DINNER-TIME.
“Within this hour it will be dinner-time;
I'll view the manners of the town,
Peruse the traders, gaze upon the buildings.”
Comedy of Errors.
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DINNER-TIME.
“Within this hour it will be dinner-time;
I'll view the manners of the town,
Peruse the traders, gaze upon the buildings.”
Comedy of Errors.
In the warm afternoons of the early summer, it is
my pleasure to stroll about Washington Square and
along the Fifth Avenue, at the hour when the diners-out
are hurrying to the tables of the wealthy and
refined. I gaze with placid delight upon the cheerful
expanse of white waistcoat that illumes those
streets at that hour, and mark the variety of emotions
that swell beneath all that purity. A man
going out to dine has a singular cheerfulness of aspect.
Except for his gloves, which fit so well, and
which he has carefully buttoned, that he may not
make an awkward pause in the hall of his friend's
house, I am sure he would search his pocket for a
cent to give the wan beggar at the corner. It is
impossible just now, my dear woman; but God
bless you!
It is pleasant to consider that simple suit of black.
If my man be young and only lately cognizant of
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the rigors of the social law, he is a little nervous at
being seen in his dress suit—body coat and black
trowsers—before sunset. For in the last days of May
the light lingers long over the freshly leaved trees
in the Square, and lies warm along the Avenue. All
winter the sun has not been permitted to see dresscoats.
They come out only with the stars, and fade
with ghosts, before the dawn. Except, haply, they
be brought homeward before breakfast in an early
twilight of hackney-coach. Now, in the budding
and bursting summer, the sun takes his revenge, and
looks aslant over the tree-tops and the chimneys
upon the most unimpeachable garments. A cat
may look upon a king.
I know my man at a distance. If I am chatting
with the nursery maids around the fountain, I see
him upon the broad walk of Washington Square,
and detect him by the freshness of his movement,
his springy gait. Then the white waistcoat flashes
in the sun.
“Go on, happy youth,” I exclaim aloud, to the
great alarm of the nursery maids, who suppose me
to be an innocent insane person suffered to go at
large, unattended,—“go on, and be happy with fellow
waistcoats over fragrant wines.”
It is hard to describe the pleasure in this amiable
spectacle of a man going out to dine. I, who
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am a quiet family man, and take a quiet family cut
at four o'clock; or, when I am detained down town
by a false quantity in my figures, who run into Delmonico's
and seek comfort in a cutlet, am rarely
invited to dinner and have few white waistcoats.
Indeed, my dear Prue tells me that I have but one
in the world, and I often want to confront my eager
young friends as they bound along, and ask abruptly,
“What do you think of a man whom one white
waistcoat suffices?”
By the time I have eaten my modest repast, it is
the hour for the diners-out to appear. If the day is
unusually soft and sunny, I hurry my simple meal a
little, that I may not lose any of my favorite spectacle.
Then I saunter out. If you met me you
would see that I am also clad in black. But black
is my natural color, so that it begets no false theories
concerning my intentions. Nobody, meeting
me in full black, supposes that I am going to dine
out. That sombre hue is professional with me. It
belongs to book-keepers as to clergymen, physicians,
and undertakers. We wear it because we follow
solemn callings. Saving men's bodies and souls, or
keeping the machinery of business well wound, are
such sad professions that it is becoming to drape
dolefully those who adopt them.
I wear a white cravat, too, but nobody supposes
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that it is in any danger of being stained by Lafitte.
It is a limp cravat with a craven tie. It has none
of the dazzling dash of the white that my young
friends sport, or, I should say, sported; for the
white cravat is now abandoned to the sombre professions
of which I spoke. My young friends suspect
that the flunkeys of the British nobleman wear
such ties, and they have, therefore, discarded them.
I am sorry to remark, also, an uneasiness, if not
downright skepticism, about the white waistcoat.
Will it extend to shirts, I ask myself with sorrow.
But there is something pleasanter to contemplate
during these quiet strolls of mine, than the
men who are going to dine out, and that is, the
women. They roll in carriages to the happy
houses which they shall honor, and I strain my
eyes in at the carriage window to see their cheerful
faces as they pass. I have already dined; upon
beef and cabbage, probably, if it is boiled day. I
I am not expected at the table to which Aurelia is
hastening, yet no guest there shall enjoy more than
I enjoy,—nor so much, if he considers the meats
the best part of the dinner. The beauty of the
beautiful Aurelia I see and worship as she drives
by. The vision of many beautiful Aurelias driving
to dinner, is the mirage of that pleasant journey
of mine along the avenue. I do not envy the
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Persian poets, on those afternoons, nor long to be an
Arabian traveller. For I can walk that street,
finer than any of which the Ispahan architects
dreamed; and I can see sultanas as splendid as the
enthusiastic and exaggerating Orientals describe.
But not only do I see and enjoy Aurelia's beauty.
I delight in her exquisite attire. In these warm
days she does not wear so much as the lightest
shawl. She is clad only in spring sunshine. It
glitters in the soft darkness of her hair. It touches
the diamonds, the opals, the pearls, that cling to
her arms, and neck, and fingers. They flash back
again, and the gorgeous silks glisten, and the light
laces flutter, until the stately Aurelia seems to me,
in tremulous radiance, swimming by.
I doubt whether you who are to have the inexpressible
pleasure of dining with her, and even of
sitting by her side, will enjoy more than I. For
my pleasure is inexpressible, also. And it is in this
greater than yours, that I see all the beautiful ones
who are to dine at various tables, while you only
see your own circle, although that, I will not deny,
is the most desirable of all.
Beside, although my person is not present at
your dinner, my fancy is. I see Aurelia's carriage
stop, and behold white-gloved servants opening
wide doors. There is a brief glimpse of
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magnificence for the dull eyes of the loiterers outside;
then the door closes. But my fancy went in with
Aurelia. With her, it looks at the vast mirror, and
surveys her form at length in the Psyche-glass. It
gives the final shake to the skirt, the last flirt to
the embroidered handkerchief, carefully held, and
adjusts the bouquet, complete as a tropic nestling
in orange leaves. It descends with her, and marks
the faint blush upon her cheek at the thought of
her exceeding beauty; the consciousness of the
most beautiful woman, that the most beautiful
woman is entering the room. There is the momentary
hush, the subdued greeting, the quick glance
of the Aurelias who have arrived earlier, and who
perceive in a moment the hopeless perfection of
that attire; the courtly gaze of gentlemen, who
feel the serenity of that beauty. All this my fancy
surveys; my fancy, Aurelia's invisible cavalier.
You approach with hat in hand and the thumb
of your left hand in your waistcoat pocket. You
are polished and cool, and have an irreproachable
repose of manner. There are no improper wrinkles
in your cravat; your shirt-bosom does not bulge;
the trowsers are accurate about your admirable
boot. But you look very stiff and brittle. You
are a little bullied by your unexceptionable shirt-collar,
which interdicts perfect freedom of
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movement in your head. You are elegant, undoubtedly,
but it seems as if you might break and fall to
pieces, like a porcelain vase, if you were roughly
shaken.
Now, here, I have the advantage of you. My
fancy quietly surveying the scene, is subject to
none of these embarrassments. My fancy will not
utter commonplaces. That will not say to the
superb lady, who stands with her flowers, incarnate
May, “What a beautiful day, Miss Aurelia.”
That will not feel constrained to say somethings,
when it has nothing to say; nor will it be obliged
to smother all the pleasant things that occur, because
they would be too flattering to express.
My fancy perpetually murmurs in Aurelia's ear,
“Those flowers would not be fair in your hand,
if you yourself were not fairer. That diamond
necklace would be gaudy, if your eyes were not
brighter. That queenly movement would be awkward,
if your soul were not queenlier.”
You could not say such things to aurelia,
although, if you are worthy to dine at her side, they
are the very things you are longing to say. What
insufferable stuff you are talking about the weather,
and the opera, and Alboni's delicious voice, and Newport,
and Saratoga! They are all very pleasant
subjects, but do you suppose Ixion talked
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Thessalian politics when he was admitted to dine with
Juno?
I almost begin to pity you, and to believe that a
scarcity of white waistcoats is true wisdom. For
now dinner is announced, and you, O rare felicity,
are to hand down Aurelia. But you run the risk
of tumbling her expansive skirt, and you have to
drop your hat upon a chance chair, and wonder, en
passant, who will wear it home, which is annoying.
My fancy runs no such risk; is not at all solicitous
about its hat, and glides by the side of Aurelia,
stately as she. There! you stumble on the stair,
and are vexed at your own awkwardness, and are
sure you saw the ghost of a smile glimmer along
that superb face at your side. My fancy doesn't
tumble down stairs, and what kind of looks it sees
upon Aurelia's face, are its own secret.
Is it any better, now you are seated at table?
Your companion eats little because she wishes little.
You eat little because you think it is elegant to do
so. It is a shabby, second-hand elegance, like your
brittle behavior. It is just as foolish for you to play
with the meats, when you ought to satisfy your
healthy appetite generously, as it is for you, in the
drawing-room, to affect that cool indifference when
you have real and noble interests.
I grant you that fine manners, if you please, are
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a fine art. But is not monotony the destruction of
art? Your manners, O happy Ixion, banqueting
with Juno, are Egyptian. They have no perspective,
no variety. They have no color, no
shading. They are all on a dead level; they
are flat. Now, for you are a man of sense, you
are conscious that those wonderful eyes of Aurelia
see straight through all this net-work of elegant
manners in which you have entangled yourself, and
that consciousness is uncomfortable to you. It is
another trick in the game for me, because those eyes
do not pry into my fancy. How can they, since
Aurelia does not know of my existence?
Unless, indeed, she should remember the first
time I saw her. It was only last year, in May. I
had dined, somewhat hastily, in consideration of
the fine day, and of my confidence that many would
be wending dinnerwards that afternoon. I saw my
Prue comfortably engaged in seating the trowsers
of Adoniram, our eldest boy—an economical care
to which my darling Prue is not unequal, even in
these days and in this town—and then hurried
toward the avenue. It is never much thronged at
that hour. The moment is sacred to dinner. As
I paused at the corner of Twelfth Street, by the
church, you remember, I saw an apple-woman, from
whose stores I determined to finish my dessert,
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which had been imperfect at home. But, mindful
of meritorious and economical Prue, I was not the
man to pay exorbitant prices for apples, and while
still haggling with the wrinkled Eve who had
tempted me, I became suddenly aware of a carriage
approaching, and, indeed, already close by. I raised
my eyes, still munching an apple which I held in
one hand, while the other grasped my walking-stick
(true to my instincts of dinner guests, as young women
to a passing wedding or old ones to a funeral),
and beheld Aurelia!
Old in this kind of observation as I am, there was
something so graciously alluring in the look that
she cast upon me, as unconsciously, indeed, as she
would have cast it upon the church, that, fumbling
hastily for my spectacles to enjoy the boon more
fully, I thoughtlessly advanced upon the applestand,
and, in some indescribable manner, tripping,
down we all fell into the street, old woman, apples,
baskets, stand, and I, in promiscuous confusion.
As I struggled there, somewhat bewildered, yet
sufficiently self-possessed to look after the carriage,
I beheld that beautiful woman looking at us
through the back-window (you could not have
done it; the integrity of your shirt-collar would
have interfered,) and smiling pleasantly, so that her
going around the corner was like a gentle sunset,
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so seemed she to disappear in her own smiling; or—
if you choose, in view of the apple difficulties—
like a rainbow after a storm.
If the beautiful Aurelia recalls that event, she
may know of my existence; not otherwise. And
even then she knows me only as a funny old gentleman,
who, in his eagerness to look at her, tumbled
over an apple-woman.
My fancy from that moment followed her. How
grateful I was to the wrinkled Eve's extortion, and
to the untoward tumble, since it procured me the
sight of that smile. I took my sweet revenge from
that. For I knew that the beautiful Aurelia entered
the house of her host with beaming eyes, and
my fancy heard her sparkling story. You consider
yourself happy because you are sitting by her and
helping her to a lady-finger, or a macaroon, for
which she smiles. But I was her theme for ten
mortal minutes. She was my bard, my blithe historian.
She was the Homer of my luckless Trojan
fall. She set my mishap to music, in telling it.
Think what it is to have inspired Urania; to have
called a brighter beam into the eyes of Miranda, and
do not think so much of passing Aurelia the mottoes,
my dear young friend.
There was the advantage of not going to that
dinner. Had I been invited, as you were, I should
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have pestered Prue about the buttons on my white
waistcoat, instead of leaving her placidly piecing
adolescent trowsers. She would have been flustered,
fearful of being too late, of tumbling the
garment, of soiling it, fearful of offending me in
some way, (admirable woman!) I, in my natural
impatience, might have let drop a thoughtless word,
which would have been a pang in her heart and a
tear in her eye, for weeks afterward.
