The Galaxy Magazine (March, 1870)
The text was read from the page scans by machine (OCR), so it has mistakes and its columns may run together. See the pages · About this title · At the Internet Archive
Page 1
THE GATAXY. VOL. IX.—-MARCH, 1870.—No. 3. PUT YOURSELF.IN, HIS PLACE.* By CHARLES READE, Author of ‘ Foul Play,” “ Griffith Gaunt,” etc. CHAPTER XXXIII. HAT was Grace Carden’s first anonymous letter. Its contents curdled her veins with poison. The poor girl sat pale and benumbed, turning the letter in her hand, and reading the fatal words over and over again. There was a time when she would have entirely disbelieved this slander ; but now she remembered, with dismay, how many things had combined to attach Henry to Jael Dence. And then the letter stated such hard facts; facts un- known to her, but advanced positively. But what terrified her most was that Henry had so hate told her Jael Dence loved him best. . Yet her tossed and tortured mind laid hold of this comfort, that not the man only, but the woman too, were loyal, faithful spirits. Could they both have changed? Appearances are deceitful, and might have deceived this anonymous | writer. After hours of mere suffering, she began to ask herself what she should do? Her first feminine impulse was to try and find out the truth without Henry’s aid. | o But, no; on second thoughts she would be open and loyal, show Henry the letter, and ask him to tell her how much truth, if any, there was in it. The agony she endured wes a lesson to her. Now she knew what jealousy was, and saw at once she could not endure its torments. She thought to her- self he was quite right to make her dismiss Mr. Coventry, and he must dismiss Jael: she should insist on it. This resolution formed, she lived on thorns, awaiting vane Little's next Visit. He came next day, but she was out. She asked the servant if he had said anything’ The servant said, “He seemed a good deal put out at first, Miss, but after- wards he said ‘ No, it was all for the best.’ ” * Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by SHELDON & Company, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. 20
Page 2
pie 3 1% oe alia i fi, MA Bes ata ; aM aye Hare act wigh cH a ule ieakits. suites ay
Page 3
LG WH\\ N = Nery PS ” ~—S Aas 7 Ly SS SESS EMEA Ct ay “6, ZY , 5 AN \e SERA ANY brie, ies SNES SS x = S SSS SSas SSASSSSS LLL LA, Se Z Yiiddldldda TEAT AY es \ ee SS <x Vee \\; S SSS | 4) WAS ‘\\ oO to ne ith ne ts hs LAS AALS = eer THE ARROW WENT UP AT AN ANGLE OF FORTY-FIVE.—p. 159.
Page 4
296 PUT YOURSELF.IN HIS PLACE. [MARCH, This was another blow. Grace connected these words. of Henry in some mysterious way with the anonymous letter, and spent the night crying: but in the morning, being a brave, high-spirited girl, she resolved to take a direct course ; she would go down t@ the works, and request an explanation on the premises. She would see the room where Henry was said to pass so many hours with Jael, and she would show him that the man she loved, and lived for; must place himself above suspicion, or lose her forever. ‘“ And if he quarrels with me for that,” she thought, “why, I can die.”” She actually carried out her resolution, and went early next morning to the works, to demand an explanation. She took the letter with her. As she went along she discussed in her own mind how she should proceed, and at last she resolved to just hand him the letter and fix her eye on him.. His face would tell her the truth. — She drove up to the great gate: there were a good many people about, talk- ing, in excited groups. 7 The porter came out to her. She said she wished to see Mr. Little. The porter stared: the people within hearing left off talking, and stared, too, at her, and then at one another. At last the porter found his voice. “Mr. Little! why, we can’t find him any- where, dead or alive.” Just then, Ransome came out, and, seeing Miss Carden, gave a start, and looked much concerned. Grace surprised this look, and her own face began to fill with surprise, and then with alarm. “Not to be found!” she faltered. She did not know Mr. Ransome, but he knew her; and he came to the car- riage window, and said in alow voice, “ Miss Carden, I am the Chief Constable. I would advise you to returnhome. The fact is, there has been an explosion here, and a young woman nearly killed.” * Poor creature! But Mr. Little! Oh, sir! Oh, sir!” on seas can’t find him,” said Ransome, solemnly; “and we fear—we sadly fear Grace uttered a low cry, and then sat trembling. Ransome tried to console her; said it was just possible he might have not slept in the works. ; The porter shook his head. Grace sprang from the carriage. “Show me the place,” said she, hoarsely. Ransome demurred. “It is an ugly sight for any one to see.” “Who has a better right to see it than I? I shall find him, if he is there. Give me your arm: I have heard him speak of you.” Then Ransome yielded reluctantly, and took her to the place. He showed her Henry’s room, all rent and mutilated. She shuddered, and, covering her face with her hands, leaned half fainting - against her conductor; but soon she shook this off, and became inspired with Strange energy, though her face was like marble, She drew him, indeed almost dragged him, hither and thither, questioning him, and listening to everybody’s conjectures ; for there were loud groups here of work-people and town’s-people. ? Some thought he was buried under the great chimney in the river, others in- timated plainly their fear that he was blown to atoms. At each suggestion Grace Carden’s whole body winced and quivered, as if the words were sword-cuts; but she would not be persuaded to retire. ‘No, no,” she cried ; “amongst so many, some one will guess right. I'll hear all they
Page 5
1870.] PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. 297 think, if I die on the spot: die! What is lifetome now? Ah! what is that woman saying?” And she hurried Ransome toward a work-woman who was haranguing several of her comrades. The woman saw Ransome coming toward her with a strange lady. “Ah!” said she, “here’s the constable. Mr. Ransome, ‘will ye tell me where you found the lass, yesternight ?” “She was lying on that heap of bricks: I marked the place with two pieces — of chalk; ay, here they are; her head lay here, and her feet here.” “Well then,” said the woman, “he will not be far from that place. You clear away those bricks and rubbish, and you will find him underneath. She was his sweetheart, that is well known here; and he was safe to be beside her when the place was blown up.” “No such thing,” said Ransome, angrily, and casting a side look at Grace. “SHe lay on the second floor, and Mr. Little on the first floor.” “Thou simple body,” said the woman. “ What’s a stair to a young man, when a bonny lass lies awaiting him, and not a-soul about? They were a deal too close together all day, tobe distant at night.” A murmur of assent burst at once from all the women. Grace’s body winced and quivered, but her marble face never stirred, nor did her lips utter a sound. “Come away from their scandalous tongues,” said Ransome, ‘eagerly. — “No,” said Grace; and such a “No.” It was like a statue uttering a chip of its own marble. ‘ | Then she stood quivering a moment; then, leaving Ransome’s arm, she darted up to the place where Jael Dence had been found. She stood, like a bird, on the broken masonry, and opened her beautiful eyes in a strange way, and demanded of all her senses whether the body of him she loved lay beneath her feet. After a minute, during which every eye was riveted on her, she said, “I don’t believe it; I don’t feel him nearme. But I will know.” She took out her purse, full of gold, and held it up to the women. “ This for you, if you will help me.” Then, kneeling down, she began to tear up the bricks and throw them, one after another, as far as her strength permitted. The effect | on the work-women was electrical: they swarmed on the broken masonry, and began to clear it away brick by brick. They worked with sympathetic fury, led by this fair creature, whose white hands were soon soiled and bloody, but never tired. In Jess than an hour they had cleared away several wagon- -loads of debris. The body of Henry Little was not there. | Grace gave her purse to the women, and leaned ‘heavily on’ Mr. Ransome’s arm again. He supported her out of the works. As soon as they were alone, she said, “Is Jael Dence alive or dead?” «She was alive half an hour ago.” “Where is she?” “ At the hospital.” “Take me to the hospital.” He took her to the hospital, and soon they stood beside a clean little bed, in which lay the white, but still comely face of Jael Dence: her luxuriant hair was cut close, and her head bandaged ; but for her majestic form she looked a fair, dying boy. ~ “Stand back,” said Grace, “and let me speak to her.” Then she leaned over Jael where she lay. nd
Page 6
298 | PUT YOURSELF IN-H1S. PLACE, [ MARCH, Gentle women are not all gentleness. Watch them, especially in contact with their own sex, and you shall see now and then a trait of the wild animal. Grace Carden at this moment was anything but dove-like ; it was more like a falcon the way she clutched the bed-clothes, and towered over that prostrate fig- ure, and then, descending slowly nearer and nearer, plunged her eyes into those fixed and staring orbs of Jael Dence. 3 So she remained riveted. Had Jael been conscious, and culpable, nothing could have escaped a scrutiny so penetrating. Even unconscious as she was, Jael’s brain and body began to show some signs they were not quite impervious to the strange magnetic power which be- sieged them so closely. When Grace’s eyes had been close to hers about a min- ute, Jael Dence moved her head slightly to the left, as if those eyes scorched her. But Grace moved her own head to the right, rapid as a snake, and fixed her again directly. \ Jael Dence’s bosom gave a heave. “ Where—is—Henry Little ?” said Grace, still holding her tight by the eye, and speaking very slowly, and in such atone, low, but solemn and commanding ; a tone that compelled reply. “ Where—is—Henry Little ?” When this was so repeated, Jael moved a little, and her lips began to quiver. “ Where—is—Henry Little?” Jael’s lips opened feebly, and some inarticulate sounds issued from them. ** Where—is—Henry Little?” Jael Dence, though unconscious, writhed and moaned so, that the head nurse interfered, and said she could not have the patient tormented. Ransome waved her aside, but taking Grace Carden’s hand drew her gently away. She made no positive resistance ; but, while her body yielded and retired, her eye remained riveted on Jael Dence, and her hand clutched the air, like a hawk’s talons, unwilling to lose her prey, and then she turned so weak, Ran- ‘some had to support her to her carriage. As Grace’s head sunk on Ransome’s shoulders, Jael Dence’s eyes closed for the first time. As Ransome was lifting Grace Carden into the carriage, she said, in a sort of sleepy voice, “Is there no way out of these works, but one ?” “Not that I know of; but I will go at once and see. Shall he drive you home ?” : “Yes. No: to Doctor Amboyne.” Doctor Amboyne was gone to Woodbine Villa. She waited in his study, moving about the room all the time, with her face of marble, and her poor restless hands. At last the Doctor returned: they told him, at the door, Miss Carden was there: he came in to her with both hands extended, and his face working with emotion. . : She fell sobbing into his arms ; sobbing, but not a tear. “Ts there any hope?” “T have one. May he not have left the country, ina fit of despair? He often threatened. He talked of going to the United States.” “So he did. Ah, he called on me yesterday afternoon. Might not that have been to bid me good-by ?” : —
Page 7
1870.] PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. 299 She looked so intiphoriiity in Doctor Amboyne’s face, that he assented, though full of doubt. And now there was a ring at the bell, and Mr. Ransome came to say there was a little postern gate, by which Mr. Little might possibly have gone out, and the porter not seen him; and, what was moré, this gate, by all accounts, had been recently opened: it was closed before Bolt and Little took the premises. Mr. Ransome added that he should now make it his business to learn, if pos- sible, whether it had been opened by Mr. Little’s orders. Grace thanked him earnestly, and looked hopeful ; so did Doctor Aimbidyné: “ But, Doctor!” said Grace, “if he has gone away at all, he must have told somebody. Even if there was nobody he loved, he would tell—ah ! Mr. Bolt !!” “You are right. Let us go to him at once.” They found Mr. Bolt in quite a different frame of mind from their own; he was breathing vengeance. However, he showed some feeling for Grace, and told the Doctor plainly he feared the worst. Little had been down-hearted for some time,-and, at last, he (Bolt) had lost patience with him, and had proposed to him to take an annual payment of nine hundred pounds instead of a share, and leave the concern. Little had asked two days to consider this proposal. “Now,” argued Bolt, “if he meant to leave England, he could not do better than take my offer: and he would have taken it, before he left. He would have called, or else sent me a letter. But no: not a word! It’s a bad job: I’m fond of money, but I’d give a few thousands to see him alive again. But I don’t think I ever shall. There are five hundred thousand bricks of ours in that river, and a foot and a half of mud.” While they were both shuddering at this dark allusion, he went off into idle threats, and Grace left him, sick and cold, and clinging to Doctor Amboyne like a drowning woman. “Have courage,” said Doctor Amboyne. “There is one chance left us. His mother! I will telegraph to Aberystwith.” They drove together to the telegraph office, and sent a telegram. The Doc- tor would not consent to frighten Mrs. Little to death. He simply asked wheth- er her son had just visited or written to her. The answer was paid for ; ste four hours elapsed, and no answer came. Then Grace implored the Doctor to go with her to Aberysistitii ‘He cet grave, and said she was undertaking too much. She replied, almost fiercely, that she must do all that could be done, or she ehenae go mad. “But your father, my dear!” “He is in London. I will tell him all when he returns. He would let me go anywhere with you. I must go; I will!” : At four o’clock they were in the train. They spoke to each other but little on the way: their hearts were too full of dire forebodings, to talk about noth- ings. But, when they were in the fly at Aberystwith, going from the station to Mrs. Little’s lodgings, Grace laid her head on her friend’s shoulder, and said, ‘Oh, Doctor, it has come to this—I hope he loved his mother better than me.” Then came a flood of tears, the first. ‘ They went to Mrs. Little’s lodgings. The landlady had retired to bed, and, . on hearing their errand, told them, out of the second floor window, that Mrs. Little had left her some days ago, and gone toa neighboring village for change of air. Grace and Doctor Amboyne drove next morning to that village, and soon learned where Mrs. Little was. Doctor Amboyne left Grace at the inn, for he
Page 8
300 PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. ——__—s[Marcu, knew the sight of her would at once alarm Mrs. Little ; and,,in a matter so un- certain as this, he thought the greatest caution necessary. Grace waited for him at the inn in an agony of suspense. She watched at the window for him, and at last she saw him coming toward her. His head was down, and she could not read his face, or she could have told ina moment whether he brought good news or bad. She waited for him erect but trembling. He opened the door and stood be- fore her pale and agitated; so pale and agitated she had never seen him before. He faltered out: “She knowsnothing. She must know nothing. She is too ill and weak, and, indeed, in such a condition, that to tell her the fatal news would probably have killed her on the spot. All I dared do was to ask her with assumed indifference if she had heard from Henry lately. No, Grace, not for these three days.” He sat down and groaned aloud. “You love the son,” said he; “but I love the mother: loved her years be- fore you were born.” At this unexpected revelation Grace Carden kissed him, and wept on his _ shoulder. Then they went sadly home again. Doctor Amboyne now gave up:all hopes of Henry, and his anxiety was con- centrated on Mrs. Little. How on earth was he to save her from.a shock likely to prove fatal in her weak condition? To bring her to Hillsborough. in her present state would. be fatal. He was compelled to leave her in Wales, and that looked so like abandoning her. He suffered torture, the torture that only noble minds can know. At midnight, as he lay in bed, and revolved in his mind all the difficulties and perils of this pitiable situation, an idea struck him. He would try and persuade Mrs. Little to marry him. Should she consent, he could then take her on a wedding tour, and that tour he could easily extend from place to: place, putting off the evil time until, strong in health and. conjugal affec- tion, she might be able to endure the terrible, the inevitable blow. The very next morning he wrote her an eloquent letter ; he told her that Henry had gone suddenly off to Australia to sell his: patents ; that almost his last word had been “My mother! I leave her to you,” This, said the Doctor, is a sacred. com- mission: and how can I execute it? I cannot invite you to Hillsborough, for ‘the air is fatal to you. Think of your half-promise, and, my many years of de- votion, and give me the right to carry out your son’s wishes. to the full. Mrs. Little replied to this letter, and the result of the correspondence was this: she said she would marry him if she could recover her health; but zhaé ‘she feared she tiever should, until she was reconciled to her brother, Meantime, Grace Carden fellinto a strange)state: fits,of feverish energy ; fits of death-like stupor. She could do nothing, yet it maddened her to. be idle. With Bolt’s permission she set workmen to remove all the remains of the chim- ney that could be got at: the water was high just then: she had a barge and workmen, and often watched them, and urged them by her presence. Not that she ever spoke ; but she hovered about with her marble face and staring eyes; and the sight of her touched their hearts and spurred them to exertion. Sometimes she used to stand on a heap of bricks hard by, and peer, with di- lated eyes, into the dark stream, and watch each bucket, or basket, as it came up with bricks, and rubbish, and mud, from the bottom. At other times she would stand on the bridge, and lean over the battlements so far, as if she would fly down and search for her dead lover.
Page 9
1870.] PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. 301 One day as she hung thus, glaring into the water, she heard a deep sigh She looked up, and there was a face almost as pale as her own, and even more haggard, looking at her with a strange mixture of pain and pity. This, ghastly spectator of her agony, was himself a miserable man. It was Frederick Coventry. His crime had brought him no happiness, no hope of happiness. ; At sight of him, Grace Carden ningide and covered her face with her hands, _ Coventry drew back dismayed. His guilty conscience misinterpreted this. “You can forgive us now,” said Grace, with a deep sob: then turned away with sullen listlessness, and continued her sad scrutiny. Coventry loved her, after his fashion, and her mute but eloquent misery moved him. He drew nearer to, her, and said softly, “ Do,not look so: I can’t bear it, He is not there.” “Ah! How do you know ?” Coventry was silent for a moment, and seemed uneasy: but, at last, he re- plied thus :—‘* There were two explosions. The chimney fell into. the rivera moment before the explosion that blew up the works, So how can he be buried under the ruins of the chimney? I know this. from a workman, who was. stand- ing on the bridge when the explosions took place.” “ Bless the tongue that tells me that. Oh, how much wiser you are than the rest of us! Mr. Coventry, pity and forgive a poor girl who has used you ill, Tell me—tell me—what can have become of him?” Coventry was much agitated, and could not speak for some time, and, when he did, it was ina faint voice as of one exhausted bya mental struggle. “ Would you rather he was—dead—or—false ?’™ | “Oh, false—a thousand times. Prove to me he is, not dead, but only, false to his poor Grace, and I will bless, you on my knees.” Coventry’s eyes flashed. ‘“ Well, then, he was the lover of Jael Dence, the girl who fought for him, and shed her blood for him, and saved his life. The con- nection was open and notorious,” Grace was silent, “Many aman has fled from two women, who could have been hapoe with either of them. I believe that this man found himself unable to play the double game any longer, and that he has fled the country——” , . “I pray God it may be so,” sobbed Grace. Sa ‘“.—Through remorse, or from dread of exposure. Have patience. Do not kill yourself, and break all our hearts. Take my word for it, you will hear from him in a few days, and he will give you reasons for his strange disappearance— excellent, business-like reasons, but not the true ones: there will not be a word about Jael Dence.” This last with a sneer. | Grace turned on him with eyes that literally gleamed: “You hated him liv- ing, you slander him dead, Falsehood was not in him: his affection for Jael Dence was no secret. I knew it, and approved it. It was as pure as heaven. His poor mutilated body will soon contradict these vile calumnies. I hate you! I hate you!” Coventry drew back at first from this burst of ire; but soon he met her glance with one of fiendish bitterness, “You hate me for pitying you, and saying that man is not dead, Well, have your own way, then; he is not false, hut dead.” He turned on his heel, and went away. 6
Page 10
302 PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. [MaRcH, As for Mr. Carden, he declined to admit that Little was dead, and said his conduct was unpardonable, and, indeed, so nearly resembled madness, that, con- sidering the young man’s father had committed suicide, he was determined never to admit him into his house again, at all events as a suitor to Grace. _Mr. Coventry had now taken spacious apartments, and furnished them. He resumed his visits to the club. Mr. Carden met him there, and spoke more con- fidentially to him than he did to his daughter, and admitted he had grave doubts, but said he was a director of the Gosshawk, and would never, either in public or private, allow that Little was dead, unless his body should be found, and prop- erly identified. All this time there was a hot discussion in the journals; and the Saw-grind- ers’ Union repudiated the outrage with horror, and offered a considerable re- ward. Outsiders were taken in by this ; but not a single manufacturer or workman. Mr. Holdfast denounced it as a Trade outrage; and Ransome groped the town for evidence. | ; The latter, however, was rather puzzled one day by an anonymous letter telling him he was all on the wrong tack ; it was not a Trade job, but contrived by a gen- tleman for his private ends. Advantage had been taken of Little being wrong with the Trade ; “but,” said the letter, “ you should look to the head for the motive, not to the hands. One or two saw them together a good many times before the deed was done, and the Swell was seen on the very bridge when the explosion took place.” This set Ransome thinking very seriously and comparing notes. Week after week went by and left the mystery unsolved. Mr. Coventry saw Mr. Carden nearly every day, and asked him was there no news of Little? The answer was always in the negative, and this surprised Coventry more and more. ~ When a whole month had elapsed, even he gdegan to fancy strange things, and to nurse wild projects that had never entered his head before. He studied books of medical jurisprudence, and made all manner of experiments. He re- sumed his intimacy with Cole, and they were often closeted together. Five weeks had elapsed, and Grace Carden had lost all her feverish energy, and remained passive, lethargic, fearing everything, hoping nothing, but quiver- ing all day with expectation of the next blow; for what had she left to expect now but sorrow in some form or other ? She often wished to visit Jael Dence again at the hospital ; but, for some time, an invincible repugnance withheld her. _ She asked Doctor Amboyne to go instead, and question the unhappy girl. Doctor Amboyne did so; but Jael was now ina half-stupid condition, and her poor brain not clear enough to remember what she was wanted to bckitithber. Her memory was full of gaps, and, unluckily, one of these gaps embraced the whole period between her battle with Hill and the present time. At last Grace was irritated, and blamed the Doctor for his failure. She re- minded him she had herself magnetized Jael, and had almost made her speak. She resolved to go to the hospital herself. “I'll make her tell me one thing,” said she, “though I tear her heart out, and my own too.” She dressed plainly, and walked rapidly down toward the nidaahar There were two ways to it, but she chose the one that was sure to give her pain. She could not help it; her very feet dragged her to that fatal spot.
Page 11
1870. ] PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. 303 When she drew near the fatal bridge, she observed a number of persons col- lected on it, looking down in the river at some distance. At the same time people began to hurry past her, making for the bridge. She asked one of them what it was. * Summut in the river,” was the reply, but in a tone so full of meaning, that, at these simple words, she ran forward, though her knees almost gave way un- der her. The bridge was not so crowded yet, but that she contrived to push in be- tween two women, and look. | All the people were speaking in low murmurs. The hot weather had dried the river up to a stream in the middle, and, in mid-stream, about fifty yards from the foot of the bridge, was a pile of broken masonry, which had once been the upper part of Bolt and Little’s chimney. It had fallen into water twelve feet deep ; but now the water was not above five feet, and a portion of the broken bricks and tiles were visible, some just above, some just under the water. At one side of this wreck jutted out the object on which all eyes were now fastened. At first sight, it looked a crooked log of wood, sticking out from among the bricks. Thousands, indeed, had passed the bridge, and noticed noth- ing particular about it; but one, more observant or less hurried, had peered, and then pointed, and collected the crowd. It needed but a second look to show that this was not a log of wood, but the sleeve of a man’s coat. A closer inspection revealed that the sleeve was not empty. | There was an arm inside that sleeve, and a little more under the water one could see distinctly a hand white and sodden by the water. The dark stream just rippled over this hand, half veiling it at times, though never hiding it. “ The body will be jammed among the bricks,” said a by stander ; ; and all as- sented with awe. “Eh ! to think of its sticking out an arm like that!” said a young girl. * Dead folk have done more than that, sooner than want Christian burial,” re- plied an old woman. **] warrant ye they have. I can’t look at it.” * Is it cloth, or what? ” inquired another. “It’s a kind of tweed, I think.” “ What’s that glittering on its finger?” “It’s a ring—a gold ring.” At this last revelation there was a fearful scream, and Grace Carden fell senseless on the pavement. x A gentleman, who had been hanging about and listening to the comments, now darted forward, with a face almost as white as her own, and raised her up, and implored the people to get her a carriage. It was Mr. Coventry. Little had he counted on this meeting. Horror- stricken, he conveyed the insensible girl to her father’s house. | ate He handed her over to the women, and fled; and the women brought | her ) round; but she had scarcely recovered her senses, when she uttered another piercing scream, and swooned again.
Page 12
+304 PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. [Marcu, CHAPTER XXXIV, COVENTRY passed a night of agony and remorse. He. got up broken‘and de- spondent, and went straight to Woodbine Villa, to doa good action. He inquired for Miss Carden. They told him she was very ill. He ex- pressed an earnest wish to see her. The servants told him that was impossible. Nobody was allowed to see her but Doctor Amboyne. He went, next day, to Doctor Amboyne, and the Doctor told him that Miss Carden was dangerously ill. Brain fever appeared inevitable. “ But, sir,” said Coventry, eagerly, “if one could prove to her that those were not the remains of Henry Little?” | “How could you prove that? Besides, it would be no use now. She is delirious, Even should she live, I should forbid the subject for many a day. Indeed, none but the man himself could make her believe those remains are not his; and even he could not save her now. If he stood by her bedside, she would not know him.” The Doctor’s lip trembled a little, and his words were so grave and solemn that they struck to the miserable man’s marrow. He staggered away, like a drunken man, to his lodgings, and there flung himself on the floor, and grovelled in an agony of terror and remorse. CHAPTER XXXV. ONE day it occurred to Raby he could play the misanthrope just as well at home as abroad, so he returned home. He found old Dence dead and buried, and Patty Dence gone to Australia with her husband. He heard Jael was in the hospital. He called at Woodbine Villa, and they told him Grace was lying between life and death. He called on Doctor Amboyne, and found him as sad as he used to be gay. The Doctor told him all, and even took him to the Town-hall, and showed him an arm and part of the trunk of a man preserved in spirits, and a piece of tweed cloth, and a plain gold ring. “There,” said he, “is all that remains to us of your sieptibine and my friend. Genius, beauty, courage—all come to this!” He could say no more. ‘The tears filled Raby’s eyes, and all his bitterness melted away. With re- spect to his sister, he said he was quite willing to be reconciled, and even to own himself in the wrong, if Doctor Amboyne, on reading the correspondence, should think so. Doctor Amboyne said he would come to Raby Hall for that purpose. He communicated this at once to Mrs. Little. Grace had a favorable crisis, and in a few days more she was out of danger, but in a deplorable state of weakness. Doctor Amboyne ordered her to the sea- side. A carriage was prepared expressly for her, and her father took her there. - Woodbine Villa was put up to let furnished, and it was taken by—Mr. Cov- entry. , | Jael Dence began to recover strength rapidly, but she wore at times a con- fused look. The very day Grace left for Eastbank, she was discharged as cured, and left the hospital. This was in the morning. In the afternoon Doctor Amboyne, being now relieved of his anxiety as to
Page 13
1870. ] ? “PUT YOURSELF IN HIS, PLACE. 305 Grace, remembered he. had not been to see this poor girl for some time; so he went to the hospital. When he heard she was discharged, he felt annoyed with himself for not hav- ing paid her closer attention. And, besides, Grace had repeatedly told him Jael Dence could make a revelation if she chose. And now, occupied with Grace herself, he had neglected her wishes. “Where is she gone ? do you know?” One of the nurses said she was gone home. Another said the patient had told her she should go down to. the works first. “And that is the very last place you should have let her go to,” said the Doctor. ‘A fine shock the poor creature will get there. You want her back , here again, I suppose!” He felt uneasy, and drove down, to the works. There he eade some inquiries among the women, and elicited that Jael Dence had turned faint at sight of the place, and they had shown her, at her request, where she had been picked up, and had told her about the discovery of Little’s remains, and she had persuaded a little girl to. go to the Town-hall with her. “Oh, the tongue! the tongue!” groaned Amboyne. He asked to see the little girl, and she came forward of her own accord, and told him she had gone to the Town-hall with the lass, but (regretfully) that the man would not show them it without an order from the Mayor. “/¢/” Doctor Amboyne said he was. very glad that common-sense had not quite deserted the earth. “And where did you go next?” “tT came back here.” “So I see; but the lass 2?” “She said she should go home. ‘My dear,’ says she,.‘there’s nobody aes me here, I’ll go and die among my own folk.’ That was her word.” | “ Poor thing! poor thing! Why~—’” He stopped short, for that moment he remembered Raby had said old Dence was dead, and Patty gone to. Australia, Ifso, here was another blow in store. for poor Jael, and she weakened by a long illness. He instantly resolved to drive after her, and see whether she was really in a fit state to encounter so many terrible shocks. If not, he should take her back to the infirmary, or into his own house ; for he had a great respect for her, and indeed for all her family. He drove fast, but he could see nothing of her on the road. So then he went, on to Cairnhope. He stopped at the farm-house. It was sadly deteriorated in appearance. In- side he found only an old carter and his daughter. The place was in their charge. The old man told him apathetieally Jael had come home two bonente. 2 ago,. and askeil for her father and Patty, and they had told “her the old farmer was dead and buried, and Patty gone to foreign parts. “What, you blurted it out like that! You couldn’t put yourself in that poor creature’s place, and think what a blow it would be. How, in heaven’s name, did she take it?” | “Well, sir, she stared a bit, and looked stupid-like; and then she sat slonrd: She sat crowded all together like, in yon corner, the best part of'an hour ; : ame then she got up and said she must go and see his grave.” ‘“*' You hadn’t the sense to make her eat, of course ?” “My girl here set meat afore her; but she couldn’t taste it.” Dector Amboyne drove to Raby Hall and told Raby. Raby said he would
Page 14
306 _ PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. [MarcnH, have Jael up to the hall. It would be a better place for her now than the farm. He ordered a room to be got ready for her, and a large fire lighted, and at the same time ordered the best bedroom for Doctor Amboyne. “You must dine and'sleep here,” said he, “and talk of old times.” | Doctor Amboyne thanked him—it was dusk by this time—and was soon seated at that hospitable table with a huge wood-fire blazing genially. Meantime, Jael Dence sat crouched upon her father’s grave, stupefied with grief. When she had crouched there a long time, she got up, and muttered. “Dead and gone, dead and gone.” Then she crept up to the old church, and sat down in the porch, benumbed with grief, and still a little confused in her poor head. She sat there for nearly two hours, and then she got up and muttered, “ Dead and gone—he is dead and gone,” and wandered on the hill desolate. Her feet wandered, her brain wandered. She found herself, at last, in a place she recognized. -It was Squire Raby’s lawn. The moon had just risen, and shone on the turf, and on the little river that went curling around with here and there a deep pool. She crept nearer, and saw the great bay window, and a blaze of light behind it, _ There she had sang the great Noel with her father; and now he was dead and gone. 2 There she had been with Henry Little, and’seen him recognize his: mother’s picture ; and now he was dead and gone. She had saved his lifein vain ; he was dead and gone. Everybody was dead and gone. » She looked up at the glowing window. She looked down at the pool, with the moon kissing it. | | She flung her arms up, with a scream of agony, and sank into the deep pool, where the moon seemed most to smile on it. Directly after dinner, Amboyne asked to see the unhappy correspondence of which he was to be the judge. | Raby went for the letters, and laid them before him. He took up the fatal letter. ‘Why, this is not written by Mrs. Little. I know her neat Italian hand too well. See how the letters slant and straggle.” “Oh! but you must allow for the writer’s agitation.” “ Why should I allow for it? Vou didwt. Who can look at this scrawl, and not see that the poor heart-broken creature was not herself when she wrote it ? This is not a letter—it is a mere scream of agony. Put yourself in her place. Imagine yourself a woman—a creature in whom the feelings overpower the judgment. Consider the shock, the wound, the frenzy; and, besides, she had no idea that you left this house to get her husband the money from your own funds.” ti “‘ She never shall know it either.” “She does know it. I have told her. And, poor thing, she thinks she was the only one to blame. She seeks your forgiveness. She pines for it. This 1s the true cause of her illness; and I believe, if you could forgive her and love her, it might yet save her life.” “ Then tefl her I blame myself as muchas her. Tell her my house, my arms, and my heart are open to her. Amboyne, you are a true friend, and a worthy _ man. God bless you. How shall we get her here, poor soul? Will you go for her, or shall 1?” “Let me sleep on that,” said Doctor Amboyne.
Page 15
1870. | PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. 307 In the course of the evening, Doctor Amboyne tgld Raby all the reports about Jael Dence and Henry Little. “ What does that matter now?” said Raby, with a sigh. Whenever a servant came into the room, Amboyne asked him if Jael had arrived. | | Raby shared his curiosity, but not his anxiety. ‘“ The girl knows her friends,” said he.. “She will have her cry out, you may depend; but, after that, she will find her way here, and, when she has got over ita little,.I shall be sure to learn from her whether he was her lover, and where he was when the place was blown up. A Dence never lies to a Raby.” But, when nine o’clock struck, and there were no tidings of her, Raby began to share the Doctor’s uneasiness, and also to be rather angry and impatient. “Confound the girl,” said he. “ Her grandfathers have stood by mine, in their danger and tremble, for two hundred years; and now, in her trouble, she slinks away from me.’ “Put yourself in her place,” said Amboyne. “Ten to one she thinks you are offended about her and Henry. She is afraid to come near you.” “What, when I ask her?” “Through your stupid lazy servants, who, to save themselves’ trouble, have very likely told somebody else to tell her ; and we know what comes of that pro- cess. Ten to one the invitation has either missed her altogether, or come to her divested of all that is»kind and soothing. And, remember, she is not a man. She is a poor girl, full of shame and apprehension, and needs a gentle encour- aging hand to draw her here. Do, for once, put yourself in a woman’s place,— you were born of a woman.” “You are right,” said Raby. “I will send down a carriage for her, with a line in my own hand.” | He did so. At eleven, the servant came back with the news that Jael Dence was not at home. She had been seen wandering about the country, and was believed to be wrong in her head. George, the blacksmith, and others, were gone up to the old church after her. “Turn out with torches, every man-jack of you, and find her,” said Raby. As for Raby and Amboyne, they sat by the fireside, and conversed together, principally about poor Mrs. Little; but the conversation was languid. A few minutes after midnight, a terrible scream was heard. It was uttered out of doors, yet it seemed to penetrate the very room where Raby and Amboyne were seated. Both men started to their feet. The scream was not repeated. They looked at each other. . “It was in my garden,” said Raby; and, with some little difficulty, he opened the window, and ran out, followed by Amboyne. They looked, but could see nothing. But, with that death-shriek ringing in their ears, they wasted no time. Raby waved Amboyne to the left, and himself dashed off to the right, and they scoured the lawn in less than a minute. A cry of horror from Raby! He had found the body of a woman floating in a pool of the river, head downward. He dashed into the water directly, and drew it to the bank: Doctor Amboyne helped him, and they got it out on dry land. The face was ghastly; the body still. “Turn her face downward,” said Amboyne, “ give her every chance. Carry her gently.” |
Page 16
308 PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. [ MARCH, One took the shoulders, the other the feet; they carried her slowly in and laid her gently down before the fire. She lay like dripping marble. Her clothes clinging tightly around her, pivotal her marvellous form, and limbs of antique mould; but all so deadly still. Amboyne kneeled over her, searching, in vain, for some sign of life. He groaned. “Oh!” ‘said he, “is it possible that such a creature as this can be cut off in its prime?” * Dead!” cried Raby, trembling all over. “Oh, God forbid! One of her ancestors saved a Raby’s life in battle, another saved a Raby in a foaming flood : and I couldn’t save her in a dead pool! ‘She is the last of that loyal race, and I’m the last Raby. Farewell Dence! Farewell Raby!” While he bemoaned her thus, and his tears actually dripped a her pale face, Amboyne detected a slight quivering in the crowned woman’s throat. “Hush !” said he to Raby. There was a pair of old-fashioned bellows by the side of the fire; Amboyne seized them, and opened Jael’s mouth with more ease than he expected. “ That is a good sign,” said he. He inflated the bellows, and inserted the tube very carefully ; then he dis- charged the air, then gently sucked it back again. When he had done this: sev- eral times, something like a sigh escaped from Jael’s breast. The Doctor re- moved the bellows, and felt her heart, and examined her eyes. “Curious!” said he. ‘Give me some brandy. It is more like syncope than drowning.” Acting on this notion, he laid her flat on her back, and applied neat brandy to her nostrils‘and ears. | After a while she moved her whole body like a wounded snake, and moaned feebly. Raby utteréd a loud shout of joy. “She is saved!” he cried. “She is saved!” He jumped about the room Jike a boy, and, anxious to do something‘ or other, was for ringing up the female servants. But Amboyne would not hear of it. “On the contrary,” said he, “lock the door, and let only you and I see the poor girl’s distress, when:She comes back to this bitter world. “Raby, don’t you shut your eyes ‘to the truth. This was no accident.” “T am afraid not,” said-Raby. “She knows the water as well as I do; and she picked out the deepest hole: poor girl! poor girl!” He then asked Amboyne in a whisper what he ‘thought she would do when she came to her senses. “Impossible to say. She may be violent, and if so, we shall have enough to do to hold her. They tell me she threw that workman like a sack.” At this moment Jael stretched her great arms and sighed. The movement, though gentle and feminine, had a grandeur and freedom that only goes with power. | | | The Doctor lowered his voice to a whisper. “She is a good Christian, and most likely she will be penitent, and then’she will cry her heart out. Any way she is pretty sure to be hysterical, so mind and be firm as well as kind. There, her color is coming back. Now put yourself in her place. You and I must call this an accident. Stick to that through thick and thin. Ah, she is coming round fast. She shall'see you first. You take’her right hand, and look at her with all the pity and kindness I,am sure you feel.” Mr. Raby took Jael’s hand in both his, and fixed his eyes on her with pity and anxiety.
Page 17
1870.] PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. 309 She came to her senses, and stared at him a long time. Then she looked down at her wet clothes. Then she snatched her hand away, and covered her face with both hands, and began to rock and moan, and finally turned round and hid her face against the very floor, as if she would grovel and burrow into it. “Are you better, my dear?” said the Doctor, quietly. No reply. And the face still crushed against the floor. “The next time you faint away, don’t let it be on the banks of ariver. You have been going too long without food; and you fainted away, and fell into the © river. Luckily it was not very deep, or it might have been serious. You have given.us a fine fright, I can tell you.” While these words were being uttered, Jael, who did not miss a’syllable, be- gan to look very, very*slowly around with scared and troubled eyes, and to de- fend herself. ‘I remember naught,” said she, doggedly. ‘“ Who took me out?” “ Mr. Raby.” She looked timidly at him, and saw his wet clothes. “Oh, Squire, why did you spoil your clothes for me?” and she laid her head on his knee, and began to cry. “My clothes!” ‘said Raby. “The girl wants 'to break my heart.” “Eh, dear! and I’ve spoiled the beautiful carpet,” said Jael, piteously. *“ D—n the carpet!” said Raby, nearly blubbering. All this time Amboyne was putting himsélf in Jael Dence’s place. “Ts there a good fire in her room ?” asked he, with a significant look. Raby took the hint, and said he would go and see. As soon as he was out of the room, the transmigrator began to talk very fast to Jael. “Now look here, Jael, that poor man is alone in the world now, and very sad; he wants you to keep his house for him; he has been sending mes- sages all day after you, and your room has been ready ever so long.” , “My room in this house!” | “Yes. But we could not find you. However, here youare. Now you must not go back to the farm. The poor Squire won’t be quite so sad if he sees you about him. You know he was always fond of you Dences. You ‘should have seen him cry over you just now, when he thought you were dead.” “T am more cared for than I thought,” said Jael, softly. “Yes, but not more than you deserve, my dear.” He dipped ‘a sponge cake in wine. “ Oblige me by eating that.” : | She took it submissively. * Now another.” She ate another, and a third. | “It’s a very wicked lass you are so good to,” ‘said she, softly, and some gen- tle tears began to flow. : ‘Stuff and nonsense !” said the Doctor. ‘ What do you know about wicked- ness? I’m a better judge of that than you, and I say you are the best girl, and the most unselfish girl in the world; and the proof is that, instead of sitting down and nursing your own gyiefs, you are going to pluck up courage, and be a comfort to poor Mr. Raby in his lonely condition.” These words appeared to sink into Jael’s mind: she put her hands to her head, and pondered them. Perhaps she might have replied to them, but Raby came down, and ordered her to her apartment. She took a step or two in that direction, but presently drew back and would not move. “The women folk! They’ll see me on the stair, this figure.” “Not they. They are all in bed.” 4 The
Page 18
310 | PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. [Marcu, “Are they so? Then please let me go to the kitchen for a dry cloth or two.” | “What to do?” “To dry the rug a bit. Just look, what a mess I’ve made!” * T’ll say it was the dog.” * Will you, though ? Oh, but you are a good friend to me this night. Then I’ll go. Let me wring my gown a bit, not to mess the stairs as well.” “No, no; I’ll take all the blame. Will you go, or must the Doctor and I carry you?” | ““ Nay, nay, there’s no need. Your will is my pleasure, sir.” So Mr. Raby showed Jael to her room, and opened a great wardrobe, and took out several armsful of antique female habiliments, and flung them on the floor : rich. velvets, more or less faded, old brocades, lace*scarfs, chemises with lace borders ; in short, an accumulation of centuries. He soon erected a mound of these things in the middle of the floor, and told her to wear what she liked, but to be sure and air the things well first ; “for,” said he, “it is a hundred years or so since they went on any woman’s back. Now, say your prayers like a good girl, and go to bed.” : “ Ay,” said Jael, solemnly, “I shall say my prayers, you may be sure.” As he left the room she said, in a sort of patient way, ‘ Good Squire, Iam willing to live, since you are so lonely.” | ‘ CHAPTER XXXVI. EARLY next morning Mr. Raby was disturbed by female voices in a high key. He opened his window quietly, intending to throw in his bass with startling ef- fect, when, to his surprise, he found the disputants were his dairy-maid and Jael Dence. | “ And who are you that interferes with me in my work? Where do you come from? Did ye get in over the wall? for ye never came in at. no door. Who are you?” ? “JT am one that won’t see. the good Squire wronged. Aren’t ye ashamed? What, eat his bread, and take his wage, and then steal his butter!” “Tf ye call mea thief, ’lllaw ye. Thief yourself! you don’t belong to the house ; whose gown have you got on your back? Here, James! Tom! here’s a strange woman making off with the Squire’s lady’s clothes, and two pounds of butter to boot.” Jael was taken aback for a moment by this’ audacious attack, and surveyed her borrowed habiliments with a blush of confusion. Several servants came about at the noise, and her situation bade fair to be a very unpleasant one; but Mr. Raby put in his word: “ Hold your tongues, all of ye. Now, Jael Dence, what is the matter?” Instantly all eyes were turned up to the window with a start, and Jael told her tale. “Sir,” said she, “I did see this young woman take out something from under her apron, and give it to a little girl. I thought there was some- thing amiss, and I stopped the girl at the gate, and questioned her what she was carrying off so sly. She gives a squeak and drops it directly, and takes to her heels. I took it up and brought it in, and here it is, two beautiful pounds of butter, fresh churned ; look else’’—here she undid a linen wrap, and dis- played the butter—“ so I challenged the dairy-maid here. She says I’m a thief-- a
Page 19
1870. ] PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE, Zit and that I leave to you, Squire; you know whether I come of thieves or honest folk ; but what I want to know from her is, why her lass dropped the butter and took to her heels at a word?” ““ Now, my good Jael,” said the Squire, “if you are going to interfere every time you catch my servants pilfering, you will have a hard time of it. However, zeal is too rare a thing for me to discourage it. I must make an example. Hy, you young woman: I dare say you are no worse than the rest, but you are the one that is found out; so you must pack up your clothes, and begone.” “ Not without a month’s warning, or a month’s wage, sir, if you please,” said the dairy-maid, pertly. , “If I catch you in the house when I come down, I'll send you to prison, on my Own warrant, with the butter tied round your neck.” At this direful threat the offender began to blubber, and speedily centers to pack her box. Mr. Raby then told the other servants that Jael Dence was the new house- keeper, and that a person of her character was evidently required in the house ; they must all treat her with respect, or leave his service. Thereupon two gave warning, and Mr. Raby, who never kept a servant a day after that servant had given him warning, had them up to his room, and paid them a month’s wages. “And now,” said he, “for the honor of the house, don’t leave us fasting; but eat a good breakfast, and then go to the devil.” At his own breakfast he related the incident to Doctor Amboyne, with a characteristiccomment. “And the fools say there is nothing inrace. So likely, that of all animals man alone should be exempt from the law of nature! Take a drowning watch-dog out of the water and put him ina strange house; he is scarcely dry before he sets to work to protect it. Take a drowning Dence into your house, and she is up with the lark to look after your interests. That girl connive and let the man be robbed whose roof shelters her? She couldn't, it is notin her blood. I’m afraid there’s to be a crusade against petty larceny in this house, and more row about it than it is worth. No matter; I shall support the crusader, on principle. Itis not for me to check honest impulses, nor to fight against nature in almost the only thing where she commands my respect.” “Very well,” said the Doctor, “that is settled: so now let us talk of some- thing more important. How are we to get your sister, in her delicate state, from Wales to this place?” ; | “Why, I will go for her myself, to be sure.” | “ Raby, your heart is in the right place, after all. But, when she is here, how are we to conceal her unhappy son’s fate from her? It will be more diffi- cult than ever, now Jael Dence is in the house.” “Why so? We must take the girl into our confidence; that is all.” “The sooner the better, then. Let us have her in here.” Jael was sent for, and Mr. Raby requested her to takea seat, and give all her attention to something Doctor Amboyne had to say. - Doctor Amboyne then told her, with quiet earnestness, that Mrs. Little was at present so ill and weak he felt sure the news of Henry’s death would kill her. | * Ay, poor soul!” said Jael, and began to cry bitterly. The Doctor held his peace, and cast a disconsolate look on Raby, as much | as to say, ‘ We shall get no efficient aid in this quarter.” ' After a little while Jael dried, her eyes, and said, “Go on, sir. 1 must needs cry before you now and then: ’tisn’t to say I shall ever cry scent her.” 21
Page 20
1312 . PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. [MaARCcR, “Well, then, if we cax get her safe to this place, and keep her in the dark for _.a few months, I think we may save her life. Everything else will be in her favor here: her native air, cherished memories, her brother’s !ove—and_ after all, it was fretting about her quarrel with him that first undermined her health and spirits.— Well, we shall remove the cause, and then perhaps the effect may go. But how are we to keep the sad truth from her ?” “Let me think,” said Jael Dence. “My head is a deal clearer since last night.” She leaned her chin upon her hand, and her face and brow showed signs of intellectual power no one hadsever observed in them before. ** Who is to go for her?” said she at last. “Tam going myself.” . “ That is a mistake at starting, begging your worship’s pardon. Why, the very sight of you might startle her into her grave.. Nay, you'll give me the money— for mine is all in the Savings Bank—and I shall go for her myself. I shall tell her the Squire is longing for her, and that I’m to be here for fear she might feel strange. She always liked me, poor soul. I shall get her safe here, you needn’t fear for that. But, when she is here’’—the chin rested on the hand again— * well, the Doctor must forbid visitors. Miss Grace must be told not to write. Every newspaper must be read before she is allowed to see it. And, Squire, you will be very kind to her when you are in her company; but we must manage, somehow or other, so that you can keep out of her way.” ** What for, in Heaven’s name?” “ Sir, we shall have to lie from morn to night; and you will be a bungler at that, saving your presence. If there’s a servant left in the house who knows, I’d give that servant a present, and part with her before Mrs. Little sets her foot in the house.” “This sounds very sensible,” said Raby. “I ama novice at lying. But I shall cultivate the art for poor Edith’s sake. I’m not a fanatic: there is justifi- able homicide, so why not justifiable facticide ?”’ *“‘ Raby,” said the Doctor, “this young woman has said enough to show me that she is more fit to conduct this delicate undertaking than either you or I. Let us profit by the discovery, put our vanity in our pocket, and give her the command. My dear, you see the importance: you see the pamaolys now will you undertake it ?” “I will sir,” said Jael, firmly ; “and I look to succeed, God willing. I shall _ be in Wales this afternoon.” ‘Well, but would you not be the better yourself for one day’s rest?” “No, sir. I’ve learned, with a sad heart, what one day may bring forth. After that, I’m sworn never to throw away a day. And, as for sitting down and thinking, ’tis the worst thing I cando. Ido thank God that in this, my own heavy trouble, I’m not tied to my sad thoughts, but can get about, and do a lit- tle bit of good for Raby House. Do what I will, ’tis but giving them back one pig out of their own farrow ; for we owe all we have to them.” .With this she retired to prepare for her journey, leaving both the gentlemen lost in admiration of her simple virtues, and the clear intelligence she had shown them in few words. She travelled into Wales that very day, and many a burst of bitter grief she had all by herself in the train. At six P.M. she stood before Mrs. Little with a smiling countenance. Mrs, Little welcomed her with some little pleasure and much surprise.
Page 21
1870,] PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. 313 “Good news, madam,” said Jael. ‘“ Squire Raby has sent me to bring you to Raby Hall. He wanted to come himself; but I would not let him.” “ That is good news,” said Mrs. Little, languidly. ‘‘ Now I shall die at peace with my brother, at peace with all mankind, | hope.” “You'll die when your time comes,” said Jael. “ But you have got a shorter journey before you at present, and that is to Raby Hall.” “Raby Hall! I shall never see it again. I have no strength to move. I am worn out with the battle of life. Stay with me here, and close my eyes.” | “ Of course I shall stay with you,” said Jael, and began to gossip with every appearance of carelessness. Next morning, with infinite difficulty, she persuaded the poor jaundiced lady to show her Aberystwith. She took the tickets herself, and got her patient half- way to Hillsborough. Next day, with less difficulty, to Raby Hall. Allhad been settled before. Edith Litthe was shown into her old bedroom, adorned with pyramids of flowers in her honor ; and there she found a loving line from Guy, begging her pardon for his past harshness, and telling her she was to send for him as soon as she felt strong enough to meet him. That evening, brother and sister were clasped in each other’s arms, and wept tears of affection and regret over each other. | Jael Dence slept on a camp-bed in Mrs. Little’s room, which was very spa- cious, and watched her, and was always about her. Under private advice from Doctor Amboyne, she superintended her patient’s diet, and, by soft indomitable perseverance, compelled her to walk every day, and fight against her Y a9 lassi- tude. : Heaven rewarded her by giving her a warm and tender. aftectinn for her poor patient, that did something to fill her own yearning and desolate heart. | | Here I must leave them both for the present, and show how these events af- fected the main characters of my story. ! CHAPTER XXXVII. Just outside the little seaside town of East-bank is a house, which, being »2zy old, contrasts agreeably with the pretentious villas fashion has raised. It is roomy inside, yet outside it looks like a cottage: low, rambling, gabled, and picturesque. It stands on a slope just above the sea, and its front garden runs down almost to the sea-shore. The aspect is southerly. The placid sea looks like a beautiful lake ; for, about two miles out, a great tongue of land runs across, and keeps the tempests out. The cottage itself was now clothed deep with green creepers, and its verandah with jessamine ; and the low white walls of the garden were beautiful with vine- leaves and huge fig-leaves, that ran up them and about them, and waved over them in tropical luxuriance. In short, the house was a very bower, and looked the abode of bliss ; and this time last year a young couple had spent their honey- moon there, and left it with a sigh. But one place sees many minds; and now this sweet place was the bed on which drooped the broken lily of this tale, Grace Carden. She lay in the warm air of the verandah, and turned her hollow eyes upon the sea; and every day life crept slowly back to her young body, but not to net desolate heart. A brain fever either kills or blunts: and Grace’s agony was blunted. Her
Page 22
314 PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. . [MARCH, mind was in a strange state. She was beginning to look two things in the face: that the man she loved was dead; that the man she loved, and had nearly died for, had loved another as well as herself; and this last grief, strange to say, was the saving of her. She forgave him with all her heart, for he was dead; she made excuses for him, for she loved him; but, since his whole heart had not been hers, her pride and modesty rebelled against dying for him, and she re- solved to live; she fought hard to live and get well. Finally, being a very woman, though a noble one, she hated Jae] Dence. She was not alone in the world. Her danger, her illness, and her misery, had shown her the treasure of a father’s love. He had found this sweet bower for her ; and here he sat for hours by her side, with his hand in hers, gazing on her with touching anxiety and affection. Business compelled him to run into . Hillsborough now and then ; but he despatched it with feverish haste, and came back to her: it drove him to London; but he telegraphed to her twice a day, and was miserable till he got back. She saw the man of business turned into a ‘man of love for her, and she felt it. “Ah, papa,” she said one day, ‘I little thought you loved your poor Grace so much. , You don’t love any other child but me, do you, papa?” and with this question she clung weeping round his neck. “ My darling child, there’ s nothing on earth I love but you. When shall I see you smile again?” “In a few years, perhaps. God knows.” One evening—he had been in Hillsborough that day—he said, “ My dear, I have seen an old friend of yours to-day, Mr. Coventry. He asked very kindly after you.” Grace made no reply. | ; “He is almost as pale as you are. He has been very ill, he tells me. And really, I believe it was your illness upset him.” “ Poor Mr. Coventry!” said Grace, but with a leaden air of indifference. “ 1 hope I didn’t do. wrong, but when he asked after you so anxiously, I said, ‘Come, and see for yourself”? Oh, you need not look frightened; he is not coming. He says you are offended with him.” “ Not I. What is Mr. Coventry to me?” “ Well, he thinks so. He says he was betrayed into speaking ill to you of some one who, he thought, was living ; and now that weighs upon his conscience.” - “1 can understand that. I am miserable, but let me try and be just. Papa, Mr. Coventry was trying to comfort me, in his clumsy way ; and what he said he did not invent—he heard it; and so many people say so, that I—I—oh, papa! papa ! 9 p , Mr. Carden dropped the whole subject directly. However, she returned to it herself, and said, listlessly, that Mr. Coventry, in her opinion, had shown more generosity than most people would in his case. She had no feeling against him; he was of no more importance, in her eyes, than that stool, and he might visit her if he pleased, but on one condition, that he should forget all the past, and never presume to speak to her of love. “Love! Men are all incapable of it.” She was thinking of Henry, even while she was speaking of his rival. The permission, thus limited, was conveyed to Mr. Coventeys by his friend Carden; but he showed no hurry to take advantage of it; and, as for Grace, she forgot she had given it.