As I walked nervously up the avenue (for I am
unaccustomed to prandial recreations), I should not
have had that solacing image of quiet Prue, and the
trowsers, as the back-ground in the pictures of the
gay figures I passed, making each, by contrast,
fairer. I should have been wondering what to say
and do at the dinner. I should surely have been very
warm, and yet not have enjoyed the rich, waning
sunlight. Need I tell you that I should not have
stopped for apples, but instead of economically
tumbling into the street with apples and apple-women,
whereby I merely rent my trowsers across
the knee, in a manner that Prue can readily, and at
little cost, repair, I should, beyond peradventure,
have split a new dollar-pair of gloves in the effort
of straining my large hands into them, which would,
also, have caused me additional redness in the face,
and renewed fluttering.
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Above all, I should not have seen Aurelia passing
in her carriage, nor would she have smiled at
me, nor charmed my memory with her radiance,
nor the circle at dinner with the sparkling Iliad of
my woes. Then at the table, I should not have sat
by her. You would have had that pleasure; I
should have led out the maiden aunt from the
country, and have talked poultry, when I talked at
all. Aurelia would not have remarked me. Afterward,
in describing the dinner to her virtuous
parents, she would have concluded, “and one old
gentleman, whom I didn't know.”
No, my polished friend, whose elegant repose of
manner I yet greatly commend, I am content, if
you are. How much better it was that I was not
invited to that dinner, but was permitted, by a
kind fate, to furnish a subject for Aurelia's wit.
There is one other advantage in sending your
fancy to dinner, instead of going yourself. It is,
that then the occasion remains wholly fair in your
memory. You, who devote yourself to dining out,
and who are to be daily seen affably sitting down to
such feasts, as I know mainly by hearsay—by the
report of waiters, guests, and others who were
present—you cannot escape the little things that
spoil the picture, and which the fancy does not
see.
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For instance, in handing you the potage à la
Bisque, at the very commencement of this dinner
to-day, John, the waiter, who never did such a
thing before, did this time suffer the plate to tip, so
that a little of that rare soup dripped into your lap—
just enough to spoil those trowsers, which is
nothing to you, because you can buy a great many
more trowsers, but which little event is inharmonious
with the fine porcelain dinner service, with
the fragrant wines, the glittering glass, the beautiful
guests, and the mood of mind suggested by all
of these. There is, in fact, if you will pardon a free
use of the vernacular, there is a grease-spot upon
your remembrance of this dinner.
Or, in the same way, and with the same kind of
mental result, you can easily imaging the meats a
little tough; a suspicion of smoke somewhere in
the sauces; too much pepper, perhaps, or too little
salt; or there might be the graver dissonance of
claret not properly attempered, or a choice Rhenish
below the average mark, or the spilling of some of
that Arethusa Madeira, marvellous for its innumerable
circumnavigations of the globe, and for being
as dry as the conversation of the host. These
things are not up to the high level of the dinner; for
wherever Aurelia dines, all accessories should be as
perfect in their kind as she, the principal, is in hers.
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That reminds me of a possible dissonance worse
than all. Suppose that soup had trickled down the
unimaginable berthe of Aurelia's dress (since it might
have done so), instead of wasting itself upon your
trowsers! Could even the irreproachable elegance
of your manners have contemplated, unmoved, a
grease-spot upon your remembrance of the peerless
Aurelia?
You smile, of course, and remind me that that
lady's manners are so perfect that, if she drank
poison, she would wipe her mouth after it as gracefully
as ever. How much more then, you say, in
the case of such a slight contretemps as spotting her
dress, would she appear totally unmoved.
So she would, undoubtedly. She would be, and
look, as pure as ever; but, my young friend,
her dress would not. Once, I dropped a pickled
oyster in the lap of my Prue, who wore, on the occasion,
her sea-green silk gown. I did not love my
Prue the less; but there certainly was a very unhandsome
spot upon her dress. And although I
know my Prue to be spotless, yet, whenever I recall
that day, I see her in a spotted gown, and I
would prefer never to have been obliged to think of
her in such a garment.
Can you not make the application to the case,
very likely to happen, of some disfigurement of
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that exquisite toilette of Aurelia's? In going down
stairs, for instance, why should not heavy old Mr
Carbuncle, who is coming close behind with Mrs.
Peony, both very eager for dinner, tread upon the
hem of that garment which my lips would grow
pale to kiss? The august Aurelia, yielding to
natural laws, would be drawn suddenly backward—
a very undignified movement—and the dress would
be dilapidated. There would be apologies, and
smiles, and forgiveness, and pinning up the pieces,
nor would there be the faintest feeling of awkwardness
or vexation in Aurelia's mind. But to you,
looking on, and, beneath all that pure show of waistcoat,
cursing old Carbuncle's carelessness, this tearing
of dresses and repair of the toilette is by no
means a poetic and cheerful spectacle. Nay, the
very impatience that it produces in your mind jars
upon the harmony of the moment.
You will respond, with proper scorn, that you
are not so absurdly fastidious as to heed the little
necessary drawbacks of social meetings, and that
you have not much regard for “the harmony of the
occasion” (which phrase I fear you will repeat in a
sneering tone). You will do very right in saying
this; and it is a remark to which I shall give all
the hospitality of my mind, and I do so because I
heartily coincide in it. I hold a man to be very
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foolish who will not eat a good dinner because the
table-cloth is not clean, or who cavils at the spots
upon the sun. But still a man who does not apply
his eye to a telescope or some kind of prepared
medium, does not see those spots, while he has just
as much light and heat as he who does.
So it is with me. I walk in the avenue, and
eat all the delightful dinners without seeing the
spots upon the table-cloth, and behold all the beautiful
Aurelias without swearing at old Carbuncle. I
am the guest who, for the small price of invisibility,
drinks only the best wines, and talks only to the
most agreeable people. That is something, I can
tell you, for you might be asked to lead out old Mrs.
Peony. My fancy slips in between you and Aurelia,
sit you never so closely together. It not only hears
what she says, but it perceives what she thinks and
feels. It lies like a bee in her flowery thoughts,
sucking all their honey. If there are unhandsome
or unfeeling guests at table, it will not see them.
It knows only the good and fair. As I stroll in the
fading light and observe the stately houses, my
fancy believes the host equal to his house, and the
courtesy of his wife more agreeable than her conservatory.
It will not believe that the pictures on
the wall and the statues in the corners shame the
guests. It will not allow that they are less than
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noble. It hears them speak gently of error, and
warmly of worth. It knows that they commend
heroism and devotion, and reprobate insincerity.
My fancy is convinced that the guests are not only
feasted upon the choicest fruits of every land and
season, but are refreshed by a consciousness of
greater loveliness and grace in human character.
Now you, who actually go to the dinner, may
not entirely agree with the view my fancy takes of
that entertainment. Is it not, therefore, rather
your loss? Or, to put it in another way, ought I
to envy you the discovery that the guests are
shamed by the statues and pictures;—yes, and by
the spoons and forks also, if they should chance
neither to be so genuine nor so useful as those instruments?
And, worse than this, when your
fancy wishes to enjoy the picture which mine forms
of that feast, it cannot do so, because you have
foolishly interpolated the fact between the dinner
and your fancy.
Of course, by this time it is late twilight, and
the spectacle I enjoyed is almost over. But not
quite, for as I return slowly along the streets, the
windows are open, and only a thin haze of lace or
muslin separates me from the Paradise within.
I see the graceful cluster of girls hovering over
the piano, and the quiet groups of the elders in
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easy chairs, around little tables. I cannot hear
what is said, nor plainly see the faces. But some
hoyden evening wind, more daring than I, abruptly
parts the cloud to look in, and out comes a gush of
light, music, and fragrance, so that I shrink away
into the dark, that I may not seem, even by chance,
to have invaded that privacy.
Suddenly there is singing. It is Aurelia, who
does not cope with the Italian Prima Donna, nor
sing indifferently to-night, what was sung superbly
last evening at the opera. She has a strange, low,
sweet voice, as if she only sang in the twilight. It
is the balled of “Allan Percy” that she sings.
There is no dainty applause of kid gloves, when it
is ended, but silence follows the singing, like a
tear.
Then you, my young friend, ascend into the
drawing-room, and, after a little graceful gossip,
retire; or you wait, possibly, to hand Aurelia into
her carriage, and to arrange a waltz for to-morrow
evening. She smiles, you bow, and it is over. But
it is not yet over with me. My fancy still follows
her, and, like a prophetic dream, rehearses her destiny.
For, as the carriage rolls away into the darkness
and I return homewards, how can my fancy
help rolling away also, into the dim future, watching
her go down the years?
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Upon my way home I see her in a thousand new
situations. My fancy says to me, “The beauty of
this beautiful woman is heaven's stamp upon virtue.
She will be equal to every chance that shall befall
her, and she is so radiant and charming in the circle
of prosperity, only because she has that irresistible
simplicity and fidelity of character, which can also
pluck the sting from adversity. Do you not see,
you wan old book-keeper in faded cravat, that in a
poor man's house this superb Aurelia would be more
stately than sculpture, more beautiful than painting,
and more graceful than the famous vases. Would
her husband regret the opera if she sang `Allan
Percy' to him in the twilight? Would he not feel
richer than the Poets, when his eyes rose from their
jewelled pages, to fall again dazzled by the splendor
of his wife's beauty?”
At this point in my reflections I sometimes run,
rather violently, against a lamp-post, and then proceed
along the street more sedately.
It is yet early when I reach home, where my
Prue awaits me. The children are asleep, and the
trowsers mended. The admirable woman is patient
of my idiosyncrasies, and asks me if I have had a
pleasant walk, and if there were many fine dinners
to-day, as if I had been expected at a dozen tables.
She even asks me if I have seen the beautiful
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Aurelia (for there is always some Aurelia,) and inquires
what dress she wore. I respond, and dilate upon
what I have seen. Prue listens, as the children
listen to her fairy tales. We discuss the little
stories that penetrate our retirement, of the great
people who actually dine out. Prue, with fine womanly
instinct, declares it is a shame that Aurelia
should smile for a moment upon—, yes, even
upon you, my friend of the irreproachable manners!
“I know him,” says my simple Prue; “I have
watched his cold courtesy, his insincere devotion.
I have seen him acting in the boxes at the opera,
much more adroitly than the singers upon the stage.
I have read his determination to marry Aurelia; and
I shall not be surprised,” concludes my tender wife,
sadly, “if he wins her at last, by tiring her out, or,
by secluding her by his constant devotion from the
homage of other men, convinces her that she had
better marry him, since it is so dismal to live on
unmarried.”
And so, my friend, at the moment when the
bouquet you ordered is arriving at Aurelia's house,
and she is sitting before the glass while her maid
arranges the last flower in her hair, my darling Prue,
whom you will never hear of, is shedding warm
tears over your probable union, and I am sitting by,
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adjusting my cravat and incontinently clearing my
throat.
It is rather a ridiculous business, I allow; yet
you will smile at it tenderly, rather than scornfully,
if you remember that it shows how closely linked
we human creatures are, without knowing it, and
that more hearts than we dream of enjoy our happiness
and share our sorrow.
Thus, I dine at great tables uninvited, and, unknown,
converse with the famous beauties. If
Aurelia is at last engaged, (but who is worthy?)
she will, with even greater care, arrange that wondrous
toilette, will teach that lace a fall more alluring,
those gems a sweeter light. But even then, as
she rolls to dinner in her carriage, glad that she is
fair, not for her own sake nor for the world's, but for
that of a single youth (who, I hope, has not been
smoking at the club all the morning), I, sauntering
upon the sidewalk, see her pass, I pay homage to
her beauty, and her lover can do no more; and if,
perchance, my garments—which must seem quaint
to her, with their shining knees and carefully brushed
elbows; my white cravat, careless, yet prim; my
meditative movement, as I put my stick under my
arm to pare an apple, and not, I hope, this time to
fall into the street,—should remind her, in her spring
of youth, and beauty, and love, that there are age,
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and care, and poverty, also; then, perhaps, the good
fortune of the meeting is not wholly mine.
For, O beautiful Aurelia, two of these things, at
least, must come even to you. There will be a time
when you will no longer go out to dinner, or only
very quietly, in the family. I shall be gone then:
but other old book-keepers in white cravats will
inherit my tastes, and saunter, on summer afternoons,
to see what I loved to see.
They will not pause, I fear, in buying apples, to
look at the old lady in venerable cap, who is rolling
by in the carriage. They will worship another
Aurelia. You will not wear diamonds or opals any
more, only one pearl upon your blue-veined finger—
your engagement ring. Grave clergymen and antiquated
beaux will hand you down to dinner, and the
group of polished youth, who gather around the yet
unborn Aurelia of that day, will look at you, sitting
quietly upon the sofa, and say, softly, “She must
have been very handsome in her time.”
All this must be: for consider how few years
since it was your grandmother who was the belle,
by whose side the handsome young men longed to
sit and pass expressive mottoes. Your grandmother
was the Aurelia of a half-century ago, although you
cannot fancy her young. She is indissolubly associated
in your mind with caps and dark dresses. You
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can believe Mary Queen of Scots, or Nell Gwyn, or
Cleopatra, to have been young and blooming, although
they belong to old and dead centuries, but
not your grandmother. Think of those who shall
believe the same of you—you, who to-day are the
very flower of youth.