Page 23
1870.] PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE 315 But this coolness of Coventry’s was merely apparent. He was only waiting the arrival of Patrick Lally from Ireland. This Lally was an old and confiden- tial servant, who had served him formerly in many intrigues, and with whom he had parted reluctantly some months ago, and allowed him a small pension for past services. He dared not leave the villa in charge of any person less devoted to him than this Lally. The man arrived at last, received minute instructions, and then Mr. Coven- try went to East-bank. He found what seemed the ghost of Grace Carden, lying on the sofa, looking on the sea. At the sight of her he started back in dismay. “What have I done?” Those strange words fell from him before he knew what he was saying. Grace heard them, but did not take the trouble to inquire into their meaning, She said, doggedly, “I am alive, you see. Nothing kills. It is wonderful: we die of a fall, of a blow, of swallowing a pin; yet I am alive. But, never mind — me; you look unwell yourself. What is the matter?” . “Can you ask me?” At this, which implied that her illness was the cause of his, she turned her head away from him with weariness and disgust, and looked at the séa, and thought of the dead. Coventry sat speechless, and eyed her silent figure with miserable devotion. He was by her side once more, and no rival near. He set himself to study all her moods, and begin by being inoffensive to her; in time he might be some- thing more. He spent four days in East-bank, and never uttered a word of love; but his _ soft. soothing voice was ever in ner ear, and won her attention now and then; not often. : When he left her, she did not ask him to come again. Her father did though, and told him to be patient ; better days wete in store. “Give her time,” said he, “and, a month or two hence, if you have the same feeling for her you used to have 7 “1 love her more than ever. I worship her “Then you will have me on your side, stronger than ever. But you must give her time.” And now Coventry had an ally far more powerful than himself, an ally at once zealous and judicious. Mr. Carden contented himself, at first, with prais- ing him in general terms ; next he affected to laugh at him for renting the villa, merely to be in the place which Grace had occupied. Then Grace defended him. “Don’t laugh at an honest love. Pityit. It is all we can do; and the least we can do.” But, when he advanced further, and began to remind his daughter she had once given this gentleman hopes, and all but engaged herself to him, she drew back with fear and repugnance, and said, “If he cannot forget that, pray let hin never come near me again.” “Qh,” said Mr. Carden, “I believe he has no hopes of the kind; it is of you ™ I am thinking, not of him. It has got about that poor Little had a connection with some girl in humble life, and that he was in love with her, and you in love with him. That wounds a father’s pride, and makes me grateful to Coventry for his unshaken devotion, while others are sneering at my poor child for her i inno- cent love.”
Page 24
316 PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. [ MARCH, Grace writhed, and the tears ran down her cheeks at this. “ Oh, spare the dead,” she faltered. Then her father kissed her, and begged her to forgive him; he would avoid all these topics in future: and so he did, for some time ; but tint he had said rankled. A few days after this, Coventry came again, and did nothing but soothe Grace with words; only he managed so that Grace should detect him looking very sad, when he was not actually employed in cheering her. She began to pity him a little, and wonder at his devotion. He had not been gone many hours when another visitor arrived quite unex- pectedly—Mr. Raby. He came to tell her his own news, and warn her of the difficult game they were now playing at Raby Hall, that she might not thwart it inadvertently. Grace was much agitated, and shed tears of sympathy. She promised, with a sigh, to hold no communication with Mrs. Little. She thought it very hard, but she promised. In the course of his narrative, Mr. Raby spoke very highly of Jael Dence, | _ and of her conduct in the matter. To this Grace did not respond. She waited her opportunity and said keenly and coldly, “ How did she come to be in your house ?” “ Well, that is a secret.”’ “Can you not trust me with a secret ?” “Oh yes,” said Raby, ‘ provided you will promise faithfully to tell no one.” Grace promised, and he then told her that Jael Dence, in a moment of des- - peration, had thrown herself into the river at the back of his house. “ Poor girl!” said he, “her brain was not right at the time. Heaven keep us all from those moments of despair. She has got over it now, and nurses and watches my poor sister more like a mother watching: her child than a young woman tak- ing care of an old one. She is the main-spring of the house.” At all this, Grace turned from pale to white, but said nothing: mr er ran on in praise of Jael, little dreaming what pain his words inflicted. When he left her, she rose and walked down to the sea; for her sbctiniess spirit gave her body energy. Hitherto she found she had only suspected ; now she was sure. Hitherto she had feared Henry Little had loved Jael Dence a lit- tle ; now she was sure he had loved her best. Jael Dence would not have at- tempted self-destruction for any man unless he loved her. The very act proved ber claim.to him more eloquently than words could do. Now she believed all— the anonymous letter—Mr. Coventry’s report—the women’s words, who worked in the same factory, and could not be deceived. And her very godfather ac- cepted Jael Dence and her claim to sympathy: she was taken into his house, and set to nurse Henry Little’s mother: poor Grace was slighted on all sides ; she must not even write to Mrs. Little, nor take part in the pious falsehood they were concocting together, Raby and his Jael Dence, whom everybody loved best—everybody except this poor, faithful, ill-used wretch Frederick Coventry ; and him she hated for loving her better than the man she loved had loved her. _ Tender, but very proud, this sensitive creature saw herself dethroned from her love. Jael Dence had eclipsed her in every way; had saved his life with her strong arm, had almost perished with him; and had tried to kill herself when he was dead. Sze was far behind this rival in everything. She had only loved, and suffered, and nearly died. ‘“ No, no,” she said to herself, “she could not love him better than I did: but Ze loved her best; and she knew it, and
Page 25
1870.) PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. 317 that made her arm strong to fight, and her heart strong to die for him. I am nobody ; nothing.” Then the snaicina tears ran down her cheeks. But soon her pride got the upper hand, and dried her cheeks, and dpe mad- dened her. She began to blush for her love, to blush for her illness. She rose into that state of exasperation in which persons of her sex do things they look back upon with wonder, and, strange to say, all this without one unkind thought of sali whose faults she saw, but excused—he was dead. She now began to struggle visibly, and violently, against her deadly sorrow. She forced herself to take walks and rides, and to talk, with nothing tosay. She even tried to laugh now and then. She made violent efforts to be gracious and: pitiful to Mr. Coventry ; and the next minute made him suffer for it, by treating him like a troublesome hound. | . . He loved her madly, yet, sometimes, he felt tempted to kill her and end both her torture and his own. Such was the inner life of Grace Carden for many days; devoid of striking incident, yet well worthy of study by those who care to pierce below the surface, and see what passes in the hearts of the unhappy, and to learn how things come. gradually about, that sound incredible when not so traced, yet are natural and almost inevitable results of certain conflicting passions in a virgin heart. One day Mr. Carden telegraphed from London to’ Mr. Coventry at Hillsbor- ough, that he was coming down to East-bank by the midday express, and would be glad to meet him there at four o’clock. He also telegraphed to Grace, and said, “ Dinner at five.” ee Both gentlemen arrived about the same time, a little before Aut ; Soon after dinner was over, Grace observed a restlessness in her father’s. manner which convinced her he had something private to say to Mr. Coventry. Her suspicions were aroused: she fancied he was going to encourage Mr. Cov-. entry to court her. Instantly the whole woman was in arms, and her love for the deceased came rushing back tenfold. She rose, soon after dinner, and _re- tired to the drawing-room ; but, as soon as she got there, she slipped quietly into the verandah, and lay softly down upon her couch. The dining-room win- dow was open, and, with her quick ears, she could hear nearly every word. She soon found that all her bitterness and her preparation for hostilities were wasted. Her father was telling Mr. Coventry the story of Richard Martin; only he carried it a step further than I have done. ** Well, sir,” said he, “the money had not been paid more than a month, when.an insurance office down at Liverpool communicated withus. The same game had been played with them; but, somehow, their suspicions were excited. We compared notes with them, and set detectives to work. They traced Mar- tin’s confederates, and found one of them was in prison, awaiting his trial for some minor offence. They worked on him ; to tell the truth, I am afraid they compounded ; and he let out the whole truth. Every one of those villains could swim like ducks, and Richard Martin like a fish. Drowned? not he: he had floated down to Greenwich or somewhere—the blackguard—and hid himself. And what do you think the miscreants did next? Bought. a dead marine, and took him down in a box to some low public-house by the waterside. They had a supper, and dressed their marine in Richard Martin’s clothes, and shaved its whiskers, and broke its tooth, and set it up in a chair, with a table before it, and a pot of ale, and fastened a pipe in its mouth ; and they kept toasting this ghastly
Page 26
eat e PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. [Marcn, corpse as the thing that was to make all their fortunes.”—At this grotesque and horrible picture, a sigh of horror was uttered in the verandah. Mr. Carden, oc- cupied with his narrative, did not hear it, but Coventry did.—‘‘ Then, when it was pitch dark, they staggered down to the water with it, and planted it in the weeds. And, mark the cunning! when they had gone through their farce of rec- ognizing it publicly for Richard Martin, they bribed a churchwarden and buried it under our very noses: it was all done in a way to take in the very devil. There’s no Richard Martin; there never was a Richard Martin; there never will be: all this was contrived and executed by a swindler well known to the police, only they can’t catch him; he is here, and there, and everywhere ; they ~eall him ‘Shifty Dick.’ He and his myrmidons have bled the ‘Gosshawk’ to —~ the tune of nine hundred pounds.” He drew his breath and proceeded more calmly: “ However, a lesson of this kind is never thrown away upon a public man: and it has given me some very curious ideas about another matter. You know what I mean.” Coventry started, and looked quite taken aback by this sudden turn. However he stammered out, “1 suppose you mean,—but, really, I can’t im- agine what similarity———” he paused, and, inadvertently, his eye glanced uneasi-« ly toward the verandah. “Oh,” said Mr. Carden, “these diabolical frauds are not done upon one pat- tern, or, of course, there would soon be an end of theirsuccess. But, come now, what proof have we got that what they found in the river at Hillsborough was the remains of Henry Little?” “T don’t know, 1am sure. But nobody seems to doubt it. The situation, the clothes, the ring—so many coincidences.” . | “ That is all very well, if there were no rogues in the world. But there are; and 1 know it, to my cost. The ‘ Gosshawk’ has just lost nine hundred pounds by not suspecting. It shall not lose five thousand by the same weakness; I'll take care of that.” He paused a moment, and then proceeded to argue the matter :— “The very idea of an imposture has never occurred to anybody—in Little’s case: it did not occur to me, until this business of Shifty Dick enlightened me. But, come now, just admit the idea of imposture into that honest, unsuspicious mind of yours, and you'll find the whole thing wears a very doubtful appearance directly. A common workman—he was no more at the time—insures his life, for how much? three hundred pounds? no; five thousand. Within one year after that he disappears, under cover of an explosion. Some weeks afterward— about as many as the Martin swindle—there is found in the river a fragment of humanity ; an arm, and a hand, and a piece of a human trunk; but no face, mind you: arms are pretty much alike, faces differ. The fragment is clad in brown tweed, and Little wore brown tweed : that is all very well; but the marine was found dressed from head to foot in Shifty Dick’s very clothes. But Jet us goon. There was a plain gold ring found on the hand in Hillsborough river, and my poor daughter had given Little a plain gold ring. But what was there to hinder an impostor from buying some pauper’s body, and putting a plain gold ring on the hand? Why, paupers’ bodies are constantly sold, and the funeral service gabbled over a coffin full of stones. If I had paper and ink here, and could put Little’s case and Martin’s in two columns, I should soon show you that Martin and his gang faced and overcame more and greater difficulties in the way of im- posture than any that have been overcome in Little’s case. The Martin gang dealt witb the face ; here, that is shirked. The Martin gang planted a body, not.
Page 27
1870.] PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. | 319 a fragment. Does it not strike you as very. odd that the rest of Henry Little is not to be found? It may be all right; but, of the two, 1 incline to think it is a plant, and that some person, calling himself the heir or assign of Little, will soon apply to the ‘ Gosshawk’ for five thousand pounds. Well, let him. I shall look on that person as the agent of a living man, not the heir of a dead one; and I shall tell him I don’t believe in arms, and shoulders, and tweed suits, and plain gold rings—(why, wedding-rings are the very things conjurers take from the pub- lic at random to play hanky-panky with ; they are so like one another). I shall demand to see the man’s face; and the mother who bore him must identify that face, before I will pay one shilling to his heirs or assigns. J] am waiting to see who will come forward and claim. Nobody moves; and that is curious. Well, when they do, I shall be ready for them. You look pale! But no wonder: ‘itis really no subject for an after-dinner conversation.” Coventry was pale indeed, and his mind all in a whirl as to what he should say ; for Mr. Carden’s sagacity terrified him, and the worst of it was he felt sure: that Grace Carden heard every word. At last, however, his natural cunning came to his aid, and he-made a very artful speech, directed principally to his unseen hearer. ; “Mr. Carden,” said he, “this seems to me very shrewd; but surely it fails in one respect: you leave the man’s character out of the account. Mr. Littlecame between me and one I love, and inflicted great misery on me; but I will try and be just to him. I don’t believe he was an impostor of that kind, He was false in love; he had been reared among workmen, and everybody says he loved a working-girl more than he did your daughter; but as for his cheating you or any other person out of five thousand pounds, I can’t believe it. They all say he was as honest a man, in money matters, as ever breathed.” “You judge him by yourself, Besides, men begin by deceiving women, but - they go on to——Why, Grace, my poor child——Good heavens ! have you—’ Grace was leaning against the open window, ghastly and terrible. “Yes,” said she haughtily, “ I have been guilty of the meanness of listening: and I suffer for it. It is but one pang moré to a broken heart. Mr. Coventry, you are just, you are generous ; and I will ¢y and reward you for those words. No, papa, no impostor, but a man sore tried, sore tempted. If he is alive, we shall soon know.” “How ?” “He will write—¢o Fael Dence.” Having uttered this strange speech she rushed away with a wild. cry of agony, and nobody saw her face again that night. She did not come down stairs next day. Mr. Carden went up to her. He stayed with her an hour, and came down looking much dejected; he asked Mr. Coventry to take a turn in the garden with him. When they were alone, he said gravely, “Mr. Coventry, that unfortunate conversation of ours jhas quite upset my poor girl. She tells me now, she will not believe he is dead until months and months have passed without his writing to Jael Dence.” “ Well, but, sir,” said Coventry, “could you not convince her?” “How can I, when I am myself convinced he is alive, and will give us a great deal of trouble yet ; for it is clear to me the poor girl loves him more than . she knows? Look here, Coventry, there’s no man I so desire for a son-in-law — as yourself; you have shown a patience, a fidelity !—but as a just man, anda man of honor, I must now advise you to give up all thoughts of her. You are not doing yourself justice ; she-will never marry you, while that man is alive and
Page 28
320 PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE, [Marcn, unmarried. I am provoked with her: she will not leave her room while you are in the house. Shall I tell you what she said? ‘I respect him, admire him, but I can’t bear, the sight of him now.’ That is all because I let out last night, that I thought Little was alive. 1 told her, alive or not, he was dead to her.” *‘ And what did she say to that?” “Not a word. She wrung her hands, and burst out crying terribly. Ah! my friend, may you never know what it is to be a father, and see your child wring her hands, and cry her heart out, as I have seen mine.” His own tears flowed, and his voice was choked. He faltered out, “We are two miserable creatures ; forgive us, and leave us to our fate.” Coventry rose, sick at heart, and said, “ Tell her I will not intrude upon her.’ ”?. He telegraphed to Lally, and went back to Hillsborough as miserable as those he left behind; but with this difference, he deserved his miséry, deserved it richly. _ Ere he had been two days in Hillsborough a telegram came from him to Mr. Carden,— ; “Re Little. Important discovery. Pray come here at once.” Mr. Carden had the prudence to withhold from Grace the nature of this com- munication. He merely told her, business called him suddenly to Hillsborough. ' He started by the next train, and found Mr. Coventry waiting for him at “ Wood- bine Villa,” with strange news : it was not conjecture, nor a matter of deduction, but a piece of undeniable evidence; and it knocked both Mr. Carden’s theory and his daughter’s to atoms, at one blow. ¥
Page 29
AT CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY. FTER having spent two years amid the noise and dirt of London, it was A with the greatest delight that I embraced an opportunity of proceeding to the University. Although I had not been educated at one of the schools ac- ‘knowledged as “ public” (z. e., one of those schools which figured in the Report of Special Commissioners appointed to review the system of education in Eng- land), I had nevertheless been sufficiently well acquainted with numerous past and present University men to imbibe strong ideas of the exceeding great de- lights of a college life. From all I had heard I confess my tendencies had a leaning toward Oxford; but owing to the short notice I had received, I was obliged to enter wherever I could, and the Oxford colleges (at least all the lead- ing ones) having already their full complement of men, I was only too glad to curl myself a member of Solent Cambridge, I do not know any period of a man’s life in which he feels so utterly alone as during the first few hours in an English university town. Every one is far too busy at the beginning of term to pay the slightest attention to so insignificant an animal as a freshman, and in consequence you are made at once to see that you are to shift for yourself. Should you even attempt to elicit some little informa- tion from one of the numerous groups of second or third year men, who loiter — about the railway station staring at the new arrivals, you would in all probability receive advice which, if followed, would give the greatest t possible annoyance. Behold me then surrendering at discretion to a watchful fly driver, who, reading “freshman” in my face, has pounced on my baggage, transferred it to the ‘roof of his vehicle, and inquired the name of my college, before I have time to con-— b sider what shall be done next. Being conversant with Oxford, I was at first greatly disappointed with the ap- pearance of the streets we now drove through, and instituted many bitter com- parisons between the glorious High street of the former city and the very ordinary Regent street of Cambridge. Arrived at my college, I obtained from tle porter (a highly important func- tionary, whose duty it is to guard the gates day and night, to keep out dogs, sus- picious characters, etc., and report all infringements of college rule that come under his immediate notice) the address of my future lodgings, with an injunc- tion to call on the tutor as soon as I had arrayed myself in academicals. These same academicals, by-the-by, were the means of opening my eyes to the intense watchfulness of the surrounding tradesmen. As I ascended the staircase leading to my rooms, I was accosted by name by a fashionable-looking individual, who had just issued from them. After inquiring tenderly after my | health, my impressions of the town, etc., he was at length induced to unfold his business. He was, he said, tailor to the college of which I was a member, and had for years supplied all its undergraduates with caps and gowns. “I have taken the liberty, sir,” he added, “to bring some with me—as I knew vou would arrive by this train, and be eager to pay your respects at once to the tutor, who, I must inform you, takes in my bills.” And here I may as well pause for a moment to explain the latter part of this fluent gentleman’s speech, as it involves one of the most important principles in the University course. Every tradesman in the town is bound to submit to the
Page 30
322 AT CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY. [MARCH, inspection of the authorities every bill due to him by an undergraduate, except for the sumwf £5. Should he neglect to do this, not only is his recovery of the money extremely doubtful, but his name is published throughout the University as that of a man with whom wo undergraduate may deal, under pain of expulsion or rustication. Nor is this law a dead letter, or applicable only to tradesmen. Medical men and lawyers residing within University precincts are equally liable to be “discommonsed ” (as this outlawry is termed) ; and at the present day there are members of both the above-named professions who have been thus punished for lending money to those “zz statu fupillari.” The tutor of the college will usually mention, during the first formal visit paid to him by the freshman, the ‘names of the tradesmen with whom it is most advisable, in his opinion, to deal (although no stress is laid upon it, nor is he in the slightest degree bound to act up to it). And herein is discoverable a reason for the extravagant prices de- manded for all commodities at Cambridge. At the end of every term these privi- leged tradesmen (booksellers, grocers, wine merchants, bootmakers, etc.) send in their accounts to the college tutor ; and by him they are submitted to the parents and guardians of the young men in residence. But the money, when received by the tutor, is never (or very, very rarely) at once handed over to the creditor, but is kept back for twelve months, in order that the holder of it may derive the benefit of the interest for that period. Thus it is that the tradesmen, compelled to give long credit, are likewise compelled for their own sakeg to demand large profits on their wares, inasmuch as they dare not, by agene, for the money, offend the magnates of the place. For the power of the Dons, or college authorities, is not simply confined to the exercise of authority over the University, properly speaking, but also ex- tends to the municipal arrangements of the town. If an undergraduate be sum- moned for any misdemeanor before the magistrates at the town hall, there must _ be at least one head of a college on the bench before sentence can be passed ; and cases are on record where a refractory student has been sent to prison without the option of a fine, at the instigation of the presiding authority. Her Majesty’s troops even, according to the strict letter of the charter, may not pass through the town unless they have previously gained permission from the Vice-Chancel- lor for the time being ; and I recollect hearing of a young dragoon officer who got into very hot water by riding roughshod over this privilege at Oxford. To the same potentates also are referred all applications from performers desiring to give entertainments in Cambridge, no matter to what order such entertainments may belong; and although the applications are seldom if ever refused, the exist- ence of the right to do so is universally acknowledged. After this digression, it is time that I should proceed with an account of my first interview with my tutor—an interview which gave me but little additional information to that I already possessed. The great.man himself appeared to me infinitely more nervous than any freshman could possibly be, and above all things unwilling to undergo any questioning. The old stereotyped form was spoken for the thousandth time—“ Lectures were given by him, or delegated authorities, on every other day: punctual and regular attendance was necessary, both to them and to one of the services in chapel, which were performed twice in each day, viz., at 7:20 A. M. and again in the evening at 4:30 or 5:30, according to the time of year. All men were to be within the college gates or in their lodgings before midnight, under penalty of being ‘gated’ at 10 o’clock” (z. ¢., being prevented from staying out beyond that time), etc.; the whole speech being concluded by a stiff ‘good morning.’
Page 31
1870.] AT CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY. 323 For two or three days after my arrival there was but little to be done beyond attending to the before-named college duties ; and it did not take long to discover that the neglect of these (in a moderate degree) brought no very heavy penalty in its train. To maintain a good character it is necessary to attend at least five . services in the chapel every week, including two on the Sabbath, and a fair pro- portion of the lectures. But, if a man be unwilling to trammel himself with even this small amount of trouble, the baldest excuses are given and received, and the Dons simply cease to interest themselves at all about him. During the first three terms the subjects of lectures for the freshman generally include those books in which he is to be examined for his “little-go,” that bugbear to dunces; and it is therefore expedient to attend them, if only for the purpose of saving one’s self the trouble of reading them afterward without any aid whatever. These sub- jects of course differ, but invariably consist of a certain portion of Greek and Latin prose and verse authors for translation, a little arithmetic, six books of Euclid, and lastly, but by no means leastly, Paley’s ‘ Evidences of Christianity.” The last-named work is a sad stumbling-block in the path of many, and the most insane versions are frequently given of the Reverend Doctor’s opinions. In my own time I recollect a man (of some 40 years of age) deliberately stating that Paley was unable to argue in favor of the probability of the Christian’s faith with any one who did not assert “that there was such an antecedent zwprobability in miracles as rendered belief in them impossible.” Every undergraduate, no mat- ter what his ultimate views may be, is compelled to pass through this ordeal ; and if he be a candidate for mathematical or classical honors, he must, in addition, satisfy the examiners in algebra, trigonometry, and mechanics. These extra subjects are, of course, child’s play to any man with the faintest chance of ob- taining a place in the mathematical tripos ; but it is not easy to discover the logic in torturing classical students with matters in which they can have no possible interest. | A very good story is told of one of the greatest Greek scholars of the day, who was quite incapable then, as now, of grappling with the slightest mathemati- cal difficulties. After having been repeatedly “ploughed” or “plucked” in his “extras,” he, as a last chance, learned the binomial theorem by heart, recklessly deciding to write it out whether it were set or no. Unluckily for him, the latter was the case, and he had no chance of favorably introducing his pet piece of erudition, But though disappointed he was undismayed, and in the mechanical paper startled the examiners by observing that, previously to understanding cor- rectly the structure of the “commen pump,” it was necessary to premise the “binomial theorem,” which he thereupon wrote out for their benefit. For those unlucky ones whose fate it is to fall beneath the requisite standard, another examination is provided, which in University parlance is called the “post mortem,” and small indeed must his chance of a degree be who does not “scrape through” this. His tutor will generally send for him, and advise (Ax- glicé, command) him to remove his name from the books and migrate to some other less particular college, or to remove himself altogether from the scene of his failures. : One more little story illustrative of the ignorance of some of our public school men, and we will leave the unsavory subject of “little-go” alone. An ingenious, if not ingenuous, youth was asked, in a v7vd voce examination, the reason of Moses’s sudden departure from Egypt. The unfortunate undergrad- uate (who had never heard of the slaughter of the Egyptian) stuttered, fidgeted, grew red, and then told his questioner that he did not like to reply. ‘Nonsense,
Page 32
324 AT CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY. [Marcu, | sir,” was the retort. “If you don’t choose to reply, I shall certainly not pass you.” After waiting for some minutes, the following reason was given by the examinee: “ Well, sir—if you—insist on an answer—I suppose it was because of that unfortunate little affair with Potiphar’s wife.” The indignation and sur- prise of the examiner can be better imagined than described; at all events, the name of this audacious calumniator of the great lawgiver did not appear on the “lists.” The first visitors of importance to a freshman are always the captain and secretary of the Boat Club, who come to solicit a subscription previously to for- “mally enrolling him as a member. Boating is without doubt the cheapest, best, and healthiest amusement in the University. For one guinea per term you may, if you choose, enjoy a good row every day, and at the end of the ninth term become, without further subscription, a member for life, with the liberty of using the college boats whenever you may chance to revisit the place. There are now and then “extra” calls for the purchase of a new boat; but the amount asked is never large, and the additional benefit most undeniable. Very few men refuse to join, even if they never intend to sit in a boat, for such a step would entail a most serious loss of caste, and at once cut them off from all that is most enjoy- able in the fellowship of their equals ; moreover, upon the opinion of the captain and secretary depends, in a great measure, the reception you will meet with among the seniors. It is not a pleasant task for two men to make the round of some thirty new-comers, and appeal at once to their purse-strings ; and they are, con- sequently, grateful to a man who sets them at their ease, and cordially enters into the spirit of the thing. Once elected into the Boat Club, and University life fairly begins. The first symptoms of this are invitations to “wine” after hall—an institution peculiar, I believe, to our country. On entering the rooms of the host, a long table is dis- covered, down the centre, surrounded by men lolling in different attitudes on chairs, sofas, etc., consuming cigars and much fluid, and all talking at once on ‘the events of the day. When ordinary topics.are exhausted, absent ones dis- cussed, and conversation begins to flag, melody is resorted to as an antidote to dulness ; and if noise be a sign of merriment, undergraduates must be the hap- piest people in the world. In olden times these wine parties degenerated into orgies, where men were not happy unless brutally drunk; but in these modern days, even if some of the party do repent next morning, excess is the exception, not the rule. After attending one of these social meetings, you will find numerous cards left in your lodgings by the second and third year men, who fancy your acquaint- ance worth the cultivating. They frequently save themselves the trouble of calling in person, by inducing a friend to take a few of their cards and deposit them in the room of any freshman who may happen to be out. The policy of this is evident, as I soon learned to my cost. A freshman may not leave his card ona senior, but must continue to call at his rooms until he finds him at home. So that all the trouble rests with the former. In due time the most promising of the youngsters are selected for initiation ‘into the mysteries of rowing, and a severe trial to the temper does “coaching” often prove. The first sight of the river is by no means inspiriting, it being little better than a ditch, and constantly spoken of as the “big sewer” at the backs of the colleges. In many parts an eight-oar is unable to turn, and the race course itself bends twice at right angles within the distance of half a mile. ‘Add to these inconveniences, that the banks are intensely ugly, and productive
Page 33
1870.) “AT CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY. 325° of weeds, which now and again wrench the oar from the grasp, and a slight idea may be formed of the courage necessary to organize a rivalry to the sister Uni- versity. For the last few months, certainly, steps have been taken to widen and deepen the Cam, and it has even been proposed to cut through one of the cor- ners, so as to secure a straighter “row in”; but improvements are very slowly carried out in Cambridge, whose authorities, many of them professedly liberal, are most thoroughly conservative in their preservation of abuses. The princi- ples of rowing are too well understood in this country to render any description of them necessary ; the fine crew sent by Harvard against Oxford proving most satisfactorily that as in England, so in America, the art has attained a high pitch of excellence. i After a good pull, a good dinner is essential, and few duties are so regularly attended to as “keeping hall.” Various colleges have different prices for this meal, but the usual charge is from two shillings to two and sixpence, exclusive of bread, ale, pastry, cheese, etc., which are all extras, or, as they are called, “sizings.” The dinner proper consists of soup, two or three kinds of meats, vegetables, etc., with one or two»side dishes—from which it may be gathered that the cooks have a good time of it. All other repasts are taken in the private sitting rooms, but are obtainable from the college kitchens, and charged in the college account—another large source of profit. In fact, if a man once becomes chief cook, his fortune is made. Several of them drive to the kitchens in their private broughams, and two or three have sons at the crack colleges, while the ex-cook of Trinity has one of the finest estates near the town. One of the most glaring evils of a university life is the facility given for ob- taining credit or “tick.” The tradesmen, one and all, vie with each other in encouraging the undergraduates to figure in their books. They penetrate into their rooms, and, utterly impervious to snubbing, seldom leave without effecting asale. If it is hinted that the article is too expensive, it is replied that time is of no consequence, and that you will not be pressed for payment. Nor do they harass you to give them their due until the time of departure comes, provided that you continue to increase the account. Directly a man remarks that the total of his bill is rather alarming, and that he is unwilling to increase it, the subservient toady is transformed into a bully whe threatens his victim with ex- posure and legal proceedings, until not unfrequently he is driven from bad to worse, and betakes himself to the worst kind of harpies in the place, namely, the low money-lenders. For the first two years of his residence, a man may live like a prince and not spend one farthing of ready money beyond the bills for tuition and rent. I myself remember well hearing one of the leaders of fashion observe that he did not spend £5 a term in hard cash in Cambridge, if the costs of his visits to Newmarket were excepted. The word “ Newmarket” is a talisman that excites a host of memories, som pleasant, others very bitter indeed. No man with any pretence to having seen “life” (as reckless contempt for prudence is called) at the University, but is thoroughly conversant with the “ins and outs” of the famous heath ; and well would it be for the majority if their visits to the old town were made simply with a view to seeing what is to be seen. But, unfortunately for the inexperi- enced (and no men are so easily betricked and befooled as those youngsters who . fancy they have obtained a knowledge of the world by a course of dissipation), the principal races come off at a time when the University is full. The late Marquis of Hastings is a sad example of the young, good-natured fool of whom sO many are evervwhere to be found ; only in his case the means for fooling were
Page 34
326 AT CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY. [Marcu, infinitely greater than those of his associates. There is no cause for wonder in the fascination which the heath possesses. A race day at Newmarket is a gala day, on which every one is determined to be pleased, and on which the appear- ance of pleasure is maintained—with what efforts few can say—even by those who in a few hours may have lost all. The Dons certainly set their faces against the attendance of their pupils, but have no power to prevent it, if they be only careful to return to their rooms before midnight. It must not be supposed that betting to excess is universal; but it is very prevalent, and many seriously in- convenience themselves by paying the so-called debts of honor, and incapacitat- ing themselves thereby from defraying their other expenses, The fast men more- over are not contented merely with betting with their equals, but are frequently ‘to be found in the ring, and very often find themselves in the awkward predica- ment of being compelled to pay up for all the bets they have lost, while their debtors have made themselves scarce. « At the entrance to the town is an hotel, which is a most favorite resort of the University visitors. It is kept by a lady who has seen some forty summers, but who still retains many evidences of the beauty for which she was once remarka- ble. Nelly (for by that name she is best known) considers it a personal insult if any University man passes her door without stopping, and is generally on the lookout for all arrivals. It must be confessed that no great pressure is needed to induce those who have once been there to enter again—the snug little room, good wines and cigars, the croquet lawn, and unlimited scandal forming a most delightful preparation for the little dinner which usually follows. Nelly herself ‘is never so pleased as when invited to make one of the party, and were it not for the prosaic nature of the bill, would almost force you to believe that some good ‘angel had dropped her on that spot to dispense happiness to mankind. Rumors are afloat, however, that Nelly is about to change her name, and that the place will then know her no more. Long will it be ere a more fascinating hostess can be found in her place. There is no little discrepancy between horse-racing and cricket; but the lat- ter subject is far too important to be neglected any longer. Possibly, “ Fenner’s Ground” is the finest in the world. It was originally opened by a man of that name, who in olden times was the champion cricketer of the country, and worthy ‘to be classed with many of his more illustrious contemporaries, such as A. Mynn, Fuller, Pilch, Felix, and others. The University are now the possessors, and any member of a college may become a member of the club by paying an annual subscription of £1 1s., and £1 Is. entrance money. The finest profes- sionals that can be procured are constantly in attendance on the ground, and bowl to any one desirous of engaging them, at a fixed charge. Here it is that all the County and University matches take place, with the exception of those played during the week which the eleven spend in London prior to their struggle with Oxford. The ground itself is very large, almost square, and as level as a bil- liard table all over. In consequence of the great care taken to keep it in order, the balls play remarkably “ true,” and larger scores are made on this ground than on any other, the batting often entirely overpowering the bowling. The ground is skirted by the newly-constructed running path on which the University ath- letic sports are contested, a third of a mile in length, from which fact an accurate idea of the size of the whole may be conceived. These athletic sports are held in the October term, and the victors in each struggle are sent to London, to run against Oxford on the day preceding or immediately following the day of the annual boat race, all expenses of the competitors, as also of the rowers in the
Page 35
1870.] | ‘AT CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY. 327 race, being paid by their respective clubs. And here it may not-be:amiss to in- troduce a few remarks on the system of training at Cambridge.. It has often been said; and many good judges concur in the opinion, that it is carried to far too great an extent; and many do not hesitate to assign this as one of the principal causes of our successive defeats by Oxford. Without going so far as to assert that training has zothing to do with it, I would suggest that it has been of late only too apparent that the Oxford crews have not only been finer men, but have rowed in a vastly superior style—two excellent reasons for winning. The train- ing for running is a simple matter enough. A man must feed well, and on whole- some food, such as beef, mutton, chicken, and a little game if he likes; must eschew potatoes and bread (unless stale), and be careful as to the quantity of liquid he drinks. It is a great error—thank Heaven, it is exploded now—to sup- pose that a man to insure condition must ever be in a state of thirst. The sole rule to be observed is to take no more than enough, and to abjure all spirits. The meals must be taken as creeres and the wind improved by SR | increas- ing the length of the morning’s canter. The boat race is a much more serious matter, and it is the ‘nen duty of the captain and coxswain to see that all the crew conform to the regulations, which are as follows: All muster at 7 o’clock A. M. for a run and walk before breakfast, which is served at eight or half-past eight, and consists of steaks, cold meat, etc. (all meals being taken in company together at an hotel, at the expense of the C. U. B.C.). During the morning they are allowed to walk about and act as they please ; but any exertion or liquid, except in moderation, is forbidden. A glass of port wine and a biscuit, or, if necessary, a mutton chop, is given for lunch at 10 o’clock, and at about 2:30 or 3 o’clock the crew betake themselves to the river for a hard row of six miles or so—the distance being increased as the training progresses. On their arrival at the boat house they are allowed a little weak brandy and water if at all beaten, and after a good wash proceed to their hotel for dinner. This is a very substantial affair, including several joints, chickens, game, a pint of good ale, and two or three glasses of port wine with their dessert. Puddings, of course, are banished from the scene, but fruit pies with very little crust are in great request. Oranges also are recommended and appreciated far more than an ordinary consumer of them would deem possible. _ Dinner finished, the crew are their own masters until Io or 10:30 P. M., when they are ordered off to bed, an order which is seldom unwelcome. On Sundays, as rowing is impos- sible, long walks into the country are taken, and many consider this the hardest labor of all, and call it anything but a day of rest. Thus, with little variation, the days pass away, until that eventful morning arrives which sees them moored alongside of the Oxford boat at Putney. : For a certain class of men, neither boating nor cricket has any attraction; in their stead rackets and tennis are the adopted amusements. But this class is small, as these games are not only expensive, but require considerable skill to render them attractive. Of those who give their entire time to billiards it is un. necessary to speak, as they hold no high place in the esteem of their fellows, and form a set entirely isolated and distinct from the majority. Having thus briefly summed up the pleasures of university life, it is time that we devote a few lines to its more serious duties. Any well-grounded public- school boy, with moderate application, will experience no difficulty in o.taining the ordinary or “ Poll” degree (z. e., the degree taken by the 6z woAAoz). To achieve this, he must pass three examinations—the “little-go” or “ previous examination,” the ordinary “examination for B. A. degree,” and the “special 22 ; I
Page 36
328 - AT CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY. [Marcu theological.” The last named, perhaps, is the one which requires most read- ing, as it mainly consists of critical questions on the text of certain given Bibli- cal books ; but the numerous text-books, with explanatory notes, invariably pub- lished a twelvemonth before the time, are easy stepping-stones to any one suffi- ciently industrious to read them. _ Before the conferring of the degree it is necessary to satisfy a “ professor” in one paper on the subject which he has been Jecturing upon, and to prove that at least two-thirds of his lectures have been attended. The examination itself is very slight, and the chief use of it appears to be, that it involves the payment of a certain fee for the professor’s benefit. The choice of professors is left almost entirely to the discretion and taste of the student, who may take in Divinity, Political Economy, Modern History, or whatever he may prefer to these. The course of study requisite for obtaining a degree in Physics, Botany, etc., is different; but as the number following these pursuits is comparatively small (although by no means uninfluential), a detailed account would be out of place in this paper. Very hard is it to obtain speech of a man reading hard for either the mathe- matical or classical tripos in his third year. Matters begin then to assume a very serious aspect, and, with the exception of two or three hours of relaxation per day, on the river or in the cricket field, every available minute is given to hard work. The mathematical tripos, without doubt, gives rise to the greatest excitement, as Cambridge and mathematics have been for years indissolubly con- nected with each other; but it is fully as hard, even if it be not more so, to gain a place in the first élass of the classical, as to figure among the wranglers in the mathematical struggle. For months before the event, the senior classic and senior wrangler of the next year are known equally as well as if the examina- tions were over; but great doubt exists as to the probable position of the others, and the most fervent interest is exhibited by the friends of the competitors, who throng the senate house on the morning of the reading of the lists. As the first few names are read out, wild shouts of approval greet the success of some popu? lar favorite. As the end draws near, every ear is on the stretch to catch the few remaining, and many a man feels sick at heart as the thought flashes upon him that all his labor may have been in vain. The owner of the last name is known as “The Wooden Spoon” (why or wherefore I know not), while the last dozen on the list rejoice in the Scriptural title of the “Twelve Apostles.” Now and again an exceptionally brilliant meteor appears in the University sky, in the shape of a double first; few however are the men by whom this glory has been won, and great are the rewards of such erudition—snug -fellowships, tutorships, and ultimately a slice of patronage in the form of a fat living, being the guerdon. Still, it may be questioned whether such exaltation has not its drawbacks (what rose is without a thorn ?), when it is considered that the life of a don com- mences with the assumption of the B. A. gown, and with it almost a total with- drawal from all the old companionships. It is hard to give a reason for it, but facts are stubborn things, and none more stubborn than this one. Whether the social element of man’s nature is eradicated by solitary study, or a feeling of su- periority is engendered by the new position, or of shyness from the long concen- tration of ideas on himself, I know not. No one can deny that a Barrier unfor- tunately does exist, which, as a rule, prevents any common feeling between a don and an undergraduate. Most painfully is this apparent during one of the few festive occasions on which the two classes meet. Once or twice during every term a certain number of invitations to breakfast or wine are issued by the fellows to the juniors. Practically they are little better than commands, as
Page 37
1875.) AT CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY. 329 a refusal is seldom received with good grace; and the unavoidable air of patron- age which pervades the whole performance acts as an effectual wet blanket on any attempt at sustained conversation. In melancholy dulness, long drawn out, the would-be festivities at length come to an end, and whatever conviction may be entertained of the kind intentions of the host, there is a general sense of satisfaction when the moment of leavetaking is at hand. There are men who never lose an interest in the old pleasures, and a few names stand high in University favor of those who are constantly to be found on the riverside, watch- ing their college boat, unable to withstand the temptation of seeing the sport in which they were once proficient. The term of all terms. at Cambridge is the May. Then it is that the town assumes its gayest aspect, and lodgings are only to be procured at fabulous prices ; for every one who can persuade his sisters or cousins to visit him does so, and the hotels are crowded to the roof with youth and beauty. . To tailors alone is holiday then forbidden fruit. These Knights of the Thimble labor day and night to array their employers in gorgeous suits wherewith they may entan- gle the heart of some fair enchantress ; and wondrous are the combinations of color in which they deck the fond mortal who trusts himself in their hands. The ordinarily strict laws of etiquette are by common consent repealed, and an in- troduction is allowed to be suificient warrant for inviting a friend’s relatives to breakfast, lunch, tea, or dinner. The reign of good feeding commences, and “ionizing” is carried to desperation, that appetite may be insured for the nu- merous dainties everywhere arrayed for consumption. Balls are arranged on grand scales at the various colleges, for even the sober don, if he dare not dance, has no objection to a mild flirtation, if he be single or his wife out of sight ; and he has more than a partiality for good eating and good wine. Happy the youth who now is a member of the A. D. C. (Amateur Dramatic Company), for he forms one of a band that gives perhaps the greatest treat of all to the visitors. This club is very exclusive and expensive—money being a most indispensa- ble qualification, as the rent of the theatre (a large hall with a gallery, retained all the year round), the sum paid for dresses and professional instructors, and the constantly-recurring suppers (held, I suppose, to aid the development of his- trionic talent) are heavy claims on the treasury. Great praise is deservedly awarded to the performers, although a factious critic might object occasionally to — the too ambitious choice of the plays represented. But when did amateur ever deem aught but a masterpiece worthy of his first efforts ? or who is unaware of the scope for rich dressing afforded by the legitimate drama? The female char- acters (for, of course, no ladies are permitted by the authorities to act in concert with undergraduates) are often marvellously “got up,” and the rarest fun is en- joyed by the ladies in criticising the movements of the embryo Garricks in their female costume. ‘The stock piece is well supplemented by a burlesque, in which the songs are made to allude to well-known University topics, and rendered with the highest gusto, the more especially as the dons are compelled to listen to the satire levelled at them, without a chance of self-defence. On these occasions certainly the “swells” have the best of it, and shine pre- eminent, “velut inter ignes Luna minores;” but alas for the brevity of human grandeur ! they retire, all too soon for their own liking, into their usual insignifi- cance. In no part of England is noble birth and wealth held in so small respect as at the University. The reason is obvious. The “Tufts,” as they are called from the gold and silver tassels on their “ mortar boards,” are useless and there- fore nonentities. They neither read hard nor play hard. Rowing is too ex-
Page 38
330 AT CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY. - [MARCH, hausting an exercise for these scions of the aristocracy: their tender frames were never made to be swathed in flannel, placed on a hard seat, or to be vio- lently exerted ; while their superior blood would fire at the insults heaped upon their feeble endeavors by the lips of a college coach, who is always a plebeian. Cricket dirties their fingers too much; long walks would be madness in those paper-like boots ; and athletics—good heavens! can any man with a claim to propriety be expected to run until he sweats like any plough-boy ? No! for them is the midday breakfast and the afternoon ride in a wicker pony carriage, or a saunter on King’s parade, in company with a cigar and their own brilliancy; a late dinner and an evening of card-playing (relieved by more wine than is good for young stomachs) concluding the toils of the day. ‘“Bell’s Life” and the most stupidly immoral translations from the French supply their literary tastes ; and conversation, except on the subject of clothes, is confined to the merits of the horses they have been backing, or the fascinations of some new bar-maid at the railway station refreshment-room. A more utterly worthless or enervating life than. the one pursued by these juvenile sybarites can scarcely be realized, Day after day, night after night, they meet the same companions, fall back on the old kill-time routine ; each successive week being, as Falstaff hath it, “a damna- ble iteration” of the preceding. And these men are our future legislators. Other clubs there are besides the A. D. C., to which very brief allusion only can be made. The “ Athenzum”’ is one in high repute, and a great struggle is made by every would-be “leader of fashion” to get his name down on the books. But for this society something more is necessary than fine clothes and an empty head; and no one is ever elected but is certain to do his University credit in some way or other. The “Beefsteak’’ Club has weekly meetings (in costume of the last century), whereat quantities of the aforesaid article are devoured, with deep potations of port wine, the evenings being devoted, as usual at Cambridge after meat and drink, to melody. Too often, when midnight is at hand, sounds of roystering issue from the club-room that would make angels weep, providing those celestial beings have any ear for harmony. I do not like to omit all men- tion of the “ Hell-fire ” Club, as it is a proof of the recklessness to which some have attained ; but a description of its rules and the character of the members had better be left alone: when I say that the head of the table is left vacant for the Devil, and that guests are forbidden to use any holy word, a sufficient clue will have been given. It is an institution peculiar to one set in one college, who are regarded with as much disgust and loathing as his Satanic Majesty himself. I believe, on my conscience, the last-named gentleman might borrow some new hints in blasphemy from the few young sinners who have borrowed the name of his dwelling-place for their own purposes. The “ Union” cannot, strictly speaking, be called a club, as it has no especial politics or aim. Debates, on any interesting topic of the day, occur once a week, and some dozen of the foremost speakers would hold their own with many who have succeeded at the bar. Fluency is the chief virtue that draws down the house, as it is seldom that the young orators have given any time to seriously pre- paring their subject. When it was proposed to open the Union on Sundays, one of the best debates on record lasted for three nights, and many of the leading dons (old members) spoke, and spoke well, on either side. The question has hitherto been carried in the negative ; but the majorities are smaller every time, and as the University becomes more liberal in its ideas there is but little doubt that the tables will be turned. The building itself, a large and handsome pile, has only been erected lately, the old house being inadequate to the accommoda-
Page 39
1870.] “AT CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY. 331 tion of the rapidly-increasing numbers. Reading, coffee, smoking rooms and offices surround the main hall in which business is discussed. The subscription — is £6 6s., and the membership is not only for life, but entitles to the use of the Unions of Oxford and Dublin. These University Unions have been the arenas of the early triumphs of men afterward celebrated in the world’s history for elo- quence and statesmanship. At Cambridge, Henry Temple (Lord Palmerston) was long a leading light, as also were several eminent barristers of the present day; while at Oxford Robert Lowe, B. Disraeli, and William Ewart Gladstone — were members of the Union at one and the same time, although, curiously enough, the’ political opinions of each were directly opposed to their present convictions. This was more especially apparent in the cases of Disraeli and Gladstone, the former of whom began life as a Red Republican, the latter as an unyielding Conservative. Which of the two, I wonder, is the more sincere in the change of his opinions ? In bringing this short and imperfect sketch to a conclusion, we must not for- get to devote a few lines to the general appearance of the town and its chief buildings. A great similarity exists between all English country towns, and Cambridge is no exception to the rule. The market place is large and well placed, and the guildhall isa very good one; but the generality of the streets are narrow and crooked, and the houses far from remarkable for beauty of de- sign. An old round church is still open for service, being noted as one of the curiosities of England. Once on a time they were numerous enough, but one or two only have been enabled, by the means of constant repairs, to withstand the ravages of time. The colleges are more scattered than they are at Oxford, and, although presenting many individual beauties to the observer, yet fail from their isolation to give that odor of learning and grandeur, for which the sister Univer- sity has so Jong been famous.. Trinity ranks high above all the rest, both for size and fame. Of royal foundation and vast wealth, she has ever been the ac- knowledged queen of the University ; and the names of many who have subse- quently held the leading strings of government are to be found on her books. She is the adopted home of nobility and wealth, equally with learning, and the master’s house is a royal lodge, where reigning monarchs are wont to reside when visiting the town.. St. Peter’s is the oldest, Downing the youngest founda- tion ; the chapel of the former remaining to this day as it was first built. Clare, the next in age as a foundation, is comparatively new as a building (owing to its having fallen more than once a victim to fire), and enjoys the reputation of being the most perfect building among all the colleges. In shape it is square, most beautifully situated on the banks of the river, and surrounded by lawns and trees. King’s Chapel is another architectural feature and landmark for miles around. King’s College was originally founded in connection with Eton © School, and until recently only Eton men were admitted there, all of whom in time were elected to fellowships; but now King’s, in common with the other colleges, is open to all, and is chiefly noted for the value of its fellowships (now as open as the college) and its achievements of late years in the classical tripos. Closely adjoining King’s is Queen’s College, which, greatly fallen if it be from its once high estate, can boast of being the most interesting of all. Its quads are surrounded by cloisters, and the old sun dial yet remains on the wall of the chapel, itself a perfect gem; and the bridge across the river is extant, which Isaac Newton constructed without bolt or fastening of any kind. St. John’s is next to Trinity as regards’ size, and has lately erected a most magnificent. mod- ern chapel, at an immense cost, which was only opened during the last twelve-
Page 40
332 AT CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY. [MARCH, month. This college, too, has always been celebrated for its mathematical men, who have secured the honors of senior wranglership far more frequently than any other, while Trinity holds her own in the classics. It would scarcely be fair to the coaches to pass them over in silence, as, at the apparent expense of every enjoyment of life, they devote themselves to the instruction of youth for the remuneration of £8 per term each man. Very com- fortable incomes are without doubt made by many, incomes to be computed by thousands per annum in some cases, especially in that of the “ Big ’Un,” asa huge and most successful private tutor is known; but the dreary toil can scarcely be repaid, as they have to contend not only with ignorance of the darkest order, but also with idleness and conceit. The coaches for honor-men occupy a far superior position, as they demand and obtain more remuneration, and have ear- nest and clever men only as pupils. One of these latter, named Routh, himself a senior wrangler, is making a great fortune, and turns out the senior wrangler regularly every year. In conclusion, I will give a sketch of the manner in which an ordinarily indus- trious man spends his day. He will usually breakfast about 8:30 or 9 o’clock in company with one or two. friends. As this meal: is always substantial at Cambridge, and usually attended with beer, a short time is required afterward for digestion, and the emptying of the pewter. A pipe is just the thing for this, and passes the time until 10 o’clock. He then sits down to read steadily until 12:30 Or I P. M., when work is knocked off, and lunch is taken on board. An- other pipe, and a change from cloth clothes to flannel, precedes the journey to the river, which is reached about-3 o’clock. After the row comes chapel, after chapel dinner, after dinner the evening, which is spent‘in very different ways. A hard worker sets off to read at once. The generality retire to their rooms with their friends to enjoy a smoke and a glass of wine. Then perhaps a stroll in the town, or a visit to some place of amusement, if there be one open, or a game of billiards until tea. After tea more tobacco, a game of whist or vingt’un, and glasses of grog, until bedtime, about 1 o’clock A.M. In short, the life of a man at the University depends entirely on himself. He must choose his own companions, his own pleasures and pursuits, and must consent to stand or fall in public estimation thereby. In Cambridge, as elsewhere, the old motto, “Birds of a feather,” is fully appreciated ; and if a youngster is fool enough to get among the black sheep, it will be long ere he can free himself from the imputa- tion of being one himself. Toall with common prudence, honor, and gentlemanly feeling, university life is most improving, beneficial, and delightful. To such, however, as embrace it with a view to running awuck, it simply proves a stage -whereon they can most advantageously exhibit their wickedness and folly, and . enjoy to the full the consciousness of being well disliked and despised by all whose good opinion is worth the having.
Page 41
AN EDITOR’S TALES. No. IV. THE PANJANDRUM. Part II.—DEsPaAIR. FORTNIGHT had been given to us to prepare our matter, and during A that fortnight I saw none of my colleagues: I purposely kept myself apart from them, in order that I might thus give a fairer chance to the scheme which had been adopted. Others might borrow or lend their pages, but I would do the work allotted to me, and would attend the next meeting as anxious for the establishment and maintenance of the ‘* Panjandrum” as I had been when I had hoped that the great consideration which I had given personally to the mat- ter might have been allowed to have some weight. And gradually, as Isde- | voted the first day of my fortnight to thinking of my work, I taught myself to hope again, and to look forward to a time when, by the sheer weight of my own industry and persistency, I might acquire that influence with my companions of which I had dreamed of becoming the master. After all, could I blame them for not trusting me, when as yet I had given them no ground for such confi- dence? What had I done that they should be willing to put their thoughts, their aspirations, their very brains and inner selves under my control? But something might be done which would force them to regard me as their leader. So I worked hard at my twenty-one pages, and during the fortnight spoke no word of the “ Panjandrum ” to any human being. ; But my work did not get itself done without very great mental distress. The choice of a subject had been left free to each contributor. For myself, I would almost have preferred that some one should have dictated to me the matter to which I should devote myself. How would it be with our first number if each of us were to write a political essay of exactly twenty-one pages, or a poem of that length in blank verse, or a humorous narrative? Good heavens! How were we to expect success with the public if there were no agreement between us as to the nature of our contributions, no editorial power in existence for our mutual support? I went down and saw Mr. X., and found him to be almost in- different on the matter. ‘ You see, sir,” said he, “the matter isn’t in my hands. If I can give any assistance, I shall be very happy; but it seems to me that you want some one with experience.” ‘I could have put them right if they’d have let me,” I replied. He was very civil, but it was quite clear to me that Mr. X.’s interest in the matter was over since the day of his banishment from Mrs. St. Quinten’s tea-table. ‘ What do you think is a good sort of subject,” I asked him— as it were casually, “with a view, you know, to the eye of the public, just at the present moment?” He declined to suggest any subject, and I was thrown back among the depths of my own feelings and convictions. Now, could we have blended our elements together, and discussed all this in really amicable council, each would have corrected what there might have been of rawness in the other, and in the freedom of conversation our wits would have grown from the warmth of mutual encouragement. Such, at least, was my belief then. Since then I have learned to look at the business with eyes less enthusiastic. Leta
Page 42
- 334 AN EDITOR’S TALES. [Marcu, man have learned the trick of the pen, let him not smoke too many cigars over night, and let him get into his chair within half an hour after breakfast, and I can tell you almost to a Jine how much of a magazine article he will produce in three hours. It does not much matter what the matter be—only this, that if his task be that of reviewing, he may be expected to supply a double quantity. Three days, three out of the fourteen, passed by me, and I could think of no fit- ting subject on which to begin the task I had appointed myself of teaching the British public. Politics at the moment were rather dull, and no very great ques- _ tion was agitating the minds of men. Lord Melbourne was Prime Minister, and had in the course of the session been subjected to the usual party attacks. We intended to goa great deal further than Lord Melbourne in advocating lib- eral measures, and were disposed to regard him and his colleagues as antiquated fogies in State craft; but, nevertheless, as against Sir Robert Peel, we should have given him the benefit of our defence. I did not, however, feel any special call to write up Lord Melbourne. Lord John was just then our pet minister ; but even on his behalf I did not find myself capable of filling twenty-one closely printed pages with matter which should really stir the public mind. Ina first number, to stir the public mind is everything. I didn’t think that my colleagues sufficiently realized that fact—though I had indeed endeavored to explain it to them. In the second, third, or fourth publication you may descend gradually to an ordinary level; you may become—not exactly dull, for dulness in a maga- zine should be avoided—but what I may perhaps call “adaggio” as compared with the “ constrepitu’? movement with which the publication certainly should be opened. No reader expects to be supplied from month to month with the cayenne pepper and shallot style of literature ; but in the preparation of a new literary banquet, the first dish cannot be too highly spiced. I knew all that—and | then turned it over in my mind whether I could not do something about the ballot. : It had never occurred to me before that there could be any difficulty in find- ing a subject. I had to reject the ballot because at that period of my life I had, in fact. hardly studied the subject. I am liberal, and indeed radical, in all my _ political ideas. I was ready to “go in” for anything that was undoubtedly lib- eral and radical. Ina general way I was as firm in my politics as any member of the House of Commons, and had thought as much on public subjects as some of them. I was an eager supporter of the ballot. But when I took the pen in my hand there came upon me a feeling that—that—that I didn’t know how to say anything about it that other people would care to read. The twenty-one pages loomed before me as a wilderness, which, with such a staff, I could never traverse. It had not occurred to me before that it would be so difficult for a man to evoke from his mind ideas on a subject with which he supposed himself to be familiar. And, such thoughts as I had, I could clothe in no fitting words. On the fifth morning, driven to despair, I did write a page or two upon the bal- lot; and then, sinking back in my chair, I began to ask myself a question, as to which doubt was terrible to me. Was this the kind of work to which my gifts were applicable? The page which I had already written was manifestly not adapted to stir the public mind. The sixth and seventh days I passed al- together within my room, never once leaving the house. I drank green tea; I eat meat very slightly cooked. I debarred myself from food for several hours, so that the flesh might be kept well under. I sat up one night, nearly till day- break, with a wet towel round my head. On the next I got up, and lit my own fire, at four o’clock. Thinking that I might be stretching the cord too tight, I
Page 43
1870.] AN EDITOR'S TALES. took to reading a novel, but could not remember the words as I’ read them, so painfully anxious was I to produce the work I had undertaken to perform. On the morning of the eighth day I was still without a subject. . I felt like the man who undertook to play the violin at a dance for five shil- lings and a dinner—the dinner to be paid in advance; but who, when making his bargain, had forgotten that he had never learned a note of music! I had undertaken even to lead the band, and, as it seemed, could not evoke a sound. A horrid idea came upon me that I was struck, as it were, with a sudden idiocy. My mind had absolutely fled from me. I sat in my arm-chair, looking at the wall, counting the pattern on the paper, and hardly making any real effort to think. All the world seemed at once to have become a blank to me, I went on muttering to myself, “No, the ballot won’t do;” as though there were nothing else but the ballot with which to stir the public mind. On the eighth morning I made a minute and quite correct calculation of the number of words that were demanded of me—taking the whole at forty-two pages, because of the necessity of re-copying—and I found that about four hours a day would be required for the mere act of writing. The paper was there, and the pen and ink; but beyond that there was nothing ready. I had thought to rack my brain, but I began to doubt whether I had a brain to rack. Of all those matters of public interest which had hitherto been to me the very salt of my life, 1 could not remember one which could possibly be converted into twenty-one pages of type. . Uncon- sciously I kept on muttering words about the ballot. “The ballot be ——!” I said aloud to myself in my agony. On that Sunday evening I began to consider what excuse I might best make to my colleagues. I might send and say I was very sick. I might face them, and quarrel with them—because of their ill-treatment of me. Or I might tell only half a lie, keeping within the letter of the truth, and say that I had not yet finished my work. Butno. I would not lie at all. Late on that Sunday even- ing there came upon me a grand idea. I would stand up before them and con- fess my inability to do the work I had undertaken. I arranged the words of my little speech, and almost took delight in them. ‘I, who have intended to be a. teacher, am now aware that I have hardly as yet become a pupil.” In such case, the “Panjandrum’”’ would be at an end. The elements had not been happily blended; but without me they could not, I was sure, be kept in any concert. The “ Panjandrum,” which I had already learned to love as a mother loves her first-born—the dear old “ Panjandrum” must perish before its birth. I felt the pity of it! The thing itself—the idea and theory of it—had been very good. But how shall a man put forth a magazine when he finds himself unable to write a page of it within the compass of a week? The meditations of that Sunday were very bitter, but perhaps they were useful. I had long since perceived that mankind are divided into two classes—those who shall speak, and those who shall listen to the speech of others. In seeing clearly the existence of such a division, I had hitherto always assumed myself to belong to the first class. Might it not be probable that I had made a mistake, and that it would become me modestly to take my allotted place in the second ? 3 On the Monday morning I began to think that I was ill, and resolved that I would take my hat and go out into the park, and breathe some air—let the *“ Panjandrum ” live or die. Such another week as the last would, I fancied, send me to Hanwell. It was now November, and at twelve o’clock, when I looked out, there was a light drizzling rain coming down, and the pavement of the street. was deserted. It was just the morning for work, were work possible. There
Page 44
336 AN EDITOR'S TALES. [Marcu, still lay. on the. little table in the corner of the room the square single sheet of paper, with its margin doubled down, all fitted for the printer—only that the sheet was still blank, I looked at the page, and I rubbed my brow, and I gazed into the street—and then determined that a two hours’ ring round the Regent’s Park was the only chance left for me. As I put on my thick boots and old hat and prepared myself for a thorough wetting, I felt as though at last I had hit upon the right plan, Violent exercise was needed, and then inspiration might come. Inspiration would come the sooner if I could divest myself from all effort in searching for it. I would take my walk and employ my mind simply in observing the world around me. For some distance there was but little of the world to observe. I was lodging at this period in a quiet and eligible street not far from Theobald’s Road. Thence my way lay through Bloomsbury Square, Russell Square, and Gower Street, and as I went I found the pavement to be almost deserted, The thick soft rain came down, not with a splash and various currents, running off and leaving things washed, though wet, but gently insinuating itself everywhere, and covering even the flags with mud. I cared nothing for the mud; I went through it all: with a happy scorn for the poor creatures who were endeavoring to defend their clothes with umbrellas. ‘‘ Let the heavens do their worst to me,” I said to myself as I spun-along with eager steps, and I was conscious of a feeling that external inju- ries could avail me nothing if I could only cure the weakness that was within. The park too was nearly empty. No place in London is ever empty now, but thirty years ago the population was palpably thinner, I had not come out, however, to find a crowd. A damp boy sweeping a crossing, or an old woman trying to sell an apple, were sufficient to fill my mind with thoughts as to the af- fairs of my fellow-creatures. Why should it have been allotted to that old wo- man to sit there, placing all her hopes on the chance sale of a few apples, the cold rain entering her very bones and driving rheumatism into all her joints, while another old woman, of whom I had read a paragraph that morning, was appoint- ed to entertain royalty, and go about the country with five or six carriages and four? Was there injustice in this, and if so, whence had the injustice come ? The reflection was probably not new ; but, if properly thought out, might it not suffice for the one-and-twenty pages? ‘Sally Brown, the barrow-woman, v. the Duchess of -—~!” Would it not be possible to make the two women plead against each other in some imaginary court of justice, beyond the limits of our conventional life, some court in which the duchess should be forced to argue her own case, and in which the barrow-woman would decidedly get the better of her? If this could be done, how happy would have been my walk through the mud and slush ! As I was thinking of this I saw before me on the pathway a stout woman— apparently middle-aged, but her back was toward me—leading a girl who might perhaps be ten or eleven years old. They had come up one of the streets from the New Road, and were hurrying along so fast that the girl, who held the wo- man by the arm, was almost running. The woman was evidently a servant, but in authority—an upper nurse perhaps, or ahousekeeper.. Why she should have brought her charge out in the rain was a mystery ; but I could see from the elas- ticity of the child’s step that she was happy and very eager. She was a well- made girl, with long well-rounded legs, which came freely down beneath her frock, with strong firm boots, a straw hat, and a plaid shawl wound carefully round her throat and waist. As I followed them those rapid legs of hers seemed almost to twinkle in their motion as she kept pace with the stout woman who
Page 45
1870. ] AN EDITOR'S TALES, 337 was conducting her. The mud was all over her stockings; but still there was about her an air of well-to-do comfort which made me feel that the mud was no © more than a joke. Every now and then I caught something of a glimpse of her face as she half turned herself round in talking to the woman. I could see, or at least I could fancy that I saw that she was fair, with large round eyes and soft light brown hair. Children did not then wear wigs upon their backs, and I was driven to exercise my fancy. At last I resolved that I would pass them and have one look at her, and I did*so. It put me to my best pace to do it, but gradually I overtook them and could hear that the girl never ceased talking as she ran. As I went by them I distinctly heard her words, “ Oh, Anne, I do so wonder what he’s like!”’ “ You'll see, miss,” said Anne. I looked back and saw that she was exactly as I had thought—a fair, strong, healthy girl, with | round eyes and large mouth, broad well-formed nose, and light hair. Who was the “he,” as to whom her anxiety was so great—the “he” whom she was trip- ping along through the rain and mud to see, and kiss, and love, and wonder at? And why hadn’t she been taken in a cab? Would she be allowed to take off those very dirty stockings before she was introduced to her new-found brother, or wrapped in the arms of her stranger-father ? I saw no more of them, and heard no further word; but I thought a great deal of the girl. Ah me, if she coulda have been a young unknown, newly-found sister of my own, how warmly would I have welcomed her! How little should I have cared for the mud on her stockings ; how closely would I have folded her in my arms; how anxious would I have been with Anne as to those damp clothes ; what delight would I have had in feeding her, coaxing her, caressing her, and playing with her! There had scemed to belong to her a wholesome strong health, which it had made me for the moment happy even to witness. And then the sweet, eloquent anxiety of her voice—“ Oh, Anne, I do so won- der what he’s like!” While I heard her voice I had senna to hear and kenw so much of her! And then she had passed out of my ken forever ! ‘I thought no more about the duchess and the apple woman, but devoted my mind entirely to the girl and her brother. I was persuaded that it must be a brother. Had it been a father, there would have been more of awe in her tone. It certainly was a brother. Gradually, as the unforced imagination came to play — upon the matter, a little picture fashioned itself in my mind. The girl was my own sister—a sister whom I had never seen till she was thus brought to me for protection and love; but she was older, just budding into womanhood, instead of running beside her nurse with twinkling legs. There, however, was the same broad, honest face, the same round eyes, the same strong nose and mouth. She had come to me for love and protection, having no other friend in the world to trust. But, having me, I proudly declared to myself that she needed nothing further. In two short months I was nothing to her—or almost nothing. I had a friend, and in two little months my friend had become so much more than I ever could have been! These wondrous castles in the air never get themselves well built when the mind, with premeditated skill and labor, sets itself to work to build them. Itis — when they come uncalled for that they stand erect and strong before the mind’s eye, with every mullioned window perfect, the rounded walls all there, the em- brasures cut, the fosse dug, and the drawbridge down. As I had made this castle for myself, as I had sat with this girl by my side, calling her the sweetest names, as I had seen her blush when my friend came near her, and had known at once, with a mixed agony and joy, how the thing was to be, I swear that I never once
Page 46
338 | AN EDITOR’S TALES. [ MARCH, thought of the “ promos -I walked the whole round of the Regent’s Park, perfecting the building; and I did perfect it, took the girl to church, gave her away to my friend Walker, and came back and sobbed and sputtered out my speech at the little breakfast, before it occurred to me to suggest to myself that I might use the thing. Churchill Smith and Walter Watt had been dead against a novel ; and, in- deed, the matter had been put to the vote, and it had been decided that. there should be no novel. But, what is a novel? The purport of that vote had been to negative a long serial tale, ranning on from number to number, in a manner _ which has since become well understood by the reading public. I had thought my colleagues wrong, and so thinking, it was clearly my duty to correct their error, if I might do so without infringing that loyalty and general obedience to expressed authority which are so essential to such a society as ours. Before I . had got back to Theobald’s Road I had persuaded myself that a short tale would be the very thing for the first number. It might not stir the public mind. To do that I would leave to Churchill Smith and Walter Watt. But a well-formed little story, such as that of which I had now the full possession, would fall on the readers of the “ Panjandrum ” like sweet rain in summer, making things fresh and green and joyous. I was quite sure that it was needed. Walter Watt might say what he pleased, and Churchill Smith might look at me as sternly as he would, sitting there silent with his forehead on his hand; but I knew at least as much about a magazine as they did. At any rate, I would write my tale. That very morning it had seemed to me to be impossible to get anything written. Now, as I hurried up-stairs to get rid of my wet clothes, I felt that I could not take the pen quickly enough into my hand. I had a thing to say, and I would say it. If I could complete my story—and I did not doubt its completion from the very moment in which’ I realized its conception—I should be saved, at any rate, from the disgrace of appearing empty-handed in Mrs. St. Quinten’s parlor. Within a quarter of an hour of my arrival at home I had seated myself at my table and written the name of the tale, “The New Inmate.” -I doubt whether any five days in my life were ever happier than those which were devoted to this piece of work. I began it that Monday afternoon, and fin- ished it on the Friday night. While I was at the task all doubt vanished from my mind. I did not care a fig for Watt or Smith, and was quite sure that I should carry Mrs. St. Quinten with me. Each night I copied fairly what I had written in the day, and I came to love the thing with an extreme love. There was a deal of pathos in it—at least so I tou she! ana I cried | over it like a child.. I had strained all my means to prepare for the coming of the girl,—I am now going back for a moment to my castle in the air,—and had fithished for her a little sitting-room, and as pretty a white-curtained chamber as a girl ever took pleasure in calling her own. There were books for her, and a small piano, and a low sofa, and all little feminine belongings. I had said to myself that every- thing should be for her, and I had sold my horse—the horse of my imagination, the reader will understand—and told my club friends that I should no longer be one of them. Then the girl had come, and had gone away to Walker, as it seemed to me at once—to Walker, who still lived in lodgings, and had not even a second sitting-room for her comfort—to Walker, who was, indeed, a good fel- low in his way, but possessed of no particular attractions either in wit, manners, or beauty! I wanted them to change with me, and to take my pretty home. I should have been delighted to go to a garret, leaving them everything. But Walker was proud, and would not have it so; and’ the girl protested that the
Page 47
1870.] AN EDITOR’S TALES. 339 piano and the white dimity curtains were nothing to her.. Walker was every- thing—Walker, of whom she had never heard when she came but a few weeks since to me as the only friend left to her in the world! I worked myself up to such a pitch of feeling over my story that I could hardly write it for my tears. I saw myself standing all alone in that pretty sitting-room after they were gone, and I pitied myself with an exceeding pity. ‘Si vis me flere, dotendum est primum ipsi tibi.”. If success was to be obtained by obeying that instruction, I might certainly expect success. | The way in which my work went without a pause was delightful. When the pen was not in my hand I was longing for it. While I was walking, eating, or reading, I was still thinking of my story. I dreamt of it. It came to me to bea matter that admitted of no doubt. The girl with the muddy stockings, who had thus provided me in my need, was to me a blessed memory. When | kissed my sister’s brow, on her first arrival, she was in my arms—palpably. All her sweet- nesses were present to me, as though I had her there, in the little street turn; ing out of Theobald’s Road, To this moment I can distinguish the voice in which she spoke to me that one little word, when I asked her whether she cared for Walker. When one thinks of it, the reality of it all is appalling. What need is there of a sister or a friend in the flesh—a sister or a friend with proba- bly so many faults—when by a little exercise of the mind they may be there, at your elbow, faultless? It came to pass that the tale was more dear to me than the magazine. As I read it through for the third or fourth time on the Sunday morning, I was chiefly anxious for the ‘‘ Panjandrum” in order that “ The New Inmate” might see the world. We were to meet that evening at eight o’clock, and it was understood that the sitting would be prolonged toa late hour, because of the readings. It would fall to my lot to take the second reading, as coming next to Mrs. St. Quinten, and I should, at any rate, not be subjected to a weary audience. We had, how- ever, promised each other to be very patient; and I was resolved that, even to the production of Churchill Smith, who would be the last, I would give an un- divided and eager attention. I determined also in my joy that I would vote against the insertion of no colleague’s contribution. Were we not in a boat to- gether, and would not each do his best? Even though a paper might be dull, better a little dulness than the crushing of a friend’s spirit. I fear that I thought “The New Inmate” might atone for much dulness, I dined early on that day ; then took a walk round the Regent’s Park, to renew my thoughts on the very spot on which they had first occurred to me ; and after that, returning home, gave a last touch to my work. Though it had been written after so hurried a fashion, there was not a word in it which I had not weighed and found to be fitting. I was the first at Mrs. St. Quinten’s house, and found that lady very full of the magazine. She asked, however, no questions as to my contribution ; of her own she at once spoke tome. ‘What do you think I have done at last ?”’ she said. In my reply to her question, I made some slight allusion to “ The New Inmate,” but I don’t think she caught the words. ‘I have reviewed Bishop Berkeley’s whole theory on matter,” said shé. What feeling I expressed by my gesture I cannot say, but I think it must have been one of great awe. “And J have done it exhaustively,” she continued, “so that the subject need not be continued. Churchill does not like continuations.” Perhaps it did not signify much. If she were heavy, I atany rate was light. If her work should prove difficult of comprehension, mine was easy. If she spoke only to the wise and old, I had addressed myself to babes and sucklings. I said something as to the contrast,
Page 48
340 , AN EDITOR’S TALES. [MARCH, again naming my little story. But she was too full of Bishop Berkeley to heed me. If she had worked as I had worked, of course she was full of Bishop Berke- ley. To me,‘‘ The New Inmate” at that moment was all the world. The other men soon came in, clustering together, and our number was com- plete. Regan whispered to me that Jack Hallam had not written a line. “ And you?” l asked. “Oh, I am all right,” said he. “I don’t suppose they’ll let it pass ; but that’s their affair—not mine.” Watt and Smith took their places al- most without speaking, and preparation was made for the preliminary feast of the body. The after feast was matter of such vital importance to us that we hardly possessed our customary light-hearted elasticity. There was, however, an air of subdued triumph about our “ Lydia,” of triumph subdued by the pres- ence of her cousin. As for myself, I was supremely happy. I said a word to Watt, asking him as to his performance. “I don’t suppose you will like it,” he replied; “but it is at any rate a fair specimen of that which it has been my am- bition to produce.” I assured him with enthusiasm that I was thoroughly pre- pared to approve, and that, too, without carping criticism. “But we must be critics,” he observed. Of Churchill Smith I asked no question. When we had eaten and drank, we began the work of the evening by giving in the names of our papers, and describing the nature of the work we had done. Mrs. St. Quinten was the first, and read her title froma scrap.of paper. “A Review of Bishop Berkeley’s Theory.” Churchill Smith remarked that it was a very dangerous subject. The lady begged him to wait till he should hear the paper read. “Of course I will hear it read,” said her cousin. To me it was evident that Smith would object to this essay without any scruple, if he did not in truth approve of it. Then it was my turn, and I explained in the quietest tone which I could assume that I had written a little tale called “The New In- mate.” It was very simple, I said, but I trusted it might not be rejected on that score. There was silence for a moment, and I prompted Regan to proceed ; but was interrupted by Walter Watt. ‘I thought,” said he, “that we had posi- tively decided against ‘prose fiction.’” I protested that the decision had been given against novels, against long serial stories to be continued from number to number. ‘This was a little thing, completed within my twenty-one allotted pages, ‘Our vote was taken as to prose fiction,” said Watt. I appealed to Hallam, who at once took my part—as also did Regan. ‘ Walter is quite correct as to the pur- port of our decision,” said Churchill Smith. I turned to Mrs. St. Quinten. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t have a short story,” she said. I then declared that with their permission I would at any rate read it, and again requested Regan to proceed. Upon this Walter Watt rose upon his feet, and made a speech. The vote had been taken, and could not be rescinded. After such a vote it was not ' open to me to read my story. The story, no doubt, was very good—he was pleased to say so—but it was not matter of the sort which they intended to use. Seeing the purpose which they had in view, he thought that the reading of the story would be waste of time. “It will clearly be waste of time,” said Churchill Smith. Walter Watt went on to explain to us that if from one meeting to an- other we did not allow ourselves to be bound by our own decisions, we should never appear before the public. I will acknowledge that I was enraged. It seemed to me impossible that such folly should be allowed to prevail, or that after all my efforts I should be treated by my own friends after such a fashion. I also got upon my legs and protested loudly that Mr. Watt and Mr. Smith did not even know what had been the subject under discussion when the vote adverse to novels had been taken.
Page 49
1870.] AN EDITOR’S TALES, _ 341 No record was kept of our proceedings ; and, ‘as I clearly showed to them, Mr. Regan and Mr. Hallam were quite as likely to hold correct views on this sub- ject as were Mr. Watt and Mr. Smith. All calling of men Pat, and Jack, and Walter was for the moment over. Watt admitted the truth of this argument, and declared that they must again decide whether my story of “ The New Inmate’ was or was not a novel in the sense intended when the previous vote was taken. If net, if the decision on that point should be in my favor, then the privilege of reading it would at any rate belong to me. I believed so thoroughly in my own work that I desired nothing beyond this. We went to work therefore, and took the votes on the proposition—was or was not the story of “ The New Inmate” debarred by the previous resolution against the admission of novels ? The decision manifestly rested with Mrs. St. Quinten. I was master, easily master, of three votes. Hallam and Regan were altogether with me, and in a matter of such import I had no hesitation in voting for myself. Had the ques- tion been the acceptance or rejection of the story for the magazine, then, by the nature of our constitution, I should have had no voice in the matter. But this was not the case, and I recorded my own vote in my own favor without a blush. Having done so, I turned to Mrs. St. Quinten with an air of supplication in my face of which I myself was aware, and of which I became at once ashamed. She looked round at me almost furtively, keeping her eyes otherwise fixed upon Churchill Smith’s immovable countenance. I did not condescend to speak a word to her. What words I had had to say, I had spoken to them all, and was confident in the justice of my cause. I quickly dropped that look of supplica- tion and threw myself back in my chair. The moment was one of intense inter- est, almost of agony, but I could not allow myself to think that in very truth my work would be rejected by them before it was seen. If such were to be their decision, how would it be possible that the ‘‘ Panjandrum” should ever be brought into existence? Who could endure such ignominy and still perse- vere? There was silence among us, which to me in the intensity of my feelings seemed to last for minutes. Regan was the first to speak. “ Now, Mrs. St. Quinten,” he said, “it all rests with you.” An idea shot across my mind at the moment of the folly of which we had been guilty in placing our most vital inter- ests in the hands of a woman merely on the score of gallantry. Two votes had been given to her as against one of ours simply because—she was a woman. It may be that there had been something in the arrangement of compensation for the tea and muffins ; but if so, how poor was the cause for so great an effect ! She sat there the arbiter of our destinies. ‘You had better give your vote,” said Smith roughly. “You think it is a novel?” she said, appealing to him, “ There can be no doubt of it,” he replied; “a novel is not a novel because it is long or short. Such is the matter which we intended to declare that we would not put forth in our magazine.” “I 0 ” said I, jumping up—‘I protest against this interference.” Then there was a loud and a very angry discussion whether Churchill Smith was justified in his endeavor to bias Mrs. St. Quinten ; and we were nearly brought to a vote upon that. I myself was very anxious to have that question decided—to have any question decided in which Churchill Smith could be shown to be in the wrong. But no one would back me, and it seemed to me as though even Regan and Jack Hallam were falling off from me—though Jack had never yet restored to me that article of clothing to which allusion was made in the first chapter of this little history, and I had been almost as anxious for Pat’s
Page 50
342 AN EDITOR'S TALES. [Marca, Latin translation as for my own production. It was decided without a vote that any amount of free questioning as to each other’s opinions, and of free answer- ing, was to be considered fair. “1 tell her my opinion... You can tell her yours,” said Churchill Smith. ‘It is my opinion,” said I, ‘that you want to dictate to everybody and to rule the whole thing.” ‘I think we did mean to exclude all story-telling,” said Mrs. St. Quinten, and so the decision was given against me. Looking back at it, I know that they were right on the exact point then un- der discussion. They had intended to exclude all stories. But—heaven and earth !—was there ever such folly as that of which they had been guilty in coming to such a resolution? I have often suggested to myself since that, had “ The New Inmate” been read on that evening, the “‘ Panjandrum ” might have become a living reality, and that the fortieth volume of the. publication might now have been standing on the shelves of many a well-filled library. The decision, how- ever, had been given against me, and I sat like one stricken dumb, paralyzed, or turned to stone. I remember,it as though it were.yesterday. I did not speak a word, but simply moving my chair an inch or two, I turned my face away from the lady who had thus blasted all my hopes. I fear that my eyes were wet, and that a hot tear trickled down each cheek. No note of triumph was sounded, and I verily believe they all, suffered in my too conspicuous sufferings. To both Watt and Smith it had been a matter of pure conscience. Mrs. St. Quinten, woman-like, had obeyed the man in whose strength she trusted. There was si- lence for a few moments, and then Watt invited Regan to proceed. He had divided his work into three portions, but what they were called, whether they were verse or prose, translations or original, comic or serious, I never knew. I could not listen then. For me to continue-my services to the “ Panjandrum ” was an impossibility. I had been crushed—so crushed that I had not vitality left me to escape from the room, or I should not have remained there. Pat Regan’s papers were nothing to me now. Watt I knew had written an essay called “ The Real Aristocrat,” which was published elsewhere afterward. Jack Hallam’s work was not ready. There was something said of his delinquency, but I cared not what. I only wished that my work also had been unready. Churchill Smith also had some essay, “On the Basis of Political Right.” That, if I re- member rightly, was its title. I often talked the matter over in after days with Pat Regan, and I know that, from the moment in which my consternation was made apparent to them, the thing went very heavily. Atthe moment, and for some hours after the adverse decision, I was altogether unmanned and unable to collect my thoughts.. Before the evening was over there occurred a further episode in our affairs which awakened me. The names of the papers had been given in, and Mrs. St. Quinten began to read her essay. Nothing more than .the drone of her voice reached the tympa- num of my ears. I did:not look at her, or think of her, or care to hear a word that she uttered. I believe I almost slept in-my agony ; but sleeping or waking I was turning over in my mind, wearily and incapably, the idea of declining to give any opinion as to the pyopriety of inserting or rejecting the review of Bishop Berkeley’s theory, on the score that my connection with the “ Panjan- drum” had been severed. But the sound of the reading went on, and. I did not make up my mind. I hardly endeavored to make it up, but sat dreamily revel- ling in my own grievance, and pondering over the suicidal folly of the “ Panjan- drum” Company. The reading went on and on without interruption, without question, and without applause. I know I slept during some portion of the time, for I remember that Regan kicked my shin. And I remember, also, a feel-
Page 51
1870.) AN EDITOR'S TALES. 343 ing of compassion for the reader, who was hardly able to rouse herself up to the pitch of spirit necessary for the occasion, but allowed herself to be quelled by the cold, steady gaze of her cousin Churchill. Watt sat immovable, with his hands in his trousers pockets, leaning back in his chair, the very picture of dis- passionate criticism. Jack Hallam amused himself by firing paper pellets at Regan, sundry of which struck me on the head and face. Once Mrs. St. Quinten burst forth in offence. ‘Mr, Hallam,” she said, “I am sorry to be so tedious.” “| like it of all things,” said Jack. It was certainly very long. Half comatose as I was with my own sufferings, 1 had begun to ask myself, before Mrs. St. Quinten had finished her task, whether it would be possible to endure three other readings lengthy as this. Ah! if I might have read my “ New Inmate,” how different would the feeling have been! Of what the lady said about Berke+ ley, I did not catch a word; but the name of the philosophical bishop seemed to be repeated usque ad nauseam. Ofa sudden I was aware that I had snored—a kick from Pat Regan wounded my shin; a pellet from Jack Hallam fell on my nose; and the essay was completed. I looked up, and could see that drops of perspiration were standing on the lady’s brow. There was a pause, and even I was now aroused to attention. We were to write our verdicts on paper—simply the words, “‘ Insert.” or “ Reject ”—and what should I write? Instead of doing so, should I declare at once that I was severed from the “ Panjandrum ” by the treatment I had received? That I was severed, in fact, I was very sure. Could any human flesh and blood have con- tinued its services to any magazine after such humiliation as I had suffered ? Nevertheless it might perhaps be more manly were I to accept'the responsibility of voting on the present occasion; and if so, how should I vote?) Thad not fol- lowed a single sentence, and yet I was convinced that matter such as that would never stir the British public mind. But as the thing went, we were not called upon for our formal verdicts: “ Lydia,’’? as soon as she had'done reading, turned at once to her cousin. She cared for no verdict but his. “ Well,” said she; “what do you think of it?” At first he did not answer. ‘I know I read: it badly,” she continued, “but I hope you caught.my meaning.” * Tt is utter nonsense,” he said, without moving his head. * Oh, Churchill! ’? she exclaimed. | “It is utter nonsense,” he repeated, “It is out of the question that it should be published.” She glanced her eyes round the company, but ventured on no spoken appeal. Jack Hallam said something about unnecessary severity and want of courtesy. Watt simply shook his head. “JI say it is trash,” said Smith; rising from his chair. ‘ You shall not disgrace yourself. Give it tome.” She put her hand upon the manuscript, as though to save it: “Give it to me,” he said sternly, and took it from her unresisting grasp, Then he stalked to the fire, and tearing the sheets in pieces, thrust them between the bars. : Of course there was a great commotion.. We were all up in a moment, standing around her as though to console hér. Miss Collins came and’ abso- lutely wept over her ill-used friend. In the instant I had forgotten “The New Inmate” as though it had never been written, She was deluged in tears, hiding’ her face upon the table ; but she uttered'no word of reproach, and ventured not a syllable in defence of her essay. ‘I didn’t think it was so bad as that,” she murmured, amidst her sobs. I did not dare to accuse the man of cruelty. I: myself had become so small among them that my voice would have had’ no weight. But I did think him cruel, and hated him on her account as well as on’ my own. Jack Hallam remarked that for this night, at least, our work must be 23
Page 52
344 AN EDITOR’S TALES. [ MARCH, considered to be over. ‘It is over altogether,” said Churchill Smith. ‘I have known that for weeks past; and I have known, too, what fools we have been to make the attempt. I hope, at least, that we may have learnt a lesson that will be of service to us. Perhaps you had better go now, and I'll just say a word or two to my cousin before I leave her.” _ How we got out of the room I hardly remember. There was, no doubt, some leave-taking between us four and the unfortunate Lydia, but it amounted, I think, to no more than mere decency required. To Churchill Smith I know that I did ' not speak. I never saw either of the cousins again; nor, as has been already told, did I ever distinctly hear what was their fate in life. And yet how inti- mately connected with them had I been for the last six or eight months! For not calling upon her, so that we might have mingled the tears of our disappoint- ment together, I much blamed myself; but the subject which we must have dis- cussed—the failure, namely, of the “ Panjandrum ”—was one so sore and full of sorrow, that I could not bring myself to face the interview. Churchill Smith, I know, made various efforts to obtain literary employment; but never succeeded, because he would yield no inch in the expression of his own violent opinions. I doubt whether he ever earned as much as £10 by his writings. I heard of his living, and almost starving, still in London, and then that he had gone to fight for Polish freedom. It is believed that he died in a Russian prison, but I could never find any one who knew with accuracy the circumstances of his fate. He was a man who could go forth with his life in his hand, and in meeting death could feel that he encountered only that which he had expected. She certainly vanished during the next summer from the street in which she had bestowed upon us so many muffins, and what became of her I never heard. On that evening Pat Regan and I consoled ourselves together as best we might, Jack Hallam and Walter Watt having parted from us under the walls of Marylebone workhouse. Pat and I walked down to a modest house of refresh- ment with which we were acquainted in Leicester Square, and there arranged the obsequies of the “ Panjandrum” over a pint of stout and a baked potato. Pat’s equanimity was marvellous. It had not even yet been ruffled, after all the indignities thrown upon him had almost surpassed those inflicted on myself. His “Lord Bateman” had been first rejected; and, after that, his subsequent contributions had been absolutely ignored, merely because Mr. Churchill Smith had not approved his cousin’s essay upon Bishop Berkeley! “It was rot; real rot,” said Pat, alluding to Lydia’s essay, and apologizing for Smith. “ But why not have gone on and heard yours?” said I. ‘“ Mine would have been rot, too,” said Pat. “It isn’t so easy, after all, to do this kind of thing.” We agreed that the obsequies should be very private. Indeed, as the “ Pan- jandrum ” had as yet not had a body of its own, it was hardly necessary to open the earth for purposes of interment. We agreed simply to say nothing about it to anyone. I would goto Mr. X. and tell him that we had abandoned our pro- ject, and there would be an end of ft. As the night advanced, I offered to read “The New Inmate” to my friend; but he truly remarked that of reading aloud they had surely had enough that night. When he reflected that but for the vio- lence of Mr. Smith’s proceedings we might even then, at that moment, have been listening to an essay upon the “ Basis of Political rights,” I think that he rejoiced that the “ Panjandrum ” was no more. © On the following morning I called on Mr. X. and explained to him that por- tion of the occurrences of the previous evening with which it was necessary that he should be made acquainted. I thought that he was rather brusque; but I can- not complain that he was, upon the whole, unfriendly. ‘ The truth is, sir,” he
Page 53
1870.] THE LOST BIRD. 345 said, “ you none of you exactly knew what you wanted to be after. You were very anxious to do something grand, but hadn’t got this grand thing clear before your eye. People, you know, may have too much genius, or may have too little.” Which of the two he thought was our case he did not say; but he did promise to hear my story of ‘* The New Inmate ” read, with reference to its possible in- sertion in another periodical publication with which he had lately become con- nected. Perhaps some of my readers may remember its appearance in the first number of the “ Marble Arch,” where it attracted some attention, and was sup- posed to have given assistance, not altogether despicably, toward the establish- ment of that excellent paper. Such was the history of the “ Panjandrum.” ANTHONY TROLLOPE. THE LOST BIRD. HAT cared she for the free hearts? she would comfort \V ‘The prisoned one ; What recked I of the wanton other singers ? She sang for me alone— Was all my own, my own! But when they loaded me with heavier fetters, And chained I lay, How could she know I longed to reach her window ? Athirst the livelong day, At eve she fled away. Still stands her cage wide open at the casement In sun and rain, Though years have gone, and rust has thickly gathered— My watching all in vain : She will not come again. Against its wires I strum with idle fingers From morn to noon ; I swing the door with loitering touch, and listen To hear that old-time tune, Sweet as the soul of June. My bird, my silver voice that cheered my prison, Hushed, lost to me: And still I wait for death, in chains, forsaken, (Soon may*the summons be !) But she is free. —‘Ts free?” Nay, in the palace porches caught and hanging, Who says ’tis gay— The song the false prince hears? Who says her singing, From day to summer day, Grieves not her heart away? But when my dream comes true in that last sleeping, » And death makes free, Against the blue shall snowy wings come sweeping, My bird flown back to me, Mine for eternity ! E. R. Srzz.
Page 54
LETTERS FROM HAVANA. LAURE D’HAUTERIVE TO ANGELA GAYNOR. II, H AVANA, March 24th—ANGELA, ANGIE, Mon ANGE: I have had your dear letter—your ivs¢ letter, for I hope another’s on the way, or in the thought—some days now. And I think, could a vision of the not-all-unhappy tears it has again and again evoked have been granted you, you would not have hurt me by the fear that what you can have to write will seem but pale, and poor, and cold, amid the varied experiences of my new life. Is it a life, after all? Is it not rather a panorama, where I sit or stand a-gaze? Life, or pictured semblance thereof, I know I feel sometimes a horrible lone- liness. I think it’s only since I came here that I begin really to comprehend the possible dreariness of a waif’s condition ; to understand what it may be to have no home, few and unknown kindred, and no country, almost, for France is not an actuality to me, only a thrill at my heart. The latter is not strange, for you know I was but a scrap of a child when Eléonore brought me to America, and to St. Joseph’s. Perhaps the whole is as little strange, for of any other home than the convent I have but the vaguest memories. I could not miss fn my sister what I never had; and as for my soldier brother in Africa, how can a brother be very real to me whom I only know through ceremonious yearly notes, and one outburst of lamentation over my departed dof just after the crowning crash of our fortunes two years ago? My dot¢/ poor Emile! And if I own that I begin to see how beautiful it is that the solitary should ‘be set in families, do not believe that the knowledge is only pain to me; that I do not remember the inexpressible sweetness of the sacred shelter of nearly all my years; that I am not sure I have a sister for Eternity, if not for Time ; that I am in the very least afraid to be a real solitary in God’s great family, if only I may be zs solitary; and understand, O doubting heart! that I write all this that you may feel how vital is my need of you, how cruel would be the wilful loosening of your hold upon me. So spare me no details, maiden mine; follow my generous example, sure that in such following you shall do well, With which modest exordium closes the preface. And here comes my first adventure—one disagreeable enough in its passage, and not entirely delightful in its sequence. Early one morning about two weeks since Mme. Herrera received a hurried note from Ma Mere Serrano, begging the loan of Laure’s voice for that same morning in some musical emergency that had just arisen. | I could go, certainly ; still there was a difficulty. Volantes are ladies’ feet here, and but two volantes appertained to this house. One of these had already con- veyed Josefina on a shopping expedition. Madame lferself had an appointment, and would be obliged to use the other ; however, she would take me to the con- vent, and I could return in a hired one. We went, and Madame left me. I sang myself into heaven, came down and breakfasted with a great, gaunt, yellow-haired, pitted-faced Irish lady, half visitor and half parlor-boarder at the convent ; then Ma Mére bade the porter call a vo- lante, put me in, and so despatched me home again.
Page 55
1870. ] LETTERS FROM HAVANA. 347 All very good ; the porter executed his:commission faithfully, and I was soon re-threading the narrow city streets, then speedily without the walls once more ; but here presently my calesero began to get uneasy. Two or three times we stopped, for no reason that I could see, then went slowly on again. Again he stopped, and this time I heard him speaking. At first I paid no attention, but repeated calls of Sefiorita! Sefiorita! convinced me that I was the object in- voked, and I pushed aside the curtain before me to get a view of my distant Jehu. He had twisted himself as far around in the saddle as his cumbrous equip- ments permitted, and the instant he saw me a very voluble query was addressed me of which I understood scarcely one word. For reply, I looked at him. This was unsatisfactory, and again he repeated his question, and again I stared blankly at him, rousing finally, however, myself and my scattered wits sufficient- ly to bring out in three Spanish words that I did not understand Spanish. I laugh, now, when I recall his face at this announcement, that significant helpless scratching of his head, then the sudden inspired torrent of explanations, eked out by pantomime, that burst upon me ; but I assure you that at the moment I felt, if ever I intended to inaugurate a fainting career, I could not possibly wish for a more suitable occasion. I know the name of-the street where Mme. Herrera lives, perfectly—very slowly and carefully I pronounced it. Yes! yes! and I suppose he said we were in that street, but then why not goon? Suddenly it flashed through me that he could not read the numbers, hence our difficulty. I did not know the number my- self, and if I had, could not have toldhim. I should recognize the house at once, but where we had stopped everything looked unfamiliar, and I could not tell him to drive on slowly and I would watch. What todo? Then I said, “Casa de la Sefiora Herrera.” Shake of the head, and mournful “ Don’t know it!” Now this was dreadful ; how dreadful I will not try to impress upon you as it has been’ impressed upon me, for there is no need. But could you have heard Ma Mére Serrano’s again and again repeated cautions, her “ Be very, very prudent, very guarded, my child!” her wishes that I were only older, her half-earnest assur- ance that a squint would have stood me in such good stead, or only one of the awiul revelations of wickedness here, you would comprehend that my anxiety was by no means unfounded. To make matters worse, my calesero drove now nearer one side the street, stopping continually to ask what to do, now of me, now of passers-by. Gentlemen began to come up to the volante.. “ What’s the matter?” and benevolently responded the cause of my distress, ‘The child doesn’t know the house!” Most of them contented themselves with question- ing and advising him, then walking away; but several addressed me in Spanish, one or two impertinents thrusting their heads quite within the carriage—some- what vainly, however, for I had drawn my mantilla closely over me, and it is so heavily embroidered as to afford most genuine concealment. These lingered, talking, and I had blotted myself into a corner in silent despair, trying to think what I could do, when another face appeared beneath the capacete (volante hood or curtain), a face crowned by venerable white hair, and I heard these delightful sounds: “ Parlez-vous francais, Madame?” Oh, with what relief I burst out “ Mais oui, Monsieur !” and my distressing predicament was set forth in very impetuous French, I’m afraid, though I really remember nothing I said, I was so amazed at the next extraordinary proceeding of this welcome new-comer: this was the lifting my mantilla completely from off my face and head, and throwing it back upon my shoulders. I looked at him quite speechless, though not at all
Page 56
348 LETTERS FROM HAVANA. [Marca, frightened, for I believe I fancied it to be only the strange whim of a cordial old gentleman who might have been my grandfather ; but when after an instant or two he informed me that my complexion was magnificent, and that I was a ‘ superb French lily, a very Queen of Love, why the flame flashed along the slow fuse of my ideas, and there was explosion. Rachel could hardly have intensified my “ Cest indigne, Monsieur /” But this sorrowful specimen of unvenerable age, as unmoved by my indignation as by my distress, kept his place and was pro- ceeding with his insulting compliments, when I rose desperately to motion the driver on, and in the act arrested the attention of a passing horseman—Don Manuel, Mme. Herrera’s brother. Of course he came to me directly, and though I could explain nothing, for he speaks and understands only Spanish, a word from the driver and a glance at the group seemed to enlighten him sufficiently, for the two or three brief re- marks he addressed to the unmanly circle around me certainly did not lack en- ergy. I don’t know what became of my tormentors. I was only conscious of safety, and that Don Manuel rode beside the volante, now rolling rapidly onward, Within five minutes it had stopped before the familiar piazza. Don Manuel helped me to alight, and when I would have paid the calesero motioned me toward the door with a gesture so imperative that I dared do no other than obey, and I hurried within, intent only on gaining my own room unobserved. Unfor- tunately, however, Madame had returned, and was seated with M. Herrera and the children in the corridor through which I must pass. I made a sweep- ing salutation to the group, and would have slipped by without more ado, but Madame detained me to inquire about our music and its occasion. Declining the chair which Monsieur with his grand air proffered me, I stood to give as brief details as possible, and should have retreated creditably had not my young- est pupil, who has developed into the most ardent and devoted follower that ever teacher was blessed or pestered with, been evilly seized with a desire for an in- stant embrace, which she mounted upon a chair and pushed back my veil to gratify. I don’t know what the face she gave to view was like, but Madame ex- claimed, “ Why, Mademoiselle! what zs the matter?” Lola’s impetuous kisses, dog-like, all over my face, impeded my answer for a moment, and when I had freed myself a little, Don Manuel had added himself to our number. At sight of him I was back in the volante, living over those horrible minutes again. Still I began bravely enough: ‘Not very much, Madame; but I am unable to thank M. Avilez for having rescued me from a disagreeable predicament, and if you will kindly do so for me I shall be very grateful.” And here I ended ignominiously in a great outburst of tears. | What anybody said or did I don’t know, for Lola’s arms closed tightly about my neck, and such a storm of sob and roar rent the air that I caught her hastily up, and hid and hushed such a disgraceful duo as speedily as I might in my chamber. I was vexed and thoroughly ashamed ; but if you think that noisy sympathy didn’t console me, that I didn’t rock the poor puss in my lap a long time, that we didn’t hug ourselves, why, then, ¢ te trompes, ma chere. Don Manuel must have divined the whole situation, for no explanations of mine were needed when Madame came to me full of regrets, accusing what she was pleased to call her thoughtlessness in the matter, declaring that until I could make myself understood in Spanish, I should not be trusted out of the house alone. When I next saw Mile. Josefina she favored me with a little sneer about
Page 57
1870.] LETTERS FROM HAVANA. | 349 distressed damsels, but further comments were spared me, and I hoped the lit- tle ripples my unlucky stone had set in motion had ceased and been forgotten. And I think they had, yet I own I did not feel quite at ease when, the next Sat- urday afternoon, the young ladies and Mlle. Laure having been sent for to the: parlor, they found there Mme. Herrera, M. le Comte, Mlle. Josetina, and the blackest son of night these eyes ever rested on, arrayed smartly.as a calesero in scarlet and gold, and were told that this gorgeous functionary, and an elegant volante which we were sent to the window to inspect, were M. le Comte’s pres- ent to his granddaughters for their sole use, including, of course, that of Mlle. Laure, their gouvernante. To complete this presentation, “ Roque, ” said M. Herrera, “here are your young mistresses. This is the child Dolores, this the child Merced, and this,” indicating me where I had drawn aside, “the young lady, Laure.” The black figure started forward, and would have fallen on its knees, I think, could it have gotten nimbly enough out of those preposterous boots to do so; but it had to content itself instead with bending lowly before each of us, carrying our hands to its forehead, etc., in Oriental and Biblical salaaming. | The children made all the white teeth display themselves, by saying a few kind words to Roque; and when the eyes turned persistently toward me and would not accept my silent recognition, I had to say through Dolores that I hoped to be his very good friend, and expected to admire his driving very much ; where- upon exit Roque. Great questioning and thanksgiving followed. “Is the volante really and truly ours, grandfather? Can we call for it and go out in it whenever we like?” “ Whenever mamma permits.” “ And we’ve got a volante and a calesero! Only think, Josefina, we’re as grand as mamma and you!” “Yes, children, you have a volante—you and Mlle. Laure!” and Mile. Jose- fina rose to depart, glancing at me somewhat sourly. “Well corrected, Josefina!” said M. Herrera in his very stateliest way, and © he also departed—a little hurriedly, or so I fancied. We are very grand, as Lola said ; indeed, it is grandissimo to have a pair of feet all to our three selves—the three selves constituting one to all excursionary intents. As yet, because of Lent, we only use them for errands and church-go- ing; and for this latter, to carry our kneeling-carpet into church, arrange it, etc., M. Herrera has lent us a tiny page—a little olive fellow done up in scarlet and gold, to match Roque. I should like you to behold the air with which this mite follows us in, establishes us, and then, upon the rear end of our rug, settles to his own devotions as if to follow to heaven also in our wake. The churches here are not at all beautiful architecturally, the forms and masonry in the very finest striking one as rude and barbaric. The cathedral is interesting from its great age—plainly enough written all over it, more especially in its crumbling and mossy front—and its paintings, which are the best I have seen. In most the paintings and frescoes are wretched, and the ornamentation generally in the worst possible taste. Two things, however, please me: the profusion of wax lights, and the exquisite delicacy and beauty of altar linens and _ laces. Butit is trying enough herein the tropics to see altars bristling with artifi- cial flowers, and to know they are actually regarded as far finer and more honor- able than those only poor Nature’s handiwork. Worst of all, I think, are the statues bedizened with tinsel and tawdry color ; to these I cannot accustom myself. I try not to see them ; to imagine very dif-
Page 58
350 LETTERS FROM HAVANA. [Marcn, ferent presentments in their places; toregard them religiously, not zsthetically ; but my success is, as yet, indifferent. In most of the churches the music is very poor, save on very high days, when members of the opera troupe assist. At Belen, however, the Jesuits’ church, the fathers furnish an excellent choir from among themselves, and there is a tenor that is heavenly. There are no pews, no chairs ; one carries rug or hassock, or kneels on the bare marble. The female worshippers occupy the main body of the building, the gentlemen skirting the walls. The latter stand during the greater part of the service; the former never do, kneeling where we rise at the North. Asthere is nothing to rest against ever so slightly, the position is dreadfully fatiguing to a neophyte, and I feel faint in anticipation of the long ceremonies of Holy Week. M. Herrera declares it is a mystery to him how the ladies endure it—that he aches only looking at them. , The sitting is almost more difficult ; the mode is to drop back upon the heels and upturned soles, making a sort of Z figure; and a genuine Habanera will sit motionless in this way fora long time. Just try the position, and you'll under- stand how loudly my ankles protest, so that I fall perforce in a sideway heap, and feel very irreverent and Cinderella-in-the-ashes-y. In the grouping of the congregation perfect equality reigns—a beggar beside a countess, slave beside mistress. I like this, despite occasional garlic; but I did wish a tall Meg Merrilies of a beggar, with a shawl over her head, would not have smitten me sick and shuddering the other day by carefully lifting my car- pet, and expectorating with fracas beneath it. If she had been a marchioness, however, the action would have been just as likely ; for ladies here seem to pos- sess as vile a habit in this respect as those tobacco-chewing nuisances at the North infesting car and ferry-boat, making vision hateful tous, and our lives a burden by reason of drapery. Church costume is various, but the mantilla absolute. Most of the older ladies cling to the old Spanish fashion, and wear black, and I should prefer this for all ; but the younger ladies are generally attired in white, or clear-tinted lawns and linens, crisp, airy, and elegant in their dainty freshness. Here and there you will see a full ball toilette, a gay fan fluttering, neck and arms bare, hair elaborately dressed with jewelled combs and pins, feathers and artificial flowers, a gauzy mass of white iliusion doing duty for the sober de rigueur mantilla ; per- haps at the side of mamma a little child dressed in the same unsuitable style. But these are exceptions, and they are growing more and more infrequent, says’ Mme. Herrera. The old ladies are my great disappointments. I am so fond of nice motherly and grandmotherly old ladies, wise, calm, tolerant, with silver hair in soft bands or curls, spotless caps and kerchiefs, placid of face, comfortable of figure, careful in dress—beautiful, venerable, and venerated centres of happy homes. But beautiful feminine age here I have nowhere seen. Children are pretty, young girls and young matrons charming. They are rather below medium height, with figures a little roly-poly, but very womanly, and with almost universally lovely busts and feet. They have hair coarse and wiry enough in quality, but magnificent in length, - quantity, and color, and the Greek coiffure they affect is very becoming. Com- plexions dark and colorless, a little downiness giving them a peculiar velvety smoothness, and they light up at night magnificently. Their eyes are intensely: black, and full of languid melancholy. Profiles fine, firm round chins, beauti- fully cut lips; and if I hint a hint of shade above them, does not Nature marry feature and feature better than we could do?