Might I plead with you, Aurelia—I, who would
be too happy to receive one of those graciously
beaming bows that I see you bestow upon young
men, in passing,—I would ask you to bear that
thought with you, always, not to sadden your sunny
smile, but to give it a more subtle grace. Wear in
your summer garland this little leaf of rue. It will
not be the skull at the feast, it will rather be the
tender thoughtfulness in the face of the young
Madonna.
For the years pass like summer clouds, Aurelia,
and the children of yesterday are the wives and
mothers of to-day. Even I do sometimes discover
the mild eyes of my Prue fixed pensively upon my
face, as if searching for the bloom which she remembers
there in the days, long ago, when we were
young. She will never see it there again, any more
than the flowers she held in her hand, in our old
spring rambles. Yet the tear that slowly gathers
as she gazes, is not grief that the bloom has faded
from my cheek, but the sweet consciousness that it
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can never fade from my heart; and as her eyes fall
upon her work again, or the children climb her lap
to hear the old fairy tales they already know by
heart, my wife Prue is dearer to me than the sweet-heart
of those days long ago.
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-- -- p535-046
MY CHATEAUX.
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree.”
Coleridge.
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MY CHATEAUX.
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree.”
Coleridge.
I AM the owner of great estates. Many of them
lie in the West; but the greater part are in Spain.
You may see my western possessions any evening
at sunset when their spires and battlements flash
against the horizon.
It gives me a feeling of pardonable importance,
as a proprietor, that they are visible, to my eyes at
least, from any part of the world in which I chance
to be. In my long voyage around the Cape of Good
Hope to India (the only voyage I ever made, when
I was a boy and a supercargo), if I fell home-sick,
or sank into a reverie of all the pleasant homes I
had left behind, I had but to wait until sunset, and
then looking toward the west, I beheld my clustering
pinnacles and towers brightly burnished as if
to salute and welcome me.
So, in the city, if I get vexed and wearied, and
cannot find my wonted solace in sallying forth at
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dinner-time to contemplate the gay world of youth
and beauty hurrying to the congress of fashion,—or
if I observe that years are deepening their tracks
around the eyes of my wife, Prue, I go quietly up
to the housetop, toward evening, and refresh myself
with a distant prospect of my estates. It is as
dear to me as that of Eton to the poet Gray; and,
if I sometimes wonder at such moments whether I
shall find those realms as fair as they appear, I am
suddenly reminded that the night air may be noxious,
and descending, I enter the little parlor where
Prue sits stitching, and surprise that precious woman
by exclaiming with the poet's pensive enthusiasm;
“Thought would destroy their Paradise,
No more;—where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.”
Columbus, also, had possessions in the West; and
as I read aloud the romantic story of his life, my
voice quivers when I come to the point in which it
is related that sweet odors of the land mingled with
the sea-air, as the admiral's fleet approached the
shores; that tropical birds flew out and fluttered
around the ships, glittering in the sun, the gorgeous
promises of the new country; that boughs, perhaps
with blossoms not all decayed, floated out to
welcome the strange wood from which the craft
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were hollowed. Then I cannot restrain myself.
I think of the gorgeous visions I have seen before
I have even undertaken the journey to the West,
and I cry aloud to Prue:
“What sun-bright birds, and gorgeous blossoms,
and celestial odors will float out to us, my Prue, as
we approach our western possessions!”
The placid Prue raises her eyes to mine with a
reproof so delicate that it could not be trusted to
words; and, after a moment, she resumes her knitting
and I proceed.
These are my western estates, but my finest castles
are in Spain. It is a country famously romantic,
and my castles are all of perfect proportions,
and appropriately set in the most picturesque situations.
I have never been to Spain myself, but I
have naturally conversed much with travellers to
that country; although, I must allow, without deriving
from them much substantial information
about my property there. The wisest of them told
me that there were more holders of real estate in
Spain than in any other region he had ever heard of,
and they are all great proprietors. Every one of
them possesses a multitude of the stateliest castles.
From conversation with them you easily gather
that each one considers his own castles much the
largest and in the loveliest positions. And, after I
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had heard this said, I verified it, by discovering that
all my immediate neighbors in the city were great
Spanish proprietors.
One day as I raised my head from entering some
long and tedious accounts in my books, and began
to reflect that the quarter was expiring, and that I
must begin to prepare the balance-sheet, I observed
my subordinate, in office but not in years, (for poor
old Titbottom will never see sixty again!) leaning
on his hand, and much abstracted.
“Are you not well, Titbottom!” asked I.
“Perfectly, but I was just building a castle in
Spain,” said he.
I looked at his rusty coat, his faded hands, his sad
eye, and white hair, for a moment, in great surprise,
and then inquired,
“Is it possible that you own property there
too?”
He shook his head silently; and still leaning on
his hand, and with an expression in his eye, as if he
were looking upon the most fertile estate of Andalusia,
he went on making his plans; laying out his
gardens, I suppose, building terraces for the vines,
determining a library with a southern exposure, and
resolving which should be the tapestried chamber.
“What a singular whim,” thought I, as I watched
Titbottom and filled up a cheque for four hundred
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dollars, my quarterly salary, “that a man who owns
castles in Spain should be deputy book-keeper at
nine hundred dollars a year!”
When I went home I ate my dinner silently, and
afterward sat for a long time upon the roof of the
house, looking at my western property, and thinking
of Titbottom.
It is remarkable that none of the proprietors have
ever been to Spain to take possession and report to
the rest of us the state of our property there. I, of
course, cannot go, I am too much engaged. So is Titbottom.
And I find it is the case with all the proprietors.
We have so much to detain us at home that we
cannot get away. But it is always so with rich men.
Prue sighed once as she sat at the window and saw
Bourne, the millionaire, the President of innumerable
companies, and manager and director of all the
charitable societies in town, going by with wrinkled
brow and hurried step. I asked her why she sighed.
“Because I was remembering that my mother
used to tell me not to desire great riches, for they
occasioned great cares,” said she.
“They do indeed,” answered I, with emphasis,
remembering Titbottom, and the impossibility of
looking after my Spanish estates.
Prue turned and looked at me with mild surprise;
but I saw that her mind had gone down the street
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with Bourne. I could never discover if he held
much Spanish stock. But I think he does. All
the Spanish proprietors have a certain expression.
Bourne has it to a remarkable degree. It is a kind
of look, as if, in fact, a man's mind were in Spain.
Bourne was an old lover of Prue's, and he is not
married, which is stranger for a man in his position.
It is not easy for me to say how I know so much,
as I certainly do, about my castles in Spain. The
sun always shines upon them. They stand lofty
and fair in a luminous, golden atmosphere, a little
hazy and dreamy, perhaps, like the Indian summer,
but in which no gales blow and there are no tempests.
All the sublime mountains, and beautiful
valleys, and soft landscape, that I have not yet seen,
are to be found in the grounds. They command a
noble view of the Alps; so fine, indeed, that I
should be quite content with the prospect of them
from the highest tower of my castle, and not care
to go to Switzerland.
The neighboring ruins, too, are as picturesque as
those of Italy, and my desire of standing in the
Coliseum, and of seeing the shattered arches of the
Aqueducts stretching along the Campagna and
melting into the Alban Mount, is entirely quenched.
The rich gloom of my orange groves is gilded by
fruit as brilliant of complexion and exquisite of
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flavor as any that ever dark-eyed Sorrento girls,
looking over the high plastered walls of southern
Italy, hand to the youthful travellers, climbing on
donkeys up the narrow lane beneath.
The Nile flows through my grounds. The Desert
lies upon their edge, and Damascus stands in my
garden. I am given to understand, also, that the
Parthenon has been removed to my Spanish possessions.
The Golden-Horn is my fish-preserve; my
flocks of golden fleece are pastured on the plain of
Marathon, and the honey of Hymettus is distilled
from the flowers that grow in the vale of Enna—
all in my Spanish domains.
From the windows of those castles look the beautiful
women whom I have never seen, whose portraits
the poets have painted. They wait for me
there, and chiefly the fair-haired child, lost to my
eyes so long ago, now bloomed into an impossible
beauty. The lights that never shone, glance at
evening in the vaulted halls, upon banquets that
were never spread. The bands I have never collected,
play all night long, and enchant the brilliant
company, that was never assembled, into silence.
In the long summer mornings the children that I
never had, play in the gardens that I never planted.
I hear their sweet voices sounding low and far away,
calling, “Father! Father!” I see the lost
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fairhaired girl, grown now into a woman, descending
the stately stairs of my castle in Spain, stepping
out upon the lawn, and playing with those children.
They bound away together down the garden; but
those voices linger, this time airily calling, “Mother!
mother!”
But there is a stranger magic than this in my
Spanish estates. The lawny slopes on which, when
a child, I played, in my father's old country place,
which was sold when he failed, are all there, and
not a flower faded, nor a blade of grass sere. The
green leaves have not fallen from the spring woods
of half a century ago, and a gorgeous autumn has
blazed undimmed for fifty years, among the trees I
remember.
Chestnuts are not especially sweet to my palate
now, but those with which I used to prick my
fingers when gathering them in New Hampshire
woods are exquisite as ever to my taste, when I
think of eating them in Spain. I never ride horseback
now at home; but in Spain, when I think of
it, I bound over all the fences in the country, barebacked
upon the wildest horses. Sermons I am apt
to find a little soporific in this country; but in Spain
I should listen as reverently as ever, for proprietors
must set a good example on their estates.
Plays are insufferable to me here—Prue and I never
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go. Prue, indeed, is not quite sure it is moral; but
the theatres in my Spanish castles are of a prodigious
splendor, and when I think of going there,
Prue sits in a front box with me—a kind of royal
box—the good woman, attired in such wise as I
have never seen her here, while I wear my white
waistcoat, which in Spain has no appearance of
mending, but dazzles with immortal newness, and
is a miraculous fit.
Yes, and in those castles in Spain, Prue is not the
placid, breeches-patching helpmate, with whom
you are acquainted, but her face has a bloom which
we both remember, and her movement a grace
which my Spanish swans emulate, and her voice a
music sweeter than those that orchestras discourse.
She is always there what she seemed to me when I
fell in love with her, many and many years ago.
The neighbors called her then a nice, capable girl;
and certainly she did knit and darn with a zeal and
success to which my feet and my legs have testified
for nearly half a century. But she could spin a finer
web than ever came from cotton, and in its subtle
meshes my heart was entangled, and there has
reposed softly and happily ever since. The neighbors
declared she could make pudding and cake
better than any girl of her age; but stale bread
from Prue's hand was ambrosia to my palate.
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“She who makes every thing well, even to making
neighbors speak well of her, will surely make
a good wife,” said I to myself when I knew her;
and the echo of a half century answers, “a good
wife.”
So, when I meditate my Spanish castles, I see
Prue in them as my heart saw her standing by her
father's door. “Age cannot wither her.” There
is a magic in the Spanish air that paralyzes Time.
He glides by, unnoticed and unnoticing. I greatly
admire the Alps, which I see so distinctly from
my Spanish windows; I delight in the taste of the
southern fruit that ripens upon my terraces; I enjoy
the pensive shade of the Italian ruins in my
gardens; I like to shoot crocodiles, and talk with
the Sphinx upon the shores of the Nile, flowing
through my domain; I am glad to drink sherbet in
Damascus, and fleece my flocks on the plains of
Marathon; but I would resign all these for ever
rather than part with that Spanish portrait of Prue
for a day. Nay, have I not resigned them all for
ever, to live with that portrait's changing original?
I have often wondered how I should reach my
castles. The desire of going comes over me very
strongly sometimes, and I endeavor to see how I
can arrange my affairs, so as to get away. To tell
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the truth, I am not quite sure of the route,—I
mean, to that particular part of Spain in which
my estates lie. I have inquired very particularly,
but nobody seems to know precisely. One morning
I met young Aspen, trembling with excitement.
“What's the matter?” asked I with interest, for
I knew that he held a great deal of Spanish stock.
“Oh!” said he, “I'm going out to take possession.
I have found the way to my castles in
Spain.”
“Dear me!” I answered, with the blood streaming
into my face; and, heedless of Prue, pulling
my glove until it ripped—“what is it?”
“The direct route is through California,” answered
he.
“But then you have the sea to cross afterward,”
said I, remembering the map.
“Not at all,” answered Aspen, “the road runs
along the shore of the Sacramento River.”
He darted away from me, and I did not meet him
again. I was very curious to know if he arrived
safely in Spain, and was expecting every day to
hear news from him of my property there, when,
one evening, I bought an extra, full of California
news, and the first thing upon which my eye fell
was this: “Died, in San Francisco, Edward Aspen,
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Esq., aged 35.” There is a large body of the Spanish
stockholders who believe with Aspen, and sail
for California every week. I have not yet heard
of their arrival out at their castles, but I suppose
they are so busy with their own affairs there, that
they have no time to write to the rest of us about
the condition of our property.
There was my wife's cousin, too, Jonathan Bud,
who is a good, honest, youth from the country, and,
after a few weeks' absence, he burst into the office
one day, just as I was balancing my books, and
whispered to me, eagerly:
“I've found my castle in Spain.”