Page 59
1870.] LETTERS FROM HAVANA. 351 But if you could see what these pretty creatures become at from forty on- ward! Hair tightly twisted in a ferocious knot; no cap; no collar or cuffs ; a breadth of black silk drawn tightly over the head constituting head-gear and wrappings ; eyes fierce or dead ; the figure of a waddling tun, or a parchment- cased mummy; and, Sancta Cecilia! what voices! But tawdriness and tinsel, cumbrous masonry, old ladies and young maidens, jeunesse dorée in white linen, beggars and blacks, gay pages and caleseros, fig- ures standing, sitting, kneeling ; here a somewhat worldly-looking canon in black soutane of finest quality, and shoes of wondrous polish; there a Franciscan in blue, with rope girdle ; yonder a brown Carmelite ; perhaps a military mass, with soldiers in the body of the house; perhaps a large benevolent society as- sisting, uniformed, within the sanctuary: it is all wonderfully picturesque in the dim old churches. | Pleasant, too, it is to see the respect manifested for the temples where God dwells. The roughest szonfero (countryman) passing one uncovers his head and crosses himself; little children fold their arms and are quite silent ; and your calesero, be his hurry never 'so great, bends to the saddle-bow as he dashes by. Very elaborate is the crossing ; instead of the simple /z nosmdine Patris, etc., touching forehead, breast, and shoulders, forehead, mouth, and heart are sever- ally blessed, ending with pressure of the lips upon a cross formed by thumb and forefinger. Beggars at the church doors; and for these a little velvet bag, contents medios, is an unfailing article of Mme. Herrera’s holiday and Sunday toilette. Never have I seen a beggar uncourteously treated, though they seem absolutely to swarm here. At my own chamber window I hold daily levees, at which assist, I should suppose, all the limps, the wounds, the horrible diseases of the city. I think I am quite alone; the room is dark and still: suddenly a turned dlind floods it with sunlight; I hear a sharp Pst! Pst! I see a grimy claw thrust through the slats, and opening and shutting persuasively. If I am visible from outside, voluble compliments. ‘ What a white child!” “ Dios mio, but she is fair!” If I approach, most likely a revolting display—wasted limbs, wasted babies, dreadful sores, etc. A very modest alms invokes the whole heavenly host to my safeguard; and a refusing gesture, and a “Go with God,” elicit nothing worse than “ Adios, another day.” And off goes the wheedling creature, hideous, and scuff-scuffing feet, but her drapery falling in folds that might be- seem the Tragic Muse. You would like to know our daily routine, I dare say. ’Tis very simple. Rise at half-past five—a little earlier if we attend mass at six, which we often do now that we’ve set up our carriage ; as soon as dressed, a cup of coffee or choco- late with a small roll. At seven we take up our daily burden—music lessons, mathematics, and French dictation before breakfast at ten. After breakfast we amuse ourselves for a half-hour ; if cool enough, we go to the garden, or have a game of cache-cache, drawing in as players all the young fry of the establishment, Victoria’s active portion that of wildly betraying us all; if we are lazy, we play with her, or with my little green paroquet, a present from Mme. H. My pet is only a baby, and like that other exemplary parrot known to fame he “says noth- ing to nobody,” but all day long hooks himself industriously up and down a dis- used grating in the front court. When I appear he flaps his wings and croaksa little ; 7 mean soaked bread, bits of cake, and stray nuts to him. When he has been fed into highest good humor, his favorite relaxation is to perch himself upon
Page 60
352 LETTERS FROM HAVANA. [MaARcH, the head of any one who will tolerate him; but in this respect his liberties are becoming very narrowly restricted, one experience of his griping purchase in one’s hair being more than sufficient. From eleven till half-past one, work again ; then a plate of fruit, a s¢es¢a, dressing for dinner, and a little space that I fill as I please, while the children practise, or take their dancing lessons of a huge fat French woman. After dinner a drive, a walk in the garden or on the housetop, concludes their day; and on the housetop I often spend the remaining hours of mine, gazing down into the rear court, which has for me an endless charm ; watching the street life, the pigeons dipping and twiddling about on roof and parapet, the vultures swooping with harsh cries heavily overhead ; looking across the city through blue gathering mist at the revolving Morro light ; listening to the softened sound of city and suburb, the sea-breeze gently soughing in a grand southern pine in the garden; saying my rosary, and often my prayers, full in face of the glorious tropic night heaven. If there is no company, and only Mme. H. at home, I put out the lights in the parlor and sit down at the piano to make such music as I list. Before long I hear shuffling on the piazza, and I can see and feel that there is quite a little crowd of street loungers at each window. The other night one indiscreet called out, “ Another, Sefiorita!”? but a gruff “Shut your mouth, Sefior!” and several hisses, made short work of him. Generally they are perfectly silent till they hear the piano closing; then the unknown musician is thanked with effusion ; and if she has attempted one of her three Spanish songs, there is such prodigal pour- ing forth of pretty sayings, that all in the darkness she gets quite shame-faced, and retreats to stumble over an auditory of servants in the corridor, this group headed by Rafaela and the tall head cook. The passion for music seems a uni- versal one. As we drive I hear pianos everywhere, and a good deal of very fine playing. Inthe poorest houses one hears guitar, flute, or violin, and nightfall sees parties of young men wandering through the streets, one of their number twang- ing a guitar or torturing an accordion. April 17th.—Lent is over, and we are resting a little from the fatigue and strain of its last weeks. No sprigs of box or hemlock here on Palm Sunday, but veritable palm branches. The Cuban ladies are very ingenious in plaiting the palm leaves into crosses, baskets, necklaces, etc., and these they have blessed and distribute among their friends. Not a bell rings in Havana from Maundy Thursday morning till Easter morn- ing, nor within that time is any carriage allowed within the city walls. On Good Friday the house was as if one, its dearest and best, were lying deaa within it. Everything was quiet, only work of absolute need being performed. But one preparation of food, that at midday—bread, rice, and daca/ao, a dish which forms in great part the food of the plantation slaves. It is composed of salt codfish, oil, and saffron; and indeed “its offence is rank.” At twilight, the dead Christ, the instruments of His passion, His sorrowing mother, the beloved disciple, and Mary Magdalene, were borne through the city ; religious orders, confraternities, charitable societies, and a great following of people, making a vast procession. A great portion of the ladies I saw on that day were dressed in black, without ornament of any kind. On Easter morning there is another procession—a triumphal one. The risen Christ is borne from the cathedral to the Church of St. Catalina, and is met by a procession from St. Catalina’s bearing Mary Magdalene seeking het Lord. At the moment of meeting, a salute is fired, bells ring in all the churches,
Page 61
1870. LETTERS FROM HAVANA. 353 flags float from ships inthe bay, from forts, towers, public buildings, volantes dash through the gates, trumpets are blown—night and its cruel horrors are passed away, and here is the day-dawn. I should have liked you to see the convent chapel at Easter. Palm branches arranged along either wall, the tops nearly meeting above, made a green arcaded temple. This was thickly starred with huge clusters of rose oleander, and the altars were fairly buried in exquisite flowers. Flowers grow here luxuriantly, as you would suppose; but Havana ladies seem to have little fondness for them—neither wear them nor keep them cut in the house. In revenge, how the slighted beauties crowd, toss, and flaunt in the gardens! That reminds me that I have not yet shown you our garden. Will you come? First, we cross a tiny paddock inhabited by the very most exasperating old Mme. Donkey that ever brayed. There is also a baby donkey; and as it is the function of Za mére to supply a morning and evening draught to Mme. Her- rera, who has a weak chest, this long-legged, big-jointed baby passes most of its youthful existence in an enforced separation from its yearning parent, and the consequences are cruel—to us. Either the old lady brays or she doesn’t bray ; but then when she doesn’t bray she is launching both her hind heels against the house or paddock wall; in point of din there is little to choose, and we are rather obliged to her for the variety. I remember that Father Huc reports a success- ful Tartar device for arresting braying to have been the appending a stone or other weight to the creature’s tail; and several mornings, while comparing our melancholy experiences of the night at breakfast, it has been at my very tongue’s end to suggest a trial of this expedient ; but I recall the swift circles I have seen the flying heels of this culprit describe, the continuous discharge of volleys ; I reflect that brain walls are hardly so impervious as those of coral rock ; so, strug- gling, I hold my peace. Here, put your finger on that bulge in the white wall. What! nota bulge at all? <A little white lizard who doesn’t wait to be poked? And here on the un- painted old gate, see, is a gray one, almost matching the decayed wood in color. In the garden there are thousands—black, brown, amber, vivid green, diamond eyes ; and the pretty shy things slip, dart, and flash about in the sunlight, till my charmed eyes rate them next humming-birds for beauty. This garden is but a neglected place ; yet I believe I could hardly like order half so well. It was partly the creation and wholly the pride of Mme. Herrera’s hnsband; since his death she will suffer no change, no pruning, no touch even, save for the removal of unsightly decay. The plan is formal enough. Along three sides of the garden rise the stately columns of the king palm, a broad walk reaching round in their shade. The fourth side is a marsh, through which flows a somewhat turbid stream, and beyond the marsh tall aloes hedge us in and bristle security. In the centre is a large double circle of king palms. Oh, impossible for aught save vision to convey to you an idea of this glorious green rotunda! And from this circle radiate walks like spokes in a wheel. Four—quartering the gar- den—are fine avenues, also palm-bordered ; but these are subject palms, and along these four avenues are more than thirty varieties. The other walks are narrower, and variously shaded. There is the lemon-tree walk, the acacia walk, the orange-tree walk, etc. ; and one between which and the palm avenues I am torn asunder, for I can never determine whether it is palms or pines I cherish within my inmost heart: this is all dark and whispery with southern pine, while here and there, amid their sombre-hued, thin, and most graceful foliage, rise ole-
Page 62
354 LETTERS FROM HAVANA. [ MARCH, anders in compact, glistening pyramids thirty feet high, studded from base to apex with rose and crimson bloom. Within the palm circle is a marble basin, in which a tiny fountain slways tin- kles. At intervals along the parapet around it stand great porcelain vases of brilliant blue, crowned with white or crimson and white lilies, or huge tropical leaves. Around the basin is a tiled pavement eight or ten feet wide ; and thi is again encircled by a light fantastic trellis of iron work, octagonal in form; on every side a broad, low arch, giving entrance to eye or person ; the trellis painted a bright vermilion—what one sees, for it is well nigh hidden beneath the luxuri- ant sprays and tossing flowers of a dozen species of climbing roses. Two or three mats and chairs, Mme. Herrera with a bit of church embroidery, the chil- dren and myself with books, Victoria tumbling with the kitten, my Dickey awk- wardly shuffling along the parapet—and it is the very prettiest open-air drawing- room in the New World, I verily believe. A good many of our lessons we have here, and Mme. Herrera’s presence I do not in the least mind; but M.]e Comte has a fashion lately of dropping down among us while we are fagging away at English, and though he does not understand it, does not enter our lines, occupy- ing himself rather with Mme. H., still I think he favors us with a good deal more attention than is at all needful or comfortable. The children have begun Grecian history with me, and as I find here a most deplorable lack of English text-books, their instruction has been for the most part oral, an old outline history being their only other aid. Fortunately I re- member well Bonner’s delightful child histories of Greece and Rome, and am | quite “up” in my mythology ; so out come the maps, and we manage to have a very bright, eager time over it. Anda day or two ago M. Herrera said, “ How unusually fond of history you must be, Mademoiselle! You seem to teach it quite ex professeur.” “Fond of history!’? Monday “vésumdés” and shade of Dr. Lingard ! “No, Monsieur,” I said ; “ I—I—Monsieur, 7e da déteste /” “ And yet I see you all so animated over the history lesson, and Lola gives one no peace with her gods and goddesses, etc.” “Oh, I had to worry through a deal, of course; history is a strong point at the Sacré-Coeur ; but I’m afraid the only histories I should ever have glanced at of my own wish were some childish ones, and Irving’s ‘ Conquest of Granada.’ ” He laughed, and I suspect my ears correctly report a low “Oh, da gouver- nante /”? At any rate I departed, feeling that that way safety lay. Shall we go back to the garden? ’Tis easier to say what is not, than what is, in this wonderful enclosure. There is no sugar-cane, no pineapples; fur- ther than that I won’t commit myself. Flowers have run wild, and very many are gone, says Rafaela. There is no close sward, no velvety lawn, and even in this abundance I miss the wonted green carpet. Everywhere underfoot grow lemon, verbena, and wild heliotrope ; everywhere overhead clings the yellow jasmine. There are several varieties of white jasmine, one particularly beautiful hanging in yard-long sprays, the close dark leaves without a blemish, and the slightly double white star flowers thickly set the whole distance, and all opening at once. Over one of the trees is a perfect bower of passion-flower vine, but no blos- soms yet. There are pomegranates, limes, cocoanuts, bananas, plantains, mangoes, gua- vas, guanadanas (a large, shapeless, dark-green, roughly-spiked fruit, its flesh the snowiest cotton, soaked in spicy-flavored cream, and eaten, crushed with sugar
Page 63
1870. ] LETTERS FROM HAVANA. 355 and pounded ice, as a sherbet), sapotas (a small, brown, rough-coated fruit, quite insipid), tamarinds, custard apples (a beautiful purple fruit, the flesh a purple cream, taken with a spoon), mamey colorado (a large, gray-brown, rough-coated fruit, cut in segments like cantelopes, the flesh insipid, but of a beautiful ver- milion), dates, rose-apples, and figs. A curious quality the fig tree is said to possess. Just before breakfast one morning I saw the cook’s scullion flying down the garden with a bit of steak dangling from a string. He stopped at a cluster of fig trees, hung his meat on a branch, loitered about a few minutes, then, taking the steak again, rushed off as he had come. I asked an explana- tion, and was told that the odor of the trees has a putrescent quality, and that it is made use of to tender tough or newly-killed meat; that the chickens are often hung in the trees when wanted inahurry. If forgotten, or left too long, they are quite spoiled. “1 tell the tale,” etc., but it is certain that the belief and custom prevail. Now the donkey’s bray is terribly, heart-breakingly tough: if she were tethered beneath a fig tree, do you think——-?_ 1 shall certainly suggest it. I have been shopping with Mlle. Josefina. It is very well for once, and things are lovely, but don’t you sigh. New York shopping is far more comfort- able and satisfactory. The shops are mostly in one street, the Calle de Mercaderes, and are known as the Bomb, Virtue, Hope, Paradise, etc., rather than by the names of their owners. The volante stops at a shop door. Pst! Pst! Pst! whistles page or lady, and in an instant a clerk is bowing beside you, inquiring deferentially concerning your wishes. Goods of all descriptions are brought to the carriage; it looks very tiresome, yet I have nowhere seen more courteous and obliging clerks. Josefina bought mourning for the family wear—lilac organdies, linens, black collars and belts, and jet ornaments. They have just lost an uncle, and this slight mourning will be worn three months. My own purchases were dresses—the lovely sheer linens so much worn here—and I was paying for them when off rushed my patient Don Yardstick to return with a pé#a of a color so celestial that Josefina gave a little scream, of de- light. ‘La Sefiorita could wear this color so well!” volunteered the clerk, and ‘Indeed it was made for you, Mlle. Laure,” cried Josefina. So up the winding stairs went the poor foolish fly, and out of la Sefiorita’s purse came forth another gold piece. Thin dress goods are, however, very cheap here—the only cheap things I fancy, save fruits. Shoes were on the list, and it is a great deal more novel than saeeshdes to have shoes tried on in an open carriage. Boots of black satin, and slippers of satin and patent leather, rosetted and buckled to the last degree; but they are not in reality well made, despite their a7, and through some curing process, I suppose, the leather possesses an intolerable reminiscence of the stable, so that I am fain to kick off my slippers into the closet at night without touching them, and shut them carefully away. Gloves are not worn at all by ladies, which is harrowing indeed to my French soul. Very fine gentlemen sometimes wear white ones when driving with ladies; but, save among foreigners, I have not seen a lady with gloved hands, Dress here is generally effective ; yet an elegant, finished toilette is rare enough to be noticeable. But it is always fresh—nothing crumpled ; and, a true ~
Page 64
356 LETTERS FROM HAVANA. [Makcu, lady’s mark, a great profusion of underwear, the linen exquisite in quality, and daintily made and trimmed. | We have nothing North like the needle-work here. In a band of linen a great number of the woof threads are drawn out, the remaining warp threads converted into an intricate, lace-like design, very strong and pretty. As I have said before, there is a deal-of wxdress. You constantly see white women of the poorer classes in the scantiest costume, and a middle-aged French lady from Santiago (a Saint Domingo refugee) assures me she remembers per- - fectly well when /adies didn’t scruple to receive or make calls in chemise and petticoat. Babies and baby children wear, usually, one garment—a little thicker, truly, than the sublimated India muslin of the Shah’s daughter, but of that she wore seven suits. I made a funny mistake soon after I came.. Something was amiss with the gas, and two or three men were at work in the house. The foreman, who came to Mme. H. for instructions as we sat in the corridor, wore his shirt in a very airy way, wholly as an outside garment, and thus clad quite petrified me with his easy unconsciousness of manner. Of course I gave but a glance at this eccen- tricity of toilette, and as soon as he was gone I inquired, with great earnestness, was the man mad? did he mean to be impertinent? First there was perplexity, then a shout, and I was pacified with the assurance that it was entirely correct. Had I not seen the monteros all similarly arrayed? I had not, my short vision and their use of colored shirts hindering; but this garment was so startlingly white! and, correct or not, the man was an absurd figure enough. My poor Pzfa nearly caused me a scare before we reached home. We stop- ped at a French dressmaker’s to leave the dresses. Mlle. Josefina was attended to; then my turn came. After measurement, she of the scissors and tape in- quired : “ Low corsage for the blue, of course, Mademoiselle ?” “Certainly not; high, and the sleeves long.” ** Mais, Mademoiselle )” and “You must have one low body and short sleeves,” interrupted Josefina. “ You certainly wouldn’t go to the opera with neck and arms covered ?” “1 certainly wouldn’t go with them bare. Why, I never had on such a dress in my life, Mlle. Josefina. What would Eléonore say ?” “ Convent notions!” pronounced Josefina. “ Quel dommage,” urged Madame, “to hide such lovely white shoulders ! Now, if I were to make Mademoiselle a charming little fichu to wear with a low corsage, Mademoiselle’s feelings would be spared, and-——-” “ Corsage montant, Madame!” firmly. Then to my disapproving companion : “You know, Mlle. Josefina, it can’t possibly matter if the governess does make an ancient of herself. She will go to the opera and drive on the Paseo to hear and see—not to be seen. That makes such a difference!” The blue dress has come home, and the modiste has made an admirable com- promise, like the skilful Frenchwoman she is. It is over glacé silk, a train from here to the mainland, Pompadour body, the only trimming an elegant sash, and I propose to wear with it a certain beautiful lace set your dear mother may re- call, some pink roses from the garden, and to feel very brave and grande dame- ish indeed. Perhaps I ought to add that my bill equalled my train in length, and that in consequence thereof the above-mentioned grande dame is stitching away at the linen dresses herself. a
Page 65
1870.] LETTERS FROM HAVANA. 357 A hundred times, more or less, since I came, have I wished myself Othello’s great-grandmother (supposing, always, that venerable lady to have been swarthy of hue). A blonde is so conspicuous, so stared at here. It is affirmed as veri- table fact of the wife of a former American Consul, a lady exceedingly fair, with blue eyes and golden hair, that, attired in white, with blue ribbons, she was walk- ing on the Paseo Tacon when she was espied by a montero riding his donkey in from the country. Never had he beheld such a vision, such a child of light. Ladies are so seldom seen on foot here, and all that white, and blue, and golden aureole of hair, were too much for the poor countryman; he was convinced he beheld the Blessed Virgin herself before him. Down he hastily scrambled from his donkey, threw himself on his knees before her, and began invoking and blessing her by all the tender names known to him. I do not know how the matter ended, but surely the lady might heartily have adopted St. Philip Neri’s * All is vanity, except a carriage, in Rome.” My own tribulations include noth- ing so startling as this, but how gladly would I filch from you your ebon locks and eyes, and magnolia-leaf hue, Angie, ma drune. Last Sunday at dinner we had company—two or three gentlemen, friends of M. Herrera; and there was quite an animated French and Spanish conversation on nationalities. In the midst of it Mlle. Josefina inquired : ‘“* Have you not Irish blood in your veins, Mlle. Laure ?” “ Yes, Mlle. Josefina; far back among the grandmothers was an Irish one. It was my brogue, perhaps, helped you to divine her ?” “No; but I have never before seen a French person with brown eyes and red hair.” My poor tawny mane! and are you really red ? However, I forgot to ask myself then, so quickly did Monsieur, fine nine- teenth century paladin that he is, exclaim: : } “That was a very clever guess of yours, Josefina. Now Z was sure Made- moiselle had walked out of an old Venetian picture for our benefit. Your happy conjecture enlightens my darkness, and I see that Mademoiselle is not an ‘Old Master,’ but an ‘ Irish Grandmother’s Own !’” Poor little Victoria is in affliction, This morning while I was dressing, in came her kitten so flurried at ‘being so/us, and on its own legs, that it could set- tle to nothing, but wandered uneasily about me in a small circle, mewing dis- mally, and seriously interfering with my toilette. Finally I accompanied the creature on a search for its small mistress. Great inspection of all the accus- tomed haunts, but no Victoria. And no one knows where she is. O Rafaela, have youseen Victoria? Ay! da pobre! you see, Sefiorita, she is so ashamed— and just here I catch a glimpse of a tiny red figure cowering in the shade of the laundry door. The kitten and I hurry toward it, but it curls up closer in the corner, its head tightly covered with the kitten’s hammock—the check apron. For a while no favor is vouchsafed us; then the kitten is stroked by a groping hand ; after twenty minutes, maybe, my coaxings take effect, and the pinafore is cautiously lowered, displaying Vic.’s head closely shaved, and such a funny little cocoanut it looks that I laugh involuntarily, whereupon the apron is whipped over it again, and Vic. turns to the wall in utter, obdurate despair. This bare little poll is a punishment, I find, the poor baby having forgotten her principles lately and made several destructive before-dinner raids upon the dessert. The next lapse will be followed by exile to the plantation, a punishment exceedingly dreaded by the house slaves. I think Victoria won’t come to that, for she is
Page 66
358 LETTERS FROM HAVANA. [ MARCH, tairly sick with mortification at her present disgrace, having cried herself into a headache and her bed. I have been greatly struck with the difference between the colored race here and such occasional specimens as I saw at the North. There they seemed to me all alike—one people; here I recognize many types, varying widely in physi- cal and mental characteristics, and I notice people speak of the tribe of cook | or coachman, as we would of the nationality of an English, Irish, or German servant. The house servants are petted and trusted to a great degree. The cook, whether man or woman, always provides the table, a certain sum being daily furnished to that end, the choice of viands left almost wholly to his discretion ; and their honesty and professional pride are sufficiently strong to make this plan answer admirably. But beholding the raw material from which these useful household friends are manufactured, one feels hopeless indeed. Breakfasting at the convent one morning early in last month, I was interrupted by the porter convoying two such strange-looking beings through the room that I dropped my napkin and followed after to the courtyard. They were slave women, straight from the slave ship and Lower Guinea—a present to the house from a government official. They had one garment each, a cotton bag reaching to the knees, holes cut for head and arms. I suppose they were young, but so intensely black and so stout that I could not tell; and oh, what impossible legs! The poor creatures were utterly forlorn ; not a word could be spoken with'them; they rejected all food because of the salt, and could only take coffee, which they drank with avidity—sensible sav- ages! They were boarded for a month with a family of their own nation, to be clothed and acquire the rudiments of the new enforced life. They are back now, and a great pest too; but Ma Mére keeps them because she thinks she is responsible for them, and not one suggestion of harshness will she tolerate. The new clothes are a great trial, and now and again the wild things are missed ; search stumbles upon two dropped rings of garments in some passageway, and at once the porter is sent to the roof, where the wearers of these “ vain lendings ” are promenatiing, clad only in turban, slippers, and the fierce sunshine. We hear that very threatening demonstrations with a rope’s end are needed to induce that procession to form the line of downward march, and you may believe they have a clear route! The lay sister who reigns in the dispensary, Sister Gahagan, a frail, bright little body, and as Irish as ever she can be, highly disapproves of these heathen ingredients in a convent ; and her disgusted looks and ejaculations, tremendous sighs and cap-shakings, are irresistible. Invariably I inquire, ‘“ Well, sister, what’s Catalina and Juanita’s latest?” and as invariably I am answered by a groan, or “Stole Mme. Foster’s slippers yesterday!” or “On top o’ the house this morning !” All this while my life moves smoothly on. I think I can see that for many it would hold great privations—desperate mental hunger: for me, too, possibly in the future, but I do not apprehend it. I am so little intellectual; music holds such a large place in my life; the climate is a delight; nature inexhaustibly rich; and my eyes never weary of the picturesque profusion ceaselessly offered them. | It is true there is nothing worthy the name society; there cannot be while Spanish rule, unmodified, exists, and while high cultivation is the rarest excep-
Page 67
1870.] LETTERS FROM HAVANA. 350 tion. But the Jesuits and the ladies of the Sacred Heart are doing grand work for morals and education ; and for independence, /e bon temps viendra. — But Havana will never be Boston: I’m so sorry! Impossible to fancy a Margaret Fuller here, or transcendental “conversations.” Shakespearian read- ings would do—or will, in time to come. Meantime there is the theatre, the opera, a good many balls, birthday parties, infrequent dinners ; the ladies are ornamental, the gentlemen pay them frantic compliments, and so one amuses one’s self. It doesn’t sound dreary! The most intelligent reunions are doubtless at the British Consul’s; this has always been the case, judging from what I hear. As for the American Con- | sul——profound silence! The salary is too mean to support a house, or even a separate carriage for the wife, and their influence is precisely equal to their hu- miliating position. To marry a United States Consul seems to me to be giving as profound proof of affection as do the women of whom your brother told me— the wives of Methodist pastors, was it not? I know I thought ¢key might as well live in furniture wagons. If the ladies don’t talk books, and dream in Greek, why, the gentlemen—that is, the gentlemen founded on the old Castilian model—have superb manners. And fine manners are so delightful! I find it far more agreeable to be told that a gentleman kisses my hand (spiritual salutation, mon Ange) than to have it vio- lently seized in a clammy grasp and shaken up and down. Then every one, or almost every one, is so kind. Mme. Herrera is hardly sweeter to her own sister than to the stranger in her household ; the children are as perfect as I can endure; the convent my dear refuge. Monsieur Herrera, too, is very thoughtful; brings me French, English, and American periodicals, gives me little summaries of home news, and, when there is urgent need, wards off Josefina. In return I play and sing for him when he asks me, and let what will have gone before, I must end always with Mendelssohn’s “ Consolation.” I am getting on nicely with Spanish, as I ought, indeed, for I use it in all or- dinary needs with every one save the children. I blunder rarely, but pantomime helps me through. I often think of the Yankee artist who made a tour in France with scarcely a half dozen French words in his vocabulary. He wished to buy, in Paris, one of those folding hats that may be stowed in a crevice. He walked into the hatter’s. “ Que désire voir Monsieur?” “Chapeau... chapeau... sgush /” with explanatory gesture. “ Ah, out, out; chapeau mécanique. Crest bien cela!” I hope you see, dear, how good God has been to me, and is to me, and will pray for me, as I for thee, that we may ever remain children of His Sacred Heart. In that Shelter, Thy LAURE. 24
Page 68
THE PRINCE OF WALES. 66 + T is now sixteen or seventeen years,” says Edmund Burke, in that famous | passage to which one is almost ashamed to allude any more, so hack- neyed has it been, “since first I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles ; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision.” That glowing, impassioned apostrophe did more to make partisans and admirers for poor Marie Antoinette among all Eng- lish-speaking peoples, probably for all time, than any charms, or virtues, or mis- fortunes of the Queen and the woman could have done. I can never of late read or recall to mind the burning words of Burke, without thinking of a certain day in March some seven years ago, when I stood ona platform in Trafalgar Square, London, and saw a bright, beautiful young face smiling and bending to a vast enthusiastic crowd on either side, and I, like everybody else, was literally strick- en with admiration of the beauty, the sweetness, and the grace of the Princess Alexandra of Denmark. In truth, I am not in general an enthusiast about prin- ces or princesses ; I do not believe that the king’s face usually gives grace. In this instance the beauty of the Princess Alexandra had been so noisily trumpeted by literary lacqueys already, that one’s natural instinct was to feel disappointed, and to say so, when the Princess herself came in sight. But it was impossible to feel disappointment, or anything but admiration, at the sight of that bright, fair face, so transparent in the clearness of its complexion, so delicate and refined in its outlines, so sweet and gracious in its expression. I think something like the old-fashioned, chivalric, chimerical feeling of personal loyalty must have flamed up for the moment that day in the hearts of many men, who perhaps would have been ashamed to confess that their first experience of such an emo- tion was due to a passing glimpse of the face of a pretty, tremulous girl. If ours were days of augury, men might have shuddered at the omens which accompanied the wedding ceremonies of the Prince and Princess of Wales. When Goethe, then a youth, surveyed the preparations for the reception of Marie Antoinette at Strasbourg, on her way to Paris, he observed significantly on the inauspicious fact that in the grand chamber adorned for her coming, the tapestry represented the wedding of Jason and Medea. The civil’ authorities of London certainly did not greet the fair stranger with any such grisly and ghastly emblazonings ; but there were other and even more inauspicious omens offered by chance and the hour. The sky darkened, a dreary wind whistled ; presently the rain came down in drenching streams that would notabate. There was a mourning-garb at the wedding—the black dress of the Queen, who would not lay aside her widow’s-weeds even for that hour; and the night of the wed- ding, when the streets of London were illuminated, the crowd was so great that, as on a memorable occasion in the early married life of Marie Antoinette, peo- ple were crushed and trampled to death amid the universal jubilation. Well, we defy augury, with Hamlet. But I think some at least in the crowd who welcomed Alexandra felt a kind of doubt and pity as to her future, which needed no inspiration from omens and superstition. No foreign princess has ever been so popular in England as Alexandra ; and assuredly some at least of the affection felt for her springs from a pity which, whether called for or not, is genuine and universal. The last time I saw the Princess of Wales was within
Page 69
1870.] THE PRINCE OF WALES. 361 avery few days of my leaving England to visit the United States. It was in Drury Lane Theatre, then fitted up as an opera house in consequence of the re- cent burning of Her Majesty’s Theatre. The Prince of Wales, his wife, and one of his sisters were in their box. 1 had not seen the Princess for some time, and I was painfully impressed with the change which had come over her. Remem- bering, as it was easy to do, the brightness of her beauty during the early days of her marriage, there was something almost shocking in the altered appearance of her face. It looked wasted and haggard; the complexion, which used to be so dazzlingly fair, had grown dull, and, if I may say so, discolored; and I must be ungracious enough to declare bluntly that, to my eyes at least, there seemed little trace indeed of the beauty of a few years before left in that dimmed and worn countenance. ‘ Only the eyes remained—they would not go.” Of course, it must be remembered that the Princess was then only just recovering from a long, painful, and exhausting illness; and she may have—lI truly hope she has—since then regained all her brightness and beauty. In any case, it would be unjust indeed to assume that the wasted look of the Princess was to be attributed to domestic unhappiness. But even a very matter-of-fact and un- sentimental person, looking at her then, and remembering what she so lately was, might be excused if he fancied that some of the unpropitious omens which sur- rounded the Princess’s marriage had already begun to justify themselves in prac- tical fulfilment. For even at the time of the marriage of the Prince and Princess there were not wanting prophets of evil who predicted that this royal union would not prove much happier than state-made marriages commonly are. Even then there were stories and reports afloat which ascribed to the Prince habits and tendencies not likely to promote the domestic happiness of a delicate and refined young wife, hardly more than a mere child in years. Indeed, there was already considerable doubt in the public mind as to the personal character of the Prince of Wales. He certainly did not look a very intellectual or refined sort of person even then, and some at least were inclined to think him, as Steerforth says of little Em’ly’s lover, “rather a chuckle-headed kind of fellow,” to get such a girl. There was, certainly, a breath of serious distrust abroad. On the Prince's coming of age, and again, I think, on the announcement of his approaching marriage, the Lon- don daily papers had set themselves to preaching sermons at him; and a very foolish chorus of sermons that was which broke out from all those tongues to- gether. The only marked effect of this outburst of lay-preaching was, I fancy, to impress the public mind with the idea that the Prince was really a very much more dreadful young man than there was any good reason to believe him. People naturally imagined that the writers who poured forth such eloquent, wise, and suggestive admonitions must know a great deal more than they felt disposed to hint at; whereas, I venture to think that, in truth, the majority of the writers were disposed to hint at a great deal more than they knew. For, indeed, almost all that is generally and substantially known of the Prince of Wales has been learned and observed since his marriage. Still, even before, and long before the marriage, there were ominous rumors. Those that I mention I give simply as ramors—not, indeed, the mere babble of the streets, but as the kind of thing which people told you who professed to know— the talk of the House of Commons, and the clubs, and the fashionable drawing- rooms and smoking-rooms. People told you that the Prince and his father had had many quarrels arising out of the extravagance, dissipation, and wrong-head- edness of the former; and there was even a painful and cruel report thus
Page 70
362 THE PRINCE OF WALES (Marcu, whispered about that the death of Prince Albert was the result of a cold he had taken from walking incautiously in a heavy rain during excitement caused by a quarrel with his son. Stories were told of this and that amour and /iaison in Ireland when the Prince of Wales was with the camp on the Curragh of Kil- dare ; of his excesses when he was a student at the University; of his escapades at many other times and places. Certain actresses of a low class, and other women of a still lower class, were pointed out in London as special favorites of the Prince of Wales. Of course every man of sense knew, first, that stories of this kind must be taken with a large amount of allowance for exaggeration ; and, next, that the public must not expect all the virtues of a saint to belong to the early years of a prince of the family of Guelph. In England public opinion, although it has grown much more exacting of late years on the score of decorum than it used to be, is still disposed to look over without censure a good deal of extravagance and dissipation in young and unmarried men, especially if they be men of rank. Therefore, if the rumors which attended the early career of the Prince of Wales had not followed him into his married years, the world would soon have forgotten all about his youthfulindiscretions. But it became a serious question for the whole nation when it began to be whispered everywhere that the Prince was growing worse instead of better during his married life, and when to the suspicion that he was wasting his own youth and his own credit came to be added the belief that he was neglecting and injuring the young and beautiful woman whom state reasons had assigned to him as a wife. In good truth, it is really a question of public and historical interest whether the Queen of England is likely to be succeeded by an Albert the Good or another George the Fourth ; and I am not therefore inviting the readers of THE GALAXY to de- scend to the useless discussion of a mere piece of idle court scandal when I ask them to consider with me the probabilities of the future from such survey as we can take of the aspects of the present. Those who saw the Prince of Wales when he visited this country, would surely fail to recognize the slender, fair-haired, rather graceful youth of that day in the heavy, fat, stolid, prematurely bald, elderly-young-man of this. It would not be easy to see in any assembly a more stupid-looking man than the Prince of Wales is now. On horseback he shows to best advantage. He rides well, and the pleasure he takes in riding lends something of animation to his usually inexpressive face. But when his eyes and features lapse into their habitual con- dition of indolent, good-natured, stolid repose, all light of intellect seems to have - been banished. The outline of the head and face, and the general expression, seemed to me of late to be growing every day more and more like the head and face of George the Third. Anybody who may happen to havea shilling or half- crown of George the Third’s time, can see on the coin a very fair presentment of the countenance of the present heir-apparent of the English throne. Whether the Prince of Wales resembles George the Fourth in character and tastes or not, he certainly does not resemble him in face. Even a court syco- phant could not pretend to see beauty or grace in our present Prince. I think that to the'eye of the cynic or the satirist the Prince of Wales shows to greatest advantage when he sits in his box at an advanced hour of some rather heavy classic opera, or has to endure a long succession of speeches at a formal public dinner. The heavy head droops, the heavy jaws hang, the languid eyes close, the heir-apparent sinks into a doze. Loyalty itself can see nothing dignified or kingly in him then. I have watched him thus as he sat in his box during some high-class, and to him, doubtless, very heavy performance at the
Page 71
1870.] THE PRINCE OF WALES. 363 Italian opera, and have thought that at times he might remind irreverent and disloyal observers of Pickwick’s immortal fat boy. I have sometimes observed that his little dozes appeared to afford innocent amusement to his sisters, if any of them happened to be in the box; and occasionally one of the Princesses would playfully poke her slumbering brother in the princely ribs, and the Heir of all the Ages would open his eyes and smile languidly, and try to look at the stage and listen to the music ; and then, after a while, the heavy head would sink once more on the vast expanse of shirt-front in which the Prince seems to de- light, and the fat boy would go to sleep again. But this would only happen at cer- tain performances. ‘There were times when the Prince had eyes and ears open and attentive, even in the opera house. His tastes in general, however, are not for high art in music or the drama. He is very fond of the little theatres where the vivacious blondes display their unconcealed attractions. There are, as every- body knows, several minor theatres in London where the audience, or, I should say more properly, the spectators, will be found to consist chiefly of men, while, on the other hand, the performers are chiefly women. These are the temples of the leg drama. “ Pidce aux jambes? Pitce aux cutsses/” indignantly exclaims Eugene Peiletan, denouncing such performances in his “ Nouvelle Babylone ” ; and he goes on to add some cumulative illustrations which I omit. Well, the Prince of Wales loves the pice aux jambes, and the theatres where it flourishes. He constantly visits theatres at which his wife and sisters are never seen, and in which it would be idle to deny that there are actresses who have made them- selves conspicuous objects of popular scandal. Now, I am far from saying that this necessarily implies anything worse than a low taste on the part of the Prince of Wales. But there are stations in life which render private bad taste a public sin. In London, of late, there has been a just outcry against a certain kind of theatrical performance. It is held to be demoralizing and degrading that the stage should be made simply a show-place for the exhibition of half-naked women, for the audacious display of legs and bosoms. Now, I beg to say for myself that I have entire faith in the dramatic as in every other art; that I believe it always when truthfully pursued vindicates itself, and that I think any costume which the true aad legitimate needs of the drama require is fitting, proper, and modest. I regard the ballet, in its place, as a graceful and delightful entertainment ; and I do not believe that any healthy and pure mind ought to be offended by the kind of costume which the dance re- quires. But artists and moralists in London alike objected, and justly objected, to performances the whole purpose, and business, and attraction of which was the exhibition of a crowd of girls as nearly naked as they could venture to show themselves in public. Now this was undoubtedly the kind of exhibition which the Prince of Wales especially favored and patronized. Night after night, even during the long and lamentable illness of his young wife, he visited such theatres, and gazed upon ‘those prodigies of myriad nakednesses.” Likewise did he much delight in the performances of Schneider—that high priestess of the obscene, rich with the spoils of princes. I say emphatically that there were actions, gestures, douffon- neries performed amid peals of laughter and thunders of applause by this fat Faustina in the St. James’s Theatre, London, which were only fit to have glad- dened the revels of Sodom and Gomorrah. And this woman was, artistically at Jeast, the prime favorite of the Prince of Wales; and when his brother, the Duke of Edinburgh, reached England for the first time after his escape from the Fe- nian bullet in Sydney, the Jar nodile fratrum celebrated the auspicious event by
Page 72
364 THE PRINCE OF WALES. | MARCH, hastening to the theatre where Schneider kicked and wriggled and helped out the point of lascivious songs by a running accompaniment of obscene gestures. So much at least has to be said against the Prince of Wales, and cannot be gainsaid. All that he could do by countenance and patronage to encourage a debauching and degrading style of theatric entertainment, he has done. He is said to be fond of the singing of the vulgar and low buffoons of the music-halls, and to have had such persons brought specially to his residence, Marlborough House, to sing for him, I have been assured of this often by persons who pro- fessed to know; but I do not know anything of it myself, nor is it indeed a mat- ter of any importance. The other facts are known to everybody who reads the London papers. The manager or manageress of a theatre takes good care to an- nounce in the journals when a visit from the Prince of Wales has taken place, and we all thus come to know how many times a week the little theatric temples of nakedness have been honored by his presence. Am I attaching too much importance to such matters as this? I think not, The social influence and moral example of a royal personage in England are now almost the only agencies by which the royal personage can affect us for good or evil. I hold that no man thoughtful or prudent enough, no matter what his morals, to be fit to occupy the position assigned to the Prince of Wales, would be guilty of lending his public and constant patronage to such exhibitions and amusements as those which he especially patronizes. Moreover, the Prince has often shown a disregard, either cynical or stupid—probably the latter—for public opinion, a heedlessness of public scandal, in other matters as well, He has made companionship for himself among young noblemen conspicuous for their debauch- ery. Atatime, not very long ago, when the Divorce Court was occupied with the hearing of a scandalous cause, in which a certain young duke figured most prominently and disgracefully, this young duke was daily and nightly to be seen the close companion of the Prince of Wales, Let me touch upon another subject, of a somewhat delicate nature. I have said that there were times when our Prince was always wide awake at the opera house. There is a certain brilliant and capricious little singer whom all England and Germany much admire, and who in certain operatic parts has, I think, no rival. Now, public scandal said that the Prince of Wales greatly admired this lady, and paid her the most marked attentions. Public. scandal, indeed, said a great deal more. I hasten to record my conviction that, so far as the fair artiste was concerned, the scandal was wholly unfounded, and that she is a woman of pure character and honor. But the Prince was credited with a special admiration for her; and I am sure the Prince’s father under such circumstances would have taken good care to lend no foundation, afford no excuse, for scandal to rest upon. Now, I speak of what I have myself observed when I say that the Prince of Wales, whenever he had an opportunity, always demeaned himself as if he really _ desired to give the public good reason for believing the scandal, or as if he was - too far gone in infatuation to be able to goyern his actions, For he was always at the opera when this lady sang; and he always conducted himself as if he wished to blazon to the world his ostentatious and demonstrative admiration. When the prima donna went off the stage, the Prince disappeared from his box; _ when she came on the stage again, he returned to his seat; he lingered behind all his party at the end, that he might give the last note of applause to the dis- appearing singer; he made a more pertinacious show of his enthusiasm than even the military admirer of Miss Snevellicci was accustomed to do. Now, all this may have been only stolidity or silliness, and may not have denoted any-
Page 73
1870.] THE PRINCE OF WALES. 365 thing like cynicism or coarse disdain of public opinion ; but whatever it indicated, it certainly did not, I think, testify to the existence of qualities likely to be found , admirable or desirable in the heir to a throne. Of the truth or falsehood of the private scandals in general circulation con- cerning the Prince of Wales I know nothing whatever. But everybody in Eng- land is aware that such stories are told, and can name and point out this or that titled lady as the heroine of each particular story. It need hardly be said that when a man acquires the sort of reputation which attaches to the Prince of Wales, nothing could be more unjust or unreasonable than to accept, without some very strong ground of belief, any story which couples his name with that of any woman belonging to the society in which he moves. Obviously, it would be enough, in the eyes of an English crowd, that the Prince should now pay any friendly attention to any handsome duchess or countess in order to convert her into an object of scandal. I am myself morally convinced that some of the titled ladies who are broadly and persistently set down by British gossip as mistresses of the Prince of Wales are as innocent of such a charge as if they had never been within a thousand miles of a court. But the Prince is a little unlucky wher- _ ever he goes, for scandal appears to pursue him as Horace’s black care follows the horseman. When the Prince of Wales happens to be in Paris, he seems to be surrounded at once by the same atmosphere of suspicion and evil report. Some two years ago I chanced to be in Paris at the time the Prince was there, and I can answer for it that observers who had never heard or read of the com- mon gossip of London formed the same impression of his general character that the public of London had already adopted. The Prince was then paying special attention to a brilliant and beautiful lady moving in the court circles of the French capital, a lady who had but very recently distinguished herself by appearing at one of the fancy balls of the Tuileries inthe character of the Archangel Michael or Raphael—it does not much matter which—and attired in a costume which left the company no possibility of doubting the symmetry of her limbs and the gen- eral shapeliness of her person. Malicious satirists circulated thereupon an an- nouncement that the lady was to appear at the next fancy ball as “La Source,” the beautiful naked nymph so exquisitely painted by Ingres. This lady received the special attentions of the Prince of Wales. He followed her, people said, like her shadow; and a smart pun was soon in circulation, which I refrain from giving because it contrives ingeniously to blend with his name the name of the lady in question, and I am not writing a scandalous chronicle. This was the time when the Prince made his royal mother so very angry by attending the Chantilly races on a Sunday. When he came back to London he had to take part in some public ceremonial—I forget now what it was—at which the Queen had consented to be present. Her Majesty was present, and I have been assured by a friend who stood quite near that a sort of little scene was enacted which much embarrassed those who had to take part in the official pageantry of the occasion. Up came the Prince, who had travelled in hot haste from Paris, and with a somewhat abashed and sheepish air approached his royal mother. She looked at him angrily, and turned away. The Duke of Cambridge, her cousin, made an awkward effort to mend matters by bringing up the Prince again, and with the action of a friendly and deprecating intercessor presenting the delin- quent. This time, I am assured, the Queen, with determined and angry gestures, and some words spoken in a low tone, repelled intercessor and offender at once; and the Prince of Wales retired before the threatened storm. The Duke of Edinburgh, who had been lingering a little in the background—he, too, had just
Page 74
366 : THE PRINCE OF WALES. { MARCH, come from Paris, and he had been to Chantilly—anxious to see what kind of re- ception would be accorded to his brother, thought, apparently, that he had seen enough to warrant him in keeping himself at a modest distance on that occasion, and not encountering the terrors of what Thackeray, in “The Rose and the Ring,” describes as “the royal eye.” | I have little doubt that Queen Victoria is a somewhat rigorous and exacting mother, and I should be far from accepting her frown as decisive with regard to the delinquencies of one of her sons. Cigar-smoking alone would probably be accounted by the Queen a sin hardly allowing of pardon. Her husband, Prince Albert, was a man so pure of life, so free from nearly all the positive errors of manhood, so remarkably endowed with at least all the negative virtues, that his companionship might easily have spoiled her for the toleration of natures less calm and orderly. I suspect that the Queen is one of that class of thoroughly good women who, from mere lack of wide sympathies and genial toleration, are not qualified to deal to the best advantage with children who show a little incli- nation for irregularity and self-indulgence. Nor do I believe that the Prince of Wales is the wicked and brutal profligate that common libel makes him out. The shocking story which one sees so often alluded to in the London corre- spondence of certain American papers, and which attributes the long illness of the Princess of Wales to the misconduct of her husband, I believe to be utterly unfounded and unjustifiable. One of the London medical journals, the “ Lancet” I think it was, had the courage to refer directly to this monstrous statement, and to give it an emphatic and authoritative refutation. If the worst things said of the Prince of Wales with any appearance of foundation were true, it is certain that he would still not be any worse than many other European princes and sovereigns. I have never heard anything said of the Prince of Wales half so bad as the stories which are believed everywhere in Paris of the enormous profli- gacies of Prince Napoleon; and it would be hardly possible for charity itself to doubt that up to a very recent period the private life of the Emperor of the French himself was stained with frequent and reckless dissipation. ‘Those who were in Vienna anywhere about the autumn of 1866, will remember the stories which were told about the fatal results of the exalted military command given by the imperial will to certain favored generals, and the kind of influence by which those generals had acquired imperial favor. Common report certainly describes the Empress of Austria as being no happier in her domestic relations than the Princess of Wales. Everybody knows what Victor Emanuel’s private char- acter is, and what sort of hopeful youth is his eldest son, Umberto. Therefore, the Prince of Wales could doubtless plead that he is no worse than his neigh- bors ; and even in his own family he might point to other members no better than himself. The Duke of Cambridge, for instance, has often been accused of profligacy and profligate favoritism. I wish I could venture to repeat here, for the sake of the genuine wit and keen satire of it, a certain epigram in Latin, composed by an English military officer, to describe the influence which brought about the sudden and remarkable promotion of another officer who was not be- lieved to be personally quite deserving of the rank conferred on him by the Duke of Cambridge, commander-in-chief of the British army. But the position of the Prince of Wales is very different from that of the Duke of Cambridge, and he has to face a public opinion quite unlike that which surrounds Prince Na- poleon or the Emperor of the French, People in France are not inclined to make any very serious complaint about the amours of a prince, or even of an emperor. I do not venture to say that there is much more of actual immorality
Page 75
' 1870.] THE PRINCE OF WALES. 367 in Paris than in London ; but, assuredly, a man may, without harm to his pub- lic and political influence, acknowledge an amount of immorality in Paris which would be utterly fatal to his credit and reputation in London. Moreover, some of the illustrious profligates I have mentioned are distinguished by other quali- | ties as well as profligacy ; but I cannot say that I have ever heard any positively good quality, either of heart or intellect, ascribed to the Prince of Wales. Unless his face, his head, his manners in public, and the tastes he so con- spicuously manifests wholly belie him, the heir to the British throne is a remark- ably dull young man. He cannot even deliver with any decent imitation of intelligence the little speeches which Arthur Helps or somebody else usually gets up for him when the exigencies of the situation compel the Prince to make a speech in public. He is reputed to be parsimonious even in his pleasures, and has managed to get himself deeply into debt without being supposed to have wasted any of his substance in obedience to a generous impulse. The Prince inherited a splendid property. His prudent father had looked well after the rev- enues of the duchy of Cornwall, which is the appanage of the Prince of Wales (even in some very dingy parts of London you may if you hire a house find that you have the Prince of Wales for a landlord), and the property of the heir must have been raised to its very highest value. Yet it is notorions that a very few years after he had attained his majority, Albert Edward had contrived to get deeply immersed in debt. There was for some time a scheme in contemplation to apply to Parliament for an addition to the huge allowance made to the Prince of Wales; and the “ Times” and other newspapers were always urging the fact that the Queen left the Prince to perform nearly all her social duties for her, as a reason why the nation ought to award him an augmented income. It puzzles people in London, who read the papers and who study, as most Britons do, the occupations and pastimes of royalty, to know where the lavish and regal hospi- talities take place which the Prince of Wales is supposed to dispense on behalf of his mother. However, the project for appealing to the generosity of Parlia- ment seems to have been put aside or to have fallen through—I have read some- where that the Queen herself has agreed to increase her son’s allowance out of her own ample and well-hoarded purse—and the English public are not likely to be treated to any Parliamentary debate on the subject just yet. But this much is certain, that the same almost universal rumor which attributes coarse and dis- sipated habits to the Prince of Wales attributes to him likewise a mean and stingy parsimony where aught save his own pleasure is concerned; and even there, if by any possibility the pleasure can be obtained without superfluous cost. This then is the character which the son of the Queen of England bears, in the estimation of the vast majority of his mother’s subjects. Almost any and every one you meet in London will tell you, as something beyond doubt, that the Prince of Wales is dull, stingy, coarse, and profligate. As for the anecdotes which are told of his habits and tastes by the artists and officials of the theatres which he frequents, I might fairly leave them out of the question, because most of them that I have heard seem to me obvious improbabilities and exaggerations, They have nevertheless a certain value in helping us to a sort of historical esti- mate of the Prince’s character. Half the stories told of the humors and de- baucheries of Sheridan and Fox are doubtless inventions or exaggerations ; but we are quite safe in assuming that the persons of whom such stories abound were not frugal, temperate, and orderly men. If the Prince of Wales is not a young man of dissipated habits, then a phenomenon is exhibited in his case which is, I fancy, without any parallcl in history—the phenomenon of a whole
Page 76
368 THE PRINCE OF WALES. (Marcu, watchful nation, studying the character and habits of one whose position com- pels him to live as in a house of glass, and coming, after years of observation, to a conclusion at once unanimous and erroneous. But were it proved beyond the remotest possibility of doubt that the Prince is personally chaste as a Joseph, temperate as F'ather Mathew, tender to his wife as the elder Hamlet, attached to his mother as Hamlet the younger, it would still remain a fact indisputable to all of us in London, who have eyes to see and ears to hear, that the Prince is addicted to vulgar amusements; that he patronizes indecent exhibitions ; that he is given to the companionship of profligate men, and lends his helping hand to the suc- cess and the popularity of immoral and lascivious women. What is to be the effect upon England of the reign of the Prince of Wales? Will England and her statesmen endure the rule of a profligate sovereign? No country can have undergone in equal time a greater revolution in public taste and sentiment at least, if not in morals, than England has since the time of George the Fourth. No genius, no eloquence, no political wisdom or merits could now induce the English people to put up with the open and undisguised excesses of a Fox; nor could any English statesman of the rank of Fox be found now who would condescend to pander to the vices of a George the Fourth. Thirty years of decorum in the Court, the Parliament, and the press have created a public feeling in England which will not long bear to be too openly offended by any one. But, although I may seem at first to be enunciating a paradox, I must say that all this is rather in favor of the chances of the Prince of Wales than against them. It will take so small a sacrifice on his part to satisfy every- body, that only the very extravagance of folly could lead him long astray on any unsatisfactory course, when once he has become directly responsible to the na- tion. Weare not exacting in England as regards the private conduct of our great people. We only ask them to be publicly decorous. Everywhere in Eng- lish society there is a quite unconscious, naive sort of Pharisaism, the unavowed but actual principle of which is that it matters very little if a man does the wrong thing, provided he publicly acts and says the right thing. I am per- - fectly satisfied that the great buik of respectable and Philistine society in Eng- land would regard Robert Dale Owen, with his pure life and his views on the question of divorce, as a far more objectionable person than the veriest profligate who did evil stealthily, and professed to maintain the theory of a rigid marriage bond. The Prince of Wales will therefore need very little actual improvement in his way of life, in order to be all that his future subjects will expect, or care to ask. No one wants the Prince to be a man of ability ; no one wishes him to be a good speaker, If Albert Edward were to rise in the House of Lords some night, and deliver a powerful and eloquent speech, as Prince Napoleon has often done in the French Senate, the English public would be not only surprised but shocked. Such a feat performed bya Prince would seem almost as much out of place, as if he were to follow the example of Caligula or Nero and exhibit himself in the arena as a gladiator, Of course the idea of the Prince of Wales fulminating against the policy of the Crown and the Government, after the fash- ion of Prince Napoleon, would be simply intolerable to the British mind of to- day—a thing so outrageous as indeed to be practically inconceivable. The Prince of Wales’s part during the coming years, whether as first subject or as ruler, is as easy as could well be assigned to man. It is the very reverse of Bottom’s ; it is to avoid all roaring. He must be decorous, and we will put up with any degree of dulness ; he must be decent, and we will all agree to know nothing of any private compensations wherewith he may repay himself for public
Page 77
1870.] THE PRINCE OF WALES. 369 propriety. All the influences of English statesmanship, rank, religion, jour- nalism, patriotism, Philistinism, and flunkeyism, will instinctively combine to screen the throne against scandal, if only the throne will consent to allow of the possibility of such a protection. I have hardly ever known an Englishman whose hostility to monarchical institutions went so far that he would not be ready to say, “ We have got a monarchy; let us try to make the best we can of it.” Therefore the Prince of Wales must be the very Marplot or L’Etourdi of princes, if he cannot contrive to make himself endurable to a people who will bear so much rather than be at the trouble of a shange. Of course it is possible that his faults may become grosser and more unmanageable with years (indeed, he is quite old enough already to have sown his wild oats long since); and it would be a hard trial upon decorous English statesmen and the English public to endure an openly profligate King. Yet even that nuisance I think would be endured for one lifetime at all events, rather than encounter the danger and trouble of any organic change. So long as the Prince of Wales keeps out of politics, he may hold his place well enough ; the England of to-day could far better endure even a George the Fourth than a George the Third. I have little doubt that the Prince of Wales, when he comes to be King, will be discreet in this matter at least. He has never indeed shown any particular interest in political affairs, so far as 1 have heard, He seems to care little or nothing about the contests of parties. Some three or four years ago, at the time of the celebrated Adullamite secession from the Lib- eral party, there was some grumbling among Radicals because it was reported that the Prince of Wales had expressed a wish to make the acquaintance of Robert Lowe, the brilliant, eccentric chief of the secession, and had had Lowe brought,to him and spent a long time talking with him; and it was urged that this was done by the Prince to mark his approval of the Adullamites and his dislike of radicalism. But just about the very same time the Prince took some trouble to make the acquaintance of John Bright, and paid what might have been considered very flattering attentions to the great popular tribune, .The Prince has more than once visited the Pope, and he has likewise more than once visited Garibaldi. Indeed, he seems to have a harmless liking for knowing per- sonally all people who are talked about; and I| fancy he hunted up the Pope, and Garibaldi, and John Bright, and Robert Lowe, just as he sends for Mr, Toole the comic actor, or Blondin, or Chang the giant. Nothing can be safer and better for the Prince in the future than to keep to this wholesome indiffer- ence to politics.. In England we could stand any length of the reign of King Log. I shall not venture to conjecture what might happen if the Prince of Wales were to develop a perverse inclination to “meddle and muddle” in pol- itics, because I think such a thing highly improbable. My impression is, on the whole, that things will go on under the reign of the next sovereign in England very much as they have been going on under the present; that the Prince of Wales will be induced to pay a little more attention to decorum and public pro- priety than he has hitherto done; and that the people of England will laugh at him and cheer for him, talk scandal about him and sing God save him, and. finally endure him, on somewhat the same principle as that which induces the New York public to endure overcrowded street-cars and miserable postal ar- rangements—just because it is less trouble to each individual to put up with his share of a defective institution, than to go out of his way for the purpose of en- deavoring to organize any combination to get rid of it. Justin McCarrTry,
Page 78
TEN YEARS IN ROME. THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS. N the year 1864, the Holy Father instituted an inquiry into the condition of the clergy, secular and regular, in the city of Rome and the outlying dio- ceses. This inquiry was intended to vindicate them from sweeping charges of concubinage. Certain priests in Turin, in the disorganization of affairs conse- quent on the cession of Umbria and the Marches to Italy, broke through their obligation of celibacy,and openly married. Now, although the people of North- ern Italy even are not quite ripe for such a reform, yet, viewing the antecedent im- morality of large numbers of the clergy, they considered marriage as the less of two evils. The example of these recusants was followed in Naples. A priest brought an action against his bishop for suspending him because of marriage. Popular feeling was with the priest, and the court pronounced that a priest can lawfully marry like any other citizen. On the strength of this decision a Capu- chin friar, and soon after a Dominican, left their respective orders and married. In self-defence, the clergy favorable to this reform ventilated a good deal of in- formation previously carefully concealed. But their facts were not credited until tke full report of the commission instituted by the Pope had been received. Up to this time the Pontiff had lived in ignorance of any such state of af- fairs. He had heard reports, but had treated them contemptuously as false- hoods. Here let me remark that the purity of his character, and his large- hearted faith in the best qualities of humanity, render any attempt to destroy them particularly hateful; and so, bya common consent, no one has ever at- tempted to enlighten the Pope. Yet such minds as his, when they get an inkling of facts, are apt to exaggerate them in proportion to the previous misconceptions in a contrary direction. The persistent and exultant tone of the Turinese and Neapolitan clergy for the first time convinced the Pope that they had some gooa grounds for their assertions. Not that mere assertions could have produced this but he could get no authoritative denial of them. Persons of whom he inquired merely smiled, shrugged their shoulders, and replied, “ Yes, they say so, but what would you have?” A very unsatisfactory equivocation, with several possi- ble meanings. The commission is most important. For although no true critic would esti- mate the moral value of religion by the lives of its professors, yet this is so con- stantly done in a very illogical way by controversialists on the Roman side against the Protestant, that the statements of a commission not in any way likely to be prejudiced except in favor of the accused, are of the utmost value as show- ing the fallacy of such arguments. The parishes and dioceses of the Roman States are very poorly endowed. In many cases they are not endowed at all. They depend'in these instances on contributions. “Having no one but himself,” say the people, “a priest needs little.” Consequently, he is very poorly provided for. The offerings of the whole parish would not equal a thousand dollars per annum on an average. But he does not get the offerings of the whole parish. It may ordirarily contain two thousand persons. There are sure to be three, frequently five churches, besides particular chapels and shrines. Then the monks come and found a monastery. Of course they bring funds with them and have a regular endowment out of the ©
Page 79
1870.] TEN YEARS IN ROME. 371 chest of their order ; but they also have a church, and frequently they have more services than the other churches, and give longer attendance at confession. Their sermons, too, are numerous, and an Italian is fond of a good sermon. On all these occasions contributions are solicited from the faithful. It may be os- tensibly for the altar of the Madonna or any of the saints, but really it is for the need of the order. When a branch is planted in any locality and placed under a superior, his tact and ability are estimated by the reduction of his drafts on the mother house. Then he is assisted in another way. John A., the butcher, can hardly charge the friars as much as other people. Nay, will not the desire to stand well with them, and the entreaties of his wife, always a partisan of the priests, induce him very frequently to send them presents? So that food is pro- cured very cheaply, sometimes gratuitously. At Easter and Christmas, and the festival of the patron saint, the monastery is overrun with gifts and presents. All these things reduce the income of the Javochus, who, but for the religious, might reap the entire beneficence of the people. The report respecting the life of country monks is anything but favorable. Taking one specimen, the Dominican house at Bracciano, we find a number of young men under the laxest discipline, having constant intercourse with the out- side world, familiar with women, prone to loose conversation, and suspected of still worse. This testimony is given by the physician attending the convent. There are exceptions to this, which may be taken as a rule; I shall note them presently. But if the friars who live by a vw#/e grow thus lax, the case of the secular clergy is not so favorable. I speak with the greatest caution, and only adduce such facts as were proven to the satisfaction of the Roman Court, and which may be witnessed by every traveller in the Pontifical States. The celibacy of the clergy has at all times given rise to great abuses. A Roman priest will unblushingly tell you, “ Celibacy is not chastity.” Anything but mar- riage is tolerated. So, it is not wonderful that, all through the dioceses of Al- bano, Frascati, Civita Vecchia, etc.—indeed, throughout all the outlying country— the priests of any means live openly in concubinage. The arch-priest of Brac- ciano has nine children. These always pass as nephews and nieces, I remem- ber a wit meeting one of these country priests who was blessed with six of these questionable nephews, and occasioning the greatest amusement by saying, “ Padre B., I suppose your sister must have had an extraordinary devotion to you, your nephews are so like you.” And once afterward he remarked that it was now literally true of the Church that “the celibates had many more children than those that were married.” Certainly a strange rendering of Isaiah liv., 1. It was also found that the priestly example in this particular was sedulously copied by the peasantry. The deficient sleeping accommodation, generally one bedroom being the only resort for a// the family, gave rise to strange and revolting crimes. Ostracism does not follow disgrace, as in England and America. A girl may live amicably with her neighbors who is open to more than suspicion. Education in most of the country parishes is neglected. There is a school, but so long as the children are not driven to it, they evade it. Unless a boy is to be a priest, little care is taken of his education. The estimate formed by the people of their clergy is very low. The priest does not in the least care for this. He regards his profession as a means of livelihood. If he has qualms of conscience about his own errors, he seeks to atone by rigid observance of his religion. For, to be religious, is not with an Italian necessarily to be moral. The ex-Queen Isabella was always regarded as a most religious woman, in spite of Sefior Marfori and two other gentlemen ; for she gave alms liberally, regularly
Page 80
372 TEN YEARS IN ROME. [MARCH, attended mass, wore the chemises of Sor Patrocinio, and was countenanced in her “ eccentricities,” as he called them, by Monsignor Claret. So, a priest in Rome will earn quite a reputation for piety and devotion by assiduous attention to his external religious duties. That other theory adopted by cardinals and dignified ecclesiastics is also adopted by their inferiors; that is, the man and the priest are two distinct characters, and what is done by the man does not af- fect the status of the priest. Frequently a cardinal, besides being a prince of the Church, is a nobleman of high rank. Then he considers himself at liberty to do freaks as a nobleman which are very unbecoming to a cardinal. The vulgar mind, unfortunately, is apt to regard this as a distinction without a difference. The persons concerned would say, Zant pis pour eux. Let us now proceed specifically to the re/zgzous orders, premising that the fore- going remarks apply more or less to them, and are part of the report I have used in compiling this paper. And, first of all, it may be interesting to the reader to be made acquainted with the szodus operandi of founding a religious order. The original idea implied in it is seclusion for the better service of God. Much may be said for and against it. It is curious that the most pious member of the ad- vanced Oxford school that to-day is seeking to restore monasticism wrote, forty years ago the doctrine still advanced by those who deem that the Christian’s work, like that of his great Exemplar, is for men and amongst them: We need not bid, for cloistered cell, Our neighbor and our work farewell, Nor strive to wind ourselves too high For sinful man beneath the sky. The trivial round, the common task, Will furnish all we ought to ask— Room to deny ourselves, a road To lead us daily nearer God. Whether or not this last excellent aim can be better attained apart from the busy haunts of men—becoming the one engrossing topic of pursuit—is still an undecided question. But when a man decides that he has discovered “a more excellent way,” whereby a greater degree of sanctity may be attained, and addi- tional benefit accrue to the world, he forms a religious order. The days of ancho- rites are gone, and now monks as wellas laymen believe that “unity is strength.” A few, perhaps one or two, are inoculated with the founder’s zeal. Let us not imagine cases, but take such as exist. —Twenty years ago two persons, one Blessed Paul of the Cross, founded the Passionists, and Vincenzo Pallotti.an order styled the “ Congregazione Apostolico.” The Passionists are known bya coarse frock of black serge, a badge in white representing the heart of Jesus, a girdle, and sandalled feet. The Honorable and Reverend George Spencer, brother of the Earl Spencer, and formerly a clergyman of the English Church, visited America in.that peculiar garb: ‘The order of Pallotti, which as yet has received no dis- tinctive name, dresses like any ordinary Roman priest. The object of the first is to excite in the faithful a greater devotion to the passion of our Saviour. It has had one very shining light in the person of Leonard of Porto Maurizio, since beatified. They live by alms and in strict poverty. A few mén were gathered together, and addressed on the grand theme of the sufferings of Jesus. The speaker, Paul of thé Cross, at once seized on those his eloquence had moved. They would go forth to advance the glory of the Crucified ; their very designation should: call to men’s minds the’ passion of the Riaddemer: The one object of their life should be the exaltation of the cross. In’a short time men flocked to the new order—some who’ sought for an outlet for their zeal and devotion,
Page 81
1870.] TEN YEARS IN ROME. 373. others who wished a clearer idea of the rule of life most conducive to sanctity, and some as a means of livelihood. ‘They spread rapidly ; for, despite all modern indifferentism and skepticism, the grand story of the cross kindles in the coldest heart an enthusiasm nothing else inspires. The rich took off their robes to go barefooted, nobles became beggars, great lights of literature scrubbed floors and performed the most menial offices—all animated by the transcendent glory of the cross. In an obscure street leading from the Ponte di San Sisto is the church of San Salvatore in Onda. It is a plain church, but in the right-hand corner near the altar rests a religious revolutionist. His’ name was Vincenzo Pallotti. The house annexed has his room, in the state he left it at his death—a long, dark apartment, in no way inspiring to devotee or student. Yet in the closet guarded by an iron wire screen which they show you, the true character of its occupant is revealed. Mark that discipline of stout waxed thongs ingeniously interwoven with pins and sharp iron points, still bearing traces of human blood—that cruel hair shirt, those shoes full of torturing nails, that girdle set with rasping points. I knew a young man who decidedly objected to the discipline. Every Friday the prior walks up and down the corridor reciting in slow tones the “ Miserere,”’ and during this the novices are expected to flog themselves on the bare flesh. This young gentleman, who had never been flogged except at Stonyhurst, where he was by no means a consenter to the operation, disliking the performance, stationed himself in an angle of the wall and flogged z¢ right and left most heartily. His zeal excited the envy of those whose flesh appeared more tender or their devotion colder, until the prior, with a view to check the indiscreet ardor of the novice, peeped in one night, and, of course, was shocked to discover the real state of affairs. The scene that followed was rather comic. The prior, a “jokist,” undertook to show him how to do it, and, after reciting a verse, lay to with a will, amid the howls of his pupil. Then he read another verse, and so on to the end of the psalm. When he departed he expressed his regret that it had not been the r1igth instead of the 51st. At the monastery of St. John’s Cowley, the Anglican revival, which is chiefly recruited by American clergymen, this same spirit of penance is not only inculcated, but exemplified in the superior, who, from being at one time a great exquisite, now never discards a shirt he has once put on until it falls from him of its own weak will. The Franciscans fully exemplify the sanctity of foul linen and dirt generally, as we shall see anon. But, returning to Pallotti. He gathered around him three or four priests, all Italians, whom he despatched on missions to England, seemingly with but one object, that of gathering recruits. They obtained several young men, mostly Irish, and these were educated for the priesthood at San Salvatore, in their turn, to obtain recruits. ‘The consent of the Pope, and a bull erecting the congrega- tion into an order, is requisite ere it can have any status, and to this end the usual method is to get the founder made a saint. Several miracles are declared at times, and when money is forthcoming—for canonization is a most costly pro- cess—these are examined. ‘The-saint’s claim is contested by counsel called the devil’s advocate, who tries to invalidate the miracles, but only with one end, apparently—to retard the process and add considerably to the cost. When his fiendship has been finally satisfied, a great festival is prepared, generally at St. Peter’s. A large transparency of the saint elect is erected over the altar, veiled, At the moment the decree of canonization is pronounced, the veil is withdrawn, and the mass for the first time is celebrated in his honor, and it is lawful to say, “ora pro nobis.’ After this the career of the new order founded by him is
Page 82
374 TEN YEARS IN ROME. [ MARCH, generally smooth: Churches and altars are built in honor of the new saint, and served by his monks. Funds and recruits flowin. The rule is approved after examination by the Congregation of Rites, and henceforth the superior of the order ranks next to a bishop, has a seat by courtesy near the Pontifical throne, and by right in all general councils and synods. The religious orders may be divided into three distinct classes—the active, the contemplative, and those which are neither, but partake of both. I pro- pose to review this latter class first, as having many special points of interest not generally known. What in this country would be a sect, in Rome becomes a confraternity. In these orders the man lives by rule, recites a certain office, wears a distinctive dress, and yet lives in the world. They are devoted to special works of mercy in Rome, such as attending the last hours of condemned malefactors, burying the dead, escorting the Viaticum to the sick, attending to pilgrims, etc. Two of these confraternities may suffice to explain the rest. I select the two most conspicuous, the Flagellants and the Penitents. Pursuant to the ideas of self-torture to which I have referred, certain per- sons have formed themselves into a confraternity to castigate the wayward flesh by flagellation. The names of the members are only known to the superior, nor is any one of them able to recognize the other, for all go masked, and speak- ing is strictly prohibited. On certain nights—Friday being one of them never | omitted—they wend their way to a certain church, a long, black habit masking them from head to foot. As only the eyes are visible, it is impossible to say whether the wearer is man or woman. Indeed, it is popularly believed in Rome that several of the demd-monde of position resort to this mode of appeasing con- science, and obtaining immunity for further transgressions. On arriving at the church, you are struck by its gloom ; not a ray of light is visible, except those pro- ceeding from the red sanctuary lamp. These kneeling figures might be the recum- bent effigies of tombs, so fixed and motionless they seem. And this is with de- sign. Every one shrinks from recognition, and therefore tries to be as unlike his or her real self as possible. A bell rings, and a priest, in surplice and violet stole, accompanied by two of the confraternity, approaches the altar, on which six candles of yellow wax are burning, and a huge crucifix, with a picture of Christ scourged in pre-Raphaelite boldness, excites devotion. The priest commences a penitential litany, and the congregation respond in monotone. Then begins the recitation of the seven penitential psalms. At the conclusion of each a candle is extinguished; at the end of the sixth all the candles are out, and the church is in utter darkness. Then the priest calls on the flagellants to examine their consciences, and assists them by prominent questions, such as “Have I sworn any oath? Have I been guilty of lying?” etc., through the decalogue and the commandments of the Church. He then recites an act of contrition and the “ Confiteor.” During this, the portion of the dress covering the back from the shoulders to the waist is unbuttoned, for the dress is so arranged that it can be removed without baring any other part. Now you,see the meaning of the crossed whips of many thongs embroidered on the badge of the confraternity. Each one produces a similar whip, made heavy or light according to the ardor of his devotion. The priest then says, “ For these and all other sins let us do penance before God.” Then on the awful stillness bursts the “ Miserere,” recited in their loudest tone, and to the accompaniment of the discipline regularly administered. In fact, they keep time on their flesh. Some in fanatical zeal, stung perhaps by remorseful remembrances, lash themselves till the blood starts ; others, more self-preservative, lay it on mildly. It seems
Page 83
1870. ] TEN YEARS IN ROME. 375 as if that slow, dragging monotone will never end. But the “Gloria Patri” is reached at last, the scourges are laid aside, the habits readjusted, and the priest rises and pronounces absolution and blessing over the throng prostrate on their faces. The confraternity glide out silently into the darkness; they came like shadows, and so depart. ? i A very droll circumstance once came to light respecting these Flaggellanti. One member was observed by another to be so timid in whipping himself, that - he at once assisted him. Every time the weak-minded devotee brought down the lash, the other laid on his. Surprised at the powerful result of so gentle a propulsion, he tried to decrease the momentum next time, but to his astonish- ment the blow was still heavier. He was inclined to forego the penance alto- gether, but feeling ashamed to evince laxity, he resolved to lay the discipline on as lightly as possible, half believing that it had some secret spring pro- ductive of concussion. And every time he laid it tenderly on his shoulders, he experienced a tremendous shock. So disgusted was he, that he quitted the con- fraternity. The Penitents are a confraternity possessing special interest. Like the last mentioned, they are unknown to each other, and wear a dress that completely shrouds them from head to foot. They are rightly supposed to be persons in high station who are anxious to repair offences, and yet not forfeit their position in society. There is a certain timidity and cowardice about a repentant sinner. He would amend, but is fearful of relapsing, more fearful still of those who saw his efforts at amendment seeing and satirizing his declension. He does not shrink from the penance, only at the exposure. For such, a confraternity like this is an asylum where oppressed consciences are able to afflict themselves by mortifications unknown to the censorious world. The confraternity go bare- footed. Follow them on one of their expeditions to the Coliseum. It is a curi- ous procession—these ghastly figures in black, whose bare feet indicate often those who tread on the high places of the earth. Their “4 di nos, Domine /” sounds like a remorseful wail. Perhaps in many cases it is so. They pass along the streets oblivious of all attractions, up: the historic Forum, by wondrous remnants of the glory of Imperial Rome, by the fine arch of Titus, through which the Judean captives trod with as weary steps in the conqueror’s triumph. That sumptuous equipage rolling past may contain a wife or daughter of a penitent. They instinctively. feel it, for the carriage stops, and the occupants stand up and bow reverently to the crucifix which is carried at the head of the procession. And now we enter the Coliseum opposite the gladiator’s fountain. Around you, masking the hideous dens of wild beasts, upon the arena which once witnessed so many triumphs of Christian heroism, there stands a rude wooden cross and the pictured “Via Crucis.” The confraternity kneel at the cross and repeat their particular devotions. Then the procession begins the “ Via Crucis.” Be- tween the stations is sung a verse of the “Stabat Mater” to a grand old Gre- gorian tune. Mark the time, taste, and sweetness with which it is sung. That con- tralto is surely a woman’s ; that basso profundo, so superb, has delighted prince- ly saloons the previous night, perhaps. The sun falls in soft radiance over the quiet scene, lighting up the flowers, and creepers, and ferns on the gray walls, till they look like floating tapestry of some kingly hall. The hymn echoes through the arches, far away into the tangled grove beyond. It is sunset ere the procession retires chanting its “ Miserere,” and as it glides out of the ruin, through which the rising moon begins to shine, the moving figures seem to 25 ,
Page 84
376. ote TEN YEARS IN' ROME. [ MARCH, be the very shades of martyrs and confessors of days of yore: and the echo of their awful chant dies. in the black arches like a groan. The regular orders, such as the Jesuits, the Benedictines, the Dominicans, and the Franciscans, require particular description, and only a very inadequate sketch can be given in the compass of this paper. The first in precedence is - the order of St. Benedict, the father of monks. It is most ancient, and devoted to the best uses—those of literature and education. As Mr. Lecky justly shows in his “ History of Morals,” they were the preservers of art, science, and letters in an age of barbarism. A somewhat good idea may be formed of the order at work if I describe.a visit to their headquarters, Subiaco.. For, although Monte Cassino, is regarded.as the mother house, it is not ‘the working house. Aged monks, like the, venerable savant Padre Tosta, retire there to end their days. ‘It has a wondrous library of manuscripts, and possesses great architectural at- tractions. Santa Scholastica is interesting as the headquarters of the Reformed Benedictines. Here, the energetic Casaretto, separating himself from the apa- thetic monks at St. Paul’s outside the Wall, who doze away their lives within their magnificent basilica, gathered around hima few men of like spirit and re- stored the order to its, ancient ideal. He was vehemently opposed, of course, but he had the countenance and aid of the Cardinal d’Andrea, the Cardinal Prince Altieri, and others.. He recommenced the missionary school, the trans- lations, etc., for which the Benedictines had been famous. The abbey. is situa- ted on the summit of a very high hill, and up this we began to climb, and a very fatiguing climb we found it. On our right lay steep ravines and rocky preci- pices, at the bottom of which a turbid stream rushed wildly over the white boul- ders.. Perched in a rocky nook is a picturesque ruin of the summer house of Nero, from which two antique porphyry pillars were carried to adorn the monks’ church. Once it overlooked a lake, long since filled in by the upheaving of the mountains in.an earthquake. It must have been a scene of great licentiousness once, but to-day it is so secluded and beautified. by the wild Vines that cluster. around its fallen stones, that it might be the home of an anchorite. Now we have gained the great gates and are in the cloister., It is arched, and has an open lattice supported by exquisitely-carved pillars of alabaster and precious marbles, overlooking a court-yard; where is the well... The prior, a most courte- ous gentleman, comes to,welcome, us, for the abbot does not reside here. As ‘we are ecclesiastics, he embraces us and conducts us: to two elegantly-furnished rooms. Here.we refresh ourselves with a bath and go to vespers.. The:church » is plain, but sumptuous... The choir is behind the altar, and the abbot’s throne, covered with violet velvet richly embroidered in silver, stands at the gospel side. The monks are in their cowls ; and here we may remark that the vestment ordi- . narily worn by the Lutherans and Independents is nothing but a Benedictine cowl, cut down the centre. It is doubtless a reminiscence of the Augustinian cowl of Luther.. The professed sit in raised stalls, with the abbot’s stall in the centre, the novices being a grade lower. A large lectern stands in the middle, and the lector reads the antiphons from a huge volume of black letter. Con- spicuous among the, fraternity are the boys, some fair-faced English and: Ameri- cans, others Indian, several negroes and Australians.. These are in the mission- ary school training for priests. The history of the little Hindoos is touching. They were one and all rescued by the “ Society of the Holy Child,” formed to buy those who are exposed by their unnatural parents to be eaten by wild hogs. One little fellow, whose antics were as eccentric as a monkey’s, had been saved from a terrible death, his thighs and a part of his back having been eaten away
Page 85
Tn nme 1870.] | TEN YEARS IN ROME. 377 by the savage swine. The vespers were monotone till the “Magnificat,” and then the organ burst out, and we were greeted with some grand old Gregorian music. At supper-time we were conducted to the refectory, a magnificent hall over a hundred feet in length and forty in width. It is frescoed, and the tables are arranged as in the colleges at Oxford, the dons sitting at the cross table, the abbot’s chair in the centre. There is a long chanted grace, and then a reader ascends the pulpit and reads a verse from Holy Scripture, to which we listen reverently standing. This concluded, the abbot rings his bell, and supper begins. The reader continues from the lives of the saints, followed by selections from the “ Rule of St. Benedict” in English. We have a capital supper, well cooked and clean, for the good monks are true to their antecedent traditions of delicate fare ; and then the bell rings again, and we adjourn for night prayers. There is something very solemn in the near approach to the family which one sees at the last and crowning act of the day, when the abbot blesses the kneeling monks. There is no speaking allowed after compline, and we retire to our rooms, rejoiced to find that guests are excepted from this rule, for we get a pleasant hour’s chat with the Reverend Father Wilfred Hayes, an English monk of good family and rare conversational powers, who is the guest-master. Then we are left to our re- pose. The narrow windows look out on the rugged hills, about which, being winter, wolves are prowling, and the moonlight reveals dark caves where proba- bly they are hiding ; but our quarters are snug, and we turn in. At midnight we wake at the call of the matin bell. Nothing can exceed the awfulness of this peal. It reverberates through the long, dim cloisters, out over the hills, through the chasms and gorges, striking on the ear of the belated reveller like a death knell, on the wakeful sick with a soothing murmur, telling of those who wake to pray. It is the vigil of St. Scholastica, the sister of St. Benedict and patron of the house. We hear a lay brother enter and light our lamp, exclaiming, “ Bezze- dicamus Domino,” to which we answer, “ Deo gratias.” Then, wrapping our- selves in a cloak, we repair to the church. We are late, for the organ is pealing forth delicious music like a triumphal march, filling the dark nave and_aisles with melody. The altar is brilliantly lighted, and we join in the “Te Deum” with hearty vigor. Never have I heard the Gregorian’ music better rendered. At two o’clock we retire again to bed till the bell sounds for prime. The ruling principle in this ancient order is that every one must work. Accordingly, the novices who are preparing themselves for holy orders instruct the boys, clean out their-own rooms, act as readers, sacristans, attendants on the abbot and guests, etc. They serve two years of novitiate, and are quite sepa- rate from the professed. Their dean is a young Englishman of great promise. Their letters are read, and they are restricted to certain topics in corresponding. Of the monks, I may name with much pleasure Father Anselm O’Gorman, who, besides being a splendid organist, is an irrepressible joker. There is one brother, a person of rank formerly, who has a whim against anything artificial. He uses a cross roughly fashioned of two pieces of wood fastened by a nail. His holy water stoup is a cocoanut, and he mends his own clothes. It is currently reported in the abbey that he never goes to bed; for go whenever you will, he is up. The Abbot Casaretto, who has set this great organization in motion, is a tall, spare man of forty. The “atrocious crime of being a young man” is frequently alleged against him by certain venerable fogies ; but he has | an indomitable will, and is fully imbued with the spirit of the ancient lights of the order. He has founded a successful mission in England, and is laboring to extend his order to other countries. He officiates at the high mass in his cap-
Page 86
378 TEN YEARS IN ROME [MarcH, pa, made like a bishop’s, but of black silk instead of violet; he wears a pecto- ral cross, a jewelled mitre, and carries a pastoral staff of gold. His theological abilities are far less than his talent for organization and government. We go with him to the upper house, his residence, situated on a higher part of the hill. It is famous as being built over the cave where St. Benedict wrote his celebrated Rule. The church is a succession of terraces, all hewn out of the rock. The cave is lit with twelve silver lamps, and contains an altar and a small statue of the saint. The abbot’s apartments are very simple, and he points out a skull that had belonged to one of his monks. He says: “I look at it and think of death, and pray for his soul.” He isa genial person to talk to, very well in- formed on general matters, somewhat reticent, but every inch an abbot. He might have learned the part under St. Anselm, at the abbey of Bee. Had his house been situate in the kingdom of Italy, he had resolved to barricade his gates against the soldiery, and shoot any monk inclined to yield. Father Cuth- bert, an Englishman, shows us the house, and tells us various stories of its past. We meet numbers of people coming on pilgrimage to the cave ; for it re- quires a good deal of devotion to get up these hills, and the peasantry only do so on great occasions. We have a splendid dinner on the feast, and instead of the usual reading, the abbot rings his bell for conversation. After dinner we have a bottle of rare old Marasquino sent us, in which we toast the reformer Casaretto. Up to dark you may hear the uproarious mirth of the boys, and the older monks frisk about among them with a light-heartedness that might do some people good to look at. At night there is solemn compline and benedic- tion, and the abbot officiates in his robes. We leave next day, accompanied by the hospitable prior to the town, and part with kindliest recollections of Santa Scholastica. | There is no order that occupies the general attention of men so much as the Society of Jesus. [And just here let me remark that I endeavor in these papers to separate men from principles. However much: I esteem these latter errone- ous, I cannot but respect those who hold them, when long years of intercourse have endeared them as counsellors and friends. Nowadays a man who leaves the Roman Church, especially a priest, is supposed to be most insincere unless he vociferates anathemas against the Church of his antecedents. This may be all very well with those who share Dr. Cumming’s idea that the Pope is one of the “three unclean spirits like frogs. proceeding out of the mouth of the dragon.” As for me, I prefer Aristotle’s medium jus, and common gratitude compels me to speak of men and things as I find them, although this and truth are generally ignored to color them up to the taste of prejudice and unreasoning bigotry. ] - There is foundation for the supposition that craftiness and guile are connected with a Jesuit. He would call it caution. His rule is, Endeavor thoroughly to understand men. He is bound to study human psychology as a physician does the symptoms of disease. I once saw a curious diary of a Jesuit, in which the names of all the persons he met with were classed under particular heads, each denoting a species of the human character. He met John Jones, say, three times a month. Each time he learned something of his character, disposition, and tastes. All these were jotted down opposite his name. When all was learned about Jones that seemed necessary or possible, he was classed under a head, such as “ Easy to Manage,” “ Docile,” “ Weak in Intellect,” etc. The particular failing or failings of Jones were specially noted. So it came to pass that if Jones was to be made use of, the operator knew exactly how to manage him. In such ways the Jesuits, having so much intercourse with Roman society, have a com-
Page 87
caren nt MTEL 1870.] TEN YEARS IN ROME. 379 plete chart of every disposition worth noting. If a hundred ardent youths are wanted for any object, they can fix upon them instantly. Here may be found a key to the influence exercised by this great order. It is unquestionably political, but for a religious end. It is practically true that in szos¢ things the end justifies the means. But this would be explained by saying neither end nor means are improper. The secret of the great power of the order is its discipline. History has numerous instances in which a general with a small force thoroughly under control has effected prodigies of valor. So, the unquestioning obedience, the entire annihilation of the will, render a Jesuit perfectly passive in the hands of his superior. How is this attained? Let us look at their novitiate in St. Sta- nislaus, near the Quirinal Palace. We shall see a repetition of the Greek idea that only entire self-subjugation makes heroes. This church of St. Stanislaus is the resting place of the famous youthful saint whose name it bears. Of royal descent, this young’ Pole, thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the “ Spiritual Ex- ercises,” is held in great veneration, and shares with St. Luigi di Gonzaga the devotion of Roman youth. Here the latter saint lived and died. His room is pointed out; and, dismissing all ideas of fanaticism and error from our minds, there comes over us as we contemplate it something of the feeling with which we regard the place where a hero fell. Here a youthful enthusiast of great talent and purity of character struggled through frightful torments, only explained by the apostle’s metaphor of “crucifying the flesh,” after that grand ideal life which is the noblest of human aspirations. The novices of the society here pass four long years—long, because meas- ured by mental and physical sufferings. In this army none are inactive. A dis- obedient thought is criminal. The abnegation of sense will make a novice refuse to read a letter from his mother, or even to see her, as in the case of St. Aloy- sius. If the Jesuits used the Inquisition and its tortures, they in a lesser de- gree did not spare themselves. A true vocation is estimated by ability to bear suffering and humiliation of the most degrading kind. If a blush of ingenuous shame should rise at a command, it is a symptom of an unruly will, and must be corrected. When one can so far restrain himself as actually only to ¢hzz& in the direction and so far as his confessor indicates, he is attaining the true Jesuit spirit. Once every year, on the feast of St. Aloysius, a curious custom is ob- served. The youth of Rome write letters to the saint containing requests. These are placed on the altar; and on the octave, that is, the eighth day afterward, the answers, whether from the saint or not, are found in the same place. The domestic arrangements of St. Stanislaus are very similar to those at St. Scholas- tica. But the régime is far more severe. More study, more fasting, more disci- pline—z. e., scourging—less sleep, talking, intercourse with the world. Their course of theology is far more complete than that of any other religious house. They are not permitted to read newspapers, to converse of the outside. world, to. laugh immoderately, to eat anything they particularly like, to refuse to eat things nauseous and repelling, to refuse the lowest menial office, to complain of cold, heat, etc. Here is a curious parallel : 7 RULES OF THE GOVERNMENT PRISON, WANDSWORTH, RULES OF THE NOVICES OF ST. STANISLAUS, ENGLAND. The superior shall read all letters, and if he deem No prisoner shall receive a letter without its being them unsuited to the novice, shall withhold them at previously read by the governor. . .. discretion. He shall grant or withhold permission to No prisoner shall write or send a letter without the write letters, as he deems proper, for the welfare of governor’s permission and inspection.—See ‘* Report the novice. on Prisons,”’ iii., § 9. So it will be seen that the convict has decidedly the best of it. The novice acquiesces in the arrangement, however, if he is sincerely in earnest. 4
Page 88
380 TEN YEARS IN ROME. (Marcu, The attractiveness of the services at the “Gesu” is remarkable. They are frequent, and sometimes of the most gorgeous character. In addition to the three organs it contains, a superb brass band is called into requisition for great festivals. The sermons are always eloquent, sometimes remarkably so, At all hours of the day the most aristocratic persons may be seen worshipping, or lounging in the corridors under pretext of waiting for one of the fathers. The attention the priests give to the confessional (the chief source of their influence, by the way) is most praiseworthy. Thirty-six hours I have known one priest sit. You may notice in the “Gesu” the prevalence of that strange anomaly, a popular confessor. We have often been asked, ‘ How is it Father A. is so much more sought after as a confessor than Father B.?”- It may be difference of manner, or the easier way in which one person enables the penitent to confess compared with another. Father A. probably takes it for granted that his peni- tent is bashful. Consequently he smooths the way by questions under various heads, which reduces confession to mere “yes” and “no.” He has, too, a cer- tain way of saying, ‘Ah, well!” which may mean “I’m glad you admit it,” or “Come, that’s not so heinous as you think,” or “ Who would have thought it?” just as the penitent determines. A Roman explains the popularity of a confes- sor by the phrase “ mzanzco largo,” that is, large sleeve, alluding to the frock of the friars, which has a sleeve doing duty as a receptacle or omuium gatherum of breviary, snuff-box, handkerchief, or any other odds and ends. The phrase im- plies both ease in hearing and leniency in disposing of confessions. The pen- ances of such a confessor are generally of the lightest—a few prayers or an almsdeed. But it is a singular fact, that those among the ‘youth who attend St. Ignatius, or the “Gesu,” most assiduously, are most distrustful of the confes- sional when they become husbands and parents, The inference is obvious. The hatred evinced toward the Jesuits by the male portion of the community is chiefly on account of their influence with their wives and children. It certainly cannot be called an influence for good, since it lands the youth almost wholly in infidelity, and promotes the severance of husband and wife, father and child, constituting the one who should be trusted above all things a spy in the house- hold and upon her husband, and leading the child to consider his duty to his con- fessor paramount to that he owes his father. Since these are its fruits in the Roman family, we may justly suspect its beneficence. The Dominicans, or Order of Friars Preachers, have their AS ere at Santa Maria sopra Minerva, a very handsome church, to which is attached the convent with a superb library. The general of the order resides here. They have other convents in Rome, the principal of which is Santa Sabina, their no- -vitiate. The novitiate of the Dominicans is scarcely inferior in severity to that of the Jesuits. In fact, minus a few corporeal details, such as scourging, etc., it is the same. Like the Carthusians, they practise much silence. You see no one on _ applying at the gate. After a minute or two the janitor reconnoitres you through ~ a small wired window in the door, through which you deliver your message. If you have anything for the convent, you find fixed in the wall a circular wheel, one half of which faces outward and the other inward. You place your letter or parcel in this, and it is turned round by the person inside, who thus receives and delivers a message or parcel without being seen or heard. In the country about Rome the Dominicans are not so rigid, as, indeed, the professed are not zz Rome. The mendicant orders, under which head we specially designate the Capu- chins and the Franciscans, meet you everywhere at Rome. The Capuchins are certainly of the two the most despised. They eschew ablutions, never taking off their habit until it falls off from rottennéss, and practise the other wretched
Page 89
1870, ] MEDUSA. 381 habits which confirmed dirtiness engenders. It is esteemed self-denial to allow a colony of fleas to feast upon your writhing flesh: The torments at first are dreadful. You see the specimen friar going about Rome in his dark-brown habit (from which keep clear), his black horn snuff-box, and his filthy blue cotton handkerchief stuffed in his sleeve, and his wallet hanging on his arm. He has his regular houses of call, where he gets broken meat and alms. He cracks in- delicate jokes and gives blessings indiscriminately. Follow him to his convent. The united contents of the wallet reappear under the skilful management of a chef in delicate dishes, and the alms purchase many ‘a good. bottle of wine. You, who cannot dine without a clean plate and a table-cloth, would be disgusted ; but here, remember, dirt is sanctified. He sleeps on a board, rises at midnight and sings his drowsy matins, lounges through the day, and this is his life. Sometimes, however, he goes.on a mission. Then he luxuriates in his element of indecorous stories, rude wit, and coarse repartee. He is said to suit the people. Certainly they laugh at his jests, but they also laugh at the poltroon himself, and, it is to be feared, at the religion he represents. MEDUSA. NE calm and cloudless winter night, () Under a moonless sky— The gracious golden sunset light Was dead, I saw it die— I stood alone a little space, ' Where tree nor building bars Its outlook, in-a desert place, The best for seeing stars. No sound was in the frosty air, No light below the skies. I looked above, and unaware Looked in Medusa’s eyes: The eyes that neither laugh nor weep, That neither hope nor fear, That neither watch nor dream nor sleep, Nor sympathize nor sneer ; The eyes that neither spurn nor choose, Nor question nor reply, That neither pardon nor accuse, That yield not nor defy; The eyes that hide not nor reveal, That trust not nor betray, That acquiesce not nor appeal ; The eyes that never pray. O love that will not be forgot ! O love that leaves alone! O love that blinds and blesses not! O love that turns to stone ! : ! ROBERT WEEKS,
Page 90
HAND TO HAND. PART I, HE managing editor’s patience was almost exhausted. “ Positively, Major Standish, I don’t see that we can find room for anything of yours in the ‘Camera’ this week. Or any week,” he added with an inward oath to him- self, glancing impatiently at the heap of “revises” waiting upon his desk. He did not take them up, however, but stood outwardly respectful, for he was a young fellow, and Standish, though a notorious bore, was old and white-headed. The Major patted him patronizingly on the shoulder. “ My dear fellow,” in his most luscious, grandiloquent tone, “let me give youahint. I’ve been twenty years in the very thick and heat of American journalism, and you are but a neophyte. You want to make the ‘Camera’ weighty? I call it dull, sir, dd7. Too much respectability kills a paper. It needs a different class of articles— something at once forcible and light. Philosophic and vz sparkling, and—well, do you take my meaning?” “Something like that in your hand, eh?” laughed Stinger. “ Precisely. You've hit it,” complacently twitching his white whiskers. “No. Not to-day, Major.” ““ Suppose we try a rahort thing on fish culture? I’ve got myself up on fishes _ thoroughly.” “The ‘Times’ did that on Friday.” , The Major stood a moment anxious and silent. “This new asteroid, now? When I was on the ‘ London News,’ Griffin used always to say, ‘ For anything taking in the scientific line, Dan Standish is our man.’ Don’t want it, eh? Who’s doing that hanging down in Delaware for you? I'll make you a two- column job of it for five dollars, and pay my own expenses. That road always dead-heads me.” Stinger took up his proofs. “We sent a stenographic reporter this morning. We really have no use for you, Major Standish.” “You never were more mistaken in your life. Where you need me, my dear boy, is to take charge of your reportorial corps. 1’d make those lazy fellows toe the mark.” “Mr. Stinger!” It was the proprietor McMurray’s voice, which rasped through the room like the filing of a saw. He came to the,door of his office. A sandy, flat-built. Scotchman, to whose making-up nature had grudged every. atom of flesh save in the one matter of a keen, red, tomahawk-shaped nose. “ Have not those proofs gone up yet? You encourage too many idlers in the office, sir. You here again, Standish?” : “Ah, Mr. McMurray! A de-lightful morning, sir!” The Major beamed down on him effulgent. Stinger and Withrow, the new editor, both driving their pens furiously at McMurray’s appearance, winked at each other. The seedy Major, with his grand brawny build, his imperturbable suavity, and his dauntless lying, always came off first-best in these encounters. McMurray, in his faultless black clothes, with all his backing of wealth and conscientious religion, seemed to feel himself thin and sour, and cowed before him. ‘‘T wonder,” he said, with a sneer, “that with your higher literary occupa- tions, you can spare time to besiege this office as you do.” “Pon my soul, I wonder too! Now that is precisely what my publishers \
Page 91
1870.] HAND TO HAND. — say to me. ‘* Write a book, Standish,’ they say. ‘Take the public between the eyes with a knock-down blow.’ Then those magazine fellows in New York and Boston are crying out every month for me to come to their help. But I like to see the old ‘Camera’ succeed, that’s the truth.” “ The ‘Camera’ is under obligation to you.” “ Not at all, I’m glad to help build it up. I’ve a pride—Philadelphia enter- prise, sir—a pride in it,” backing to the door. ‘What I have here, sir,” touch- ing his forehead, “‘ was meant for mankind, not to barter for fame or money. By the way, have you seen that last little thing of mine in the ‘Westminster’ ?” “No, nor nobody else,” savagely. “Ah, you don’t take the Quarterlies ? I’ll send it to you. I'll send it te you. Good morning, Mr. McMurray, good morning.” “Keep that liar and braggart out of the office, Mr. Stinger,” said McMurray in his coldest, civilest tones ; for when other men would have raged, his sense of duty kept him quietest. He smoothed his face before going back into the office. Young John Proctor was there, the clergyman to whom McMurray’s church, through his influence, had just given a call. He had just come from the depot after two years’ absence in the West, and McMurray was striving to do him honor in his hard, ungenial way. Proctor had been a sort of ward of his, and it was whispered about in the office that McMurray would be glad to have him now for a son-in-law. This church was his idol, and to see his only child the wife of one of its ministers was in his opinion to enclose her in the? pearly gates of salvation while yet alive. ‘The office” felt as if the delicate, bright-haired lit- tle heiress would be thrown away on Proctor. “These penniless preachers know how to feather their nests,” Stinger had said but a few minutes before. Mr. McMurray could not forget Standish when he went back to his office. “Lazy old Bohemian!” he growled. “If you want the most disreputable vices, Mr. Proctor, always look for them in an old man who lives by his wits.” “ Who was it ?” * Standish—the Major. You know him.” “What! There?”? Proctor dashed out into the office without his hat, and down the stairs, shouting, “ Hillo, Major!” leaving McMurray astonished be- hind him. He took up his pen and began to write severely. The carnal flesh was stronger in the young man than he had thought. Withrow, out of curiosity, lounged down the stairs and found John at the door looking anxiously up and down the street. “Ah, Mr. Withrow! do you remember me? John Proctor,” wringing his hand in a hearty fashion which he used to have when a boy. “I’m looking for a friend of mine, Major Standish.” “Yes? Major Munchausen, we call him in the office.” “He is a friend of mine,” coolly. “The office does not know him as well as I do, probably.” Withrow felt himself rebuffed, but only fora minute. ‘ The old fellow has a cockloft over a warehouse somewhere, where he cooks for himself. How he lives, God knows. He has nothing now but the odd jobs we give him here in the office. He’s had nothing from us for two weeks.” “Ts he alone? There was a little girl, or woman, rather?” Proctor hesi- tated.. The story of the old Major and Madeline was something which he could not ‘drag out before this fellow. “Niece or something? She lives in some country town now, I obdliaey and colors photographs. A great artist, the Major says. She’s a dull girl, I fancy. Women without brains have to scratch hard for a living nowadays.”
Page 92
384 HAND TO HAND. [ Marcu, Mr. Proctor did not care to enter into the woman question. He stood whis- tling under his breath, with some queer ideas in his clerical head, which Mr. Withrow would have hardly thought befitted it. They grew out of the remem- brance of those Saturday afternoons when, for year after year, he used to escape from boarding-school and repair to that same cockloft over the warehouse, there to feel himself a Gypsy or a Crusoe for a few delicious hours. What a vaga- -bond, uncertain life it was! the poverty, the shifts, the fun, the inextinguishable _jollity and tender love under it all! What a prince the Major and Madeline made of him—saving all week to compass the Saturday’s roast chicken and cranberry tart! Proctor had never known father or mother; his ideas of love or a: home were all drawn from poor Standish and his crazy ménage. So strong was this boyish instinct in him just now that he actually stood breathless when anybody resembling the Major came in sight. If the old man should not recog- nize him, or should meet him with the formal deference of other respectable people, why, then, good-by to that old boyhood, so horribly dear and disreputable ! Now the Major was in a restaurant a few doors down the street. ‘ Try an advertisement in the ‘ Camera,’ Sam,” he said to the bookkeeper. “I swear it will pay you like—like—” His talk halted; the ideas seemed to stagger through his brain. “T believe you’ve had a drop too much, Standish,” said Sam. “No; Dve had to stop drinking. You can’t get a glass of champagne fit for a gentleman in this accursed town. But about the advertisement?” (The “ Camera” paid hima small percentage on this sort of business, and a few cents now would buy him his dinner.) 6c No.” The Major leaned on the glass counter fora moment. It was two days since he had tasted food. The steam of savory dishes below was too much for him. A collapsed stomach in a powerful frame like his is a deadly drag upon a man’s pluck. He looked at Sam. The fellow would give him his dinner if he asked it, he knew. He gathered himself up with an effort. “I’d steal, but I can’t beg,” he said, silently. He nodded affably to Sam, and filliped to the parrot as he went out. His high-featured, usually florid face, had turned cold and blue under the mous- tache and whiskers, but he carried himself jauntily. John Proctor saw him as soon as he stepped on the street.” There was the identical broadcloth suit cut twenty years ago, and the vast expanse of shirt- bosom, frayed in the plaits, but immaculately white. The Major was a property of the town, well known as the city clock. With his bushy white mane, his im- posing shoulders, his lofty bow, he radiated and filled the pavement from wall to curb. Proctor thought the old man would be glad to see him, but he certainly had not expected the strange effect which the sight of him produced. Standish stopped as though he had been struck a blow, holding him off at arm’s length. His pomposity seemed to suddenly drop from him. “Why, Jack! Jack!” he stammered, “I did not look to see you. I beg your pardon, Mr. Proetor. I forget—” drawing back, yet still holding the young man’s coat-sleeve with what would have been very like a caress in a woman. “Forget? You forget old friends, I think.” “Prince Hal has changed his state,” said the Major, smiling, with an. effort to be himself. “It is time he shook off old Falstaff. How ill white hairs become a fool and jester ! So surfeit-swelled, so old and so profane !”” touching his big breast with a bitter latgh.
Page 93
1870.] HAND TO HAND. » 385 “You did not use to affect the cynic.’ “No. Itis the sight of you that reminds me of what I had better forget.” Proctor was ashamed, as one man always is of emotion in another. ‘You had always an unreasonable liking for me, vicious young dog that I was!” he said, lightly. “ You’re at the old place, I suppose? I'll come round at dusk. We'll broil a steak together, hey, Major? My hand has not lost its cunning,” The old man looked down at him steadily with an inexplicable brightness in his keen eyes, ‘I did not think you would go so far as that, my boy,” he said, quietly. ' Mr. McMurray’s carriage drew up at the door at that moment. It was plain but rich, the horses thoroughbred. An innocent-looking, delicate little blonde, dressed with Quaker-like plainness, looked. out and blushed crimson at the sight of John. At that the blood mounted also into the fellow’s tell-tale face, and he went down to the carriage, leaning on the door to speak to her. ‘A handsome pair, Major,” whispered Withrow, who was still loitering near. Standish nodded. ‘She looks like a good religious woman. McMurray would raise his daughter cleaner than other girls.” : *She’s worth a cool half million; that’s the way in which I’d think you would look at her.” “So I do, Mr. Withrow. Proctor is lucky, very lucky. Talents, and edu- cation, and religion, and now a good wife with money. The boy could not ask .for more.” There was something in the old man’s unusual quiet, and the look which he fastened on Proctor, that roused Withrow’s curiosity. “There used to be some connection between you and the young man, wasn’t there? He was under your guardianship when he was a boy, I think I’ve heard ?” | “ Not at all, sir,” eagerly, “not at all. It was a mere business transaction. I held certain moneys for the lad’s use from his father, and paid his bills; that was all. I placed him under Mr. McMurray’s care when he was entered here first at school. McMurray has the entrance to the best society, and is religious ; those were the two things I looked at. Why, the boy’s blood is of the best. His father was one of the old blue-bloods of Virginia. He would never have trusted his son.to the guardianship of an old scallawag like Dan Standish.” The Major was himself again, his rolling voice and theatrical gestures keeping time and apparently enjoying each other thoroughly. “Oh, that’s it? You were not one of the blue-bloods, then ?’” ‘“‘ My father was a butcher, sir. I’ve lived by my wits; and an infernally poor capital they are for any man. I'll say that. I’ve dined with dukes and rag- pickers in my day, Mr. Withrow. But the smell of the slaughter-house followed me. A man is nothing without family here in Philadelphia.”’ And again his eyes rested on Proctor, with the anxious thoughtfulness so strangely at variance with his ordinary stagey manner, Withrow clapped his hand to one pocket, then to the other. “By the way! Where the deuce—? Oh, here it is. Come this way, Major,” drawing him into the doorway, and opening a New York paper. “Here in the Personals. ‘ Rich- ard Standish.’ You see? No relation of yours, eh?” The Major had the paper up before his face. He took out his cracked eye- glasses and adjusted them on his nose; took them down and wiped them lei- surely ; read the card once, a second time. ‘No, I don’t know the man.”
Page 94
386 HAND TO HAND. [MARCH, From Virginia, you see,” said Withrow, putting the paper in his pocket again ; ‘and came here about the same time you say you did. But your name’s Dan. Certainly. It looks like a trick of the police to get hold of a criminal, to me.” “So it does to me.” “Going, eh? Proctor’s busy,” with a significant wink. “He has no need of old fellows like us, now.” “No.” The Major stood a moment watching John’s eager gestures, and the bright, blushing face bent over him. “No; he has no more need of me,” he said quietly, and turned away with a bow as he passed the carriage, though neither of them saw him. Mr. McMurray, with the young clergyman again in his office, safely trapped, could not let him go without a word or two of rebuke. “Should you accept it” (they were talking of the call), “ you must be careful, my dear sir, to avoid even the appearance of evil. You are young and impulsive, fond of your friends. The dignity of your position would render improper many associates whom you knew as a boy, unless, indeed, you approach them officially, administering the Word as the hope of salvation. This Major Standish now, for example “a “JT am very uncertain about accepting this church at all,” broke out Jack. “ There’s a place in the West that suits my ways better. But I could not marry on their salary. _It’s the merest pittance. I could barely live on it.” | Mr. McMurray paused, and answered with deliberation: “In the matter of marriage, must you, consult that point of salary at all, Mr. Proctor? The wife you select may—will, in all probability—be independent. A woman ought to feel - herself honored in being called to share the spiritual work of a Christian minis- ter, and should rejoice if she can bear her part in his temporal burdens.” “Tll never be supported by a rich wife,” said John, bluntly. “I’ll be frank with you, Mr. McMurray. ‘There is a woman whom I have loved long and faith- fully. I will marry her, if I can. If she has money, well and good; but I must be the provider in my own household.” “Tt is a natural feeling, and a manly one,” said McMurray, not ill-pleased. “We differ, too, in this matter of associates,” obstinately resumed Jack. “I have never felt that my ‘cloth,’ as the vulgar phrase has it, placed me one whit apart from other men. When I measure myself with a prince or ruffian in the dock by his courage or good sense or faithfulness to his friend, I touch a brother- hood between us stronger than any church bond. .We get our naked hands together. You understand? And oftener then it is he who gives the Word to me than I to him,” he added, under his breath. Mr. McMurray checked the angry rebuke on his lips. All young men were flighty nowadays, and given to this visionary talk. He remembered John Proc- tor’s brilliant reputation in the church, the crowds that pressed to hear him as he went from city to city. If Clara were his wife, no woman in the church would hold higher rank. “I cannot understand,” he said, gently, “what bearing this has on your intimacy with Major Standish, particularly ”— raising his voice when Proctor would have spoken—“ when I have every reason to believe the police are on his track as a long-escaped criminal.” John’s face burned as though he himself had been accused. ‘ What proof have you of this ?” he said, rising. “There is a New York detective here to identify him now,” in a mysterious whisper. ‘I could learn no more from him than that Standish is living under an assumed name. But I fear the worst, Mr. Proctor, the very worst.”