I put the blotting-paper in the leaf deliberately,
for I was wiser now than when Aspen had excited
me, and looked at my wife's cousin, Jonathan Bud,
inquiringly.
“Polly Bacon,” whispered he, winking.
I continued the interrogative glance.
“She's going to marry me, and she'll show me
the way to Spain,” said Jonathan Bud, hilariously.
“She'll make you walk Spanish, Jonathan Bud,”
said I.
And so she does. He makes no more hilarious
remarks. He never bursts into a room. He does
not ask us to dinner. He says that Mrs. Bud does
not like smoking. Mrs. Bud has nerves and babies.
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She has a way of saying, “Mr. Bud!” which destroys
conversation, and casts a gloom upon society.
It occurred to me that Bourne, the millionaire,
must have ascertained the safest and most expeditious
route to Spain; so I stole a few minutes one
afternoon, and went into his office. He was sitting
at his desk, writing rapidly, and surrounded by files
of papers and patterns, specimens, boxes, everything
that covers the tables of a great merchant.
In the outer rooms clerks were writing. Upon high
shelves over their heads, were huge chests, covered
with dust, dingy with age, many of them, and all
marked with the name of the firm, in large black
letters—“Bourne & Dye.” They were all numbered
also with the proper year; some of them
with a single capital B, and dates extending back
into the last century, when old Bourne made the
great fortune, before he went into partnership with
Dye. Everything was indicative of immense and
increasing prosperity.
There were several gentlemen in waiting to converse
with Bourne (we all call him so, familiarly,
down town), and I waited until they went out. But
others came in. There was no pause in the rush.
All kinds of inquiries were made and answered. At
length I stepped up.
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“A moment, please, Mr. Bourne.”
He looked up hastily, wished me good morning,
which he had done to none of the others, and which
courtesy I attributed to Spanish sympathy.
“What is it, sir?” he asked, blandly, but with
wrinkled brow.
“Mr. Bourne, have you any castles in Spain?”
said I, without preface.
He looked at me for a few moments without
speaking, and without seeming to see me. His
brow gradually smoothed, and his eyes, apparently
looking into the street, were really, I have no doubt,
feasting upon the Spanish landscape.
“Too many, too many,” said he at length,
musingly, shaking his head, and without addressing
me.
I suppose he felt himself too much extended—
as we say in Wall Street. He feared, I thought,
that he had too much impracticable property elsewhere,
to own so much in Spain; so I asked,
“Will you tell me what you consider the shortest
and safest route thither, Mr. Bourne? for, of course,
a man who drives such an immense trade with all
parts of the world, will know all that I have come
to inquire.”
“My dear sir,” answered he wearily, “I have
been trying all my life to discover it; but none of
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my ships have ever been there—none of my captains
have any report to make. They bring me, as
they brought my father, gold dust from Guinea;
ivory, pearls, and precious stones, from every part
of the earth; but not a fruit, not a solitary flower,
from one of my castles in Spain. I have sent clerks,
agents, and travellers of all kinds, philosophers,
pleasure-hunters, and invalids, in all sorts of ships,
to all sorts of places, but none of them ever saw or
heard of my castles, except one young poet, and he
died in a mad-house.”
“Mr. Bourne, will you take five thousand at
ninety-seven?” hastily demanded a man, whom, as
he entered, I recognized as a broker. “We'll make
a splendid thing of it.”
Bourne nodded assent, and the broker disappeared.
“Happy man!” muttered the merchant, as the
broker went out; “he has no castles in
Spain.”
“I am sorry to have troubled you, Mr. Bourne,”
said I, retiring.
“I am glad you came,” returned he; “but I
assure you, had I known the route you hoped to
ascertain from me, I should have sailed years and
years ago. People sail for the North-west Passage,
which is nothing when you have found it. Why
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don't the English Admiralty fit out expeditions to
discover all our castles in Spain?”
He sat lost in thought.
“It's nearly post-time, sir,” said the clerk.
Mr. Bourne did not heed him. He was still
musing; and I turned to go, wishing him good
morning. When I had nearly reached the door,
he called me back, saying, as if continuing his
remarks—
“It is strange that you, of all men, should come
to ask me this question. If I envy any man, it is
you, for I sincerely assure you that I supposed you
lived altogether upon your Spanish estates. I once
thought I knew the way to mine. I gave directions
for furnishing them, and ordered bridal bouquets,
which were never used, but I suppose they
are there still.”
He paused a moment, then said slowly—“How
is your wife?”
I told him that Prue was well—that she was
always remarkably well. Mr. Bourne shook me
warmly by the hand.
“Thank you,” said he. “Good morning.”
I knew why he thanked me; I knew why he
thought that I lived altogether upon my Spanish
estates; I knew a little bit about those bridal bouquets.
Mr. Bourne, the millionaire, was an old
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lover of Prue's. There is something very odd about
these Spanish castles. When I think of them, I
somehow see the fair-haired girl whom I knew
when I was not out of short jackets. When Bourne
meditates them, he sees Prue and me quietly at
home in their best chambers. It is a very singular
thing that my wife should live in another man's
castle in Spain.
At length I resolved to ask Titbottom if he had
ever heard of the best route to our estates. He
said that he owned castles, and sometimes there
was an expression in his face, as if he saw them. I
hope he did. I should long ago have asked him if
he had ever observed the turrets of my possessions
in the West, without alluding to Spain, if I had not
feared he would suppose I was mocking his poverty.
I hope his poverty has not turned his head, for he is
very forlorn.
One Sunday I went with him a few miles into
the country. It was a soft, bright day, the fields
and hills lay turned to the sky, as if every leaf and
blade of grass were nerves, bared to the touch of
the sun. I almost felt the ground warm under
my feet. The meadows waved and glittered, the
lights and shadows were exquisite, and the distant
hills seemed only to remove the horizon farther
away. As we strolled along, picking wild flowers,
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for it was in summer, I was thinking what a fine
day it was for a trip to Spain, when Titbottom suddenly
exclaimed:
“Thank God! I own this landscape.”
“You,” returned I.
“Certainly,” said he.
“Why,” I answered, “I thought this was part
of Bourne's property?”
Titbottom smiled.
“Does Bourne own the sun and sky? Does
Bourne own that sailing shadow yonder? Does
Bourne own the golden lustre of the grain, or the
motion of the wood, or those ghosts of hills, that
glide pallid along the horizon? Bourne owns the
dirt and fences; I own the beauty that makes the
landscape, or otherwise how could I own castles in
Spain?”
That was very true. I respected Titbottom more
than ever.
“Do you know,” said he, after a long pause,
“that I fancy my castles lie just beyond those distant
hills. At all events, I can see them distinctly
from their summits.”
He smiled quietly as he spoke, and it was then I
asked:
“But, Titbottom, have you never discovered the
way to them?”
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“Dear me! yes,” answered he, “I know the way
well enough; but it would do no good to follow it.
I should give out before I arrived. It is a long and
difficult journey for a man of my years and habits—
and income,” he added slowly.
As he spoke he seated himself upon the ground;
and while he pulled long blades of grass, and,
putting them between his thumbs, whistled shrilly,
he said:
“I have never known but two men who reached
their estates in Spain.”
“Indeed!” said I, “how did they go?”
“One went over the side of a ship, and the other
out of a third story window,” said Titbottom, fitting
a broad blade between his thumbs and blowing a
demoniacal blast.
“And I know one proprietor who resides upon
his estates constantly,” continued he.
“Who is that?”
“Our old friend Slug, whom you may see any
day at the asylum, just coming in from the hunt, or
going to call upon his friend the Grand Lama, or
dressing for the wedding of the Man in the Moon,
or receiving an ambassador from Timbuctoo. Whenever
I go to see him, Slug insists that I am the
Pope, disguised as a journeyman carpenter, and he
entertains me in the most distinguished manner.
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He always insists upon kissing my foot, and I bestow
upon him, kneeling, the apostolic benediction.
This is the only Spanish proprietor in possession,
with whom I am acquainted.”
And, so saying, Titbottom lay back upon the
ground, and making a spy-glass of his hand, sur
veyed the landscape through it. This was a mar
vellous book-keeper of more than sixty!
“I know another man who lived in his Spanish
castle for two months, and then was tumbled out
head first. That was young Stunning who married
old Buhl's daughter. She was all smiles, and mamma
was all sugar, and Stunning was all bliss, for
two months. He carried his head in the clouds,
and felicity absolutely foamed at his eyes. He was
drowned in love; seeing, as usual, not what really
was, but what he fancied. He lived so exclusively
in his castle, that he forgot the office down town,
and one morning there came a fall, and Stunning
was smashed.”
Titbottom arose, and stooping over, contemplated
the landscape, with his head down between
his legs.
“It's quite a new effect, so,” said the nimble
book-keeper.
“Well,” said I, “Stunning failed?”
“Oh yes, smashed all up, and the castle in Spain
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came down about his ears with a tremendous crash.
The family sugar was all dissolved into the original
cane in a moment. Fairy-times are over, are they?
Heigh-ho! the falling stones of Stunning's castle
have left their marks all over his face. I call them
his Spanish scars.”
“But, my dear Titbottom,” said I, “what is the
matter with you this morning, your usual sedateness
is quite gone?”
“It's only the exhilarating air of Spain,” he answered.
“My castles are so beautiful that I can
never think of them, nor speak of them, without
excitement; when I was younger I desired to reach
them even more ardently than now, because I heard
that the philosopher's stone was in the vault of one
of them.”
“Indeed,” said I, yielding to sympathy, “and I
have good reason to believe that the fountain of
eternal youth flows through the garden of one of
mine. Do you know whether there are any children
upon your grounds?”
“`The children of Alice call Bartrum father!”'
replied Titbottom, solemnly, and in a low voice, as
he folded his faded hands before him, and stood
erect, looking wistfully over the landscape. The
light wind played with his thin white hair, and his
sober, black suit was almost sombre in the sunshine.
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The half bitter expression, which I had remarked
upon his face during part of our conversation, had
passed away, and the old sadness had returned to
his eye. He stood, in the pleasant morning, the
very image of a great proprietor of castles in Spain.
“There is wonderful music there,” he said:
“sometimes I awake at night, and hear it. It is
full of the sweetness of youth, and love, and a new
world. I lie and listen, and I seem to arrive at the
great gates of my estates. They swing open upon
noiseless hinges, and the tropic of my dreams receives
me. Up the broad steps, whose marble
pavement mingled light and shadow print with
shifting mosaic, beneath the boughs of lustrous
oleanders, and palms, and trees of unimaginable
fragrance, I pass into the vestibule, warm with
summer odors, and into the presence-chamber
beyond, where my wife awaits me. But castle, and
wife, and odorous woods, and pictures, and statues,
and all the bright substance of my household, seem
to reel and glimmer in the splendor, as the music
fails.
“But when it swells again, I clasp the wife to
my heart, and we move on with a fair society,
beautiful women, noble men, before whom the
tropical luxuriance of that world bends and bows
in homage; and, through endless days and nights
-- 053 --
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of eternal summer, the stately revel of our life proceeds.
Then, suddenly, the music stops. I hear
my watch ticking under the pillow. I see dimly
the outline of my little upper room. Then I fall
asleep, and in the morning some one of the boarders
at the breakfast-table says:
“`Did you hear the serenade last night, Mr. Titbottom.”'
I doubted no longer that Titbottom was a very
extensive proprietor. The truth is, that he was so
constantly engaged in planning and arranging his
castles, that he conversed very little at the office,
and I had misinterpreted his silence. As we walked
homeward, that day, he was more than ever tender
and gentle. “We must all have something to do in
this world,” said he, “and I, who have so much
leisure—for you know I have no wife nor children
to work for—know not what I should do, if I had
not my castles in Spain to look after.”
When I reached home, my darling Prue was sitting
in the small parlor, reading. I felt a little guilty
for having been so long away, and upon my only
holiday, too. So I began to say that Titbottom invited
me to go to walk, and that I had no idea we
had gone so far, and that—
“Don't excuse yourself,” said Prue, smiling as
she laid down her book; “I am glad you have
-- 054 --
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enjoyed yourself. You ought to go out sometimes, and
breathe the fresh air, and run about the fields, which
I am not strong enough to do. Why did you not
bring home Mr. Titbottom to tea? He is so lonely,
and looks so sad. I am sure he has very little comfort
in this life,” said my thoughtful Prue, as she
called Jane to set the tea-table.
“But he has a good deal of comfort in Spain,
Prue,” answered I.
“When was Mr. Titbottom in Spain,” inquired
my wife.
“Why, he is there more than half the time,” I
replied.
Prue looked quietly at me and smiled. “I see it
has done you good to breathe the country air,” said
she. “Jane, get some of the blackberry jam, and
call Adoniram and the children.”
So we went in to tea. We eat in the back parlor,
for our little house and limited means do not allow
us to have things upon the Spanish scale. It is better
than a sermon to hear my wife Prue talk to the
children; and when she speaks to me it seems
sweeter than psalm singing; at least, such as we
have in our church. I am very happy.