Page 95
1870.] HAND TO HAND. 387 “Bah!” muttered John to himself. “ Where is this fellow? I’ll go to him at once,” putting on his cap. McMurray rose and put out his hand. It was high time that he became the mouthpiece of the church and Clara. “Mr. Proctor, I beg that you will not es- pouse this disreputable old man’s cause so vehemently. His name is a public by-word of infamy among newspaper men. A vaporing boaster and liar.” ‘“Newspaper men know but one side of the fellow,” retorted John, hotly. *T could tell you tales of him, of his unselfishness and his noble charity, that would put the lives of many of our professors to shame. Besides, he was kind to me when I was a boy. I’ll not turn my back on him now.” McMurray’s sallow cheek began to burn. ‘ Then I regret to say, Mr. Proctor, that you must make your choice between the church and your very boyish impulse. A clergyman who makes an associate of so doubtful a character is hardly suited to our society. As for his good traits, I know nothing. I do know that the righteousness of the carnal flesh is filthy rags.” “And I know that courage and self-sacrifice are proofs of as good mettle in poor old Standish as ina church member, and come as direct from the Master of both. I must judge for myself in these matters.” “ Assuredly. But if your judgment in points so essential differs so widely from ours, I must beg leave, as chairman of the committee, to withdraw the call. Do not be rash, my dear sir,” changing his voice and laying his hand on John’s shoulder. “There! don’t answer me now. Think it over, and by evening you'll see that I was right. You are young and—pardon me—a little hot-headed.” A friendly word disarmed Jack. He laughed. “ You're right there, anyhow. Let the matter go till evening. But I will not change my mind.” And nodding a hasty good-by, he ran down the office stairs. Now the quality of loyalty to his friends was exaggerated in John Proctor. But yet he was a young man, with all the ambition, tastes, and shrewd knowledge of the world belonging to young men of the present day. When he reached the pavement he saw the stately towers of the church in which he was called to min- ister, and beyond, the exquisite parsonage, its picturesque walls draped with ivy. Mr. McMurray’s carriage rolled by again, and soft, tender little Clara beckoned smiling to him with her white jewelled hand. Itiwas a high path and a flowery one that opened itself before him. No wonder that the doubt suggested itself to him, as he stood hesitating, whether it was worth giving it up for a bit of quix- otism—a romantic fealty to a boyish fancy. i ParRT II. LATER in the afternoon the Major stood leaning against a pile of bales in front of the warehouse, loftily tapping his chin with his pinchbeck-headed cane and listening to Mr. McMurray. That gentleman, in his anxiety lest the church should actually lose Proctor, had resorted to the desperate remedy of an appeal to Standish. The old man kept his malicious eyes fixed upon him, and grin- ned with enjoyment of his embarrassment, but under the grin he looked haggard and anxious. **So the boy has a mind to take the part of his old friend? He’d stick by the hulk because it’s going down? Tut! tut! There’s stupidity for you.” “T do not talk in metaphor about hulks. I only thought it likely, from my knowledge of you, you might presume on your acquaintance with the lad and his generous nature to draw him into trouble, and I warn you what the result will be to him,”
Page 96
or 383 HAND TO HAND. [Marcu, “Tt will ruin him to be known as even my friend. I understand.” McMurray hesitated. After all, why not give Standish a hint of the detec- tive on his track? If he would escape, all difficulty would be over. “ Inquiries of a significant kind have been made for you this week, Major Standish,” he said. **So I have been told.” “1 do not know to what part of your past career they refer.” “And you'd better not ask too closely, Mac. Dan Standish has led a hot life, I tell you,” with a vicious wink that made the deacon shudder from hat to boots. “Well, I have discharged my duty,” he said, after an irresolute pause. “It is most probable that young Proctor will come to seek you this afternoon.” “And if he comes, I am not to see him?” with an attempt at a jocular tone that had more terrible force in it even to the cold-blooded hearer than any pain- ful outcry. “Why, man, I am pushed nearer to the wall to-day than anybody knows. As for this wey all: no matter what he is to me. I gave up some- thing for him once. It seems as if I had the right to ask his help now, when— when death has me by the throat.” He looked vacantly, quickly about him, at the boxes, the cars rattling by, at the head of his cane. McMurray thought ke had been drinking. “Tam sorry I troubled myself about it,” he said; with dignity. “ Good day, Major Standish.” “ Good day,” effecting a flourishing bow with his unsteady hand. “ Take old Dan to point your next sermon, will you? I’ve lived by my wits. I’ve made myself the companion of poets—of nobles, sir! And now when the end comes, damn it, man, I haven’t a friend!” Mr. McMurray hurried nervously away, picking his steps among the boxes and bales. Standish stood a moment looking at the ground, and then turned and stumped up the narrow rickety stairs that led to the top of the building. He did not know what especial sin of old times was coming back to give him the last blow, nor did he care. That was all fair enough. It seemed to him some- times, comparing his life with that of other men, that he had lived just like a beast from hour to hour, out of whatever impulse was in him. He was ready to meet any old abomination of his past life and take the punishment. “I’ve had the dance, and I’ll pay the piper,” he said, kicking open the door of his room and going in. . “ But—the boy ?” Now, the Major’s cockloft was in reality a garret room covering the whole sixth story of the warehouse. The beams overhead, the plastered walls, the half- dozen squat dormer windows, the pine floor, were as clean as lime and scrubbing could make them. It looked, in fact, like a big white plain with a little camping ‘ground at one end, in which was a grate with a good fire, a tent-bed neatly made, a table with pens and paper laid in exact order, the “ Men of our Day,” out of which the Major furnished obituaries at ten minutes’ notice for the “Camera,” and an odd volume of Appléton’s Cyclopzdia, out of which he drew its sup- plies of science. Great decency of cleanliness everywhere, but nothing to eat, If there had been, perhaps the Major’s acts in the next hour would have been less guilty in the eyes of religious people. But when it comes to looking out in the world from a starving body, a man is apt to slip the orthodox leashes and follow his own notions of right and wrong. He took off his black coat carefully, hung it up, threw his braces loose down his back, and sat down in his shirt sleeves before the fire, his hands on his fat
Page 97
1870.] HAND TO HAND. 389: knees. He wished, dully, Madeline was here to puzzle it out for him; remarking half aloud, that if that girl undertook to write a leader, it would be bosh, but in any thing else she never failed to hit the nail plump on the head. There was a round roly-poly brown crock in the window, in which bloomed a buttony little: rose, one of the Burgundy sort, red, fresh, and pungent. Madeline had left it. It was like her somehow, the Major thought.’ Do what he would, his thoughts would go back to the girl and to the years she had lived with him, instead of this ques- tion of life and death which must be settled to-day. There was the door to her little room ajar, He always had contrived to pay the trifle of rent for the room after she left him, liking to think of it as hers.. He- remembered the day he brought her there first. He shad had a tough siege nurs- ing old Durbrow, her father (on the “ Camera” like-himself). When he was dead, the Major settled up the estate: there were four hundred dollars of debts, and for assets, one trunk, empty; one suit of clothes, patched ; one watch, gold; a pretty lot of meerschaums 3 and the little girl of five, just over the measles. The watch went to pay the debts, and the little girl, of course, must go to an asylum. But. the Major brought her home for a week, to cheer her up a bit. He took her to the theatre and. circuses every afternoon; he bought her a gay little plaid silk suit (it was a flush time with him just then); he stuffed her with oysters and cara- mels ; and in the night, when she cried for her father, took her on his knee in her white night-gown, made her say over her prayers again, and then rocked and croaked over her some old ditty about ‘‘ Shepherds, have you seen my love?” till she fell asleep. The other men, who missed him at billiards or over their stews and.ale when; the papers were out toward morning, used to unearth old Standish at this sort of work, and joked him about it roughly enough. But they were pleased when he kept her week after week, and used to be coming in perpetually with scraps of anxious advice about croup or nettle-rash, and fell into the habit of buying all sorts of expensive and useless things for ‘ poor Durbrow’s baby.” So it went on for years. There was always a strong smell of cigars and printer’s ink in the air the child breathed, and no doubt when she came to be a young lady she learned to think in a scrappy, itemizing, newspaper way; but Madeline’s life was in fact as cleanly, and sweet, and tender among these men, as if she had been one of any rosebud garden of girls, perhaps more so... Whatever garment of lies the Major chose to put on as armor, or to perk and vaunt him- self in out among other men, he never wore it into ‘the cockloft.” Nobody could account for, the almost pathetic tenderness of his love to the girl. It was more than seemed due for her father’s sake, or even her own. | Once, however, he had said to her, “You came to take the place of a child that I lost.” That was the only time he had hinted at the secret of his former life. He kept it hidden even from himself. It came to him to-day, and would not be thrust aside. In a few hours’ it would be known to all the world, John Proctor was his son. He remembered well now the last. day when he had called the boy by that name. It was a dreary, rainy season in November, three or four years before he took Madeline. He. sat by a hotel window with Jack on his knee. It was a week since he had come from Richmond, leaving the child’s mother dead there. He had spent the week going from one newspaper office to another, vaunting and vaporing, and drinking hard, but with a still cold consciousness all the time of | standing by her grave, on which the rain pattered, with her child’s life left in his hands to do with it what he would.
Page 98
390 HAND TO HAND. [MaRcn, Mary’s boy would have grown into a truthful, God-fearing man if she had lived ; a gentleman too ; the class which Standish, with all his tawdry bragging, watched far off with jealous awe. Now What could he make of the boy ? He took the little chap’s hands in his, and pulled him closer, trying with his bleared eyes to penetrate the future. Like father, like son: it was so always. For himself, whether it was the taint of the butcher-shop or some flaw in his mak-— ing-up he did not know, but he was labelled everywhere for contempt. Even here, where he was a stranger, he was marked already, he saw, as disreputable, vulgar, a frothy bubble of aman. He was sore and galled by the snubs he had met with to-day. He sat quiet in the gaudy hotel parlor, holding Jack close while the servants lighted the lamps and people came and went; he looked steadily at the cost of what he meant to do. “ll take the weight of your old father off of you, Jack,” he said at last, stooping to kiss the fat, red little face. “‘ Good-by, my son.” He did take it off. He entered the boy under the name of Proctor at a fash- ionable boarding-school, setting aside the entire sum he had saved with which to start a paper in Philadelphia. “I can scratch for myself,” he said. “Let the lad have everything he wants,” he urged his governess one day. “ His father had the best blood in Virginia in his veins, madam. And teach him religion. His mother——” but he broke down here. ‘She’s yonder,” he said quietly at last, glancing up. The governess nodded, and understood him. So the feint succeeded. Of what it cost himself, he said nothing; it had lifted the boy at once, he thought, into a pure region of fashion, and refinement, and salvation. The glories of the Proctors, in the course of years, grew and multiplied readily in the Major’s handling. There were times when he became confused himself, so real had Jack’s illustrious family grown. ‘Remember your father the General, lad!” he would cry, when urging the boy to manliness or courage. “ JVodblesse oblige!” “ Damned if I know whether there was a General Proctor or not!” he ‘would mutter perplexed to himself afterward. Well, there was the end of it all now. The lie had been played successfully for years, yet now all Jack’s world was to know it was a lie. Sitting by the fire in his shirt sleeves, tapping his knees with his clumsy fingers, the Major went over it this afternoon. _ © There’s nobody who knew me in Virginia, and knows my name is Richard and not Dan, that can’t tell about the boy.” He saw no way of escape. “If to call himself my friend was ruin to the lad, what will become of him as my son?” And to-day, Jack’s fate stood in the balance, as McMurray had said. Again and again the Major reasoned round the dreary circle. “On one side the charge of a great church, wealth, and the woman he loves ; on the other—me.”’ There was nothing beyond that. To-night must end it one way or the other. ‘The drumming of his fingers grew slower on his knees, till he sat like a block staring in the fire. The gnawing hunger tearing at his flesh made his brain clearer. He was to be hung on his boy like a mill-stone to drag him down, till one or other of them died ? What if he were dead now? Great gain would follow ; and as for loss The Major rose mechanically, the eyes under his grizzly brows growing strangely keen and glittering. ‘I don’t know that I’m of much account—if one took stock of me.” He passed his hand with a queer chuckle over his big hungry, rheumatic body; then glanced hastily toward the pile of MSS. on which
Page 99
en eee — 1870. ] HAND TO HAND. 391 no publisher had drawn for months, proudly conscious for a moment of the genius which had been his birthright, “1 never made my mark, though,” he muttered. He repeated that once or twice. The stock was taken. He stood quiet a moment, and then sopped his face with his ragged white handkerchief. It was strangely composed and grave. He went to a closet and took down from the orderly shelves a bottle full of a dark-brown liquid, from which he half filled a goblet, which he placed ready on the mantel-shelf; then, as though doubting its efficacy, he took out a tiny vial full of white powder, and hid it in his pocket. Unlocking a desk, he took out an old leather-covered Bible, yel- low with age, and began turning over the leaves, to find the Family Record. “ Born, Jan. 31st, John, only child of Richard and Mary Standish.” He read it over, as he had done every day since he gave the boy up. He fancied God came as.near to him in those words as he could in any others in that Book. It was the only page which he ever read. Sze had written them there. “She knows whether I’ve loved her and you, Jack,” stooping to kiss the faded writing. ‘Your old father shall never be a weight on you, boy.” He opened a knife and cut the leaf. It was loose now; -he held it in his hand and stooped over the fire irresolute. After all, his real hold on life for a good many years had been through that page; as it began to crisp, he glanced up quickly at the goblet, and then out of the square dormer window. Lights were beginning to gleam in the houses beyond the Schuylkill, the sky warmed red as cinnabar on the frosty sunset, while wisps of feathery smoke from some passing steamer wavered across it. The world gave him a friendly look—/or the dast. He threw the paper in the fire, put out his hand for the goblet—when there was a sudden soit flurry behind him, and two nervous little hands were clapped over his eyes. The next thing was a hearty kiss right on his mouth. “Why, Madeline ! child! is it you?” | “Of course it isnot me! there are so many pretty girls stealing in to kiss you without leave! Oh dear, I’m quite frozen, Uncle Dan!” She looked as if she were; her chubby, dimpled face was blue, and the rimy drops stood in her eyes. She perched herself up on the Major’s chair, beating her hands in their woollen gloves together. “If you only could unlace my boots? My feet haven’t had a bit of feeling for an hour. Five miles did they tramp. I didn’t want to break the note for car-fare. It’s the half-yearly pay-day, you know. Just look at it,” fumbling in her bosom under her sacque and bring- ing out warm and crispa bright new note. “I couldn’t sleep until we’d both seen it and—gone halves !”” winking with both eyes and laughing all over in the most ridiculous lovable way. ‘The Major had taken off her shoes, and stood with them in his hands looking down at her. She was so alive with beauty, warm- blooded and happy! She seemed to come to him like sudden youth or summer in this last desperate hour. There hung about her even the faint scent of roses. It seemed so easy to come back to sit down beside his little daughter, who loved him with all her honest heart, and be happy and jolly and alive as always. But he knew what he had to do. “How long are you going to stay, Maddy ?” “ Until to-morrow—unless you would rather I would go to-night,” quickly. “Yes, I would rather. I have some business—there will be some men here after a-while—it wouldn’t be best for you to stay.” “Very well,”” Maddy nodded, turning her stockinged feet about before the fire. She nevér asked questions, but she generally found out all that she wanted 26
Page 100
392 _. HAND TO HAND. | [Marcx, to know without them. “How long can I stay, Uncle Dan?” taking off her hat. , “Tn two hours will be time enough. Let me have you as long as I can.” “Tsn’t that a lovely hat ?” poising it on her little fat fist, and looking over it steadily into his gaunt, changeless face. ‘The brown plume is just the shade of my hair. Been hard at work on the ‘Camera’ lately, dear ?” *¢ They’ve needed nothing for two weeks.” “Oh!” She was quieta minute. “Just put that hat carefully away in my | room, won’t you? and bring me my slippers. They’re in the lower drawer. You | have the keys.” She sat motionless until the door closed behind him, and then’ like a flash she was in the pantry cupboard, which was empty, as we know, and back again by the fire. She took up the goblet and smelled it. The Major, coming back, glanced at it jealously, but it stood where he left it, and Maddy was leaning lazily back in her own low chair. She was pale, and the water stood in her eyes. *You’re not well, child ?” “No. Sitdown by me, Uncle Dan. I’m tired and I’m hungry, that’s all. I ordered a miraculous little supper as I came along. It will be here presently.” She took his big hand as he sat by her, fingering it over, holding it now and then to her cheek. Something else than hunger had been at work with him. They were both too old- soldiers to be beaten, as he was to-day, by a little wholesome fasting. But what was the sore? She did not know where to thrust her probe. “They’ve raised my salary, Uncle Dan. Did you notice ?” “No, I did not. I’m glad of it, my darling. You can go through the world alone pretty well now, Maddy?” She made a grimace. “If one only cares for hard work and money—yes. But I’m tired of being alone. I mean to either come home, or you must come tome. Though a man of your talents would be wasted in a Jersey village like that. They have only one newspaper. You could not go there.” “Only one newspaper, have they ?” There was silence. ‘ Jack is at home,” he said, at last. The cheek against which she had pressed his fingers grew suddenly, fiercely hot. She got up and laid some wood on the grate, sat down leisurely, her face turned from him. ‘ Who did you say had come home ?—John ? John Proctor?” “Yes, Jack.” The very name of the boy stabbed him like pain, yet he could not keep it off his lips. He did not waver in his resolve. He would put himself out of the way to keep the shameful birth of his boy a secret. Yet, as the clock ticked away the moments of this last hour, nature grew almost too strong for him. He could have cried out, so that all the world might hear, for his son—for his son, whose flesh and blood was the same as his. He heard the girl speaking to him as ina dream. Her voice trembled in spite of herself. Tell me something about him, Uncle Dan. Is he much changed ?” “T see no change in him.” He caught sight of her face, and through all his dull absorption, it startled him ; it was so strangely fresh, and dewy, and young. — “TI suppose John has been successful, then?” she said at last, with an effort. “He told me once he would never come back or write until he could do a man’s work and make all his friends proud of him. He thought they would forget him. He need not have been very much afraid of that.” She was talking half to her- self, stooping as she sat on her stool, her brown eyes fixed on the fire, her hands pressed on her breast. ‘I always knew he would find some little home in the West, and then come back; I knew he would.” “ Maddy!” “Yes, Uncle Dan.”,
Page 101
1870.] HAND TO HAND 393 “T’ll tell you about Jack,” in an unnaturally loud, harsh voice. “He is a man of mark now—a leader in his sect. They’ve called him to the First Church here. His companions are not yours or mine, and his ways are not ours. They would look upon him as tainted if he made friends of shiftless Bohemians like us. He’s in a world the door of which is shut to you and me. It will be the same way when we are dead. He will be inside, but when I come the door will be shut—shut.” A sudden comprehension broke through her face. Dimpled, kissable little face as it was, there was a latent nobility in it, great steadiness and strength. “TI think you’re unjust to us, and to Jack,” she said firmly, standing before him. “T tell you the boy is on the road to success, and he must go on,” he cried. * Nobody shall stand in his way to hinder him. I mean to stand out of his way. It will be quite easy for me to do it—quite easy.” . Some suspicions of years ago were coming back to her. “I think I under- stand,” she said. ‘Is Jack willing that you should give him up?” “ What could it matter to him? <A shabby old liar and braggart, as McMur- ray called me. I saw his church to-day, and the house where he will live. So grandly furnished, Maddy!” | “Churches and furniture !” witha contemptuous shrug. “ What are they to Jack?” | ““T saw the woman he is to marry.” “Ah! the woman - “ A daughter of McMurray’s—a delicate, white rosebud of a girl. He has everything now the world can give, Jack has. There’s but one bar in his way, and that won’t be there long.” But Madeline had turned to the window, her face toward the sun that was going down. It was some time before she came back. When she did, she stood by the mantel-shelf looking down at him, “ Does the woman love him?” “T thought so. It was in her face.” “She only has known him a little while ?” “ Withrow told me they met last month in Chicago. The match was arranged there.” ; She looked at her hand. There was a thin gold ring on one finger—a cheap little trifle, such as a school-boy would give. It had been there so many years that it bound and pained the woman’s full-grown finger. It had done so for many years. | ‘*One month ?” she said to herself again and again. The sun was down, but the reflection from the snow on the roofs threwa pleasant brightness into the many windows, while the clock ticked cheerfully the last hour of daylight away. A noise below broke the silence into which they had fallen. The stairs were long and rickety, and steps could be heard creaking from one flight to the other. | “Tt’s Jack!” The Major spoke hoarsely, standing up. He had been think- ing it over as he sat. However false and disreputable his course had been since he was a man, he at least was right, he thought, in this act of its close. “* Nothing in his life so became him as the ending of it,’ ”” he quoted to him- self. ‘But McMurray would call it a theatrical trick.” Jack was at the street door; in a few minutes it would be too late. He thrust his fingers into his pocket and secreted the little vial in his palm. He went to the door as if to close it. At that moment Maddy caught sight of a yellow bit of writing on the hearth, stooped, picked it up. She nodded as she read it without surprise. . |
Page 102
394 HAND TO HAND. [Marcu, “His son? And Jack wants the old man now to deny it? Not to stand in his way?” | The first hint about that poor white rabbit Clara had turned her blood to gall. She was suddenly bitter and unjust as death to Jack, to whom she had given her whole life of patient, sweet-tempered trust. The steps came nearer. The poor old Major backed toward the inner door, his uncouth face white and wet. “I’m not well. I’m going to lie down on your bed. Take him away with you, Maddy. I can’t see either of you to-night.” Yet even then it gave him a vague pleasure to hear how light and gay and reso- lute the boy’s steps were. Maddy came quietly between him and the door. ‘ No, we will both see this Jack, who puts you out of his way.” The door opened. There was the old short, stout-built Jack! The old sturdy honest face under the same fur cap, the twitch in the mouth ready to make a joke at anybody or at himself. “Why, Maddy? I did not hope to find you here, little woman,” giving hera brotherly shake of the hand, and so figuratively setting her aside. How the dull morbid shadows that had filled the room crept aside before him! Madeline felt that her life had been but a passionate dream. Practical, common-sense people on the same plane of society saw each other a month ago in Chicago, and married ra- tionally. And why should a practical, rational man encumber himself with this late-discovered father, with his undoubtedly unwholesome fancies and stagey habits ? “ Major Standish ”’—Jack with all his hearty manner was embarrassed—“ I came to speak to you on business of importance. You have no secrets from Maddy ?” ‘ “ Don’t speak, boy! For God’s sake! Ina little while I willset itall right! Wait one minute!” retreating to the door. “ But I won’t wait.” Jack had his hands on the Major’s shoulders and forced him down on a chair. His face flushed as he spoke, and his voice grew un- steady. ‘Look at this old man, Madeline. Twenty years ago, he came here a healthy, middle-aged man, with a comfortable living and a son; a boy that he could have educated plainly and had to work for him and be a companion as he grew old. But what does he do? Puts the boy where he will be tended like a prince, be clothed in purple and fine linen, gives up his income to him, while he —look at, this cockloft, Maddy! Look—eve/” He put his hand on the old man’s head and drew it through the thin white hair. Once or twice he began to speak, but stopped. At last he said: “I know the shifts you have made to live, the insults you bore, that I might sleep soft and live warm! It’s well I do know them all. You will never want the care of a son again, so help me God!” “Yes, yes, I knew you would say that,” cried the Major. “ But of what use was itall? You have ruined yourself. I know what Iam. Who told you this ?? “ A man who came from Virginia to find you.” “ What does he want ?” “He would not tell me.” Proctor’s face clouded. The Major’s quick eyes marked it. : ‘‘ He has a warrant for me, I suppose ?”’ sullen and dogged. . “I donot know. He refused to give me any hint.” “ There were several little affairs—there’s no use in their stirring up muddy water, that I can see,’ peevishly. ‘But if it’s criminal—let me alone, Jack,”
Page 103
a 1870.] HAND TO HAND. 395 catching the young man’s sleeve. “You shall not drag yourself down for me. Ill not have my whole life thwarted,” fiercely. Jack’s answer was to glance around the poverty-stricken garret, and at his_ own costly quiet dress. The tears were in his eyes. ‘ We’re one now, come what will, father,” he said quietly. “That is the man at the door.” The Major went to openit. “I'll balk them yet,” he muttered. “I'll not drag Jack down.” He came back in a moment, a huge yellow envelope in his hand. “He sent it in a letter. A man can’t be arrested by letter? It may be” —turning itover. ‘ What’s this? God bless my soul, what’s this? Why, it’s no arrest!” “Thank God for that!” muttered ‘Proctor. “Robert Standish is dead, Jack,” poring and muttering over a parchment sheet. “Ts he, sir?” indifferently. Jack was standing awkwardly alone, for Made- line, whom he had time to notice now, was engrossed in tying up some drawings of hers, which she was going to take away with her. She would not leave one ves- tige of herself in her old home, she thought. The old man would go with his son to the delicate little rosebud of a girl. As for her, what did it matter that she had no home, nobody on earth but them ? that her life had held nothing but them ? | The drawings looked like masterpieces of art to Jack; he had heard of Maddy’s genius. How cold and still she had grown in these two years! It might be devotion to art and to her work. She looked as impassive and ab- stracted as. if she had gone into some height unknown to him, from whence she would look down on all his fancies and his Jack never remained long in doubt about anything. } “Maddy!” Hecrossed the hearth-rug to the corner where she stood, and took up her hand. “Thering? It’s:gone.” Maddy glanced down carelessly. “Ring? Yes. I remember now. That ring was too small. I took it off long ago.” | Jack's eyes twinkled ;-he held her wrist tights “‘How long ago? Within the hour? See how red and bruised the poor little hand is !” The pity was too much for heroic Maddy. She gave.a sob, but held the tears back in her wet miserable eyes. Jack never knew in all his life how deep the bruise went when that ring came off. He looked at her steadily, closer, closer ; lifted the hurt hand till his breath touched it, then kissed it. Just as he used to kiss her lips long ago; as no man had touched them since ; as they never would be kissed again. She drew back. “ You have no right to play with me in that way.” At the first tone of her altered voice, Jack stood startled and grave. ‘ What do you mean, Madeline? You need not feign that you did not know I loved you, when I went away two years ago!” “You were under no promise to me,” quickly. “I have no right to reproach you.” “No promise. But I loved you.” “ And now little Clara has taken my place,” with icy composure. “I do not think that strange.” “That poor little creature! O Madeline!” That touch of contempt was worth more than a thousand arguments. ‘Do you mean tosay you don’t love her, Jack?” catching his coat lapels with both her hands. ‘I’ve been so—so miserable! I—” She dropped her head and said
Page 104
396 HAND TO HAND. [ MARCH, no more ; but the little Burgundy rose had opened its heart to him now with all its sweetness and spicy perfume, and Jack knew the flavor of it weil. He had ,been waiting for it for a good many years. They sat together in a shaded corner: the Major was poring over his parch- ment by firelight. After a while Madeline referred to her rival again, patroniz- ingly. ‘Clara is pretty, you must acknowledge, Jack. ‘Though she is weak, as you say, poor child!” “ T don’t know,” said Mr. Jack, whose conscience twinged him with certain moonlight walks in Chicago. ‘‘ She was very considerate and kind to me, Mad- eline. Her father was anxious for me to take the First Church here. But I’d made up my mind to that little home in the West—if you would go with me.” “T always thought you’d come for me,” said honest Maddy. The Major was looking at them over his spectacles. “So? So?” he said in amazement. ‘ Why, God bless you, children! Youplan better for yourselves than I did for you.” Jack laughed, and drew his chair over between them. “It will be hard work to live, at first. But we three are old comrades, and know how to rough it.” “This is a duplicate of Robert Standish’s will,” said the Major, striving to be legal and lucid, ‘‘and by it I find certain demesnes, messuages—well, I don’t know, to tell the truth, if it’s a fortune or a mere competency, Jack. But it’s enough for us all to.give McMurray and his cursed ‘ Camera’ the go-by for life. _ We may start a National Magazine with it,” in his old bragging tone. “There will be no more of this for you then, father,” glancing around. The bare floors, and pinched poverty, and the worn-out old man with his white hair in the midst, chafed Jack angry and sore continually. “And here is the supper. At last!” cried Maddy. “T had really forgotten I was hungry; but it is long past my usual dinner hour,” said the, Major, loftily. He rose with alacrity, to help her spread the white cloth and set the hot, dainty dishes on it, managing, as he lighted the lamp, to empty a half-filled goblet into the ashes. ‘Such abominable wineas these fel- lows furnish me.now!” he muttered, and then suddenly stopped, looking at Jack, a shamed, defeated look creeping all over his big body. He went to him. “My son,” he said humbly, “it would be better you left me behind, you and Maddy. I’m a miserable, faulty old man.” “And I am a faulty young one,” said Jack hastily. “ But there’s that be- ‘tween you and me, father, which God will look to find in us all underneath these weeds that grow atop.” Maddy came closer to the twomen. “I think I know what you mean. And I too,” she said with infinite love, and very bad grammar, putting her hand softly into: theirs. REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.
Page 105
THE CLOWN’S REAL PIGLING. HAEDRUS tells a story of a clown who undertook to rival a mounte- p bank. ‘The latter gained applause, if nothing more, from an audience of rustics by his imitation of the squealing of a little pig which he pretended to have hidden under his cloak. One of his auditors called upon his fellows to ad- mire his own performance of the same feat. He put his head under his cloak and pretended to pinch his pigling, and the squealing was heard ; and a very excellent, ear-piercing outcry it was. But the audience declared with one voice that this imitation was not to be compared to the mountebank’s. Whereupon the: clown produced from under his cloak a living pig of tender years which he had hidden there, and whose real outcries were those which the bucolical critics. had pronounced inferior to the mountebank’s counterfeit. This story was told! by the Latin poet, and has since been accepted, as a satire upon presuming criti-- cism. It is taken for granted that the clown was triumphant, and that his cen-- sors were put to open shame. Not surely so, however. If they had said that the squealing that their fellow offered to their approval was not like that of a little pig, he would have put them down, flat. But in preferring the performance: of the mountebank they were right ; and they unconsciously, but none the less. correctly, acted upon a principle that lies at the base of all art criticism. With which prologue I pass abruptly to the consideration of the subject of this article;. to which it will be found directly pertinent. Among the men who hold themselves aloof while those who have the field: work out the plans or pursue the pleasures of the hour, no one deserves more re’ spect or more pity than the aged critic who is unable to bend himself to the tem: per of his time. Incapable of the spirit of the present, and living in the memory of the past, he tries the former by the latter, and finding them unlike, he con: demns thatas' bad which is only new. In the words of Horace’s well-worn line ““Difficilis, querulus, laudator temporis acti,” hard to please, complaining, 4 praiser of his own day’s doings, he goes about uttering protests which to him have the significance of condemnation, but to those around him seem as ridicu- lous as the protests of a man who is left behind by a railway train. In his accus- tomed walks, he suddenly comes upon that inevitable other Pharaoh who knows. not Joseph; and to him he straightway gives the cut direct, deeming that he should be put down as a usurper. For with him not to know Joseph is not to be Pharaoh. But the new king sweeps past him with the shouting train that always. waits upon the hand that holds the sceptre, and heeds not, if he sees, the scorn- ful adherent of his predecessor. And well he may; for the old Pharaoh is a mummy. But there are always men who, although they themselves have not yet put on cerecloths, live among the mummies. They are not yet embalmed, but they have embalmed others in their own memories ; and with these they dwell. These they admire and love; and to these they turn when they take counsel or’ look for a standard of comparison. Of these mummy-worshippers no one is more constant in his devotion to the dead than the old theatre-goer ; the man who in his youth attended the theatre frequently, and who in his age goes rarely; who declares that the glory of the stage has departed, and who goes to see a play, not as he once went for mere enjoyment, but to compare the actors of the day with those of the past genera-
Page 106
398 THE CLOWN’S REAL PIGLING. [ MARCH, tion, and to condemn the former as feeble imitators, monstrous caricatures, or ig- norant scorners of the latter. This man, if a New Yorker and well advanced in years, talks of the palmy days of the old Park Theatre, and sings the praises of Placide and Power. A man who talks of the palmy days of anything is pretty sure to be a dweller among the mummies. Now, in the dramatic world such ‘men abound. Perhaps this is one consequence of the personal interest which we are apt to feel in actors whom we have seen frequently and with pleasure—an in- terest which sometimes takes the warm tone of personal attachment for a person with whom we have never exchanged a word, and with whom, after the charm of novelty had worn off, we might find personal intercourse disagreeable. The praise of old actors, and the disparagement of the new, is what the world has heard ever since there was a theatre. Never was there a more un- reasonable cry. Nature is inexhaustible, and every people possessed of a thea- tre has had a succession of actors just as good as it was capable of appreciating and desirous of paying. I cannot believe that Burbage or Betterton was a more gifted, more thoughtful, or more finished actor than Booth is—saying this with- out admitting that the last has adopted the style best suited to my taste, or that he always takes the view of a character or gives the interpretation to a passage that commends itself to my judgment. But who of those who might make the same exception is ready to believe that if Burbage or Betterton could and should reappear, either of them would conform more exactly to our notions ? And even in the caseof Garrick or of Kean, should we be willing to commit ourselves more absolutely? Of these five actors it is quite possible that one was superior to all the others. But how can we decide which? This is a question that can- not be determined. Unlike the poet and the painter, the actor leaves behind him only the memory of the impression he has made upon others ; and actors not con- temporary cannot be compared. Just comparison is almost impossible even by - one person ; because even if the senses and the intellect remain unimpaired, man’s emotional nature—that to which the actor chiefly appeals—differs, except in very rare instances, in age from what it was in youth, both in kind and in degree. Youth is generally more impressible than age, but not always. Men sometimes live inverted lives, and become more sensible to beauty, more capable of emotion, and more susceptible of sentiment as they grow older. Burke seems to have been a marked instance of this kind of man. His early writings indicate a colder and more critical nature than his later. The frigid precision of the “‘ Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful,” written in his youth, gave no promise of the glow of feeling and the splendor of thought that warmed and illuminated the emanations of his maturer years. . As the effect produced by the actor is not a simple and a positive projection, but a result, the elements of which are his power on the one hand and the im- pressibility of his audience on the other, and it is only by the effect which he pro- duces that he can be judged, we cannot compare two actors unless we see them both in circumstances combining both these elements. This is impossible in the case of actors of different periods. One elementat least must be lacking. We may learn perhaps by criticism the methods, and by tradition the effects produced by an actor of past days; but we have no means of knowing what power an actor of the past would have over an audience of the present. Between ten and fif- teen years ago I| heard at several times from two aged men of rare intelligence and culture, and who had not compared notes, a description of the style of Mrs. Siddons and John Kemble, whom they had seen in their early youth ; and my conclusion was that those famous players would now empty any theatre by their
Page 107
1870. |}: THE CLOWN’S REAL PIGLING. | 399 stilted extravagance and the sing-song cadence of their elocution. Andif I have not been misinformed as to his methods by those who have seen and admired Edmund Kean, even he would alternately disgust and delight a cultivated audi- ence of the present time by his extravagance and his personal electricity. Be this as it may, ours is not the day nor ours the public of inferior actors. A town which within fifteen years has seen Rachel, Ristori, Booth, Burton, Hackett, Fechter, Jefferson, and Miss Bateman, cannot with any semblance of good reason complain of the decadence of good acting. What is true of acting, however, may not be true, and in fact is not true, of the drama; and what is true of public taste as to actors may not be true, and in fact is not true, of public taste as to the drama. It is possible with little plays to have great players ; and it is possible for those who can intelligently admire the latter to be satisfied with the former. And that, briefly, is our present con- dition. This question, unlike the other, can be positively decided. For the drama, unlike acting, is a positive, enduring production, which can be judged by laws deduced from a study of man’s nature, and which can be compared with itself in its various stages. Players vanish and live only in memory; plays remain. The condition of the drama in any country—whether it is thriving or decaying— can be easily determined ; and as plays more than any other production of the a human mind are adapted to the existing taste of the general public, to which dramatist, actor, and manager look for remuneration, the kind of play which is successfully produced (and not the actors by whom it is performed) may be taken as a sure criterion of the dramatic taste of its period. Can there be any doubt, for instance, as to the comparative dramatic power and dramatic taste of the two periods of the French people, in one of which Corneille, Racine, and Moliére were the leading dramatists, and in the other Scribe, Dumas, and Sardou? This question is altogether independent of that whether Frédéric Lemaitre or Mr. Fechter is a better actor than Moliére ; which cannot be decided. Nor is the success of theatrical entertainments any gauge of the healthy con- dition of the drama, A declining drama and a very debased dramatic taste are entirely compatible with the expenditure of much money both by managers and the public on theatrical entertainments. A like relation of material prosperity to spiritual decay has been seen in literature. More money was paid for poetry, and more poetry was written and read, five times over, in the period that began with Pope and ended with Crabbe than in that which began with Spenser, in- cluded Shakespeare, and ended with Milton. In the consideration of our sub- — ject the distinction must be clearly kept in mind between plays and players, between the theatre and the drama, between the willingness to pay for being diverted by a splendid or an amusing spectacle and an intelligent enjoyment of dramatic art. A dozen splendid houses may be filled evening after evening ina city in which dramatic taste is deteriorating and a love for the drama is dying out as surely as they appear to be in New York. The Grand Opera House,and _ the French Theatre, and Niblo’s, and Wood’s Museum might be thronged nightly by ten thousand people each—if they could hold so many—to see burlesque, and that would not, I think, indicate a very sound condition of the drama (if it could be accepted as a fact of any significance), but rather that it was in the last stages of decay. And evidence of the same deterioration might be presented by a like © profitable performance of dramas, comedies, and tragedies of a high, or even the highest order. Such evidence is not lacking now and here. The run after the “Grand Duchess,” the “Forty: Thieves,” and “Orpheus and Eurydice”
Page 108
‘400 THE CLOWN’S REAL PIGLING. | MARCH, was a more striking, but not a more unmistakable indication of the decay of the drama than the successful production of “ Ours” at Wallack’s Theatre, of “Ruy Blas” at Niblo’s, and of “ Hamlet” at Booth’s. Of Mr. Booth’s performance of Hamlet little can be said, at least in praise, that has not been well said already. Probably no more thoughtful and finished a representation of that character has been seen since the play was written. It is mere opinion, perhaps no more'than mere surmise, but I doubt if so much was made of the character and of the tragedy, if the significance and dramatic value of every line and almost every word uttered by the principal personages ‘was so carefully.sought out and weighed, when it was first produced under Shakespeare’s own eye as is now done under Mr. Booth’s. Andas to the mounting of the piece, the material form in which it is presented, it is needless to say that nothing like it was dreamed of then, and safe to say that nothing surperior if equal to it has since been seen in any theatre. Every scene is a grand and im- pressive historical picture in which the figures move and speak. It is difficult to conceive of stage effects more real in their seeming, more brilliant and impos- ing, and more in harmony with the sentiment of the tragedy, than those which we have here produced. Each one is a study, a composition well balanced and thought out to the minutest details. The great hall in which the second act and most of the third act pass, the grouping and the movement of the personages down to the most unimportant of them, the churchyard, and the burial of Ophe- lia, are poetic conceptions, pictorial treatments of their subjects, which in spirit, keeping, and composition, and even in effects of color, few living painters could hope to rival. They are so complete that they leave nothing to be desired that is attainable by thought, research, ample resources, and the artist’s skill. The most exacting spectator confesses that his imagination of these scenes has been fully equalled, if not surpassed. And in this fact is to be found one reason of the dramatic failure and esthetic emptiness of this performance. For the “Hamlet” of Booth’s Theatre is a splendid blunder. The blunder is in the purpose. The end in view is attained with a com- pleteness almost without a parallel in the history of the stage ; but that end is a false one, and all the means by which it is sought are directly at variance with the spirit of the play, and even the manifest material purpose of the author. “ Hamlet” is an ideal, romantic drama; a tragedy the events of which can be conceived as possible, if possible at all, only in the rudest time and among a people hardly held together by sufficient colresive social power to be called a community. Shakespeare, taking a story made to his hand, disregarded abso- lutely all unity of time, of place, and even all consistency of action and congrui- ty of manners, that he might present in its hero his ever-living conception of a musing, wayward, procrastinating, purposeless man, whose imagination ever out- runs his action, checked as that is by reflection so quick and so penetrative that he seems to see both sides of every question, not successively, but at once. Now this supremely ideal and extravagantly romantic tragedy, a play the con- ditions of which, regarded from the point of physical possibility, are impossible, Mr. Booth—yielding, as he must needs yield, to the demands of a degraded dra- matic taste or else cease playing—presents, or attempts to present, as if it were a composition in the real school of art, a drama of real, every-day life, in which the stage and the actors are to represent, and can represent, that which has been or might have been, or—like Tom Taylor’s cleverly constructed “‘ Mary Warner,” which gives Miss Bateman such fine opportunities to move the hearts of her audience to sympathy with sorrows which might be their own—that which is now, ae
Page 109
1870. ] THE CLOWN’S REAL PIGLING. 401. daily. The realism of the representation sometimes embodies conceptions of great material grandeur, as in the scene which is played in the gallery over the arches in the great hall, from which the personages descend the long flights of the grand staircase; and this realism, on the other hand, more consistently cares even for the minutest detail of costume and of court etiquette. No obeisance due to the heir apparent is omitted ; and even when the two recorder-players enter in their flame-colored robes, the Prince of Denmark does not receive an instru- ment from one of them, but through the hands of a courtier. But the realism of the representation goes further: it penetrates even Mr. Booth’s action and his speech. Of this an instance, exhibiting perhaps the most extraordinary combina-- tion of attitude and elocution ever seen on the stage, appears in the first act. When the ghost disappears, saying, ‘‘ Hamlet, remember me,” Mr. Booth, who has listened kneeling, falls to the ground, representing Hamlet as overwhelmed by the tumult of his emotion. He lies still a moment, and then, tossing about as aman might who had been so disturbed and was so exhausted, he begins the following soliloquy before he rises, and actually speaks the first lines, “ O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else? And shall I couple hell?” etc., lying flat on his back looking up to the sky, and with his head toward the audience. Now, as soliloquy represents, in the only possible way, man’s unuttered thoughts and feelings, such a delivery of this speech represents what would be very likely, and almost sure, to happen in real life, were a man so prostrated by the effect of such a vision. Before he collected himself sufficiently to rise and become self- possessed and coherent, he would begin to think thoughts that spoken would be exclamations. But we may be sure that Shakespeare had no such delivery of .this soliloquy in mind when he wrote it; for there is so great an incongruity be- tween the realism of the actor’s treatment and. the ideal and romantic conception of the scene as to void the performance of all dignity, and to make it approach as nearly to the ridiculous as is possible in the hands of an artist of Mr. Booth’s histrionic power. Briefly, Mr. Booth has attempted what is impossible, and what would not be desirable even if it were possible. To put “Hamlet” correctly upon the stage as to scenery and costume is beyond the reach of research and the attainment of art; for some parts of it must needs be baldly and bluntly incongruous with others. “ Hamlet” is, from beginning to end, in its external conditions and in its very structure and spirit, one monstrous anachronism. The play moves and ends in absolute defiance of material coherence and physical possibility. The period of its action is the most indeterminable problem in dramatic criticism. It runs through a possible range of nearly a thousand years, and while some pas-. sages take us back to the remotest verge of the dark ages, others not less essen- tial bring us down to the time of Shakespeare himself. What need to trouble ourselves about correct conformity to the architecture, the furniture, and the costume of Denmark before the tenth century, when we must listen not only to the firing of cannon but to the talking about them, and when the turbulent close of the tragedy is brought about by a duel with rapiers in which all the terms of the modern fencing school pass’ between the combatants and the bystanders? In such a play of what value is correctness of costume? What correctness can there be? The very upper and lower limbs of the personages at Booth’s Theatre are at variance, open and palpable; their legs tied up with cross-bands in the style of the Bayeux tapestry, and their arms holding rapiers which did not come into use until the reign of Elizabeth, six hundred years afterwards, %
Page 110
402 THE CLOWN’S REAL PIGLING. [Marcn, Hamlet and Laertes, to fight in character, should hack at each other with doubled-edged axes. And not content with such anachronisms as those al- ready indicated, Shakespeare gives to the Danes in the dark ages the English coroner’s inquest with its laws, and the funeral ceremonies of the Roman Cath- olic Church ; although the period of the story on which the tragedy is founded is four centuries before that at which Christianity was introduced into Denmark. Finally, the anachronism of this great tragedy is not limited to its material forms and physical conditions, to points of costume, of custom, or even of law. The anachronism most monstrous of all in “ Hamlet” is Hamlet hiniself, embodying as -he does in act and speech the thought, the spirit, the purpose of the tragedy. At any time of the many centuries during which the events of the tragedy may be sup- posed to have taken place, and certainly at that chosen, and well chosen, by Mr. Booth, such a character as Hamlet was impossible, or, if not such a character, at least a character sorevealing itselfin words. The period of the story which is the framework of the play, and that indicated by the events in the play itself, is one of barbarism and the reign of physical force, one in which Hamlet’s introspective philosophizing was as absolutely impossible as Polonius’s reference to the su- premacy of France in the realm of fashion. To Amleth the Dane, the soliloquy “To be or not to be,” and the musings in the churchyard, the reflections on man, indeedialmost every thought uttered by Shakespeare’s prince, were as inconceiv- able as a discourse on the electric telegraph or a discussion of the law of na- tions. Wise men live in all ages of the world’s progress, and among all peoples ; but speculations in psychology and introspective dissections of men’s hidden motives belong to periods of high intellectual culture, when brute force has long been subjected to reason, and the mind of man, grown familiar with the world’s out- side, begins to turn its eye upon itself. In the Iliad, the Nibelungenlied, the Chanson de Roland, and the Norse Sagas—those great and almost contemporary epics of rude times, like those in which the Hamlet presented to us in the old tale and at Booth’s Theatre lived—we find no trace of the speculative habit and power of mind, the representation of which in an extreme and morbid form is the chief end and purpose of Shakespeare’s tragedy. To attempt the representation of sucha play as this in a realistic style is preposterous. It seeks*the unknown and tries the impossible ; and more than all, it is at war with the very purpose and spirit of the work. In “ Hamlet,” cos- tume, scene, all material forms and physical conditions are nothing. Here, more even than in any other of his plays, Shakespeare deals with the naked soul of man. The scenery required is only enough to suggest the situations. And in- deed, to put “ Hamlet” on the stage as Shakespeare wrote it with realistic scenery would be a physical impossibility. In the ‘‘ Hamlet” of our stage, even with Mr. Booth’s intelligent and reverential restorations, much of the original is omitted. To present the succession of scenes that Shakespeare wrote in the style in which Mr. Booth produces it, would be beyond the ingenuity of the carpenter and the art of the scene painter. As to the costume, it may well be that of any period except our own—that of Elizabeth’s day, in which we may be sure it was first performed, that of Charles the First’s time, or even the bob-wig, broad-flapped velvet coat, and knee-buckles in which Garrick played it, or any other that would remove the action from associations with our practical and materialis- tic time. The only point as to the scenery and costume of this play which is absolute and essential to its proper presentation, is that ‘neither should attract any attention: a good point as to the scenery and costume of any play that rises above burlesque or spectacle, an important point as to high comedy and tragedy, , bat most important as to “ Hamlet” among all tragedies.
Page 111
1870. ] THE CLOWN’S REAL PIGLING. | 403 As the drama has declined, however, the play becoming less and the player more, the development of character less than striking situation, and a fine show more attractive than fine poetry, accuracy of costume has become a point of per- sonal vanity with actors and managers, and the placing of a buckle, the set of a ruff, and the height of a boot-heel are deemed worthy subjects of investigation and grave consultation. Mr. Fechter, admirable artist as he is, a man who would command attention and excite interest if he played all his parts in one costume, yields to this weakness, this unmistakable symptom, or rather sign, of the degra- dation of the drama, It is amusing, and somewhat pitiful, to see the little point he makes in the first act of “ Ruy Blas” of throwing sand over the letters which he writes at the dictation of the Duke. He does it with a little, a very little pro- nouncement, as if he would say, Please to take notice that I don’t leave the ink on this letter wet, and also that I don’t use blotting paper, which was unknown » at the period of this play. But if Mr. Fechter’s audience were absorbed in the interest of the scene—as Mr. Fechter’s audiences can hardly fail to be—they would not know whether he left the letters wet or not, or care whether he used sand or Moore’s patent blotter, or any other machine, so long as it was something that did not divert attention from the dramatic interest of the situation. To do that by scenery, or costume, or obtrusive conformity to ancient custom, whether correctly or incorrectly, is a vice, and one surely indicative of dramatic degenera- tion. But what, indeed, could be better evidence of such degeneration than the successful appearance of such an actor as Mr. Fechter in such a play as “ Ruy Blas”! . Mr. Fechter is an artist whose natural gifts and whose accomplishments place him high in the second rank of French actors. He is subtle, vivid, earnest, im- passioned, and knows the artistic value of the union of simplicity with strength. He has the rare ability of seeming absorbed in the situation of the moment, of forgetting himself and his audience in the emotion which he assumes, of throw- ing his whole being, mind, soul, and body, into one action. Of all actors seen here since I have known the stage, he is at once the most impulsive and the most picturesque. He seems to be borne without his will, if not against it, on the tide of his emotions, not to know where he is on the stage or in what position he has placed himself; and yet he never fails to be graceful and dignified, or to satisfy and please the eye by his mere attitude. He is an artist of such rare powers and high accomplishment that he could almost make Falstaff forget that he makes fritters of English; and yet his success also is indicative of the decay of the drama. That such histrionic ability as his should find its vehicle in such plays as “Ruy Blas” and “The Duke’s Motto” is a fact equally significant and de- plorable. These plays are without the least dramatic value, and almost entirely without dramatic meaning. The essential purpose of the higher drama is the develop- ment and revelation of character by the action and the words of the personages who are brought upon the scene. In the drama we learn to know the personages by our observation of themselves, as we know men in daily life. In stories we are told what they are, and see them through the eyes and weigh them with the judgment of others. Novels are more or less dramatic as they reveal character more or less through action or by description. The gradual disappearance of this dramatic element from the plays of modern times is one of the most impor- tant signs of the decline of the drama. This, and the importance attached’ to scenery and costume, and the fondness for the extravagant, the sensational, on the one hand, and on the ofher for that caricature of emotion which results in
Page 112
404 TE E CLOWN’S REAL PIGLING. [ MARCH, burlesque, shiew how little value is set by the public on real dramatic writing and acting. * Ruy Blas,” far from being a play worthy of a first-rate actor, is merely a se- ries of coarse theatrical contrivances to produce a certain number of situations in which any actor can make an impression. Look, for instance, at the scene in which the hero is introduced to the old Marquis of Santa Cruz as his kinsman. The Marquis is a little inclined to sniff at and to snub the young man. But the Duke says bluntly to the old man in a few words, “ He has a very great respect for you” (the speech is to that effect, and hardly longer), and in a moment the old hidalgo is mollified, and pronounces Ruy an admirable and an excellent young _ fellow; and the audience are satisfied and pleased with this coarse piece of work, which is worthy of a school-boy or a savage. It would be almost as well, al- most as worthy of the drama, to send the Marquis upon the stage with a label round his neck on which was written in large letters, “This is a vain, conceited old fool.” Leaving the work of the greatest of all dramatists out of considera- tion, imagine with what subtle revelation of character, what delicate unfolding of the processes of thought, and gradations of feeling Beaumont and Fletcher, or Ford, or even Middleton or Shirley, would have treated such a situation. And in the second act of the same play, consider fora moment (for it is not worthy of more than a moment’s consideration) the council-chamber scene. The mem- bers of the council bawl at each other for a few minutes about their various per- quisites, in language which has no dramatic interest or significance whatever, their brief, rude speeches having no fitness to the speakers, but each being as well suited to one as to another. And they answer their purpose, which is simply to make a situation in which the principal personage can enter and ha- rangue them in a high strain, full of sentiment noble enough, it is true, but of little more dramatic worth than the coarse and commonplace wrangling which calls it forth. The drama of the day is filled with, if it is not entirely made up of writing more or less like this ; and with this audiences are satisfied, if with it they have striking situations, realistic effects, and the fine show that is produced by pictur- esque scenery and costume. All which things are not to be sneered at; they are pleasant enough; they have their value as a means of theatrical eheatishe: ment; but they are not dramatic. | Take away from Robertson’s “ Ours” the march of the regiment, the falling into line, the word of command, the ring of the muskets, the wheel into conn: and the outburst of the regimental band (half indicated although they are through the speech and action of the personages); take away the scene in the hut in the Crimea, with the shell stew-pan and the whirl of snow through the opened door ; take away these and kindred effects, the costumes, and the real look of things, and say to how large audiences and how many of them would “Ours” be played? As well take away the moonlight and the Gypsy tableau from “ Rosedale,” which the public went to see for almost a year together, and which I sat out twice to the fall of the curtain with great pleasure. Tor I, at least, am-not virtuous, and there shall be more cakes and ale. All this is very charming pastime; but let those who know what has been written for the stage think a moment, and say whether all this is also not a very low form of the drama. Let them say whether the at- traction which takes our public to the theatre even to see good plays, great trage- dies, is dramatic, or whether it is not on the one hand a craving for coarse and strong sensation, and on the other a love of pictorial effects on a large eet of scenery and costume—in a word, of spectacle. lf any manager would prove that the drama and the taste for it are not
Page 113
1870. | THE CLOWN’S REAL PIGLING. 405. declining, let him produce and perform with reasonable profit a play in which there is no attraction of scenery or of costume, no calcium lights, no sensational situations or local hits, and in which the characters of the various personages are evolved during the progress of the piece by means of its events, and in language that will at least bear reading—a play from which the audience should come away without thinking or caring what any actor or actress wore, or whether the trees, the houses and the furniture seemed real and were of the period. The production and profitable performance of such a play would show indeed that the drama was holding its own as an intellectual entertainment. But who needs to be told that the production of a series of such plays, if such plays couid be ob- | tained, would ruin any manager who had not the purse of Fortunatus ? Is, then, the accompaniment of fine scenery and costume degrading to the drama? Can we not have good plays and good acting, and these things also ? It would seem not. Whenever scenery and cdstume are made so fine that they attract attention to themselves, they degrade the drama. When Hamlet comes before us, we should not care where Hamlet is or what he wears. Only let his surroundings not attract our attention, either by their careless unfitness or their elaborate fitness. For in either case, let him be personated by ever so great an actor, and we find that, will we nill we, they derogate from him. “Just to think,” said alady to me, radiant no less with delight than beauty, as she came from see ing the life and death of the Prince of Denmark—“ Just to think, the grave-digger must dig a real grave every night. I never saw more than a shovelful of earth ta- ken up before, but at Booth’s he takes up a whole barrelful. It’s perfectly splen- did.” Of another kind was the private performance of a part of “ Julius Caesar,” in which he who played Brutus was a man who would have had few rivals if the stage had been his profession. A lady praised his delivery of the speech over the dead body of Cesar, but added, “ 1t was n’t quite right to bring in that coffin.” Coffin there was none, except in the tones, the countenance, and the action of the man who said, “ My heart is in the coffin there with Cesar.” Real art is always low art. It may be excellent in itself, and admirable in its kind; but its kind is inferior. It would puzzle a modiste to tell the stuff or describe the texture of the drapery in any one of Raphael’s pictures, or Michael Angelo’s, or Correggio’s. It is simply drapery ; and were it more, the perfection in that respect would detract from the picture just in so far as it called for ad- miration. Satin and velvet and lace and leather in gezre pictures, if you please ; and they are very pretty in their way. Butthey are not great; their beauty is not a noble beauty ; and the age or the school which can produce only genre pictures is . a declining age or school—not even one that is rising. For in art the ideal always precedes the real. Then upon the real comes decay and death, with sometimes a resurrection. And the more nearly the artist, in any department of art, attains to the representation of the real seenting of what he portrays, the surer is he to sink to an inferior level. In art the rule is absolute that the more remote the substance in which an artist works is from seeming identity with that which is imitated, the higher the pleasure is in the imitation. Otherwise, manifestly the man who made little real landscapes by real little mountains, real little trees, and real little waterfalls, would eclipse Turner and Church. But what need of say- ing that his work would be scoffed at by all who know what artis? The ars celare artem is the art of concealing the artifice, the effort, not the art. Shakespeare seems to have had this truth in mind when he wrote— For through the painter you must see his skill, To find where your true image pictur’d lies, And the rustics were right in their preference of the mountebank’s squealing / \
Page 114
406 GLIMPSES INTO A PORTRAIT GALLERY. _ [Marcu, over that of the clown’s real pigling. For what they missed was that which is ‘necessary to the enjoyment of all art—the sevse that what they were called upon to admire was not the real thing, but an imitation. In proportion as this sense of unreality coexists with a lively impression of the thing imitated, in any art, is the exaltation of our pleasure. | RICHARD GRANT WHITE. GLIMPSES INTO:A PORTRAIT GALLERY. we ee HAT first my whetted vision took Were heads of single men, Enkindled heads, whence beamed a look Of supersensuous ken ; The men who carry giant loads Of costliest human work, And carry them without the goads That in coarse natures lurk ; Who, standing on firm promontories In gross tempestuous nights, Guide through the deep man’s perilled glories From their illumined heights. They hark the life, to others still, That aye creative stirs ; They read its law and speak God’s will, Divinest messengers, The men who breathe so sweet a breath, They never miss their youth ; And even in death they baffle death, Steeped in the life of truth. pie Here Moses on a mountain frowned, With looks forged inward far, His luminous front superbly crowned With one great angry star. There broad-browed Plato, listening Joyful with upward head, As he then heard the voices sing, To common ears so dead.
Page 115
1870.] GLIMPSES INTO A PORTRAIT GALLERY. ‘407 Emerging from a lurid smoke, His sad face sunk in seams, Dante glared wan, as one just woke From tearful, crimeful dreams. And near him Goethe’s calm wide orbs Fused all things in their glow: Their light the densest clods absorbs, As sunbeam drinketh snow. Fitly between such two was set Our Shakespeare’s hallowed face, Where thought with joy and sorrow met In sweetest bond of grace. Within a round of flashing steel A stalwart figure stood : It stirred me like a trumpet’s peal, As only Luther’s could. And many more, so splendent there The soul its raiment thaws, Their inmost being stripped so bare They blab life’s higher laws. Each picture looked a spirit, clear Of its mouldering fleshly clods, Revealing how divinely near Man’s being is to God’s. One imaged on a growling sea Jovge-eyed Columbus ; one The large secluded majesty Of selfless Washington. And others, from the whitest stone, In stature full or bust, Outbreathed a moral grandeur, won By love, and faith, and trust. GEORGE H, CALVERT.
Page 116
THE GALAXY MISCELLANY A MORNING AT SARONY’S HEN Oliver Cromwell asked that his portrait should represent his face just as it was, wart and all, he not only showed a trait of his character and an habitual mood of his mind, but he took his stand on the side of a certain school of art, the realistic. When Queen Elizabeth insisted that hers should be painted without that ugly dark spot (the shadow) under the nose, she also not only displayed the personal vanity which was the swaying element of _ her nature, but she, too, threw the weight of her royal influence, though ignorantly, on the side of the other school of art, the idealistic. Cromwell wished to be painted as he was; Elizabeth as she seemed, or as she thought she seemed. It may by no means be safely assumed that Cromwell was absolutely right and Elizabeth absolutely wrong; for art should represent objects rather as they seem than as they are; if, indeed, representing them as they are does not show them as they seem. Of what value is a portrait, for example, which, although it represents exactly every line and tint of a face, does not produce on the beholder the effect which the face itself produces? It fails in attaining the highest and most essential point of faithfulness, Now there are such portraits—portraits correct in form and color, which are yet without individuality; a truthfulness which may appear in a sketch that is not only unfinished but incomplete, a mere hint or memorandum for the painter. Of such portraits photography produces hundreds of thousands yearly. When Daguerre discovered this method of using the chemical qualities of sunlight, it was supposed that one of the benefits to be conferred by it was perfect portrai- ture of the human face and figure. And in truth it has made such portraiture attainable. But the experience of twenty-five years has proved that the attain- ment of such perfection is no mere result of delicate manipulation in applied chemistry. Photography, scouted at first by the painter—and with some rea- son—as a merely mechanical process, having only a ceftain utilitarian value, has been gradually rising until now it stands on the grade of a mixed art. Itis ina certain sense mechanical ; the perfection of its results does in'a measure depend upon the nicety of mechanical appliances and chemical manipulations; but to the attainment of its best effects in portraiture, and in even landscape, there goes something which is supplied by the sensitive organization and esthetic culture of the operator. Otherwise, with good light and good chemical preparation, any person well taught and practised in the processes of photography could produce good portraits ; and all persons so taught and practised would produce portraits equally correct and valuable. But the fact is, and it is now well known, that different operators produce different effects. Three photographers will produce three portraits of the same individual which are strikingly unlike, in spite of a certain likeness to their subject. And yet more, the same operator shall take three portraits of the same person within one quarter of an hour which shall be so unlike as hardly to be recognized as representations of the same indi- vidual. Ina word, the photographer has become an artist. The eminent pro- fessors of the art have each his style, his individual manner, which is recognizable by an acute and practised eye almost as easily as the manner of different painters. It is this style that gives their work its peculiar value and insures reputation, profit, success.
Page 117
1870.] THE GALAXY MISCELLANY. 409 Do you suppose that mere chance, or command_of resources, has enabled Bra- dy to produce that superb array of the most distinguished men in the country ? or that society decided blindly when Kurtz became the fashion? or that Sarony’s reputation as the picturesque photographer is the consequence of his having happened to take good likenesses of a fewcelebrated actors? Such things never merely happen ; they are the results of natural gifts and hard study. Sarony’s portrait of Ristori as Marie Antoinette is a work of which Delaroche need not have been ashamed. True, it is the product of three factors. The skilful use of the chemical qualities of light, and the marvellous power of the actress her- self in summoning into her face and attitude an expression of the emotions of the scene, are two; the third is the ability, the artistic ability, of the opera- tor. He has succeeded in selecting, and then in fixing by a process almost in- stantaneous, the position and expression that will transmit Ristori’s grandest moment to posterity. The product is noble as a mere work of art. The por-. traiture aside, it is valuable for itself. There is mental anguish in every line of that face; there is tragedy in the very sweep of that drapery. Here is Bryant, most difficult of subjects, of whom the photographic and even the painted por- traits are almost innumerable; but until these heads appeared nothing was quite satisfactory. This is the man: strong, simple, serene, benign, venerable. Here is not only the feature but the spirit. And in these portraits of Henry Ward Beecher, see the boldness, the subtlety, the flexibility, the intellectual and mag- netic force, and also the humor, of the Plymouth Church preacher for the first time all embodied. A skilful artist with the pencil, Sarony has made the picto- rial capacity of the camera a study. He can-do with it almost anything within the range of the draughtsman’s art—glorify or caricature at his will. Discarding those few formal poses so familiar and so oppressive in photographs, he is able to make true and characteristic portraits in positions so various and so free that they rival not only those of the portrait painters, but those in which figures are represented in gezve or historical paintings. He is a master of light and shade, and produces heads which repeat the startling effects of Rembrandt’s etchings with a truthfulness to the facts of nature that Rembrandt in the attainment of his effect sometimes disregarded. See this head of a well-known and beautiful actress. The whole of the face is in shadow, except the high outlines of the features, and these are defined, not by shadows, but by brilliant lines of light. And there is a woman whom, having a beautiful profile and beautiful shoulders, Sarony boldly photographed with her back toward us, its fine undulations re- vealed in a broad mass of softened light, and her head turned so that we catch its finest outlines. Even if you have never seen the original, you covet this pho- tograph as a fine picture. These observations we make in the exhibition room, where Mr. Sarony’s business partner, Mr. Campbell, presides, as he does in every other part of the establishment except the operating room, where Sarony himself is absolute. For a great photographic establishment is a complicated affair, with many assis- tants mechanical and artistic, and must be directed with system and adminis- trative ability. Mr. Sarony could not do so much work, or do it so well, were it not that he is relieved of this detail, and that another hand runs the machine for which he supplies the steam. But Mr. Campbell intimates to a mild-eyed young lady that she can give us a pass to the operating room, and thus provided we ascend. Glare, bareness, screens, iron instruments of torture, and a smell as of a drug and chemical warehouse on fire in the distance. A photographer’s operat- ing room is always something between a barn, a green-room, and a laboratory.
Page 118
410 THE GALAXY MISCELLANY. [Marcu, Here we find a few others like ourselves waiting their turns like the cripples at the pool of Bethesda. Sarony himself, no taller than his namesake Napoleon, and quite as peremptory, is listening to the complaints of a man who is dis- satisfied with the proofs of his sitting. A hard-featured, money-making, Western pork-packer, who is fifty-five years old and looks every hour of it, in the hard lines of whose leathern face devotion to the one great object of life may be traced, it might naturally be supposed that he would be quite indifferent to the degree of youth and comeliness that appears in his portrait. Vain expectation ! There are many astonishing revelations of human nature in the photographer’s rooms. Sarony and the sun have dealt kindly with this man, and have taken off at least five years from the record of time upon his face. But he is dissatisfied and ungrateful. He points out faults here and there, and Sarony with a erayon now softens an outline and now tempers an expression. But still the man, see- ing himself as others see him, grumbles. At last the artist turns to him some- what sharply, and yet with good nature, saying, “ How young would you like to be made, sir? I could make you twenty-five, but my reputation could not bear that. Thirty-five is as low as I can go.” ‘Oh no,” is the reply, with a sudden manifestation of modesty, ‘make me look full forty-three,” drawing a fine line between forty and forty-five. “I'll try to satisfy you, sir ;” and Adonis departs, How can he look himself in the face when he shaves those mahogany jaws to- morrow ? | And now a lady steps forward for her sitting, an acquaintance with whom ad- mits us with her behind the screen,’but not quite to the artist’s satisfaction. For the photographer does not like to have the sitter’s attention diverted by even the consciousness of the presence of a third party. She begins to talk to him and he to watch her. He sees that she is pretty, but with that kind of prettiness which consists of expression, vivacity, and brightness of eye, more than regu- larity of feature. These are the most difficult faces to photograph satisfactorily to the friends of the sitter. He places her, makes her take two or three positions, tempers the shadows as many times by the adjustment of screens and curtains, and at last says suddenly, ‘ There, so, if you please,” and sweeps his hand down the skirt and settles it with a look of satisfaction. The movement attracts her attention ; and more concerned about her dress than herself, she turns her head quickly and gives her gown one of those pulls a little behind and below the waist that seem necessary to the perfect tranquillity of the female mind, and— an exclamation breaks from Mr. Sarony: ‘Ah, why could you not stand still as I placed you?” “But, my dress, sir!” “But me, madam!” with a tragi- comic air, yet not without serious meaning. “Do I count for absolutely nothing in this matter?” Then turning to us: “It’s gone, hopelessly. One cannot do that twice immediately in succession.” The best is done that can be done, how- ever, and the lady descends to give place to another. The new-comer is a radiant beauty, who is accompanied by a gentleman whose admiration she accepts with the air of a queen receiving tribute. If she but knew how much more admirable a little graciousness would make her! He complains that of several photographers not one has done this lady justice, and -exhibits half a dozen different cards. Mr. Sarony silently passes them to us, who boldly remain and assume the part of an assistant. The complaint is reasonable. Of all the portraits even the best degrades, vulgarizes, and grossens that lovely face, and two or three of them are so hideously unlike that they could not be recognized by either superficial or close examination. Strange, too; for the lady proves to be a most docile sitter, and one of fhose who take position with grace and retain it with ease. Delighted with his subject, Sarony takes her
Page 119
1870. ] THE GALAXY MISCELLANY. 4It in half a dozen different attitudes. She then asks to be allowed to make a slight change in her costume, and disappearing, returns in a few moments with her head-dress entirely changed, much simplified and diminished. Two more sit- tings in this state, and then the gentleman approaches her and asks a question. She plainly refuses a request. He evidently asks again, and she again says Ne. He presses his suit and becomes solicitous. Her cheek flushes, her docility vanishes, and the conversation becomes audible. “What! with no chignon at all, and my hair just dragged behind my ears! I never heard of such a thing; it’s perfectly preposterous.” “But you said you would; and that one will be worth all the rest.” ‘Well, I’m sure I’ve had two taken in braids, and nothing can be prettier than braids.” “Braids are very pretty, but there is one thing much prettier.’ “What?” The question is asked not in words, but with a quick — turn of the face and a look of inquiry. “Your head.” “Bother!” for she is beyond the mollifying effect of compliment. And, indeed, what woman is there who could be flattered into being photographed, or seen at a reception, without a head-dress or in a two-year-old bonnet, by being told that she would look as’ superb as Juno, as wise as Minerva, and as beautiful as Venus? So she says, “Bother! why do you want me to make a fright of myself?” His countenance falls, and she sees that he is sadly disappointed and even displeased. Her cheeks flush deeper, and her eyes glisten. “Well, if Imust, I must;” and she begins to tear down her head-dress with reckless hands. ‘“ You’re very unkind to make me do this just for your selfish pleasure ;” and she bursts into tears of mingled grief and vexation; whereupon he evidently falls prostrate, and—as we can see by dumb show, for his voice is inaudible—entreats her not to do that to which she is so unwilling. But she has the bit between her teeth ; and now she will do, despite his entreaties, what before she was so reluctant to do in com- pliance with them. Nothing so fell of purpose as a woman determined to be a martyr; and what martyrdom, what stake, what rack, what gibbet is equal to being pilloried without a fashionable head-dress that in five years will be ridicu- lous! Disdaining the artifices of the toilet as unbecoming the solemnity of the occasion, with a turn of her hand she sweeps her hair behind her head and as- cends the platform as if it were a scaffold. Her companion ventures to put out a finger to make some change in the position of the hair which is the cause of allthis woe. Ignorant, presuming creature! She withers him with a glance, and draws herself away with a look that says, “ Touch me not with unholy hands, for Iam consecrated to sacrifice.” To Sarony, in his mingled office of high priest and executioner, she submits with a mien of offended dignity and edifying meek- ness. The portrait is taken; but what will come of that strange sitting probably only he and she, and her now utterly abject and humiliated companion, will ever know. G. THINGS OF TO-DAY. OUR CIVIL SERVICE. F a blacksmith wanted an assistant, would he try to find one that had learned ] something about horse-shoeing, or would he take the first painter and glazier out of work that came along? If a storekeeper needed a bookkeeper, would he prefer a young man who had passed through a commercial schoci, or. would he put up with a boy who had just mastered the “three R’s”? Does any sane man take his boots to his physician to be mended, or ask ‘his tailor to con-
Page 120
412 THE GALAXY MISCELLANY. [MARCH, duct a case in court for him? And does anybody fear an aristocracy of black- smiths or bookkeepers or doctors, because they have served an apprenticeship to their business, or in other words, have learned it ? Such questions appear almost childish ; yet exactly the same absurdity is ha ‘bitually committed by the people of the United States in the choice of their agents and public servants. And it is astonishing how high, as well as how far, | this absurd bugbear of ‘‘aristocracy ” has spread. ‘ Wouldn’t this Civil Ser- - vice bill create a special and dangerous class ?” asked a Senator (!) the other day when Carl Benson was trying to open the subject to him. But the members of Congress foster this pernicious delusion because they are unwilling to lose their present patronage. ‘ That’s what’s the matter.” The people need to have their work done well, expeditiously, and cheaply. (The last desideratum is involved in the other two, for all bad work and all un- necessarily circuitous work is dear in the long run.) And public business, like all other business not of the very lowest order, can only be done well and expe- ditiously by those who have been educated to do it. What a lovely spectacle we present to “all the world and the rest ob maa- kind” when one of our foreign ministers commences a defence of himself thus : On my arrival in Taprobana, I was of course ignorant of the language, laws, history, manners, and usages of the people!” And yet he might have added, with very slight exaggeration, “and in the interests of republican simplicity I have ‘done my best to remain ignorant of them up to the present time.” THE DARIEN EXPEDITION. Our expedition to survey the lower part of the great American isthmus has by no means attracted the public attention which it deserves. True, just before its starting the laurels of M. Lesseps had slightly disturbed our slumbers, and there was a little flutter about oz interoceanic canal; but sundry wise men pooh-poohed the expectation with hints of impossible locks and impracticable tun- nels. Now the canal, though a very important part, is still only a part of the subject. We have good reason to believe that gold may be found all over—or rather all under—the country. Certainly the Spanish discoverers and early set- tlers procured it in abundance, till they were driven out by a combination of the natives and the English buccaneers. Then there are the geographical and scientific explorations. This little territory, lying at our doors, as it were, is lit- erally less known than the interior of Africa. Up to 1850 or later, all the geo- graphers, including Humboldt, believed in the existence of traces of a mythical Spanish canal (the Raspadura), and to this day the position of certain lakes is mere matter of guess-work on the maps. Our Darien expedition is really one of the events of the century, however unpretending and unnoticed in its begin- nings. PORTABLE SOUP. “ Tempora mutantur, magazines mutantur in illis,” quite as much as anything else. The young reader who wishes to know what an English magazine of the old style in its best and last days was, may spend an afternoon or two (say at the Society Library) in studying a few years of “ Fraser” between 1840 and 1860. At that time the seria: had not attained its present development, and much of the magazine was made up of monographs—exhaustive, or nearly exhaustive essays ©. various subjects. Long they often were, but by no means dull. Some of the best men in England wrote for these magazines ; yet the remuneration was very
Page 121
1879.] THE GALAXY MISCELLANY. 413 moderate, ten shillings (about two dollars forty-five cents) for a closely-printed, double-columned page. (Some confusion between half founds and half dollars must have given rise to our newspaper canard some years ago about Thackeray’s writing in early life for fifty cents a page.) On the other hand, the contributor, once acknowledged as such, was received by the editor quite on the level of a fellow being. It rarely happened that a sizgle word of his MS. was changed in print. Of course, cutting down was sometimes necessary, but it was done by himsedf, after “setting up.” ‘ Here is a proof of twelve pages; we have only room for ten ;” and he was left to make the excisions where he pleased. The contribu- tors were apt to form a set or clique of their own around the publisher. The circulation rarely exceeded 4,000 copies. Of the American typical magazine of the same period, it may be sufficient to: say that it had about the same circulation as its English contemporary, and was chiefly made up of voluntary and gratuitous contributions by the editor’s per- sonal friends and acquaintances. | Nous avons changé tout cela—very much indeed. While the circulation of magazines has so increased as to be counted by tens and even hundreds of thou- sands, their number has increased also. The fashion for every Jarge publishing. house to have a magazine of its own sprang up simultaneously in the two countries. Such is the appetite for fugitive literature in England that the purveyors of the ‘commodity seem at their wits’ end to supply it. Any ‘constant reader” of Eng- lish magazines must have observed their recent tendency to reproduce incidents: of local history. The unfortunate prejudice of most Anglo-Saxon editors against translations (unfortunate because founded on a total misconception of both the difficulty and the merit of good translations from good authors) causes many versions to be palmed off upon them for original works. Articles are even stolen bodily from histories and cyclopedias. Certain English periodicals seem to be the favorite victims of literary swindlers. ‘“ Once a Week” has been particularly unfortunate in this respect. Except in the matter of unacknowledged translations now and then, our own fugitive writers show no such poverty of resource, Of commonplace fluency on the: part of the men, and lay-figure copiousness on the part of the women, there is no end, and our popular editors must always have barrels of manuscript at their dis- posal. The result of this overwhelming accumulation of matter on the one hand, and certain easily-accounted-for changes in the public taste on the other, has been a demand for short, condensed, telling articles, bearing about the same relation to the old magazine paper which the “item” does to the old newspaper paragraph. Contributors are expected to sake portable soup of their ideas. This expecta- tion is sometimes carried to lengths positively grotesque. When that most compiicated of snarls, the Schleswig-Holstein row, was just in mid tangle, an ed- itorial friend requested me to furnish him, in consideration of the sum of twenty dollars, lawful money of the United States, with an article four pages long, which should explain, simplify, do up, and exhaust the aforesaid dispute. My answer was of anature to discourage him from pursuing his researches in that direction. The readers of his periodical were not edified to the extent of four pages on the Schleswig-Holstein difficulty. | Although this new system is convenient and captivating, and from a business point of view has some great advantages, its literary results are less unex- — ceotionable. It bears fruit in broad and sweeping assertions without the neces- sary qualifications and caveats, in the substitution of epigram for truth and ase sumption for argument, in partial, imperfect, and one-sided views. Nor does it
Page 122
414 THE GALAXY MISCELLANY. [MaRcH, always coincide with editorial interest. One of the first literary journals in the country died prematurely last year. Other causés may have hastened its dis- solution, but it perished principally of a passion for portable soup. You cannot coax three or four first-class essays every week into as many columns. It is probably the habit of cutting down articles to the portable soup form which has led our editors to be so very free and easy in their treatment of man- uscript. We have heard so much of the duties of contributors, how they ought to write on paper of such a size and fold it in such a way, and be terse, and witty, and graphic, and exhibit all the literary and most of the business virtues for so much a page, that I think it about time for the contributors to have their innings ; and with permission of Divine Providence and the Church—or the two Churches—I intend to take this opportunity of liberating my soul slightly. I protest against an editor’s meddling with the style of his regular contributors. The writer of an article in a respectable periodical must be supposed not only qualified to treat of his subject, but the best qualified writer that can be obtain- ed—else why does not the editor employ some othér person, or write the article himself? And his manner is an essential part of his treatment; “the style is part of the man” (Buffon). The alteration or omission of @ single word may weaken, pervert, or destroy the force not merely of the sentence, but of the whole paragraph in which it occurs. And the more careful, and conscientious, and experienced the writer is, the harder does the practice bear upon him. If he throws off his articles merely as “ pot-boilers,” he may not care what becomes of them after they have been paid for. If he is a green beginner, he may be more flattered than annoyed at his editor’s voluntary collaboration. But if he has a professional pride in his work, a reasonable respect for himself, and an honest consideration for his public, the criticism implied in perpetual petty alter- ations is discouraging, mortifying, almost insulting. Condensation in some form may often be a physical necessity, but the proper person to condense is the au- thor. If editors’ needs and the public taste require portable soup, the original concocters should at least be allowed to season it after their own fashion. In this case, as in most others, too many cooks spoil the broth. NOVELS AND SERIALS. Much has been said within the last few years about the different conditions of novel-writing in England and America, and the effects of the serial on ficti- tious literature in both countries. Not that the magazine serial is a new thing. It is almost as old as the magazine itself. Some of the best standard works of fiction belonging to the old schools were originally published as magazine se- rials; ¢.g., “Tom Cringle’s Log,” in “ Blackwood.” But the serial, as we have elsewhere noted, did not then occupy so much space in the magazine, was not considered an essential feature, and was not always, or even generally, re- published in book form. Had the cant term Jadding been then invented, it would often have been applied to. the serials, whereas it is now often applied to nearly all the periodical excef¢ the serials. Indeed, between serials and porta- ble soup, the old class of magazine writers—the essayists, monographers, and reviewers—seems likely to be killed off altogether on our side of the water. Perhaps it will be said that this is just as well, while a supply of the article re- mains in England, always ready for annexation gratis. It has often been asserted that the serial plan of publication destroys the novel as a complete work of art by tempting the writer to cut it up into a suc- cession of tableaux. But this may be doubted. Victor Hugo and Erckmann- &
Page 123
1870. | THE GALAXY MISCELLANY. 415 Chatrian do not write serials, yet their works break up into parts with the tab- leaux at convenient intervals quite as readily as if they had been written on pur- pose fora monthly. George Sand (in her later manner) and Anthony Trollope always write serials, but their novels show few traces of sensational construc- tion. We may say broadly that the natural tendency of the romance is to melo- drama, of the novel proper to quiet realism, independently of their form of pub- lication. The number of novels, and readable novels too, published in England is sur- prising, especially when we consider that the educated Englishman has usually a supreme contempt for novels, and will only condescend to read the very best. Apparently the principal consumers of them are the young ladies at the watering- places. An English fashionable watering-place is all horseback and circulat- ing library, as an American ditto is all dress and dance. The next marvel is how all these novels can pay. It may simplify the situation to learn that the authors are generally zo¢ paid. Some years ago there was a prominent London publisher (and I have little doubt that he still follows the practice) who would ac- cept for publication anything short of absolute rubbish in the shape of a novel on these conditions: “ Zf the success of the work justified the production of another, the author should have a share in the profits of the second ”’—a pretty safe double contingency. ‘And thus,” said my informant, “he keeps up a run- ning fire of novels, not one of which is paid for.” But where did they find a sale? At the circulating libraries, whose name is legion, and which are bound to have several copies of every new novel. Rather a different state of things here. I wonder what my friend Henry Holt would do if the MS. of a roman de société walked into the little Broome street snuggery with Carl Benson behind it. Would he observe that “if the success of the work,” etc., or would he execute a very rapid change of base? Of course the absence of international copyright tells here. The English pub. lisher, as we have seen, must be content with a bad novel for nothing, while the American publisher can get a good one for nothing. But there seem to be other causes outside of this since the days of Cooper and Hawthorne. During the past lustrum I have read some and tried to read many of our na- tive productions called novels, and what most struck me in them was their utter unreality and unlifelikeness. It is an amusing paradox that in a land where there is so much communication and intermixture of all classes and sets, it should be so hard to find a correct written delineation of any class or set. Thus we have novels of (so-called) fashionable life, the characters of which resemble no fashionables ever seen in an American city, or, for that matter, in any part of the world, save perhaps on the stage. Other kinds and classes of our popula- tion are similarly caricatured. Probably the strangest mistakes are those made by ladies in endeavoring to represent the manners and conversation of certain varieties of the human species with which they have a very distant and imperfect acquaintance. I once chanced, in opening a work by a tolerably popular female author, to light on one of the obscenest words in the language, evidently used in pure ignorance of its meaning. The few (and few they are) among our novelists who can represent real men and women fail in the construction of their plots, so that they make good sepa- rate chapters, but cannot achieve a good whole. ; Perhaps it is as well thus. Why should we have native novels any more than native essays, if we can get them gratis from over seas? Such, at least, is the opinion of most of our publishers, who are assumed by the wisest body of
Page 124
416 THE GALAXY MISCELLANY. [MARcH, men in the country (meaning of course Congress) to represent the literary in- terests of America.* CLIMATE, AND INDUSTRY. The advantages of our Southern climate, not only for invalids, but for many who follow outdoor occupations which the long dreary winters of our North in- terrupt for months, are only just beginning to receive due attention. Nor is the slow dawning of this truth on the public mind to be wondered at. There was an old popular prejudice just the other way: “ White men can’t work at the South; ” it was one of the standard apologies for slavery before slavery grew so rampant as to disdain apology. And there was a certain plausibility of historical illustra- tion in support of the theory. Look at the lazy Spaniard and Italian compared with the active Englishman ; see the effects of the climate on the English in India, etc., etc. But the inference was more plausible than correct. Certainly, the shores of the Mediterranean produced anything but inactive people in ancient times. True, the climate may have been alittle less mild then than now; the sum- mit of Soracte does not now whiten in winter, nor do the adjacent streams stop by reason of the hard frost; but that it was a mild climate the dress and archi- tecture of the period prove. And how was it in the sixteenth century? . Clear- ly, the idleness of Spain and Italy is to be traced to those ages of misgovern- ment which made labor dishonorable and encouraged professional mendicancy. As to the English in India, we must remember that they have always looked on that country as a place of temporary sojourn for gain, and have hardly made serious endeavors to acclimatize themselves or their children ; also that many of them keep up those habits of hard drinking which only a cold, foggy climate ean render possible without serious injury. . And still, in spite of these drawbacks, the English who have the will to do so really accomplish a great deal of hard work in India. Let us admit that the summer of our Gulf States lasts from the first of May till the first of November. The Northern winter occupies a great part of the other six months, and during half of it most outdoor work is forcibly interrupted. But, the malaria! To hear some people talk of Southern malaria, a stranger would suppose that there were no chills and fever in the Middle or Western States, no marshy lands or stagnant waters at the North, no Northern children born with ague in their systems. Even were this not so, the large class of diseases either directly caused or greatly aggravated by cold, such as pulmonary complaints, af- fections of the throat, rheumatism, heart disease in its various forms (a most fre- quent product of rheumatism), might fairly be set off against malaria. But after physical prejudices are removed, social obstacles remain to be over- come. Many Northerners of all classes and grades of fortune are deterred from emigrating southward, not by fear of violence—for that is only to be dreaded in regions like Texas where the natives themselves have never dwelt safely, and it would be a small compliment to Charleston, for instance, to say that its streets are safer at any hour of day or night than those of New York—but by the apprehen- sion of being snubbed and sent to Coventry, and scowled at and worried in va- rious petty ways. Here is the main difficulty after all; for not only do our peo- * Surely why? But will our friend Carl Benson stop to tell us what novels worth publishing are, as a matter of fact, even got “ gratis’? from over seas? He writes in evident ignorance of the fact that the ad- vanced sheets of the best foreign novels, as a rule, command a higher price from American publishers than the original manuscripts of American novelists. —ED1TOoR. + Strong alcoholic stimulants may be used with advantage in the moist seasons of a hot climate, but stricte ly as tonics, not as beverages. :
Page 125
1870. } THE GALAXY MISCELLANY. 417... ple everywhere ridiculously overvalue the opinion and favor of the local Mrs. — Grundy, but the state of feeling in some parts of the South is so peculiar, that it requires much natural tact and acquired world-knowledge on the part of a North- erner to preserve his own dignity without unnecessary violence to the suscepti- bilities of the people.- But we have good reason to believe that this obstacle is a transient one. Whatever bitterness exists at the South is most intense where — there has been most suffering; this is only human nature. We may therefore reasonably suppose that returning prosperity will dispel bad feeling ; and con- sequently, all Northern capital that goes to the South, all Northern money that is spent at the South, all Northern labor that develops the South, really helps to reconcile the two sections, though the effect may not in every instance be imme- diately apparent. . CARL BENSON. FINDING WINGS. HE sits and sings by the open door, For the balmy Spring is abroad to-day ; The crocus lifts up its golden cup, And drinks to the ides of the blooming May. She sees the sentient Summer near In the pink and white of the grassy slope, And her young face pales with a phantom fear ; But her heart is happy with love and hope, And she wishes the phebe would come once more, And build a nest by the open door. Now July quickens in all the air Unfolding its beauty. What joy is hers! For her light foot touches the cradle there, Whenever her dreaming darling stirs. As she steals to the shadowy porch to catch The breath of roses that climb the eaves, A bird darts out from the startled thatch ; She parts the lattice, and lifts the leaves, And lo! one little warm egg—no more— In a nest of twigs by the open door! The rose has dropped in the rueful rain, And Autumn is blue on the bending hill: Her young heart breaks with a nameless pain, For the cradle is hushed, and the house is still. “The phebe has hers—but mine is gone!” And she seeks the porch with a tearful eye ; But the young bird, too, is fledged and flown, And it flutters and sings in the tranquil sky! Ah! mother! how birdie and baby soar From the soft little nests by the open door! Wo. A. CROFFUT.
Page 126
DRIFT- WOOD. POPULAR LECTURES. TEN years ago the social pundits who settle so many things told us lectures were going out of fashion, which was, perhaps, the hardest thing they could say of lectures. We all know how this prophecy failed, and how, though there be some fickleness in cities which boast of beer gardens and opera bouffe (for these rivals certainly do cut into the patronage of the platform), yet, take the country over, the lecture is a deeply-rooted institution. Like writing for the newspapers, lecturing has grown to a species of profession; and if journalism should ever fully reach that rank, this, its sister calling, will follow it to equal honors. Already the lecture plays a Jarge part in academic culture, as, for instance, at Har- vard; lawyers and doctors use the platform like the press ; a thousand clubs in America listen every year to ten thousand lectures. There are men and women, able-bodied and strong-minded, whose business is lecturing— this is their visible means of support—and who, if they dabble a little in farming, or law, or divinity, make these pastimes auxiliary to the real work of their lives, which is lec- turing. They not only lecture for a liveli- hood, but make it pay.; and whenever their old lectures are threadbare, they print them and write new ones. There are bureaus where commercial colleges and mercantile libraries may order lectures by the dozen or gross, and where an order will be filled at a fair living percentage on such a bill, for ex- ample, as this : ; NorTH PLATO PHILOGLOSSIAN SOCIETY, To ATLANTIC AND GREAT WESTERN LEC- TURE COMPANY, + - - = = = = = Dr To 12 lots prime, extra, and middling, as per your order, say: 2 poets, at $25 per poet, - - - - - + = =$ 50 1 Aictic traveller, - - - + - - = = + + 50 1 Baron Munchausen - - - - = = = = = 100 1 Elocutionist, - -“-+ © Ss 2. eb sk 2” ge 1 Congressman (Democrat), - - - - + = = 30 1 Congressman (Republican), - - - - - = 30 r Actress (p@nitent-but piquant), - - - - - 50 3 Divines (with side whiskers), at $40, - - - 1 Editor, at $5 and expenses, - - - - - - $545 “ Lectures, sir!” said Dr. Johnson (who, I believe, never said anything quotable with- 29:3 out a “sir ”’ in it)—“ Lectures, sir ! what man would go to hear that imperfectly at a lec- ture which he can read at leisure in a book?” A great “ Roundabout Paper” refers pleasantly to this dictum, in a dis- course upon Christmas pantomimes: “A philosopher was giving a lecture to young folks at the British Institution, But when this diversion was proposed to our young friend Bob, he said, ‘ Lecture? No, thank you. Not as I knows on,’ and made sar- castic signals on his nose.” Upon which Thackeray adds, “ 7 never went, of my own choice, to a lecture ; that I can vow.” But, as we all know, many men and women go to hear at lectures what they can but will not readin books ; and this, indeed, is one of the uses of the lecture. Many a clerk, mechanic, seamstress, salesman, sales- woman, takes a lecture as a mild “lark,” who never turns the covers of a treatise, after the hard day’s work is done. It is wonderful how much information, suggestion, taste, criticism, enthusiasm, curiosity, mo- rality, ambition have been insidiously spread through communities by this device of the lecture ; how it has sown the seed-grain of thought, and nurtured the fruit of wholesome discussion. To a hard-working man a book is often, despite himself, a night-cap in which he regularly dozes as often as he tries iton. To a brain-working man—an editor, lawyer, or engineer—a book is often a weari- ness, because he wants less print for his eyes, not more. The lecturer comes with his hour’s quintessence of'a month’s thought, a year’s travel, a life’s experience and ob- servation. He approaches, not with a quarto volume of science, but with the pith of the quarto ; perhaps instead of words he oc- casionally resorts to the language of signs, and tells a long story in one stroke of his battery or dip of his litmus-paper. “As to popular lectures,” said Prof. Faraday, “which at the same time are to be respecta- ble and sound, none are more difficult to find. Lectures which really teach will never be popular ; lectures which are popular will never really teach.” Yet, after all, the same objection may be laid at the door of books, and we must nevertheless make popular books of science. Lectures and books both teach—lectures less than books, but yet in
Page 127
1870. } a school that books do not always reach. Some people hear that do not read, and some will see and comprehend things who neglect descriptions of things, as there are travellers who will learn much of foreign countries but refuse to read about them. Lectures have also this advantage over books, that they give you not only the mat- ter but the man—the soul behind the sub- stance, the worker together with his work. Print can never vie with personality; and one ofthe ends served by lectures is to put on exhibition people more or less illustrious. Is it the same to us whether we read the “Four Georges” or hear them from Thack- eray? Would anybody that ever saw this writer on the platform, pretend that ‘ hear- ing imperfectly” was not better than ‘ read- mg at leisure in his book”? The charm of personality, to all but a few of the public, is lost without the lecture. In this charm is included, first, the delight (which I maintain to be not silly, but honorable) of seeing great men worth the seeing; next, a magnetism of presence ; thirdly, those helps which even zenius, art, and erudition cannot despise, to wit, voice, gesture, pose, subtle modulation, and, above all, characteristic expression ; finally, a certain gain of fresh apprehension of the man, whereby not only a single even- ing’s entertainment but other books and works may become luminous with new and clearer meaning. At least, I know that having once heard a great man speak in pub- lic, I never afterwards can divest any of his speeches and writings from the personal im- pression he has created. I seem to hear his voice, and inevitably pronounce his books mentaily as he could and would have read them orally. Once let a man hear the twang of Greeley, and thereafter the “ Tri- bune’s ” resonant leaders on “ Protection ” ring with it, and the face peers through the type. The tumultuous splendor of Phillips, once heard in “ The Lost Arts,” forever re- sounds like a Niagara adown the columns of the “ Anti-Slavery Standard.” The less impetuous and. impassioned, but not less skilful and adroit, platform oratory of Em- erson—which illustrates not so singularly the uses of speech as of expressive silence— the power of well-measured Aazses, carrying, by their contrast, a telling emphasis to every utterance—this, too, is a fatal spell, once ° heard, and thereafter no sentence of Emer- son can be read but*as he might pronounce it. I say that we carry away from the lec- ture infinitely more than the book can give us, namely, the man, and henceforth have DRIFT-WOOD. -“ universologist.” 419 corrected our faulty interpretation of what he might have meant by the assurance of what he must have meant. When once we have heard Rachel or Ristori cry “Ciel!” we cannot come upon the word afterwards in dramatic literature without remembering its whispered horror. Now, the lecture is to the book what the stage is to the play, and very much more, because it is the play- wright too, and no mere mocking-bird of elocution. He acts his drama before our eyes. On the other hand, this very virtue of lec- tures is abused, so that while vain nobodies, who ought to be in perpetual eclipse, are forever putting themselves up on pedestals to be seen, lyceums lend their platforms indifferently to notorious characters of any sort, whether chaplains, Congressmen, sol- diers, stage-drivers, jailers, traders, poets, painters, or forgers. When people flock to mere newspaper notoriety, it is a different matter. What I refer to as being natural and useful is that feeling which made people who had read Dickens for thirty years yo to see his face and hear his voice : lectures, so used, are keys to current literature. I own, too, to having spoken rather of possible than present lecture-systems, and admit that nine- tenths of them are now waste or worse ; but it is in this respect with lectures as with books, and perhaps as many of the one are not worth reading as of the other are not worth hearing. So long as the current of the age sets the way it does, namely, upon individual study, thought, and expression, instead of on insti- tutional creed and dogma, lectures may as- pire to a lofty level of favor and use. Di- vision of labor makes us eclectic in opinion, and we take what each genuine expert gives us, on the old principle of trusting each man in his ownart. We find ourselves volunteer disciples of many thinkers, instead of forced pupils in a single dame-school, We listen to a man where he appears reasonable, and to his rival where he is not; so that politi- cal and other beliefs are more of a patch- work than of yore, and systems must be fed from more sources. ‘“ Universologies”” may possibly be useful for fact, but hardly for opinion, which last, however, is, I believe, the special virtue they claim ; for, after all is said and done, the sage who plumes himself on his four-square, all-embracing system, is taken by his readers as one element in sheer “universologies”: each man is his own The specialist is rather the man for the hour, and such is often the
Page 128
420 3 DRIFT-WOOD. modern lecturer—a student, thinker, ob- server, actor, in some matter of public in- terest or use. We say “modern lecturer,” and yet his is one of the oldest of professions, dating back to the glories of the Stoa Peecile. ‘True, we oftener find a zany than a Zeno at the lyceum table ; but teaching assemblies by the voice is ancient. Journalism is the new profession, lecturing the old. Divines and orators of twenty centuries have adorned it, from Mars Hill to the Meionaon, and from the bema to the stump. Lecturing is but a preaching, to which we moderns have simply added scope, so that it may treat not more of religion than of romance, not more of sacred than of scientific themes, not more of patriotism than of practical family life. Everett the orator, Emerson the philosopher, are distinctively lecturers, whose spoken words, instinct with personality and electric with sympathy, will have been powerful in moulding the lives and actions of their auditors. Modern times give the individual heart and hope and a chance, even if cut achift from the party; and with each dis- establishment of institutional ideas, the lec- ‘turer finds a new fetter knocked off. It is only painful to end one’s reflections on this subject by taking up the winter’s programme of the Lincolnville lecture-club, and so to discover that we have been talking mainly of what lectures might be, and that at pres- ent too little room is found for poets, philo- sophers, orators, travellers, artists, scholars, heroes, divines, and too much for pretentious people and clowns. COURT AND CORPORATION. Does any GALAXY reader recall that an- tique picture of the Pest—a monster striding across the face of the earth with a pair of weapons that look like flails, and felling hap- less nations, right and left, by thousands at a blow? One of our modern scourges, that pest whose prey is rich corporations, and which so prizes money as to scorn taking life, is also armed with terrible flails. This giant thresher is the New York Court of Law, and the alternate weapons which maim and slay are its writs of injunction and man- damus, With these instruments it stalks through the State, greeted as a pestilence is greeted. Some corporations beg, some promise, some fight, some yield in despair, some escape scarred, some make offerings to appease the destroyer; while some, nei- ther paying nor praying, simply take to their [MARcH, heels, as the Pacific Railway Company packed up its goods and fled to Boston. Mr. Adams, in the ‘‘ North American Re- view,” has disclosed what fabulous purses are put at the service of railway kings—that it is not uncommon to find fifty or a hundred millions’ worth of property controlled by a single company. It is these coffers of cor- porations which have excited the attention of courts. To stop rich individuals is but a sorry footpad’s employment; but to open the strong boxes of public carriers, to make whole companies of rich travellers on the highway stand and deliver, persuaded by a brace of pistols (injunction and mandamus) at their heads—this is game worthy of those modern Claude Duvals whom we call “Courts of Law.” The process is a simple one. A body of. “ operators,” having looked among all the available corporations for a victim, and pitched on one, next engage a judge to stop the business of the victimized corporation, to fetter its directors and mana- gers, and to put all the valuables into the hands of some “ pal” whom they nominate and who is styled the “receiver.” All this is obligingly done by the judge ; and lest, on a fair hearing, the corporation should de- fend itself and show the whole to be a trap and trick, the good-natured judge claps his pistols of injunction and receivership at the victim’s head without a moment’s warning. Rescue comes in time ; but meanwhile the ‘‘operators” make off with more or less “ swag.” It is this device of granting an injunction and receivership on ex parte application which has rendered no corporation safe from attack, and exposed all railroad property, especially, to depredation. The only de- fence ever made for this abuse is that “ cor- porations are fair game,” that they plunder more than they are plundered, and that as each living thing in nature seems to have its specific and deadly enemy, which preys on it, so great corporations, swollen with riches sucked from the people in the perpetual leeching of exorbitant charges, must expect to disgorge something, in their turn, when —. brought before the courts of law. Courts come to be valued, very naturally, by business men, as machines to make money with. Each great operator fancies he can do nothing without owning at least a part of some court, and being able to lock it up in his safe with other valuables. Now, when- ever it is popularly supposed that any given court is preémpted, as it were, by certain
Page 129
1870. } leading politicians and financiers, other suitors know just what to expect. The trouble only comes when it is not known what firms and what “rings” are running any particular court, and whose business agent it is. But whenever this is settled, the decisions of the court in certain cases can be forecast as correctly as the leaders of a party newspaper. But I do not think it can ever increase public confidence in the judiciary to have judges carry on private law business, consultations, referee cases, and so on; and yet I believe instances have been known where even judges of the Su- preme Court of the United States have had desks in the offices of lawyers. The cus- tom in certain State courts for judges to issue papers and settle suits in the office of one or other of the parties, needs no mention, I think, however, that out of respect for the traditional purity of the ermine, the “ go- betweens” or middlemen, who transact in modern times so much of the law-business for attorneys and judges, ought to make themselves less prominent. A lawyer was lately called upon by one of these intermedi- aries, who, without wasting much time in preliminaries, laid before him the papers on which an injunction had been issued, and asked, ‘‘W hat do you think of that as a case?” “ Why,” answers the other very frankly, “T think it is the most shameful thing of the sort I ever heard of.” “So do I,” coolly rejoins the visitor. “ And what is more, I think I am the only man living who can get an injunction, on so weak a case, before Judge X. If you ever want anything in my line, give me a call There’s my card.” And depositing his pasteboard, he coolly went out to advertise in a dozen or twenty other offices. Not very long ago a lawyer, having experienced some unforeseen and unaccountable difficulties in getting a very plain and simple case tried, received word that by retaining as advisory counsel a professional character of whom he had previously been ignorant, he might im- prove his client’s chances. He took the hint, and won his suit with a celerity quite | startling. Shortly after, therefore, having occasion to try a case before the same judge, he took a consultation fee to the same suc- cessful practitioner. To his surprise he found the latter seedy and despondent, and unwilling to grease the wheels on the car of Justice. “I can’t do anything with Minos now,” says the distinguished practitioner. DRIFT-WOOD. 421 “How so? You were on good enough terms with him a year ago.” “Yes, Lut Minos is down on me for some reason now, and I can’t do anything with him. Now, if it were before Rhadaman+ thus, I could get you whatever you want.” — It is a peculiarity of our courts, also, that whenever a judge does happen to take a good deal of interest in any suit, it seems impossible to get it away from his friendly attentions. He flushes it in chambers, he is after it in circuit, he confronts it in full bench; sometimes counsel who _ believe they have brought it before another judge find, to their dismay, that two brethren have swapped circuits. It has been sug- gested that the next move should be to elect judges for particular cases, and to so arrange the programme that inflexible judges (for we have ¢hem, among others, in New York) shall not be left to spoil suits involving millions. But we must return from this digression into what would prove’ a very broad field. In the last ‘ Driftwood” it was noted that Governor Hoffman had called upon the Legislature to make a law “ forbidding the granting of injunctions or the appointing of | receivers in cases affecting moneyed and other corporations on ex parte applications ;”» and “I think,” added the Governor, “it would be far better even that the writ of in- junction should be abolished altogether than that it should continue to be the cause of the: unseemly collisions between judges, which have been frequent for some years past.” It is now, therefore, just and needful to say that, at this writing, the Legislature has before it a bill to remove the very stigma which has formed the subject of this brief essay. This bill provides that “no injunction to suspend the ordinary business of a corporation or association, or to suspend from office any director, trustee, or manager, or to restrain either from the performance of his duties as such, shall ever be granted except by the Court, and upon at least six days’ notice after the application.” We may believe that this measure will put an end to the time- honored pastime with which rival courts have amused themselves in corporate af- fairs, and whereby one judge issues his writs and another his counter-writs, until the corporation, having been sufficiently knocked about like a shuttlecock between two battledores, falls to the ground. PHILIP QUILIBET.