Yet I dream my dreams, and attend to my castles
in Spain. I have so much property there, that I
could not, in conscience, neglect it. All the years
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of my youth, and the hopes of my manhood, are
stored away, like precious stones, in the vaults;
and I know that I shall find everything convenient,
elegant, and beautiful, when I come into possession.
As the years go by, I am not conscious that my
interest diminishes. If I see that age is subtly sifting
his snow in the dark hair of my Prue, I smile,
contented, for her hair, dark and heavy as when I
first saw it, is all carefully treasured in my castles
in Spain. If I feel her arm more heavily leaning
upon mine, as we walk around the squares, I press
it closely to my side, for I know that the easy grace
of her youth's motion will be restored by the elixir
of that Spanish air. If her voice sometimes falls
less clearly from her lips, it is no less sweet to me,
for the music of her voice's prime fills, freshly as
ever, those Spanish halls. If the light I love fades
a little from her eyes, I know that the glances she
gave me, in our youth, are the eternal sunshine of
my castles in Spain.
I defy time and change. Each year laid upon
our heads, is a hand of blessing. I have no doubt
that I shall find the shortest route to my possessions
as soon as need be. Perhaps, when Adoniram is
married, we shall all go out to one of my castles to
pass the honey-moon.
Ah! if the true history of Spain could be written,
-- 056 --
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what a book were there! The most purely romantic
ruin in the world is the Alhambra. But of the
Spanish castles, more spacious and splendid than any
possible Alhambra, and for ever unruined, no towers
are visible, no pictures have been painted, and only
a few ecstatic songs have been sung. The pleasure-dome
of Kubla Khan, which Coleridge saw in Xanadu
(a province with which I am not familiar), and
a fine Castle of Indolence belonging to Thomson,
and the Palace of art which Tennyson built as
a “lordly pleasure-house” for his soul, are among
the best statistical accounts of those Spanish estates.
Turner, too, has done for them much the same service
that Owen Jones has done for the Alhambra.
In the vignette to Moore's Epicurean you will find
represented one of the most extensive castles in
Spain; and there are several exquisite studies from
others, by the same artists, published in Rogers's
Italy.
But I confess I do not recognize any of these as
mine, and that fact makes me prouder of my own
castles, for, if there be such boundless variety of
magnificence in their aspect and exterior, imagine
the life that is led there, a life not unworthy such
a setting.
If Adoniram should be married within a reasonable
time, and we should make up that little family party
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to go out, I have considered already what society I
should ask to meet the bride. Jephthah's daughter
and the Chevalier Bayard, I should say—and fair
Rosamond with Dean Swift—King Solomon and the
Queen of Sheba would come over, I think, from his
famous castle—Shakespeare and his friend the Marquis
of Southampton might come in a galley with
Cleopatra; and, if any guest were offended by her
presence, he should devote himself to the Fair One
with Golden Locks. Mephistophiles is not personally
disagreeable, and is exceedingly well-bred in
society, I am told; and he should come tête-à-téte
with Mrs. Rawdon Crawley. Spenser should escort
his Faerie Queen, who would preside at the tea-table.
Mr. Samuel Weller I should ask as Lord of Misrule,
and Dr. Johnson as the Abbot of Unreason. I would
suggest to Major Dobbin to accompany Mrs. Fry;
Alcibiades would bring Homer and Plato in his
purple-sailed galley; and I would have Aspasia,
Ninon de l'Enclos, and Mrs. Battle, to make up a
table of whist with Queen Elizabeth. I shall order
a seat placed in the oratory for Lady Jane Grey and
Joan of Arc. I shall invite General Washington to
bring some of the choicest cigars from his plantation
for Sir Walter Raleigh; and Chaucer, Browning,
and Walter Savage Landor, should talk with Goethe,
-- 058 --
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who is to bring Tasso on one arm and Iphigenia on
the other.
Dante and Mr. Carlyle would prefer, I suppose,
to go down into the dark vaults under the castle.
The Man in the Moon, the Old Harry, and William
of the Wisp would be valuable additions, and the
Laureate Tennyson might compose an official ode
upon the occasion: or I would ask “They” to say
all about it.
Of course there are many other guests whose
names I do not at the moment recall. But I should
invite, first of all, Miles Coverdale, who knows
every thing about these places and this society, for
he was at Blithedale, and he has described “a select
party” which he attended at a castle in the air.
Prue has not yet looked over the list. In fact I
am not quite sure that she knows my intention.
For I wish to surprise her, and I think it would be
generous to ask Bourne to lead her out in the bridal
quadrille. I think that I shall try the first waltz
with the girl I sometimes seem to see in my fairest
castle, but whom I very vaguely remember. Titbottom
will come with old Burton and Jaques.
But I have not prepared half my invitations. Do
you not guess it, seeing that I did not name, first of
all, Elia, who assisted at the “Rejoicings upon the
new year's coming of age”?
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And yet, if Adoniram should never marry?—or if
we could not get to Spain?—or if the company
would not come?
What then? Shall I betray a secret? I have
already entertained this party in my humble little
parlor at home; and Prue presided as serenely as
Semiramis over her court. Have I not said that I
defy time, and shall space hope to daunt me? I
keep books by day, but by night books keep me.
They leave me to dreams and reveries. Shall I confess,
that sometimes when I have been sitting, reading
to my Prue, Cymbeline, perhaps, or a Canterbury
tale, I have seemed to see clearly before me the
broad highway to my castles in Spain; and as she
looked up from her work, and smiled in sympathy,
I have even fancied that I was already there.
-- --
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-- -- p535-078
SEA FROM SHORE.
“Come unto these yellow sands.”
The Tempest.
[figure description] Divisional Title-Page.[end figure description]
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SEA FROM SHORE.
“Come unto these yellow sands.”
The Tempest.
“Argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales.”
Tennyson.
In the month of June, Prue and I like to walk
upon the Battery toward sunset, and watch the
steamers, crowded with passengers, bound for the
pleasant places along the coast where people pass
the hot months. Sea-side lodgings are not very
comfortable, I am told; but who would not be a
little pinched in his chamber, if his windows looked
upon the sea?
In such praises of the ocean do I indulge at such
times, and so respectfully do I regard the sailors
who may chance to pass, that Prue often says, with
her shrewd smiles, that my mind is a kind of Greenwich
Hospital, full of abortive marine hopes and
wishes, broken-legged intentions, blind regrets, and
desires, whose hands have been shot away in some
hard battle of experience, so that they cannot grasp
the results towards which they reach.
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She is right, as usual. Such hopes and intentions
do lie, ruined and hopeless now, strewn about the
placid contentment of my mental life, as the old
pensioners sit about the grounds at Greenwich,
maimed and musing in the quiet morning sunshine.
Many a one among them thinks what a Nelson he
would have been if both his legs had not been prematurely
carried away; or in what a Trafalgar of
triumph he would have ended, if, unfortunately, he
had not happened to have been blown blind by the
explosion of that unlucky magazine.
So I dream, sometimes, of a straight scarlet collar,
stiff with gold lace, around my neck, instead of
this limp white cravat; and I have even brandished
my quill at the office so cutlass-wise, that Titbottom
has paused in his additions and looked at me as if he
doubted whether I should come out quite square in
my petty cash. Yet he understands it. Titbottom
was born in Nantucket.
That is the secret of my fondness for the sea;
I was born by it. Not more surely do Savoyards
pine for the mountains, or Cockneys for the sound
of Bow bells, than those who are born within sight
and sound of the ocean to return to it and renew
their fealty. In dreams the children of the sea hear
its voice.
I have read in some book of travels that certain
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tribes of Arabs have no name for the ocean, and
that when they came to the shore for the first time,
they asked with eager sadness, as if penetrated by
the conviction of a superior beauty, “what is that
desert of water more beautiful than the land?”
And in the translations of German stories which
Adoniram and the other children read, and into
which I occasionally look in the evening when they
are gone to bed—for I like to know what interests
my children—I find that the Germans, who do not
live near the sea, love the fairy lore of water, and
tell the sweet stories of Undine and Melusina, as if
they had especial charm for them, because their
country is inland.
We who know the sea have less fairy feeling
about it, but our realities are romance. My earliest
remembrances are of a long range of old, half dilapidated
stores; red brick stores with steep wooden
roofs, and stone window-frames and door-frames,
which stood upon docks built as if for immense trade
with all quarters of the globe.
Generally there were only a few sloops moored to
the tremendous posts, which I fancied could easily
hold fast a Spanish Armada in a tropical hurricane.
But sometimes a great ship, an East Indiaman, with
rusty, seamed, blistered sides, and dingy sails, came
slowly moving up the harbor, with an air of
-- 066 --
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indolent self-impoance and consciousness of superiority,
which inspired me with profound respect. If the
ship had ever chanced to run down a row-boat, or a
sloop, or any specimen of smaller craft, I should
only have wondered at the temerity of any floating
thing in crossing the path of such supreme majesty.
The ship was leisurely chained and cabled to the
old dock, and then came the disembowelling.
How the stately monster had been fattening upon
foreign spoils! How it had gorged itself (such galleons
did never seem to me of the feminine gender)
with the luscious treasures of the tropics! It had
lain its lazy length along the shores of China, and
sucked in whole flowery harvests of tea. The Brazilian
sun flashed through the strong wicker prisons,
bursting with bananas and nectarean fruits that
eschew the temperate zone. Steams of camphor,
of sandal wood, arose from the hold. Sailors chanting
cabalistic strains, that had to my ear a shrill
and monotonous pathos, like the uniform rising and
falling of an autumn wind, turned cranks that
lifted the bales, and boxes, and crates, and swung
them ashore.
But to my mind, the spell of their singing raised
the fragrant freight, and not the crank. Madagascar
and Ceylon appeared at the mystic bidding of the
song. The placid sunshine of the docks was
-- 067 --
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perfumed with India. The universal calm of southern
seas poured from the bosom of the ship over the
quiet, decaying old northern port.
Long after the confusion of unloading was over,
and the ship lay as if all voyages were ended, I
dared to creep timorously along the edge of the
dock, and at great risk of falling in the black water
of its huge shadow, I placed my hand upon the
hot hulk, and so established a mystic and exquisite
connection with Pacific islands, with palm groves
and all the passionate beauties they embower; with
jungles, Bengal tigers, pepper, and the crushed feet
of Chinese fairies. I touched Asia, the Cape of
Good Hope and the Happy Islands. I would not
believe that the heat I felt was of our northern sun;
to my finer sympathy it burned with equatorial
fervors.
The freight was piled in the old stores. I believe
that many of them remain, but they have lost their
character. When I knew them, not only was I
younger, but partial decay had overtaken the town;
at least the bulk of its India trade had shifted to
New York and Boston. But the appliances remained.
There was no throng of busy traffickers,
and after school, in the afternoon, I strolled by and
gazed into the solemn interiors.
Silence reigned within,—silence, dimness, and
-- 068 --
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piles of foreign treasure. Vast coils of cable, like
tame boa-constrictors, served as seats for men with
large stomachs, and heavy watch-seals, and nankeen
trowsers, who sat looking out of the door toward
the ships, with little other sign of life than an occasional
low talking, as if in their sleep. Huge
hogsheads perspiring brown sugar and oozing slow
molasses, as if nothing tropical could keep within
bounds, but must continually expand, and exude, and
overflow, stood against the walls, and had an architectural
significance, for they darkly reminded me of
Egyptian prints, and in the duskiness of the low
vaulted store seemed cyclopean columns incomplete.
Strange festoons and heaps of bags, square piles of
square boxes cased in mats, bales of airy summer
stuffs, which, even in winter, scoffed at cold, and
shamed it by audacious assumption of eternal sun,
little specimen boxes of precious dyes that even now
shine through my memory, like old Venetian schools
unpainted,—these were all there in rich confusion.
The stores had a twilight of dimness, the air was
spicy with mingled odors. I liked to look suddenly
in from the glare of sunlight outside, and then the
cool sweet dimness was like the palpable breath of
the far off island-groves; and if only some parrot or
macaw hung within, would flaunt with glistening
plumage in his cage, and as the gay hue flashed in
-- 069 --
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a chance sunbeam, call in his hard, shrill voice, as if
thrusting sharp sounds upon a glistening wire from
out that grateful gloom, then the enchantment was
complete, and without moving, I was circumnavigating
the globe.
From the old stores and the docks slowly
crumbling, touched, I know not why or how,
by the pensive air of past prosperity, I rambled
out of town on those well remembered
afternoons, to the fields that lay upon hillsides over
the harbor, and there sat, looking out to sea, fancying
some distant sail proceeding to the glorious ends
of the earth, to be my type and image, who would
so sail, stately and successful, to all the glorious ports
of the Future. Going home, I returned by the
stores, which black porters were closing. But I
stood long looking in, saturating my imagination,
and as it appeared, my clothes, with the spicy suggestion.
For when I reached home my thrifty mother—
another Prue—came snuffing and smelling
about me.