Page 130
LITERATURE AND ART. AMERICAN AND ENGLISH LITERATURE, -“ BARREN, barren, beggars all! Marry, sir, good air!” So does Justice Shallow describe the condition of things in his neigh- borhood ; and the words might perhaps be applied to the past month’s product of American and English literature. There is an almost absolute beggary of anything new ; but the air is so far good that at least itis tainted with no more of the Byronic scandal. The only works of any real mark are the conclusion of Froude’s “ History of England,” and Lowell’s poem, “ The Ca- thedral ;” the latter having, however, already appeared in the “ Atlantic Monthly,” and the former being but the crowning of a long, laborious task. ? LET us take the foreign work first, giving the place of honor to the stranger, after the fashion of the soldiers of Fontenoy—was it Fontenoy? Mr. Froude has finished his great work. The foremost of ali Eng- lish historians has left us a memorable and touching description of his own feelings when he took that famous midnight walk along his terrace at Lausanne and reflected that he had no more to write of “ The De- ~ cline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” Mr. Froude-is probably not a Gibbon ; but he may well look back with high intellectual pride upon the work he has done. He has certainly written his name duwn in the list of England’s few great historians, The work ends, indeed, somewhat sooner than the world expected. The history closes with the destruction of the Spanish Armada, in- stead of continuing to the death of Eliza- beth, Mr. Froude holds that when the Armada was destroyed the struggle between Romanism and Protestantism in England was over, and that this, therefore, is the fit- ting climax of his narrative—the proper time at which to let the curtain of his drama fall. He does, indeed, sketch out, in a few rapid lines, the close of Elizabeth’s life ; but with the ruin of the Armada his work is practically done. These two volumes are, of course, to be judged fully and fairly only as the conclud- ing passages of a long literary labor; and we have on a former occasion spoken some- what at length of Mr. Froude’s attributes as a writer of h’story. But there is something specially to be ‘said of these closing vol- umes; at least of the grand, dark, central figure on which so much labor, not of love, has been bestowed. Mr. Froude’s Mary Stuart is conducted to her death in these volumes with a grim, solemn irony worthy of a Grand Inquisitor and his Act of Faith. Nothing we know of is more coldly, sternly, -sardonically impressive and ghastly than the description of the execution of the Queen of Scots. This scene is artistically admirable ; it closes the career of Froude’s Mary as appropriately as the finishing-up of Fielding’s ‘Jonathan Wild” disposes of the great humorist’s prince of scoundrels. But throughout the whole of Froude’s his- tory we have been haunted by an unpleasant doubt, which these concluding volumes greatly strengthen—the doubt whether the author has not been working in the spirit of a poet and dramatist quite as much as Schiller did on the one side, or Swinburne on the other, in putting before the world a Mary Stuart. Not that we raise any ques- tion whatever of Mary’s guilt. Weare as much convinced as Mr. Froude that she committed the crimes with which he charges her. But he seems to have made up his mind to create acomplete and perfect type of wickedness in woman—Messalina, Semiramis, Lucrezia Borgia, Pompadour, and Becky Sharp all in one palpitating frame —and to have written his Mary Stuart up to that standard. He persists in regarding the woman as a conscious hypocrite, whose dis- play of pious and brave resignation on the very scaffold was not the result even of fa- natical and superstitious self-delusion, but a deliberate piece of play-acting, planned and performed for the malign purpose of casting a new stigma upon her enemies in her very death. ‘This is, we are convinced, a theory false not merely to this particular figure in history, but false to the whole history of human nature. We do not believe there ever was such a woman in real Jife as Mr. Froude has drawn in Mary Stuart. But the historian exults over his picture, and posi- tively revels in sardonic joy over the most revolting details of Mary’s execution, over the exposure of the false hair and the with- ered cheeks, over the stripping of the corpse,
Page 131
1870. ] and the revelation of the abscesses which disfigured the form once so lovely. Posi- tively, Mr. Froude reminds us of Swin- burne in the cold, cruel exultation of these passages. For Elizabeth, even while he explicitly admits her worst vanities, false- hood, and crimes, he always has excuse, toleration, explanation, mitigating plea of some kind; for Mary he has neither the calm, just consideration of the historian, nor the pity of the generous man. Mr. Froude illustrates the reverse of Pygmalion’s story : he has created a figure and fallen into hate of it. It is only fair to say, however, that this influences the temper of the historian more than the accuracy of the mere narra- tive. Mr. Froude seems to be rigorously impartial in stating a fact, however it may affect his own peculiar mood. It is as a painter of historical portraits that he shows at once his great artistic strength and his greatest judicial weakness. His Mary Stuart is a wonderful piece of art, and shows, in- deed, a very high degree of dramatic and poetic conception. Itis almost fit to be thé work of a poet. But the authentic picture of the woman who did such evil deeds and won such hearts, who was, as Schiller makes her say of herself, so much hated and so much loved, has yet to be painted. We hold it to be philosophically certain that no mere ac- tress, hypocrite, Madame Tartuffe, whatever gifts of beauty or genius she may have had, ever yet stirred such an enthusiasm of strife and sent such a controversy echoing along centuries as was done by Mary Stuart. Mr. LOWELL’s poem, “ The Cathedral,” now issued in an elegant little volume by Fields, Osgood & Co., has received already perhaps more high praise than any of its author’s previous productions. Undoubtedly “The Cathedral” is a beautiful and noble poem, almost unique in its blending of hu- mor, imagination, and philosophy. We can recollect nothing exactly like it in any litera- ture. Something of the zsthetic enthusiasm of certain of Schiller’s meditative poems is combined with a humor softer and more genial than Browning’s, and a spirit of religious philosophy as genuine and pure as that of Young’s “ Night Thoughts ” is con- ventional and affected. There are flashes of © picturesque, poetic light here and there, sud- denly revealing to the mind’s eye sights and scenes not to be forgotten. Such as, to take one illustration out of many, the lines which glance at 28 LITERATURE AND ART. 423 —those stark wastes that whiten endlessly In ghastly solitude about the pole, And gleam relentless to the unsetting sun. Indeed, we have hardly ever read any purely meditative poem which more dis- tinctly impresses us with the conviction that it zs poetry, the true birth of poetic inspira- tion, and not merely high thought put into smooth verse. But at the same time we must be allowed to doubt whether a medi- tative poem, into which no gleam of human passion enters, which has nothing to do with any of the thrilling influences of pity and terror, can take a place with poetry of the highest order. However calmly and artistically the poet may mould the metal which pours forth molten by the fire of his inspiration, yet that fire must be lighted by passion in the first instance when the grand- est work is to be done. The inspirings of the highest poetry are, after all, to quote from Wordsworth, “ Exultations, Agonies, and Love.” We are not seeking to dispar- age “The Cathedral,” but only to suggest: some measure to the praise that has been and is likely to be given to it. All that the- quiet, easy meditation of a true poet, a ge- nial thinker, and a remarkably accomplished: man could do within such limits, has been. done in this little poem. The comparison, forr example, between the Greek and the Gothic: in architecture seems to us as scientifically: perfect as it is poetically beautiful ; and there: - are many passages equally remarkable for: beauty and truth to be found in these pages. . But there went no exultation, agony, or. love to the creation of ** The Cathedral.”. It: will charm every true heart and cultivated: intellect, but will stir no soul. Therefore, we hold it unreasonable even to the poet. and his purpose here to talk of this poem as. if it should be ranked among the great mas-. terpieces of the art. Even its meditation is. of an easy, quiet order ; the poet glances, half sadly, half playfully at some problem of life or the future, and then turns. calmly: away, acknowledging that he cares not to» vex his soul by striving to see any further into the depths. Thus, “The Cathedral’ grows up a charming, tender, thoughtful,, humorous poem ; but it is not a great poem,, nor are great poems thus created. : Two volumes of pleasant, pungent gossip: are given to the American public, by: Messrs. Harper & Brothers, in “The Life: of Mary Russell Mitford, told by herself. in her Diary and Letters.” It is a work of
Page 132
™ “424 less value, indeed, than Crabb Robinson’s Diary, because Miss Mitford was by no means So accurate a judge of human charac- ter and capacity as Crabb Robinson. But it is vivacious reading from beginning to end, - nota little of its piquancy being caused by “Miss Mitford’s sharp and sudden way of es- ‘timating people’s powers and characters, ‘and equally sharp and sudden way of changing her. opinion.’ What ‘a tercible ‘jconoclast this good little woman was ! Johnson himself could not have been more ‘dogmatic and paradoxical. In general, she seems to have taken up rising genius and “become enthusiastic about it when it was only rising, and to have got angry with it ‘and called it contemptuous names when it ihad become famous. Who would have ithought that the authoress of “Our Vil- flage” could be thus sharp and_ sarcastic ? - Where did she get, how did she nourish, ‘such a fund of spite? It is not too :much to say that she has thus alternately |praised and scoffed at all the eminent men ‘and women who came under her keen eyes, from Charles James Fox to Harriet “Beecher Stowe. Readers on this side of the “water will feel some interest in learning that the man she seems to have admired most— 'to be sure, he did not remain very long under ‘her close observation—was Daniel Webster. “T PROPOSE to show in this book that a man’s natural abilities are derived by inher- ‘itance under exactly the same limitations as are the form and physical features of the ‘whole organic world. Consequently, as it ‘is easy, notwithstanding those limitations, to ‘obtain by careful selection a permanent breed of dogs or horses gifted with peculiar powers of running or of doing anything else, so it would be quite practicable to produce a highly-gifted race of men by judicious marriages during several consecutive gen- erations.” Such are the opening sentences of the introductory chapter to a work called ““ Hereditary Genius,” by Francis Galton, 'F..R. S., of London, which is introduced to ‘American readers by ‘Messrs. Appleton. “The two sentences we ‘have quoted are the ‘keynote to the whole volume.. Mr. Galton is convinced that genius, skill, and, indeed, all remarkable qualities of mind or body, ‘are hereditary ; and he sets about proving ‘this theory, as nearly.as it .may be proved, by an elaborate and tabulated exposition of ‘the numbers of illustrious ;:men in every ‘walk of life whoihave uhad «eminent rela- LITERATURE AND ART. [MARcH, tives. Obviously Mr. Galton’s theory, whether it be a scientific proposition or a mere ap~ercu, looks apt and probable. It seems reasonable that the intermarrying of people of intellect should bring. forth an- other. generation of people of intellect. But we doubt whether Mr. Galton’s ingenious and elaborate lists and tables really carry us much beyond the point from which we may see that there is some substantial rea- son for admitting the aptness and probabil- ity of the theory. Some of the illustrations in this remarkably clever book remind one a little of the manner in which somebody cited by Macaulay used to argue that Jaco- bins always have three names—namely, by stringing together Charles James Fox, Theobald Wolfe Tone, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, John Horne Tooke, and all other names which suited his line of argument. Our own impressions are with Mr. Galton -rather than against him, and he has certain- ‘ly produced a very ingenious, interesting, and able volume ; but he has hardly pushed his theory high enough up into the clear, dry air of scientific debate to secure it as yet a chance of full, grave, and exhaustive con- sideration. Nort much need be said of the new novel, “Only Herself” (Harper & Brothers), by Mrs. Pender Cudlip, who used to be Miss Annie Thomas. It is a clever, bright story in its way—a sort of feminine compound of Anthony Trollope and Edmund Yates. If there were any use in being sorry for any- thing which was probably inevitable, one might be sorry for Annie Thomas having to convert herself into a regular hack writer of novels, so many per year. There was a time when this vivacious, fresh young Irish- woman promised to make a mark on liter- ature, but that time has passed, and she now keeps on grinding at the novel-making machine like dozens of other men and women, no worse, no better.. There is not one hint of an original character or idea:in this latest of her novels. It is pleasant ‘reading enough for those who are not tired of mere-cockneyism, but there is nothing in it to remember, or to bid us-hope. THERE are'so many ladies named Edwards engaged in the writing of novels that it would be very natural ahd excusable if the public -were to hash them all up together, after the fashion of the Englishman who expressed his wonder and regret that a statesman so
Page 133
1870. ] distinguished as Webster, who, amid all his public duties, found time to compile a valu- able dictionary, should have disgraced him- self by such a crime as the murder of Dr. Parkman. ‘There are, we think, three au- thoresses named Edwards engaged in fiction : ‘Mrs. Annie Edwards, whom the readers of “Tue GALAxy know as the authoress of “Susan Fielding” and other novels. which ‘have been published in these pages ; Miss Amelia B. Edwards, who wrote ‘ Half .a ‘Million of Money”; Miss M..Betham-Ed- wards, whose “ Dr. Jacob” had, in its way, such a success. ‘This last is the lady of whom we have to speak at present. Her latest novel, “Kitty,” has just been pub- lished by Messrs. Harper & Brothers. It is a pleasant story, with some well-drawn characters, and one or two almost. brilliant scenes ; and there is really nothing in it that is badly done. But then it has nothing new —nothing whatever. Kitty, the heroine, the waif of Bohemia, who sets her soul on being a fashionable lady,-the- Pariah who will be a Brahmin, has been a regular figure in fiction every other week since Becky Sharp, .al- though in fact the creation of Becky Sharp ought to have deterred ithe most ambitious novelist from attempting to produce such another. All the figures in this book are old and threadbare ; its Bohemia. is worn out; its Belgravia is faded. A bright, vivid ‘style, and a faculty of writing good English, are excellent gifts in a novelist, and by no means so common as to overcome us like a summer cloud without our. special wonder ; but they will not make an original novel. “ Kitty” is far below “ Dr. Jacob” in merit, for the reason that it has not one original character. SUTHERLAND EDWARDS (another | Ed- wards !), the London journalist and author, is a man who can do many things well. He knows Russia and Poland well, was.special correspondent for the London “Times” dur- ing the Polish insurrection, and wrote like a sensible, spirited, impartial man until the . Russian authorities packed him out of War- -saw. He wrote a really valuable work. on Poland, a book which may be relied upon, for he is neither a sentimental revolutionist _. nor a Carlylean. worshipper of force. He is also the author of a novel named “ The Three Louisas,” which had a good. deal of originality and yet more of sparkle in it. Moreover, he has distinguished him- self as a musical critic; and he is now the LITERATURE AND ART. leen Bawn; ov, Zhe. Collegians.” 425 author of a‘ Life of Rossini;” published by Ditson & Co. of Boston. Now this is really a very well written and interesting little vol- ume, and it ought to be said that it has been a long time in preparation, and is not a mere piece of hack-work tinkered up to meet.a sudden demand. But it seems to us. that the book will fail in popularity, will. fail indeed to attain the object it aims at, that of diffusing a correct and general knowledge of Rossini’s place in music, ‘for the mere. reason that it is neither. the one thing nor the other; neither fish nor flesh; neither a scientific work for the mu- sician nor a popular biography for the gen- eral reader. It.is quite scientific enough to frighten away the latter, although there is -nothing heavy or pedantic about it, and it is certain that it will never satisfy the demand of the profound, musical scholar. But it is entirely above the average of commonplace biographical work, and does great credit to -Mr. Sutherland Edwards as a terse and agreeable writer. WHEN Dion .Boucicault .made such.a success, a few years ago, with his rubbishy, vulgar “Colleen Bawn,” constructed out of poor Gerald Griffin’s beautiful, pathetic, ar- tistic novel of “The Collegians” (a man -with.a popularizing genius like Boucicault would make a capital scarecrow out of a fine statue, or a Bowery melodrama out of Mac- - beth), an enterprising publishing house instantly brought out a new edition of the almost. forgotten. Irish romance, which he introduced to popular readers as “‘ The Col- Messrs. Fields, Osgood & Co. have just done some- . thing which belongs. to the same class of en- . terprise. -work on the Byron scandal, made some al- Mrs. Stowe. having, in her latest lusion to Godwin’s “Caleb Williams,” her publishers see in the fact a chance for a cheap, and popular edition of a great, almost forgotten romance. Thus one of the most foolish books ever printed is used as a sort of lever'to hoist into public sight a work | which had more. of the elements of power and greatness in,it than nine-tenths of the romances written since Godwin’s time. The enterprise will probably not be successful. Even -the allurements of the ‘Colleen Bawn.”, could not induce the readers of to-day to stand ‘‘ The Collegians”; and we question whether the Byron scandal will prevail on the general run of novel-readers to endure the cold, stern power of “ Caleb
Page 134
426 Williains.” Indeed, the latter is a painful book, which it needs some resolution to. read ; and we cannot picture to ourselves an ordinary romance-devourer of to-day sitting patiently down to grapple with its grim de-. tails, and follow out its slow, hard, almost cruel exposition of the dark possibilities ly- ing concealed in the depths even of hearts originally pure and noble. ‘There was a novel called ‘ Paul Ferroll” written some years ago by an English lady, which made for a time a deep sensation; it was a sort of “Caleb Williams ”; at least its central idea was that of a man of noble nature hur- ried into the commission of a great crime and having his whole subsequent life domi- nated by the necessity of keeping his awful secret. But ‘ Paul Ferroll” never sinks to other crimes; Falkland, in “Caleb Wil- liams,” becomes a monster of cold, deliber- ate cruelty for the sake of hiding his secret, and in the hope of destroying every witness who could bear testimony against him, eve- ry observer who might even have suspected him. A more grim groundwork no ro- mance could well have ; and as a specimen of painful art Caleb Williams” is worth a study. Mrs. OLIPHANT is one of the feeble class of authors whom Ouida would scorn—a nov- elist who does not believe civilized life to be one vast orgy andstew. After George Eliot —truly with something of an interval—she leads the host of the female novelists of the day in England. Just now, however, the public are invited to a work of hers which 1s not a novel, but a volume of critical bi- ography —the collection of ‘ Historical Sketches of the Reign of George the Sec- ond,” which appeared as a series in “ Blacke wood’s Magazine,” and is now published in a sewed volume by Messrs. Littell & Gay, of Boston. Mrs. Oliphant sketches Queen Caroline, Mary Wortley Montagu, Lord Chesterfield, Sir Robert Walpole, Pope, Wesley, Charles Edward Stuart, Berkeley, Hume, Hogarth, Richardson, and other ce- lebrities of the age. ‘Truly all these have been sketched over and over again already ; indeed, there has been quite a run of late on the celebrities of the Hogarth and Richard- son days, and there is an air of book making about this volume which one does not like to find or to acknowledge in anything com- ing from so true an artist as Mrs. Oliphant. But the sketches, judged on their own mer- ‘its, are very good, and make agreeable read- LITERATURE AND ART. [ MARCH, ing. Mrs. Oliphant is clear, candid, genial, forcible. She has nothing particularly orig- inal to say—how could anybody now say anything original about Hogarth or Mary Wortley Montagu ?—but she has skill enough to make one read over again, with fresh pleasure, criticisms of which he must have read the like twenty times before. Still, this is not the sort of work a judicious pub- lic wishes or expects Mrs. Oliphant to do. Doubtless George Eliot could write the lives of the Twelve Cesars forcibly and well ; and Mrs. Stowe could probably pre- pare an excellent history of New England ; but then there are others who could do such work as well or better, and who could not write ‘‘ Silas Marner” or “ Oldtown Folks.” Therefore it may be hoped that Mrs. Oli- phant will not be tempted into “shredding away” her faculties for the mere production of taking magazine sketches. Having done this. so well, Mrs. Oliphant, be content, and please don’t do it any more. “THE ELEMENTS OF TACHYGRAPHY,” by David Philip Lindsley, is the latest con- tribution to our catalogue of stenographic text-books. The book challenges criticism principally because it claims to present a better system of short-hand than any of the systems heretofore published, not even ex- cepting phonography, which the author takes frequent occasion to single out for compari- son; and because it aspires to supersede long-hand by the general introduction of tachygraphy as the common medium of written communication. If some system ot short-hand could be substituted for our pres- ent cumbrous mode of writing, so wasteful of time and energy, it would surely be a great blessing. ‘That such a substitution will some day be made—though perhaps not in our time—we have hope, but we will not venture prophecy. A careful examination of his book, however, has failed to con- vince us that Mr. Lindsley has done any- thing to hasten that event. Stenography— using the term in its general sense—is an art, and as such has certain materials, such as straight and curved lines, dots, dashes, etc., that are common to all the various sys- tems of short-hand: So, too, there are, to regulate the use of those materials, certain fundamental principles, which also belong as well to one system as to another. For instance, difficult junctions should be avoid- ed, as the making of obtuse angles, because they detract from speed, and of outlines that —
Page 135
1870. | are not well defined, because they impair legibility. Now, he who attempts to con- struct a system of short-hand should not only understand all the principles of his art, but should know how to apply them to his material. In this respect Mr. Lindsley has utterly failed, The “two great principles.” of his system, to which he points with pride as constituting its chief superiority over phonography, viz., ‘“‘lineality”? and “ con- tinuity,” are really among its most objection- able features, By “lineality” the author means the general tendency of tachygraph- ic writing to move along from left to right, with as few lateral strokes as possible, and which is secured by giving to the most fre- quently-recurring sounds either horizontal Signs or signs inclined to the right; and by “continuity,” the joining of both consonant and vowel signs in the outlines of words. Lineality affects the system injuriously, be- cause it gives to some of the most frequent sounds in the language signs that are com- paratively difficult of formation, and because, those signs being all struck in the same gen- eral direction, it necessitates the making of a vast number of obtuse angles, most of which are avoided in phonography. Con- tinuity, or the writing of the vowels in the word-outlines, shows want of knowledge re- specting the history of stenographic devel- opment. Nothing has been more surely established by the experience of practical stenographers than that the outlines of words should contain consonant signs only, the vowels, if inserted at all, being placed at the side of the consonants, but not attached to them, Continuity is a defect in the sys- tem, because it imposes en the writer the task of learning two sets of outlines, the vocalized and the unvocalized, and because it robs the consonants of much valuable material which would be used by them con- stantly, and bestows it upon the vowels, which, when the system is mastered, are generally omitted, thus allowing the mate- rial to fall into disuse. In phonography the final consonantal hooks on, stems are very valuable, and they add much to brevity and legibility ; but in tachygraphy they are wasted on vowels, and instead of shortening the system, actually make it more cumbrous. That there is less to learn in tachygraphy than in phonography is true ; but the same might be said of a child’s primer as com- pared with a grammar. Phonography has superseded all other systems of short-hand writing because it is briefer, and therefore LITERATURE AND ART. 427 does its work with greater ease. And now, after phonography has reached a compara- tive degree of perfection, Mr. Lindsley asks us to give it up and adopt his system, which is two or three times as long, is untried, and has the single merit of being simple because there is but little in it. Thus far all prac- ticable short-hand systems have been con- structed by skilled stenographers. Mr. Lindsley is a clergyman, and does not pre- tend that he is a skilful reporter with his system ; and we have never yet been able, after repeated inquiries, to learn of any one who can write it with the speed of ordinary speech. Now a system that fails in this re- spect can never be anything but a snare and a delusion to those who are so unfortunate as to adopt it; and at a time not very far distant, it must take its place among the two or three hundred other obsolete hobbies of similar character, which are now to be studied only in the libraries of collectors of curious books, In the Rev. James Reed’s “ Man and Wo- man, Equal but Unlike” (Boston: Nichols & Noyes), we have a contribution toward the settlement of the question of the mission and work of woman, from a clergyman of the only religious body which has thus far as- sumed a definite position on the question of sex. Though the Swedenborgians, of whom Mr. Reed is one, do not agree in the appli- cation of their doctrines to the existing social facts, they yet are united in the belief, which with them assumes the force of doctrine, that sex is an inherent and essential . attribute of soul, and not a mere circumstance of form, The logical result of this is, they assert, a sexual distinction in occupations and in the relations to society and the state, which ultimately must determine the question of woman’s place and work. “ There are offices peculiar to men, and others peculiar to women,” Swedenborg declares; ‘those which are proper to men may be called pub- lic, and those proper to women domestic.” Here we have the summing up of Mr. Reed’s argument, so far as it applies to the questions most in dispute. Women, he be- lieves, cannot enter into the offices of men, nor can men enter into those of women, and perform them well. It is in the mutual re- lation and dependence of these offices that the true equality and union of the two sexes is to be found, and not in a struggle for the same offices and honors. Mr. Reeds in the five sermons which form this volume
Page 136
428 has attempted nothing more than a presen- tation of the doctrines of the church. of which he is a disciple, and disclaims origi- nality. He is at least entitled to the praise of having presented his views with a clear- ness. and force which attracted attention to these sermons from those beyond his immedi- ate circle of fellow-believers, and gave just occasion for their publication in this form. A VERY familiar English book of ref- erence which comes to us in improved form, so far as American wants are con- cerned, is ‘“‘ Haydn’s Dictionary of Dates,” that steady companion and counsellor of English journalists and scholars, which is published, with some modifications and im- provements, by Messrs. Harper & Brothers, *“Haydn’s Dictionary of Dates,” like most other English publications, treats with true insular indifference events and dates on this side of the Atlantic, making more account of a street “row” in London or Manches- ter than of a Mexican war or the creation of a new American State. To give the book, therefore, any practical value here, many additions and alterations had to be made; and the result, as the edition pub- lished by the Harpers gives it, is a work which ought to be infinitely more useful, even to English readers, than the regular British publication. SPANISH LITERATURE. THE last number of the “Revista de Espafia,” a (we might say ¢4e) Spanish quarterly review, published at Madrid, in noticing a recent historical) work, gives us a rather depressing view of the present condition of the literature of Spain. “‘ Doubtless,” it remarks, “it is agreeable to see that our national literature is cultivated in foreign countries ; but our satisfaction is changed to bitter sadness (amarga melan- colia) when we know that Spanish. affairs are studied in every country more’ assidu- ously than in Spain itself. “Englishmen and Belgians come to Si- mancas to consult its collection of manu- script documents relating to our history, our kings, and our statesmen ; and Anglo- Americans are the principal historians of the politics and’of the literature of Spain. A question arises as to the sanity of the mother of Charles V.: straightway Mes- sieurs Bergenroth and Gachard engage in it, and the French, Belgian, Swiss, Eng- lish, and German reviews join in the dis- LITERATURE AND ART. [MARCH, cussion; but in Spain rlobody: notices: it, In France, Gustave Doré produces: engrav- ings which are the most effective illustra tions ever made of Don Quixote. At Rome, they edit the works of’ the illustrious Span- ish Jesuit Coledo. At Florence, the poems of Yriarte are published and set to music. In London appear the memoirs of the French Ambassador Villars at the Court of Charles II. At Leyden, M. Dozy pub- lishes a glossary of Spanish works derived from the Arabic! “We might cite many more such ins stances, Certain it is, however, that most of these productions, if they originally’ ap- peared in Spain, could not’ possibly attain the success they achieve in foreign lands.” CURRENT GERMAN LITERATURE.* Irs salient feature is still the rapid accu- mulation of fresh historical works. Not mere fruitless disquisitions on barren peri- ods, nor rhapsodies concerning certain char- acters, nor fantastic s2dleawux a la Froude ; that is not the German method; but se- rious, solid, and yet progressive productions. Useful, certainly, in any event; for even when you part from your average German historian as wide asunder in opinion as the poles, he’ has yet almost certainly added to your store of new and authentic historical material. Excepting only the department of natural science, there is’ none’ in German literature in which such remarkable progress has been made within the past thirty years as in that of history. And this progress is not _ alone in the surprising increase of historical writers. It is most marked in superior method,: better style, color of narration, and adaptability to the general reader. The erudition in attaining, and the critical acu- men in using, the sources of historical knowledge, so long the great merits of Ger- man scholars, do not of themselves suffice to make the historian. The transcendent merits of such writers as Heeren and Niebuhr, with their narrow rill of narrative meandering amid huge swampy margins of Jearned notes and cum- brous references, could only be appreciated by scholars ; and their admirable works are almost sealed books to the great bady of readers. Even in the slender text the stu- dent is not unfrequently called upon to * Works mentioned in this article may be had of E. Steiger, German bookseller, Nos. 22 and z4 Frank- fort street, New York.
Page 137
1870. } share in the difficulty and sympathize in the doubt of the writer as to a proper solution of the most important historical questions. In all these matters German historians have wonderfully advanced. A mere choice of labyrinths among cunflicting authorities has given way to intelligent decision as to their respective merits, and the dry bones of cita- tion are now made to live and move in spirited narrative. Niebuhr and Heeren have long since been translated into English, and, thanks. to the enterprise of a New York publishing house, we now have Mommsen’s “ History of Rome” in our own language. Let any one compare a few pages of the two first-named historians with the last, or with the ‘ Grie- chische Geschichte” by Ernst Curtius, and he will perceive more clearly what we mean. We may sum up this branch of our subject by saying that the earliest produc- tions of the modern German historical school are written mainly for scientific men and historical scholars ; the last are for all readers of cultivation, although by no means at the sacrifice of profound investigation or true historic method. _ Glancing back at the literary results of the year just ended, we remark the rapid completion of Roman history from the point where it was left by Mommsen and his pre- decessors. These authors may be said to have exhausted ancient Rome as an historic theme, leaving the more picturesque period of the Empire for modern writers. In the January number of THE GALAXY we spoke of what Gibbon had done for this era, But Gibbon’s frame was so large and crowded that his individual great personages could not be produced in full-length portraits. He was followed in England with admirable success by Merivale ; but in Germany, with the exception of Imhof’s “ History of Domitian,” the Roman Emperors had been treated only by Wietersheim and Sievers. Of the separate works on various Empe- rors by Richter, Bernhardt, Huschke, Preuss, and Miicke, mention has already been made in our January article. But an- cient Rome by no means monopolizes the ardor of the German scholar. His historic appetite is omnivorous. Ranging over all antiquity, the middle ages, and modern eras, down to our own day, not only empires, states, and kingdoms are treated exhaus- tively, but provinces, cities, villages, abbeys, hamlets, castles, battle-fields, rivers, and even roads, have their special historians, LITERATURE AND ART, 429, HERE is an interesting case of historic ree habilitation. The Swiss chronicles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries repre- sent Queen Agnes, of Hungary as having in- stigated the murder of her father, King Al- brecht I. Johann Miiller and an entire school, of historians followed this chronicle, But Kopp, the distinguished Swiss historian—, the same who settled the question of cruel Austrian bailiffs and the exploits of William | Tell so effectually that no serious historian. now repeats them—in his ‘“‘ Documens pour servir a l’Histoire des Confédérations helvé- tiques,” suggested very grave doubts as to the truth of the tradition, and pointed out the fact that the chronicles in question, al-. though explicit in charging Elizabeth, King, Albrecht’s. widow, with complicity in the vendetta, made no mention whatever of Ag- nes. This suggestion is fully developed by, Dr. H. Liebenau,, who, with a wealth of erudition and original documents, not only proves his proposition, but writes the his- tory of the, House of Hapsburg for the pe- riod 1350 to 1363. THE history of Prussia since the Treaty of Vienna (1815), if nowhere else written, might be found in the perennial supply of Varnhagen von Ense’s memoirs and letters, of which two fresh volumes (“ Blatter aus der preussischen Geshichte. Aus. dem Nachlasse von K, A. Varnhagen von Ense”’) have just been published by Brock- haus, Leipsic, THE fifth volume. of Bastian’s. great. work on “ The Races of Eastern Asia” is lately published. It contains his observations in the Eastern Archipelago, Singapore, Bata- via, Manilla, and Japan, and is specially re- markable for its. able,discussion of ethnologi- cal questions, 3 DuRING the Seven Years’ War, one Jo- seph von Frohn, a prisoner at Magdeburg, re- vealed to the Emperor Joseph the existence of a plot for the seizure of the fortress. The Emperor’s. attention being drawn to the man, Frohn was taken into the Impe- rial personal. service. The whole affair has been already narrated by Levin Shiick- ing, and, as there was not much to tell; the story was necessarily short. But Louisa Miihlbach has taken up Shiicking’s account of Frohn, and; with liberal use of material that has no possible bearing on the matter, contrives, in her “ Kaiser Joseph und sein
Page 138
430 Landsknecht,” to make four volumes for its first part alone. The French Court, that of the Electoral Prince at Coblentz, and a variety of characters from Cologne and ekewhere, are pressed into the service, and the result is a collection of platitudes which, with many people, pass muster under the name of “ historical novel.” ‘A worK on Americus Vespucci, lately published in Vienna, will be found noticed under the head of French literature. ‘“ AnD YeT IT Moves” is the title of a novel by Friedrich Karl Schubert, its hero being, of course, Galileo. This is all very well for a novel, but would not answer for history, inasmuch as it has been sufficiently shown that Galileo never said, Z pur si muove, as related by familiar tradition. .A question arises here. We (English-speak- ing people) call the Florentine astronomer Galileo. The Germans call him Galilei, and they are right. His name was Galileo Galilei. * CURRENT FRENCH LITERATURE.* -In 1854, M. Paul Dupont, a well-known Paris publisher (afterwards member of the French Chamber of Deputies), published a history of printing, of which an enlarged and revised edition—“ Histoire de I’Im- primerie ”—has just appeared. The author starts out by stating that we would better appreciate the blessings of the discovery of printing were we more frequent- ly to look back at the period when a copy of a work of three hundred pages cost from four to five hundred francs. M. Dupont’s work is particularly intersting for its rela- tion of the modern developments of the art of. printing since the days of the Aldi and the Elzivirs. Naturally enough, the French historical portion of the work is very full, and con- tributes new and interesting instances of cu- rious typographical errors to the hundreds with which we are already familiar. Thus, the much admired and celebrated lines of Malherbe, Et Rose elle a vécu ce que vivent les roses, L’espace d’un matin, - js claimed to be the result of a typographical blunder ; for Malherbe wrote, Et Rosette a vécu, etc., etc. During the French Revolution a boy * Works noticed may be had of F. W. Christern, foreign bookseller, No. 77 University Place. LITERATURE AND ART. | [ MARCH, brings to Siéyes the proof of one of his speeches in which he was made ‘to say, “Fat abjuré la Républigue,” instead of “ F'aiadjuré,” etc. The poor little printer’s devil was startled by Si¢yes thundering out at him, ‘‘ Does your master want to send me to the guillotine?” - The son of Charles Crapelet, a printer of reputation, relates: “I well remember the expression of positive anguish that came over my father’s face on looking at a revised proof which had been read three times, and the last time by himself’ His eye had at that moment caught the word Pélenofe (for Pénelope). On one occasion the elder Didot, almost by accident, arrested a page of’ Racine just going to press, in which the line, Vous allez A l’autel, et moi j’y cours, Madame, was printed Vous allez 4 l’hotel, et moi j’y cours, Madame. A HANDSOME specimen of typography and superior wood-cut illustration is “ Ro- main Kalbris, par Hector Malot,” the story of a poor boy, the son of a Breton sailor, and his adventures. It is related with grace and spirit, and will be found spe- cially interesting to the American reader on account of its graphic pictures of French life, city and country scenes, peasants, fish- ermen, sailors, and gevs @’armes. Our readers are doubtless familiar with the merited popularity of Macé’s well- known “ History of a Mouthful of Bread,” translated from the French. Of late years French writers have been wonderfully suc- cessful in what they call the ‘* vulgarization of science,” and have been admirably sec- onded by artists and publishers in produc- ing attractive works in every department of knowledge, which are as remarkable for the beauty and profusion of their illustration as for the very low price at which they are furnished. Among these publications the Collection Brunet, “The Library of Pictur- esque Science,” merits special mention. Fourteen volumes of the collection are al- ready out, each one of 216 pages, 18mo, illustrated with from twenty to one hun- dred engravings, at one franc the volume, Among them we remark the histories (sep- arate volumes) of “ A Sheet of Paper,” “A Lump of Coal,” “A Bit of Glass,” “A Grain of Salt,” “A Ray of the Sun,” “A Blade of Grass,” the last by Macé. All this. means, of course, optics, geology, : \
Page 139
1870. | chemistry, etc., made popular and agreea- ble reading while teaching serious and solid science. Another excellent series is ‘The Library of Wonders,” many volumes of which, well translated, have been repub- lished in this country by Messrs. Scribner & Co. Three new volumes of this library have lately appeared in Paris, which we hope soon to see added to the American series. They are “The Wonders of Paint- ing,” “The Wonders of Sculpture,” and “The Wonders of Engraving.” The last mentioned, by George Duplessis, contains thirty-four vignettes, and gives an admira- ble sketch of the origin of engraving and its history in Italy, France, Germany, etc., with the various systems and methods of the art. The volume on sculpture, by Louis Viardot, illustrated with sixty-two vignettes, presents the progress and history of the art from its earliest manifestations in Egypt, Assyria, and Etruria, down to our own day. With pardonable national vanity, we confess to have looked for a chapter—a short one, of course—at the end of this work, headed “Sculpture in the United States.” We are compelled to say that we did not find it. With reference to these and other French series of publications for popular education, it must fairly be admitted that neither in England nor the United States have we any to be compared with them in merit, economy, and artistic perfection. The great advantage possessed by our French friends lies in their ample supply of superior artistic talent. The stumbling- block for the American publisher is in the illustrations and vignettes. These cannot be produced here—not even copies of de- signs and drawings already made—short of an outlay that makes publication at any ac- cessible price simply impossible. In this emergency, fortunately, the resources of electrotype and kindred processes aid him, and he is enabled to purchase at a reasona- ble rate exact copies of the French plates, and thus give us as handsome an edition as the Parisian. M. JULES VERNE is somewhat noted for books descriptive of fantastic journeys. He has written “ Five Weeks in a Balloon,” “A Voyage to the Centre of the Earth,” and another journey, “From the Earth to the Moon.” He now gives us “ Vingt mille Lieues sous les Mers,” which is an account of a submarine trip of some sixty LITERATURE AND ART. 43t thousand miles in a patent triple-action-sub- merged-screw steamer, which navigates with facility the unknown depths of ocean, and gives its passengers, as it progresses, the advantage of viewing the wonders around them through large panels of crystal. THE interest and excitement naturally at- tendant upon the completion of the Suez Canal have been answered by the appear- ance of a very large number of publications on the subject, treating it from every possi- ble point of view and in every variety of form, from the pamphlet to the illustrated quarto. The most complete and satisfactory appears to be the work of M. Olivier Ritt— “ Histoire de ’Isthme de Suez”—a_ hand- some octavo of 473 pages, illustrated with maps and plans. Its historical portion is of special interest and well executed. Begin- ning at the year 1800 before Christ, and coming down to the year A. D. 800, M. Ritt presents the history of the Isthmus during that long period, and of the various experi- ments and attempts at its canalization by Nechos, Darius, the Ptolemies, Trajan, and the Arabians. During the period from A, D. 800 to 1854, the route to India by Egypt was gradually abandoned for that by the Cape. Meantime the English attempts and experiments under Captain Waghorn, Major Chesney, and others, are related, until we reach the advent of M. de Lesseps, to whose labors five chapters of the book are devoted. M. Ritt’s work is probably the most complete and exact on the subject. Its style is neither too technical for the gen- eral reader, nor too literary for the man of science, | “ Love’s TRAVELS.” A work of art has lately been placed on exhibition in the Mu- seum of the Louvre, whose adventures would make a story worth reading. It is a marble group—“ Venus Chained by Love ”—the work of an artist of Franche-Comté in the seventeenth century. It was presented by Louis XIV. to the Chinese Ambassador for his Emperor. For two hundred long years it stood unnoticed in a corridor of the Im- perial summer house near Pekin. When the French and English troops stormed and plundered the palace, this group fell to the lot of a French soldier, who sold it to one’ of his officers for a hundred francs. The officer was modestly content to part with it for five thousand francs, and the Art Com- mission of the Louvre has just had the good:
Page 140
432 fortune to secure it for thirty-five thousand francs, | ALTHOUGH somewhat at a loss under what head to classify a book written in French but printed in Germany, we suppose the language should decide the question. Branmiiller & Son, of Vienna, have just pub- lished a work of interest to Americans. It is “ Amerigo Vespucci, son Caractére,. ses Kcrits (méme les moins authentiques), sa Vie et ses Navigations, avec une Carte in- diquant les Routes,” The author is F. A. von Varnhagen, Brazilian Minister at the Court of Vienna. Blandini, Peschel, Kunstmann, and Wash- ington Irving have written on the uncon- scious godfather of a greatcontinent. Hum- boldt has also treated the subject in his his- torical development of geographical knowl- edge of the New World. InN a volume of speeches (‘ Discours Populaires ”) delivered, by Edouard Labou- laye, you may be certain of finding the -United States referred to or directly men- tioned on almost every page. The book be- fore us, published by Charpentier & .Cie (1869), contains. nineteen discourses deliver- ed by M. Laboulaye during the past year at Paris and Versailles. There is one on Franklin, one on Lincoln, and one on Horace Mann. In all the others the allu- sions to the United States are frequent. It will be remembered that M. Laboulaye, M. Cochin, and Count Montalembert were among the few in France who defied Im- perial example by sympathizing with the cause of liberty in America. LITERATURE AND ART. [ MARCH, “ AUTOUR D’UNE SOURCE,” by Gustave Droz. With a wonderfully small amount of material, the author has made a most grace- ful story, interesting from the beginning to the : end, Portraiture of character, de- scription of persons, dissection of motive, pictures of life in city and among the moun- tains, conversation, dialogue, development of plot, are all excellent. ~_—___—_- “‘ LETTRES DE MON MOULIN.” The title is a mere pretext for a series of charming novelettes, whose scenes are laid in the south of France and in Algeria, Books of French travel in the United States are still the order of the day in Paris: The last one is “ A Travers l’ Atlantique et dans le Nouveau Monde, par César Pascal.” (1870.) Recognizing in the name the. au» thor of a life of Abraham Lincoln, we could understand why he should desire to see the United States. He recounts a short excur- sion in 1869 to New York and the principal Eastern cities, going west by Harrisburg to Cincinnati, and returning by Cleveland and Buffalo. Of course, we do not look for fresh information from these books ; but it is in- teresting, if not always agreeable, to see how we appear in the eyes of a stranger. Can- dor compels us to say that, almost without exception, they complain of our want of po- liteness, Suppose we begin a reform by being polite to each other? Politeness. to strangers will then follow as a matter of course,
Page 141
NEBULZ. — A CERTAIN writer whom we all ad- mire, and who assumes the title of an Old Bachelor in “ Harper’s Bazar,” discoursed the other day on Success. His moral was that what the world calls success is after all not the true success ; that the truly successful men are often brave, obscure strugglers of whom no one ever hears ; that aman ought not to be considered successful simply because, by no merit of his own, he has been endowed with the gift of genius ; and that there are poor clerks living on small salaries compared with whom Byron and Nelson were failures. Dear Old Bache- lor, what earthly good is there in writing this sort of thing? What is the good, as Macaulay puts it somewhere, of trying to alter names when you cannot alter things ? Do you think it is the name Success which people strive for? Not in the least; it is the influence, the power, the fame, the wealth if you will. Suppose we all agree to call such careers as those of Byron and Nelson failures, and those of honest and poor clerks living in obscurity successes.. Very well, what then? Simply that we shall all go on as before, striving for the great, glittering re- sult which now you prefer to call failure, but which before was called success. If there really are men who would ueliberately rather be poor and obscure than, in the old, familiar sense, great and successful, then the preaching is thrown away on them; they don’t value the thing by whatever name it may be called. Sydney Smith. speaks with just reprehension of the weakness of people who preach to their daughters that beauty is of novalue. Every girl, he says, who enters the world and has eyes, must see that beauty is of value, and it is worse than useless to tell her the thing which is not. Show her that there are other things more valuable in the end; but don’t think you have gained anything by merely altering names. So, dear Old Bachelor, don’t waste your pure thoughts and charming style in futile and indeed spurious moralizing. No man of brains, and spirit, and health, ever will be induced to turn away from success in the career to which he feels himself called by your preaching to him that such success may after all be failure. And indeed it is unhealthy teaching, this preaching down of success. It has no marrow or heart in it, Why, Byron himself would have been a far better man if he had set greater store even on worldly success. ‘“ Ambition,” says he only too truly, “zas my idol, which was bro- ken before the shrines of Sorrow and of Pleasure.” No good comes of trying to glorify mediocrity and obscurity. Nobody ought to be mediocre and obscure if he can honestly be anything else. Stand up and be aman, whoever you are, however dull and humble ; but don’t let the genial Old Bache- lor persuade you that you are a much | greater personage than Shakespeare or George Washington. Beloved brother blockhead, you are nothing of the kind, and you know very well that you and I would be as great as Shakespeare and Washington if we only could. And as Mrs. Meg Dods says in Scott’s romance,,,“‘ What for no ?”” — IN all novels, romances, tragedies, and comedies we have ever read, the heroine (unless she be made specially and purposely ugly like Jane Eyre or Miss Bremer’s Petrea) is not merely beautiful, but is of a beauty which every man and woman in the novel, romance, tragedy, or comedy ac- knowledges, and either admires or envies. Now, it would be interesting to know wheth- er anybody in real life ever did meet with or hear of any woman whose beauty was thus acknowledged. Did any of us ever see a woman so beautiful that men did not differ about her claims to beauty? A very little reading below the mere surface of history, below the depth of the Pinnock’s Cate- chism style of thing, will show that about all the famous historical beauties people did so differ in the full prime and flush of the charms which, according to the way of ro- mance, ought to have had universal acknowl- edgment. Diana of Poictiers, Mary Stuart, Marie Antoinette, Madame Dubarry, Ma- dame Recamier—all these, and all others in- deed, were, in the midst of whatever general chorus of admiration, criticised by some ob- servers who saw no claim to beauty in their faces, and so recorded their convictions. The writer of these lines is free to declare that he does not see, and never could see
Page 142
434 the beauty which so many cordially ascribe to the Empress of the French; and he re- members to have heard very disparaging comments made on the appearance of the Princess of Wales even when she looked to him most charming. Of course the rap- tures of ordinary newspaper paragraphists and ball-room chroniclers go for nothing, We all see every day in the New York pa- pers inflated panegyrics of the personal charms of this or that distinguished lady whom we all know in private life to be per- fectly innocent of the fatal gift of beauty. We put, however, the newspaper paragraph- ists out of the question, and only make the assertion that no one who reads these lines ever saw any woman so beautiful that her beauty escaped sincere and frequent dis- paragement. Perhaps our friends the novel- writers would just sometimes remember that a creature of undisputed, unchallenged beauty does not exist, and never did, and is not by any means necessary either to ro- mance or to reality. Woman’s face seems to be somewhat like the rainbow; no two observers see precisely the same tints, lights, and outlines. ; ® — GIULIA GrisrI dead, and Jenny Lind Singing again! Each event makes one feel a little like an old fogy; that is to say, if he can remember the days when the two sing- ers were rivals contending for the crown of song. A somewhat curious fact about Grisi is, that hardly any middle-aged man can possibly remember her in her prime and her best days—certainly no man of forty years can well do so; and yet she was not sixty years old when she died. She began life so very, very soon—she came before the world at an age so little removed from childhood— that generations seem to have passed away since the days of her glorious ascendancy. Those who only heard Grisi during the last dozen or fifteen years never heard the true Grisi at all; they saw the incomparable lyrica] actress, but did not hear the once un- rivalled voice, The last time the writer of this saw Grisi was on a somewhat memora- ble occasion—the last appearance in Lon- don of Adelina Patti before her marriage. Mario (with a voice which was the poor ghost of the voice he once had, but with the style and vocalization which had no equal, and no second or third even) per- formed with Patti; and Grisi, still adorned with at least the outlines of her majestic beauty, sat in a box, her daughters beside NEBULA. [ MARCH, her, and listened to and applauded the young singer. Well, it is not old-fogyism to say that Grisi has left no peer, for indeed her grand lyrical style has gone out alto- gether. Titiens is the only woman who tries to keep up even the memory of it ; and Titiens has neither beauty nor grace, and has to struggle, fact, against physical dif- ficulties which a woman of less genius never could get over. Where Grisi was majestic _ as a Greek goddess, thrilling and-terrible as a Medea, Titiens reminds one of what Charles Lamb called Mrs. Siddons in com- edy, “a Gog in petticoats.” But in any case the whim of the age is now for pretty little humming-birds like Patti, and sad gen- tle nightingales like Nilsson, This whim must have its day; and then when it has had it, the sweetness and light will doubtless give place to lyrical passion and power once more. Will any one write the story of Grisi’s life? Could it be truly told in any book likely to be printed by a_ high-class American or English publisher? Hardly ; and yet it would be a wonderful and, in one sense, an instructive story, There is an anecdote told of a once-famous London ac- tress, some time dead, which may serve to illustrate our meaning. At a rather ad- vanced period of her career she married.a great actor younger than herself. There was gossip thereon in the green-room. Said. one lady, “I believe she acted most frankly ; she told him, when he proposed for her, all her history, every one of her adventures,” Said a second lady, uplifting her eyebrows, “What acandor!” ‘ Yes,” added a third, raising hands and eyes in wonder, “ but what a memory !” — THERE were projects for the holding of women's parliaments before Mrs, Cady Stan- ton, and poets who satirized woman’s rights before Tennyson wrote “ The Prin- cess.” The world seems to have forgotten Tom Moore’s poetical “ Proposals for a Gyneecocracy,” and may well bear being re- minded of them. Thus the poem opens: As Whig reform has had its range, And none of us are yet content, Suppose, my friends, by way of change, We try a Female Parliament ; And since of late with e M. P.’s We’ve fared so badly, take to shes, Petticoat patriots, flounc’d John Russells, Burdetts in blonde and Broughams in bustles? Then the poet goes on to argue out his scheme and show its justice and manifold advantages, For instance:
Page 143
1870.] If Vestris, to oblige the nation, Her own Olympus will abandon, And help to prop the administration, It can’t have better legs to stand on, For the name of Vestris we may now, if we choose, substitute that of Lydia—meaning the blonde Thompson, of course. The famed Macaulay (Miss) shall show Each evening forth in learn’d oration, Shall move, ’midst general cries of ‘‘Oh!” For full returns of population. For the name of the learned and eloquent Miss Macaulay we can easily find a substi- tute in Twenty-third street. So, with Tom Moore we may cry: Hurrah, then, for the Petticoats ! To them we pledge our freeborn votes, We'll all have se, and only shé ; Pert blues shall act as best debaters, Old dowagers our bishops be, And termagants our agitators ! , — Last month these columns contained an allusion to a recent medical exposition, according to which the American woman of to-day is losing, the American woman of to- morrow will have lost, the fairest ornament of her sex—a well-developed and shapely bust. Now come forward two medical men, of our own land, and declare, in a work just published, that ‘“‘a handsome leg is a rarity —we had almost said an impossibility— among American women!” Ladies, this is not our speech ; it is the grave assertion of two physicians whose names, in mercy to themselves, we forbear to write. But be comforted, indignant ladies, and patriots who are proud to believe in our country- women as models of symmetry. There never was a time or land in which the phy- sician did not thus endeavor to frighten away the follies of fashion by somewhat overdrawn and general pictures of the evils they cause. Decidedly there is much in our climate, and in the habits of life, dietary, and so forth, which prevail among our women, calcu- lated to repress affluence and undulation of form; and if to these causes are added specially injurious modes of dressing, a marked effect is likely to be soon visible. Still, we utterly refuse to believe that sym- metry of limb is altogether lost to American womanhood. No living doctor shall per- suade us of that. To the two physicians who have made the ungallant and sweeping assertion quoted above, we have only to say with Hamlet, “Have you eyes?” Any of these breezy March days a walk up and down Broadway will show you evidence NEBULA. 435 enough that you have been too rash and wholesale in your declaration. Repent and retract! Remember the fate of the calumni- ating Duenna in “Don Quixote,” who un- justly disparaged the “lower limbs” of the lovely Duchess. — Is it then true that the Celt-and-Saxon © theory, on which all British legislators of the dominant faction have relied for generations back to explain the condition of Ireland, has no foundation whatever? So, at least, says Thomas Huxley, the fearless iconoclast who delights in destroying the idols of the Phi- listine. Huxley has been demonstrating to an English audience that the Irish are not more Celtic than the English, the English not more Anglo-Saxon than the Irish, Down goes, then, one of the darling beliefs of the British churchwarden class of men. “You can’t do anything with those Celts, sir! They are all a lazy set, who are not fit for anything but beggary!” Years and years ago Stuart Mill denounced this kind of talk, when coming from lips more influ- ential than those of the British churchwar- den, as the resource and refuge of statesmen too apathetic, or ignorant, or timid, to seek and find out their duty ; and now the great- est of English naturalists demonstrates the justice of Mill’s conclusions on scientific evidence. What then is, according to Thomas Huxley, the cause of Ireland’s backward condition? Simply the misgovern- ment of centuries of British rule. Surely Ireland is being avenged at last. Even the British ethnologist adds his testimony to the evidence against her conquerors. This lec-— ture of Huxley’s will do good service in the House of Commons, and will serve as a kind of “boost” to Gladstone. — How many of us, if not professional journalists or military men, remembered anything about General de Lacy Evans, the veteran English soldier whose death was an- nounced a few days ago? Yet he accom- plished what Lee, and Beauregard, and Johnston never even attempted : he entered Washington as an enemy, and at the head of an armed invading force. To be sure, it was nearly sixty years ago, and was nothing better than a military surprise and a mere. raid, in fact, on which the burly old soldier looked back in later years with very little pride; but still it might have made a man’s name memorable here that he did some- how accomplish the feat. We are glad to
Page 144
436 be told. that De Lacy Evans always in- dignantly disclaimed any share or sympa- _thy in Admiral Cockburn’s barbarous incen- diary work ; and Lossing, in his recent his- tory of the war, speaks with respect and generous admiration of the veteran English soldier who has just died. What a career was that of De Lacy Evans! Truly his life, like that of Wallenstein’s soldier in Schiller, -was_ but ‘(a battle and a march.” India, Spain, Bladensburg and New . Orleans, Quatre Bras and Waterloo, Spain again in the Don Carlos wars, Balaklava and Inker- mann! We have called him an English general, but he was in fact an Irishman, .whom. sixty years of absence from his native land had not despoiled of ‘his. native “brogue.” He sat in Parliament for many years as a radical and an army reformer, Wechanced to hear him—-no, see him, we did not hear—when he was delivering a speech ina thin House of Commons against: the pernicious and abominable. system of selling commissions inthe army. Poor old soldier ! _The voice.that had rung through the storm of so. many battle-fields was gone, and though De Lacy Evans’s lips were seen to -move, no word reached the.ears of listeners inthe galleries. Perhaps one,may call’ him swhat. Carlyle. calls. Dumouriez, ‘a Heaven’s Swiss, worthy of a better cause” than that to which most of his gallant life was given. _— “THou who shalt pass where Thames’ translucent wave shines a broad mirror,” in which the trees.of Richmond: Hill can. see themselves reflected—thou, from whatever land coming, must have some reason to la- ment over the burning of the famous Star and Garter Hotel. Who that. ever visited London did not know.the Star and Garter? What traveller of us all has not enjoyed -its dinners, its, gardens—and its bills? It was one of the regular institutions of Lon- don; one can hardly indeed think of Lon- don in the season without thinking of the Star and Garter. Its dinners were not al- ways good; its prices were always enor- -mous ; but it was a place one must go to. ‘Not to have dined there was to have wasted existence. .Assuredly, the scene on which the. Star and Garter looked down is the very perfection of Euglish landscape. .No- where except in England do we find:such a scene. A river, there pure and_ bright enough to gladden the soul of a Naiad, winding through gentle hills and groves, rich with the greenest and most luxuriant NEBUL&. MARCH, of foliage—this is in bare words what the landscape is made of ; but it would take far better and brighter words than any this pen can give out, to convey any adequate idea of the wonderful richness, softness, verdure, and beauty of that delicious bit of sylvan scenery. There beneath you is the Thames as Pope described it, and as it looked to him and to St. John, from Twickenham yonder ; that view from this hill you stand on is.the one which Collins pictured in some of his most famous lines. But it certainly was not for the beauty of the scene, or the de- light of ‘its poetic associations, that visitors poured in to the Star and Garter. People went there because it was the right sort of thing to do. More flirtation has been done at the Star and Garter than in any other European hostelry ; hardly.a modern Eng- lish novel, ;dealing in any way with Lon- don fashionable, or artistic, or even dourgeois life, which .does. not locate some. incident within the precincts of this famous inn, Really, the flames might have. spared this Star and Garter, and taken say the Bank of England, or Buckingham Palace, or some other building in which the worldin general has nointerest. The hotel, as far as its out- er appearance was concerned, had nothing attractive about.it, but was indeed a shabby- looking structure enough, like nearly all the fashionable dining-places in and about London. Probably it will be built up anew dian modern, and splendid fashion ; but some- -how one. cannot help thinking that. the genius.of the place will be as little propi- tiated by stucco and ornamentation as the fountain of Egeria by the costly marble which Juvenal deprecated. — A FEARFUL dream of the future arises, The Chinese are pouring into San Fran- cisco at the rate of a couple of thousand a month, and this is only the mere beginning of the movement, the vanguard of the inva- sion. China has such a population, that it dis quite possible the average inaccuracy of a census there might leave out of the reckon- ing as many millions as our American States include. .. Supposg, then, the Mongolians, finding such a splendid field here, pour in and in until at last they are numerous enough to make :this..country. New China. Suppose this is their deliberate design ? The old country could easily spare some trifle of sixty or eighty millions or so and swamp us altogether! Then we should become.as the Indians, and have settlements. assigned
Page 145
1870. | to us; and if we didn’t keep within them, we should be bambooed! Or, perhaps, the Chinese, owners of this continent, might not even be so liberal as to allow us to stay here. They might insist that all white bar- barians and foreign devils must “ git up and git” out of the country. Fancy the Euro- pean Powers vainly negotiating with Prince Kung, Viceroy of New China, to procure for foreign vessels the privilege of admission to the port of New York! Fancy the-com- plications induced by the murder of some audacious stranger who had ventured to penetrate the interior of the country as far as Yonkers! Fancy the devoted mission- aries trying in vain to make their way into Philadelphia ; and Mr. Burlingame break- ing his heart in futile efforts to obtain a con- cession allowing foreign consuls to present themselves in Boston! Cooper Institute a joss house, and the City, Hall occupied bya Mandarin ! And where are'we all to go to? What fleet of Mayflowers will ‘carry us ; and who will have us, who will take us in ? — NATuRE has very few patterns for the moulding of men and women. Let us say what we will, after the fashion of ‘‘Sturm’s Reflections,” about the inexhaustible re- sources of Nature, we cannot, if only we open our eyes, avoid being struck by the fact that she is sadly lacking in originality and variety so far as the human countenance is concerned. Go into any strange crowd, and you will dis- cern in almost every face you see the like- ness of somebody you know in a different part of the country or the globe. There never was anybody who did not seem to some observer tobe surprisingly like some- body else. Men and women appear ‘to: be turned out in lots like Nuremberg tin -sol- diers. You see somebody for the first time, and you exclaim, “‘ How very like Tomkins he is!” or, “‘ How he reminds me of Hop- kins!” There certainly are Tomkins’s. or Hopkins’s eyes, nose, manner of wearing the hair, etc., etc.; and the more you look'the more you are impressed by the resemblance. Meanwhile scores of other observers are li- kening your absent Tomkins or Hopkins to other personages ; and scores will find out in the creatures you think so like Hopkins or Tomkins the counterfeit presentment of somebody they know. Take the trouble to observe how often this sort of thing occurs to you, and to think how often it probably occurs to others, and you may perhaps be- gin to wonder over Nature’s resources in NEBULA. ‘the case ‘may be. 437 quite a new strain. There is a student of human faces so impressed with this fact that when he wants to describe—to his wife, for instance—the appearance of any stranger he ‘has seen, he merely says : “ He is one of the Smith pattern,” or the “ Brown pattern,” as f7e insists that the whole Caucasian race only contains some six orig- inal patterns, and that Nature is always drudging contentedly upon this limited stock over and over again, without the faintest in- timation of will or tendency to produce any- thing new. | — Evreryvsopy has been “sold,” it would seem, about Carlyle’s “ Liturgy of Dead Sea Apes,” as applied to spiritualism. People exploded with admiration over the phrase, and it ran a wild round of the newspapers. An inquiring creature here and there did perhaps ask of his own soul what “ Liturgy of Dead Sea Apes” meant; what species of ape was peculiar to the Dead Sea, and ‘what was their liturgy. But even these in- quirers were too timid to put the question openly, and so it passed into a public law that Carlyle had said something wonderfully clever when he spoke of a Liturgy of Dead Sea Apes. But behold it now turns out that Carlyle never said any such thing. He wrote “ Dead Sea Apples,” and a bewildered printer made it “Dead Sea Apes!” Well, a Liturgy of Dead Sea Apples is intelligible at least, if not remarkable for any great novelty of idea. But we are for sticking to the Dead Sea Apes, as far finer and more truly Carlylean. Nobody can understandit, and this is a merit which to the devotees of Carlyle must be simply inestimable. The ‘whole story is that of Sydney Smith and the ““ Kimes ” over again. Sydney Smith wrote of somebody being “ wounded with knives.” A printer’s blunder converted “knives” into ‘*kimes,” and the public supposed these latter to be some awful weapons used in _ foreign torture, and were therefore impressed far more profoundly by the story than would otherwise have been possible. We know of another instance of a somewhat similar kind. A journalist had to write an angry editorial: about a certain person in Rome being committed to the tender mercies of the “Papal Gendarmes.” The printers made it ‘Papal Zendaives.” The article went round all the papers, and “‘ Papal Zen- daives ” figured everywhere. One journal actually inserted after the mysterious words a parenthetical line or two explaining that
Page 146
438 these Zendaives were “torturers kept in the Pope’s prisons!” Now, the whole effect would surely have been spoiled by any un- timely announcement that there are no such beings as Zendaives, and that the awful word was only a misprint for the familiar, commonplace gendarmes. We are, there- fore, emphatically for the Kimes, the Zen- daives, and the Dead Sea Apes. — IT does not seem as if a guest has any rights which a hotel-keeper in the United States is bound to respect. Nearly all ho- tels now gratify their visitors by announce- ments that the proprietors are not responsi- ble for baggage ; some add to this that the proprietors decline responsibility for wear- ing apparel left in the rooms ; while in Chi- cago and other towns a further step is taken, and the proprietors declare themselves not responsible if the boots which the guests leave out to be cleaned should happen not to be brought back to the owners. Thus, while hotel prices are rising every day, the responsibilities of hotei-keepers are dimin- ishing. After a while we shall probably be told that the hotel-keeper will not hold him- self responsible. for the furnishing of the meals for which he charges five dollars a day. The railway companies have long been announcing that they will not be respon- sible for baggage beyond the value of one hundred dollars—and only let anybody ask his wife how far one hundred dollars would go toward making good the loss of a single silk dress in her trunk! Now all this is, as the angry Brown Forester says in Dickens’s ** American Notes,” “'rather too mountain- ous.” Really, if people can legally get rid of their responsibilities by verbally disclaim- ing them, we had better understand the mat- ter and all of us start fair. Let the guests at a hotel announce that they do not hold them- selves responsible for glasses they may break or dinners they may eat and forget to pay for; let them declare, when travelling by rail, that they do not hold themselves bound to pay any fare excceding a prescribed number of dollars. At present, to use the Irishman’s phrase, “the reciprocity is all on one side.” NEBULA. [ MARCH, — HARDLY any author has ever drawn, or ventured to draw, or perhaps thought of draw- ing, a faithful picture of a child. No grown human being is so simply, singly selfish as an ordinary child. No tyrant Nero, Helio- gabalus, Philip the Second, or any other, ever felt the natural passion for cruelty, the delight in witnessing and causing the inflic- tion of pain which a healthy, uncontrolled boy or girl will feel. Indeed, the pleasure of tormenting may be said to be as peculiar- ly infantile as the delight in smoking is mas- culine or the love of bonnets feminine. Never, after the childish years, can the full, true, absorbing pleasure of cruelty be enjoy- ed. The delight of inflicting pain and hu- miliation on the weak, the infirm, the old, can hardly be appreciated in after life, even by natures like those which Swinburne sometimes puts into the form of woman. Untrained children always are thus selfish and cruel; the tendency of every child is to be thus selfish and cruel. The idolatry of children, which is so popular, and, indeed, almost universal, is pitiful and contemptible. Somebody who never had a kindly emotion toward any grown human being may be thought a creature full of charming sensibil- ity if only he shows that he loves to fondle a child. The truth is that the human being improves as he grows. Bill Sykes, the man and murderer, has some gleams of kindliness and disinterestedness which Bill Sykes the marble-playing brat never knew. Bad as he is now, on his way to the gallows, he was worse then, on his way to the gutter. We stand up for man and woman, and in- sist that, with all their faults, they are de- cided improvements on boy and girl; and we utterly reject all the sentimental rubbish about the exquisite innocence and general delightfulness of childhood. George Sand, perhaps, has gone nearer to representing the truth in this respect than any novelist we can recollect. Alexia Aldini, the selfish, haughty, arrogant little girl who sticks pins into her dolls to try whether they have the true azure of patrician blood, grows into the wil- ful, imperious woman who, with all her wil- fulness, has a deep capacity for love and a soul that can appreciate sacrifice and feel generosity. ,