“Why! my son, (snuff, snuff,) where have you
been? (snuff, snuff.) Has the baker been making
(snuff) ginger-bread? You smell as if you'd been
in (snuff, snuff,) a bag of cinnamon.”
“I've only been on the wharves, mother.”
“Well, my dear, I hope you haven't stuck up
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your clothes with molasses. Wharves are dirty
places, and dangerous. You must take care of
yourself, my son. Really this smell is (snuff, snuff,)
very strong.”
But I departed from the maternal presence, proud
and happy. I was aromatic. I bore about me the
true foreign air. Whoever smelt me smelt distant
countries. I had nutmeg, spices, cinnamon, and
cloves, without the jolly red-nose. I pleased myself
with being the representative of the Indies. I
was in good odor with myself and all the world.
I do not know how it is, but surely Nature makes
kindly provision. An imagination so easily excited
as mine could not have escaped disappointment if it
had had ample opportunity and experience of the
lands it so longed to see. Therefore, although I
made the India voyage, I have never been a
traveller, and saving the little time I was ashore
in India, I did not lose the sense of novelty and
romance, which the first sight of foreign lands inspires.
That little time was all my foreign travel. I am
glad of it. I see now that I should never have
found the country from which the East Indiaman
of my early days arrived. The palm groves do not
grow with which that hand laid upon the ship
placed me in magic conception. As for the lovely
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Indian maid whom the palmy arches bowered, she
has long since clasped some native lover to her
bosom, and, ripened into mild maternity, how should
I know her now?
“You would find her quite as easily now as
then,” says my Prue, when I speak of it.
She is right again, as usual, that precious woman;
and it is therefore I feel that if the chances of life
have moored me fast to a book-keeper's desk, they
have left all the lands I longed to see fairer and
fresher in my mind than they could ever be in my
memory. Upon my only voyage I used to climb
into the top and search the horizon for the shore.
But now in a moment of calm thought I see a more
Indian India than ever mariner discerned, and do
not envy the youths who go there and make fortunes,
who wear grass-cloth jackets, drink iced
beer, and eat curry; whose minds fall asleep, and
whose bodies have liver complaints.
Unseen by me for ever, nor ever regretted, shall
wave the Egyptian palms and the Italian pines.
Untrodden by me, the Forum shall still echo with
the footfall of imperial Rome, and the Parthenon,
unrifled of its marbles, look, perfect, across the
Egean blue.
My young friends return from their foreign tours
elate with the smiles of a nameless Italian or
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Parisian belle. I know not such cheap delights; I
am a suitor of Vittoria Colonna; I walk with Tasso
along the terraced garden of the Villa d'Este, and
look to see Beatrice smiling down the rich gloom
of the cypress shade. You staid at the Hôtel
Europa in Venice, at Danielli's, or the Leone bianco;
I am the guest of Marino Faliero, and I whisper to
his wife as we climb the giant staircase in the
summer moonlight,
“Ah! senza amare
Andare sul mare,
Col sposo del mare,
Non puo consolare.”
It is for the same reason that I did not care to
dine with you and Aurelia, that I am content not
to stand in St. Peter's. Alas! if I could see the
end of it, it would not be St. Peter's. For those
of us whom Nature means to keep at home, she
provides entertainment. One man goes four thousand
miles to Italy, and does not see it, he is so
short-sighted. Another is so far-sighted that he
stays in his room and sees more than Italy.
But for this very reason that it washes the shores
of my possible Europe and Asia, the sea draws me
constantly to itself. Before I came to New York,
while I was still a clerk in Boston, courting Prue,
and living out of town, I never knew of a ship
-- 073 --
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sailing for India or even for England and France,
but I went up to the State House cupola or to the
observatory on some friend's house in Roxbury,
where I could not be interrupted, and there watched
the departure.
The sails hung ready; the ship lay in the stream;
busy little boats and puffing steamers darted about
it, clung to its sides, paddled away from it, or led
the way to sea, as minnows might pilot a whale.
The anchor was slowly swung at the bow; I could
not hear the sailors' song, but I knew they were
singing. I could not see the parting friends, but I
knew farewells were spoken. I did not share the
confusion, although I knew what bustle there was,
what hurry, what shouting, what creaking, what
fall of ropes and iron, what sharp oaths, low
laughs, whispers, sobs. But I was cool, high,
separate. To me it was
“A painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.”
The sails were shaken out, and the ship began
to move. It was a fair breeze, perhaps, and no
steamer was needed to tow her away. She receded
down the bay. Friends turned back—I could not
see them—and waved their hands, and wiped their
eyes, and went home to dinner. Farther and
-- 074 --
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farther from the ships at anchor, the lessening vessel
became single and solitary upon the water. The
sun sank in the west; but I watched her still.
Every flash of her sails, as she tacked and turned,
thrilled my heart.
Yet Prue was not on board. I had never seen
one of the passengers or the crew. I did not know
the consignees, nor the name of the vessel. I had
shipped no adventure, nor risked any insurance,
nor made any bet, but my eyes clung to her as
Ariadne's to the fading sail of Theseus. The ship
was freighted with more than appeared upon her
papers, yet she was not a smuggler. She bore all
there was of that nameless lading, yet the next ship
would carry as much. She was freighted with
fancy. My hopes, and wishes, and vague desires,
were all on board. It seemed to me a treasure not
less rich than that which filled the East Indiaman
at the old dock in my boyhood.
When, at length, the ship was a sparkle upon
the horizon, I waved my hand in last farewell, I
strained my eyes for a last glimpse. My mind had
gone to sea, and had left noise behind. But now I
heard again the multitudinous murmur of the city,
and went down rapidly, and threaded the short,
narrow, streets to the office. Yet, believe it, every
dream of that day, as I watched the vessel, was
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written at night to Prue. She knew my heart had
not sailed away.
Those days are long past now, but still I walk
upon the Battery and look towards the Narrows,
and know that beyond them, separated only by the
sea, are many of whom I would so gladly know,
and so rarely hear. The sea rolls between us like
the lapse of dusky ages. They trusted themselves
to it, and it bore them away far and far as if into
the past. Last night I read of Antony, but I have
not heard from Christopher these many months,
and by so much farther away is he, so much older
and more remote, than Antony. As for William, he
is as vague as any of the shepherd kings of ante-Pharaonic
dynasties.
It is the sea that has done it, it has carried them
off and put them away upon its other side. It is
fortunate the sea did not put them upon its underside.
Are they hale and happy still? Is their
hair gray, and have they mustachios? Or have
they taken to wigs and crutches? Are they popes
or cardinals yet? Do they feast with Lucrezia
Borgia, or preach red republicanism to the Council
of Ten? Do they sing, Behold how brightly breaks
the morning with Masaniello? Do they laugh at
Ulysses and skip ashore to the Syrens? Has Mesrour,
chief of the Eunuchs, caught them with
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Zobeide in the Caliph's garden, or have they made
cheese cakes without pepper? Friends of my
youth, where in your wanderings have you tasted
the blissful Lotus, that you neither come nor send
us tidings?
Across the sea also came idle rumors, as false
reports steal into history and defile fair fames.
Was it longer ago than yesterday that I walked
with my cousin, then recently a widow, and talked
with her of the countries to which she meant to
sail? She was young, and dark-eyed, and wore
great hoops of gold, barbaric gold, in her ears.
The hope of Italy, the thought of living there, had
risen like a dawn in the darkness of her mind. I
talked and listened by rapid turns.
Was it longer ago than yesterday that she told me
of her splendid plans, how palaces tapestried with
gorgeous paintings should be cheaply hired, and the
best of teachers lead her children to the completest
and most various knowledge; how,—and with her
slender pittance!—she should have a box at the
opera, and a carriage, and liveried servants, and in
perfect health and youth, lead a perfect life in a
perfect climate?
And now what do I hear? Why does a tear
sometimes drop so audibly upon my paper, that
Titbottom looks across with a sort of mild rebuking
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glance of inquiry, whether it is kind to let even a
single tear fall, when an ocean of tears is pent up
in hearts that would burst and overflow if but one
drop should force its way out? Why across the sea
came faint gusty stories, like low voices in the
wind, of a cloistered garden and sunny seclusion—
and a life of unknown and unexplained luxury.
What is this picture of a pale face showered with
streaming black hair, and large sad eyes looking
upon lovely and noble children playing in the sunshine—
and a brow pained with thought straining
into their destiny? Who is this figure, a man tall
and comely, with melting eyes and graceful motion,
who comes and goes at pleasure, who is not
a husband, yet has the key of the cloistered
garden?
I do not know. They are secrets of the sea. The
pictures pass before my mind suddenly and unawares,
and I feel the tears rising that I would
gladly repress. Titbottom looks at me, then stands
by the window of the office and leans his brow
against the cold iron bars, and looks down into the
little square paved court. I take my hat and steal
out of the office for a few minutes, and slowly pace
the hurrying streets. Meek-eyed Alice! magniticent
Maud! sweet baby Lilian! why does the
sea imprison you so far away, when will you
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return, where do you linger? The water laps
idly about docks,—lies calm, or gaily heaves.
Why does it bring me doubts and fears now, that
brought such bounty of beauty in the days long
gone?
I remember that the day when my dark haired
cousin, with hoops of barbaric gold in her ears,
sailed for Italy, was quarter-day, and we balanced
the books at the office. It was nearly noon, and in
my impatience to be away, I had not added my
columns with sufficient care. The inexorable hand
of the office clock pointed sternly towards twelve,
and the remorseless pendulum ticked solemnly to
noon.
To a man whose pleasures are not many, and
rather small, the loss of such an event as saying
farewell and wishing God-speed to a friend going
to Europe, is a great loss. It was so to me, especially,
because there was always more to me, in
every departure, than the parting and the farewell.
I was gradually renouncing this pleasure, as I saw
small prospect of ending before noon, when Titbottom,
after looking at me a moment, came to my
side of the desk, and said:
“I should like to finish that for you.”
I looked at him: poor Titbottom! he had no
friends to wish God-speed upon any journey. I
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quietly wiped my pen, took down my hat, and went
out. It was in the days of sail packets and less
regularity, when going to Europe was more of an
epoch in life. How gaily my cousin stood upon
the deck and detailed to me her plan! How merrily
the children shouted and sang! How long I
held my cousin's little hand in mine, and gazed into
her great eyes, remembering that they would see
and touch the things that were invisible to me for
ever, but all the more precious and fair! She
kissed me—I was younger then—there were tears, I
remember, and prayers, and promises, a waving
handkerchief,—a fading sail.
It was only the other day that I saw another
parting of the same kind. I was not a principal,
only a spectator; but so fond am I of sharing, afar
off, as it were, and unseen, the sympathies of human
beings, that I cannot avoid often going to the dock
upon steamer-days and giving myself to that
pleasant and melancholy observation. There is
always a crowd, but this day it was almost impossible
to advance through the masses of people.
The eager faces hurried by; a constant stream
poured up the gangway into the steamer, and the
upper deck, to which I gradually made my way,
was crowded with the passengers and their friends.
There was one group upon which my eyes first
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fell, and upon which my memory lingers. A glance,
brilliant as daybreak—a voice,
“Her voice's music,—call it the well's bubbling, the bird's
warble,”
a goddess girdled with flowers, and smiling farewell
upon a circle of worshippers, to each one of whom
that gracious calmness made the smile sweeter, and
the farewell more sad—other figures, other flowers,
an angel face—all these I saw in that group as I
was swayed up and down the deck by the eager
swarm of people. The hour came, and I went on
shore with the rest. The plank was drawn away—
the captain raised his hand—the huge steamer
slowly moved—a cannon was fired—the ship was
gone.
The sun sparkled upon the water as they sailed
away. In five minutes the steamer was as much
separated from the shore as if it had been at sea a
thousand years.
I leaned against a post upon the dock and looked
around. Ranged upon the edge of the wharf stood
that band of worshippers, waving handkerchiefs
and straining their eyes to see the last smile of farewell—
did any eager selfish eye hope to see a tear?
They to whom the handkerchiefs were waved stood
high upon the stern, holding flowers. Over them
hung the great flag, raised by the gentle wind into
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the graceful folds of a canopy,—say rather a gorgeous
gonfalon waved over the triumphant departure,
over that supreme youth, and bloom, and
beauty, going out across the mystic ocean to carry
a finer charm and more human splendor into those
realms of my imagination beyond the sea.
“You will return, O youth and beauty!” I said
to my dreaming and foolish self, as I contemplated
those fair figures, “richer than Alexander with
Indian spoils. All that historic association, that
copious civilization, those grandeurs and graces of
art, that variety and picturesqueness of life, will
mellow and deepen your experience even as time
silently touches those old pictures into a more persuasive
and pathetic beauty, and as this increasing
summer sheds ever softer lustre upon the landscape.
You will return conquerors and not conquered.
You will bring Europe, even as Aurelian brought
Zenobia captive, to deck your homeward triumph.
I do not wonder that these clouds break away, I do
not wonder that the sun presses out and floods all
the air, and land, and water, with light that graces
with happy omens your stately farewell.”
But if my faded face looked after them with
such earnest and longing emotion,—I, a solitary
old man, unknown to those fair beings, and standing
apart from that band of lovers, yet in that
-- 082 --
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moment bound more closely to them than they knew,—
how was it with those whose hearts sailed away
with that youth and beauty? I watched them
closely from behind my post. I knew that life had
paused with them; that the world stood still. I
knew that the long, long summer would be only a
yearning regret. I knew that each asked himself
the mournful question, “Is this parting typical—
this slow, sad, sweet recession?” And I knew
that they did not care to ask whether they should
meet again, nor dare to contemplate the chances of
the sea.
The steamer swept on, she was near Staten
Island, and a final gun boomed far and low across
the water. The crowd was dispersing, but the
little group remained. Was it not all Hood had
sung?
“I saw thee, lovely Inez,
Descend along the shore
With bands of noble gentlemen,
And banners waved before;
And gentle youths and maidens gay,
And snowy plumes they wore;—
It would have been a beauteous dream,
If it had been no more!”
O youth!” I said to them without speaking,
“be it gently said, as it is solemnly thought,
should they return no more, yet in your memories
the high hour of their loveliness is for ever
-- 083 --
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enshrined. Should they come no more they never
will be old, nor changed, to you. You will wax
and wane, you will suffer, and struggle, and grow
old; but this summer vision will smile, immortal,
upon your lives, and those fair faces shall shed, for
ever, from under that slowly waving flag, hope and
peace.'
It is so elsewhere; it is the tenderness of Nature.
Long, long ago we lost our first-born, Prue
and I. Since then, we have grown older and our
children with us. Change comes, and grief, perhaps,
and decay. We are happy, our children are obedient
and gay. But should Prue live until she has
lost us all, and laid us, gray and weary, in our
graves, she will have always one babe in her heart.
Every mother who has lost an infant, has gained a
child of immortal youth. Can you find comfort here,
lovers, whose mistress has sailed away?
I did not ask the question aloud, I thought it only,
as I watched the youths, and turned away while
they still stood gazing. One, I observed, climbed a
post and waved his black hat before the white-washed
side of the shed over the dock, whence I
supposed he would tumble into the water. Another
had tied a handkerchief to the end of a somewhat
baggy umbrella, and in the eagerness of gazing, had
forgotten to wave it, so that it hung mournfully
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down, as if overpowered with grief it could not express.
The entranced youth still held the umbrella
aloft. It seemed to me as if he had struck his flag;
or as if one of my cravats were airing in that sunlight.
A negro carter was joking with an apple-woman
at the entrance of the dock. The steamer
was out of sight.
I found that I was belated and hurried back to my
desk. Alas! poor lovers; I wonder if they are
watching still? Has he fallen exhausted from the
post into the water? Is that handkerchief, bleached
and rent, still pendant upon that somewhat baggy
umbrella?
“Youth and beauty went to Europe to-day,” said
I to Prue, as I stirred my tea at evening.
As I spoke, our youngest daughter brought me
the sugar. She is just eighteen, and her name
should be Hebe. I took a lump of sugar and looked
at her. She had never seemed so lovely, and as I
dropped the lump in my cup, I kissed her. I glanced
at Prue as I did so. The dear woman smiled, but
did not answer my exclamation.
Thus, without travelling, I travel, and share the
emotions of those I do not know. But sometimes
the old longing comes over me as in the days when
I timidly touched the huge East Indiaman, and
magnetically sailed around the world.
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It was but a few days after the lovers and I waved
farewell to the steamer, and while the lovely figures
standing under the great gonfalon were as vivid in
my mind as ever, that a day of premature sunny sadness,
like those of the Indian summer, drew me
away from the office early in the afternoon: for fortunately
it is our dull season now, and even Titbottom
sometimes leaves the office by five o'clock. Although
why he should leave it, or where he goes, or
what he does, I do not well know. Before I knew
him, I used sometimes to meet him with a man
whom I was afterwards told was Bartleby, the scrivener.
Even then it seemed to me that they rather
clubbed their loneliness than made society for each
other. Recently I have not seen Bartleby; but Titbottom
seems no more solitary because he is alone.
I strolled into the Battery as I sauntered about.
Staten Island looked so alluring, tender-hued with
summer and melting in the haze, that I resolved to
indulge myself in a pleasure-trip. It was a little
selfish, perhaps, to go alone, but I looked at my
watch, and saw that if I should hurry home for
Prue the trip would be lost; then I should be disappointed,
and she would be grieved.
Ought I not rather (I like to begin questions,
which I am going to answer affirmatively, with
ought,) to take the trip and recount my adventures
-- 086 --
[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]
to Prue upon my return, whereby I should actually
enjoy the excursion and the pleasure of telling her;
while she would enjoy my story and be glad that I
was pleased? Ought I wilfully to deprive us both
of this various enjoyment by aiming at a higher,
which, in losing, we should lose all?
Unfortunaely, just as I was triumphantly answering
“Certainly not!” another question marched
into my mind, escorted by a very defiant ought.
“Ought I to go when I have such a debate about
it?”
But while I was perplexed, and scoffing at my
own scruples, the ferry-bell suddenly rang, and answered
all my questions. Involuntarily I hurried
on board. The boat slipped from the dock. I went
up on deck to enjoy the view of the city from the
bay, but just as I sat down, and meant to have said
“how beautiful!” I found myself asking:
“Ought I to have come?”
Lost in perplexing debate, I saw little of the
scenery of the bay; but the remembrance of Prue
and the gentle influence of the day plunged me into
a mood of pensive reverie which nothing tended to
destroy, until we suddenly arrived at the landing.
As I was stepping ashore, I was greeted by Mr.
Bourne, who passes the summer on the island, and
who hospitably asked if I were going his way.
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His way was toward the southern end of the island,
and I said yes. His pockets were full of papers
and his brow of wrinkles; so when we reached the
point where he should turn off, I asked him to let
me alight, although he was very anxious to carry
me wherever I was going.
“I am only strolling about,” I answered, as I
clambered carefully out of the wagon.
“Strolling about?” asked he, in a bewildered
manner; “do people stroll about, now-a-days?”
“Sometimes,” I answered, smiling, as I pulled
my trowsers down over my boots, for they had
dragged up, as I stepped out of the wagon, “and
beside, what can an old book-keeper do better in
the dull season than stroll about this pleasant
island, and watch the ships at sea?”
Bourne looked at me with his weary eyes.
“I'd give five thousand dollars a year for a dull
season,” said he, “but as for strolling, I've forgotten
how.”
As he spoke, his eyes wandered dreamily across
the fields and woods, and were fastened upon the
distant sails.
“It is pleasant,” he said musingly, and fell into
silence. But I had no time to spare, so I wished
him good afternoon.
“I hope your wife is well,” said Bourne to me, as
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I turned away. Poor Bourne! He drove on alone
in his wagon.
But I made haste to the most solitary point upon
the southern shore, and there sat, glad to be so near
the sea. There was that warm, sympathetic silence
in the air, that gives to Indian-summer days almost
a human tenderness of feeling. A delicate haze,
that seemed only the kindly air made visible, hung
over the sea. The water lapped languidly among
the rocks, and the voices of children in a boat beyond,
rang musically, and gradually receded, until
they were lost in the distance.
It was some time before I was aware of the outline
of a large ship, drawn vaguely upon the mist,
which I supposed, at first, to be only a kind of
mirage. But the more steadfastly I gazed, the more
distinct it became, and I could no longer doubt that
I saw a stately ship lying at anchor, not more than
half a mile from the land.
“It is an extraordinary place to anchor,” I said to
myself, “or can she be ashore?”
There were no signs of distress; the sails were
carefully clewed up, and there were no sailors in
the tops, nor upon the shrouds. A flag, of which I
could not see the device or the nation, hung heavily
at the stern, and looked as if it had fallen asleep.
My curiosity began to be singularly excited. The
-- 089 --
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form of the vessel seemed not to be permanent;
but within a quarter of an hour, I was sure that I
had seen half a dozen different ships. As I gazed, I
saw no more sails nor masts, but a long range of
oars, flashing like a golden fringe, or straight and
stiff, like the legs of a sea-monster.
“It is some bloated crab, or lobster, magnified by
the mist,” I said to myself, complacently.
But, at the same moment, there was a concentrated
flashing and blazing in one spot among the
rigging, and it was as if I saw a beatified ram, or,
more truly, a sheep-skin, splendid as the hair of
Berenice.
“Is that the golden fleece?” I thought. “But,
surely, Jason and the Argonauts have gone home
long since. Do people go on gold-fleecing expeditions
now?” I asked myself, in perplexity. “Can
this be a California steamer?”
How could I have thought it a steamer? Did I
not see those sails, “thin and sere?” Did I not
feel the melancholy of that solitary bark? It had
a mystic aura; a boreal brilliancy shimmered in its
wake, for it was drifting seaward. A strange fear
curdled along my veins. That summer sun shone
cool. The weary, battered ship was gashed, as if
gnawed by ice. There was terror in the air, as a
“skinny hand so brown” waved to me from the
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deck. I lay as one bewitched. The hand of the
ancient mariner seemed to be reaching for me, like
the hand of death.
Death? Why, as I was inly praying Prue's forgiveness
for my solitary ramble and consequent
demise, a glance like the fulness of summer splendor
gushed over me; the odor of flowers and of eastern
gums made all the atmosphere. I breathed the
orient, and lay drunk with balm, while that strange
ship, a golden galley now, with glittering draperies
festooned with flowers, paced to the measured beat
of oars along the calm, and Cleopatra smiled alluringly
from the great pageant's heart.
Was this a barge for summer waters, this peculiar
ship I saw? It had a ruined dignity, a cumbrous
grandeur, although its masts were shattered, and its
sails rent. It hung preternaturally still upon the
sea, as if tormented and exhausted by long driving
and drifting. I saw no sailors, but a great Spanish
ensign floated over, and waved, a funereal plume.
I knew it then. The armada was long since
scattered; but, floating far
“on desolate rainy seas,”
lost for centuries, and again restored to sight, here
lay one of the fated ships of Spain. The huge
galleon seemed to fill all the air, built up against
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the sky, like the gilded ships of Claude Lorraine
against the sunset.
But it fled, for now a black flag fluttered at the
mast-head—a long low vessel darted swiftly where
the vast ship lay; there came a shrill piping whistle,
the clash of cutlasses, fierce ringing oaths, sharp
pistol cracks, the thunder of command, and over all
the gusty yell of a demoniac chorus,
“My name was Robert Kidd, when I sailed.”
—There were no clouds longer, but under a serene
sky I saw a bark moving with festal pomp, thronged
with grave senators in flowing robes, and one with
ducal bonnet in the midst, holding a ring. The
smooth bark swam upon a sea like that of southern
latitudes. I saw the Bucentoro and the nuptials of
Venice and the Adriatic.
Who where those coming over the side? Who
crowded the boats, and sprang into the water, men
in old Spanish armor, with plumes and swords, and
bearing a glittering cross? Who was he standing
upon the deck with folded arms and gazing towards
the shore, as lovers on their mistresses and martyrs
upon heaven? Over what distant and tumultuous
seas had this small craft escaped from other centuries
and distant shores? What sounds of foreign
hymns, forgotten now, were these, and what
-- 092 --
[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]
solemnity of debarkation? Was this grave form, Columbus?
Yet these were not so Spanish as they seemed
just now. This group of stern-faced men with high
peaked hats, who knelt upon the cold deck and
looked out upon a shore which, I could see by their
joyless smile of satisfaction, was rough, and bare,
and forbidding. In that soft afternoon, standing in
mournful groups upon the small deck, why did
they seem to me to be seeing the sad shores of
wintry New England? That phantom-ship could
not be the May Flower!
I gazed long upon the shifting illusion.
“If I should board this ship,” I asked myself,
“where should I go? whom should I meet? what
should I see? Is not this the vessel that shall carry
me to my Europe, my foreign countries, my impossible
India, the Atlantis that I have lost?”
As I sat staring at it I could not but wonder
whether Bourne had seen this sail when he looked
upon the water? Does he see such sights every
day, because he lives down here? Is it not perhaps
a magic yacht of his; and does he slip off privately
after business hours to Venice, and Spain, and
Egypt, perhaps to El Dorado? Does he run races
with Ptolemy, Philopater and Hiero of Syracuse,
rare regattas on fabulous seas?
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Why not? He is a rich man, too, and why should
not a New York merchant do what a Syracuse
tyrant and an Egyptian prince did? Has Bourne's
yacht those sumptuous chambers, like Philopater's
galley, of which the greater part was made of split
cedar, and of Milesian cypress; and has he twenty
doors put together with beams of citron-wood, with
many ornaments? Has the roof of his cabin a
carved golden face, and is his sail linen with a
purple fringe?
“I suppose it is so,” I said to myself, as I looked
wistfully at the ship, which began to glimmer and
melt in the haze.
“It certainly is not a fishing smack?” I asked,
doubtfully.
No, it must be Bourne's magic yacht; I was sure
of it. I could not help laughing at poor old Hiero,
whose cabins were divided into many rooms, with
floors composed of mosaic work, of all kinds of
stones tessellated. And, on this mosaic, the whole
story of the Iliad was depicted in a marvellous manner.
He had gardens “of all sorts of most wonderful
beauty, enriched with all sorts of plants, and
shadowed by roofs of lead or tiles. And, besides
this, there were tents roofed with boughs of white
ivy and of the vine—the roots of which derived
their moisture from casks full of earth, and were
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[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]
watered in the same manner as the gardens. There
were temples, also, with doors of ivory and citron-wood,
furnished in the most exquisite manner, with
pictures and statues, and with goblets and vases of
every form and shape imaginable.”
“Poor Bourne!” I said, “I suppose his is finer
than Hiero's, which is a thousand years old. Poor
Bourne! I don't wonder that his eyes are weary,
and that he would pay so dearly for a day of leisure.
Dear me! is it one of the prices that must be paid
for wealth, the keeping up a magic yacht?”
Involuntarily, I had asked the question aloud.
“The magic yacht is not Bourne's,” answered a
familiar voice. I looked up, and Titbottom stood
by my side. “Do you not know that all Bourne's
money would not buy the yacht?” asked he. “He
cannot even see it. And if he could, it would be
no magic yacht to him, but only a battered and solitary
hulk.”
The haze blew gently away, as Titbottom spoke,
and there lay my Spanish galleon, my Bucentoro,
my Cleopatra's galley, Columbus's Santa Maria,
and the Pilgrims' May Flower, an old bleaching
wreck upon the beach.
“Do you suppose any true love is in vain?” asked
Titbottom solemnly, as he stood bareheaded, and the
soft sunset wind played with his few hairs. “Could
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[figure description] Page 095.[end figure description]
Cleopatra smile upon Antony, and the moon upon
Endymion, and the sea not love its lovers?”
The fresh air breathed upon our faces as he spoke.
I might have sailed in Hiero's ship, or in Roman
galleys, had I lived long centuries ago, and been
born a nobleman. But would it be so sweet a remembrance,
that of lying on a marble couch, under
a golden-faced roof, and within doors of citron-wood
and ivory, and sailing in that state to greet queens
who are mummies now, as that of seeing those fair
figures, standing under the great gonfalon, themselves
as lovely as Egyptian belles, and going to see
more than Egypt dreamed?
The yacht was mine, then, and not Bourne's. I
took Titbottom's arm, and we sauntered toward the
ferry. What sumptuous sultan was I, with this sad
vizier? My languid odalisque, the sea, lay at my
feet as we advanced, and sparkled all over with a
sunset smile. Had I trusted myself to her arms, to
be borne to the realms that I shall never see, or
sailed long voyages towards Cathay, I am not sure
I should have brought a more precious present to
Prue, than the story of that afternoon.
“Ought I to have gone alone?” I asked her, as I
ended.
“I ought not to have gone with you,” she replied,
“for I had work to do. But how strange that you
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[figure description] Page 096.[end figure description]
should see such things at Staten Island. I never
did, Mr. Titbottom,” said she, turning to my deputy,
whom I had asked to tea.
“Madam,” answered Titbottom, with a kind of
wan and quaint dignity, so that I could not help
thinking he must have arrived in that stray ship
from the Spanish armada, “neither did Mr. Bourne.”
-- -- p535-114
TITBOTTOM'S SPECTACLES.
“In my mind's eye, Horatio.”
Hamlet.
[figure description] Divisional Title-Page.[end figure description]
-- --
[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]
-- 099 --
[figure description] Page 099.[end figure description]
TITBOTTOM'S SPECTACLES.
“In my mind's eye, Horatio.”
Hamlet.
Prue and I do not entertain much; our means
forbid it. In truth, other people entertain for us.
We enjoy that hospitality of which no account is
made. We see the show, and hear the music, and
smell the flowers, of great festivities, tasting, as it
were, the drippings from rich dishes.
Our own dinner service is remarkably plain, our
dinners, even on state occasions, are strictly in keeping,
and almost our only guest is Titbottom. I buy
a handful of roses as I come up from the office, perhaps,
and Prue arranges them so prettily in a glass
dish for the centre of the table, that, even when I
have hurried out to see Aurelia step into her carriage
to go out to dine, I have thought that the
bouquet she carried was not more beautiful because
it was more costly.
I grant that it was more harmonious with her
superb beauty and her rich attire. And I have no
doubt that if Aurelia knew the old man, whom she
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must have seen so often watching her, and his wife,
who ornaments her sex with as much sweetness,
although with less splendor, than Aurelia herself,
she would also acknowledge that the nosegay of
roses was as fine and fit upon their table, as her own
sumptuous bouquet is for herself. I have so much
faith in the perception of that lovely lady.
It is my habit,—I hope I may say, my nature,—
to believe the best of people, rather than the worst.
If I thought that all this sparkling setting of beauty,—
this fine fashion,—these blazing jewels, and lustrous
silks, and airy gauzes, embellished with gold-threaded
embroidery and wrought in a thousand
exquisite elaborations, so that I cannot see one of
those lovely girls pass me by, without thanking
God for the vision,—if I thought that this was
all, and that, underneath her lace flounces and diamond
bracelets, Aurelia was a sullen, selfish woman,
then I should turn sadly homeward, for I should
see that her jewels were flashing scorn upon the
object they adorned, that her laces were of a more
exquisite loveliness than the woman whom they
merely touched with a superficial grace. It would
be like a gaily decorated mausoleum,—bright to
see, but silent and dark within.
“Great excellences, my dear Prue,” I sometimes
allow myself to say, “lie concealed in the depths
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of character, like pearls at the bottom of the sea.
Under the laughing, glancing surface, how little
they are suspected! Perhaps love is nothing else
than the sight of them by one person. Hence every
man's mistress is apt to be an enigma to everybody
else.
“I have no doubt that when Aurelia is engaged,
people will say she is a most admirable girl, certainly;
but they cannot understand why any man
should be in love with her. As if it were at all
necessary that they should! And her lover, like a
boy who finds a pearl in the public street, and wonders
as much that others did not see it as that he
did, will tremble until he knows his passion is returned;
feeling, of course, that the whole world
must be in love with this paragon, who cannot possibly
smile upon anything so unworthy as he.
“I hope, therefore, my dear Mrs. Prue,” I continue,
and my wife looks up, with pleased pride,
from her work, as if I were such an irresistible humorist,
“you will allow me to believe that the
depth may be calm, although the surface is dancing.
If you tell me that Aurelia is but a giddy
girl, I shall believe that you think so. But I shall
know, all the while, what profound dignity, and
sweetness, and peace, lie at the foundation of her
character.”
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I say such things to Titbottom, during the dull
season at the office. And I have known him sometimes
to reply, with a kind of dry, sad humor, not
as if he enjoyed the joke, but as if the joke must be
made, that he saw no reason why I should be dull
because the season was so.
“And what do I know of Aurelia, or any other
girl?” he says to me with that abstracted air; “I,
whose Aurelias were of another century, and another
zone.”
Then he falls into a silence which it seems quite
profane to interrupt. But as we sit upon our high
stools, at the desk, opposite each other, I leaning
upon my elbows, and looking at him, he, with
sidelong face, glancing out of the window, as if it
commanded a boundless landscape, instead of a
dim, dingy office court, I cannot refrain from
saying:
“Well!”
He turns slowly, and I go chatting on,—a little
too loquacious perhaps, about those young girls.
But I know that Titbottom regards such an excess
as venial, for his sadness is so sweet that you could
believe it the reflection of a smile from long, long
years ago.
One day, after I had been talking for a long
time, and we had put up our books, and were
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preparing to leave, he stood for some time by the
window, gazing with a drooping intentness, as if he
really saw something more than the dark court, and
said slowly:
“Perhaps you would have different impressions
of things, if you saw them through my spectacles.”
There was no change in his expression. He still
looked from the window, and I said:
“Titbottom, I did not know that you used glasses.
I have never seen you wearing spectacles.”
“No, I don't often wear them. I am not very
fond of looking through them. But sometimes an
irresistible necessity compels me to put them on,
and I cannot help seeing.'
Titbottom sighed.
“Is it so grievous a fate to see?” inquired I.
“Yes; through my spectacles,” he said, turning
slowly, and looking at me with wan solemnity.
It grew dark as we stood in the office talking,
and, talking our hats, we went out together. The
narrow street of business was deserted. The heavy
iron shutters were gloomily closed over the windows.
From one or two offices struggled the dim
gleam of an early candle, by whose light some perplexed
accountant sat belated, and hunting for his
error. A careless clerk passed, whistling. But the
great tide of life had ebbed. We heard its roar far
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away, and the sound stole into that silent street like
the murmur of the ocean into an inland dell.
“You will come and dine with us, Titbottom?”
He assented by continuing to walk with me, and
I think we were both glad when we reached the
house, and Prue came to meet us, saying:
“Do you know I hoped you would bring Mr.
Titbottom to dine?”
Titbottom smiled gently, and answered:
“He might have brought his spectacles with
him, and have been a happier man for it.”
Prue looked a little puzzled.
“My dear,” I said, “you must know that our
friend, Mr. Titbottom, is the happy possessor of a
pair of wonderful spectacles. I have never seen
them, indeed; and, from what he says, I should be
rather afraid of being seen by them. Most short-sighted
persons are very glad to have the help of
glasses; but Mr. Titbottom seems to find very little
pleasure in his.”
“It is because they make him too far-sighted,
perhaps,” interrupted Prue quietly, as she took the
silver soup-ladle from the sideboard.
We sipped our wine after dinner, and Prue took
her work. Can a man be too far-sighted? I did
not ask the question aloud. The very tone in which
Prue had spoken, convinced me that he might.
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“At least,” I said, “Mr. Titbottom will not refuse
to tell us the history of his mysterious spectacles.
I have known plenty of magic in eyes (and
I glanced at the tender blue eyes of Prue), but I
have not heard of any enchanted glasses.”
“Yet you must have seen the glass in which
your wife looks every morning, and, I take it, that
glass must be daily enchanted,” said Titbottom,
with a bow of quaint respect to my wife.
I do not think I have seen such a blush upon
Prue's cheek since—well, since a great many years
ago.
“I will gladly tell you the history of my spectacles,”
began Titbottom. “It is very simple; and
I am not at all sure that a great many other people
have not a pair of the same kind. I have never,
indeed, heard of them by the gross, like those of
our young friend, Moses, the son of the Vicar of
Wakefield. In fact, I think a gross would be quite
enough to supply the world. It is a kind of article
for which the demand does not increase with use
If we should all wear spectacles like mine, we
should never smile any more. Or—I am not quite
sure—we should all be very happy.”
“A very important difference,” said Prue, counting
her stitches.
“You know my grandfather Titbottom was a
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West Indian. A large proprietor, and an easy man,
he basked in the tropical sun, leading his quiet,
luxurious life. He lived much alone, and was what
people call eccentric—by which I understand, that
he was very much himself, and, refusing the influence
of other people, they had their revenges, and
called him names. It is a habit not exclusively
tropical. I think I have seen the same thing even
in this city.
“But he was greatly beloved—my bland and
bountiful grandfather. He was so large-hearted
and open-handed. He was so friendly, and thoughtful,
and genial, that even his jokes had the air of
graceful benedictions. He did not seem to grow
old, and he was one of those who never appear to
have been very young. He flourished in a perennial
maturity, an immortal middle-age.
“My grandfather lived upon one of the small
islands—St. Kitt's, perhaps—and his domain extended
to the sea. His house, a rambling West
Indian mansion, was surrounded with deep, spacious
piazzas, covered with luxurious lounges,
among which one capacious chair was his peculiar
seat. They tell me, he used sometimes to sit there
for the whole day, his great, soft, brown eyes fastened
upon the sea, watching the specks of sails
that flashed upon the horizon, while the evanescent
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expressions chased each other over his placid face
as if it reflected the calm and changing sea before
him.
“His morning costume was an ample dressing-gown
of gorgeously-flowered silk, and his morning
was very apt to last all day. He rarely read; but
he would pace the great piazza for hours, with his
hands buried in the pockets of his dressing-gown,
and an air of sweet reverie, which any book must
be a very entertaining one to produce.
“Society, of course, he saw little. There was
some slight apprehension that, if he were bidden to
social entertainments, he might forget his coat, or
arrive without some other essential part of his
dress; and there is a sly tradition in the Titbottom
family, that once, having been invited to a ball in
honor of a new governor of the island, my grandfather
Titbottom sauntered into the hall towards
midnight, wrapped in the gorgeous flowers of his
dressing-gown, and with his hands buried in the
pockets, as usual. There was great excitement
among the guests, and immense deprecation of
gubernatorial ire. Fortunately, it happened that
the governor and my grandfather were old friends,
and there was no offence. But, as they were conversing
together, one of the distressed managers
cast indignant glances at the brilliant costume of
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my grandfather, who summoned him, and asked
courteously:
“ `Did you invite me, or my coat?'
“ `You, in a proper coat,' replied the manager.
“The governor smiled approvingly, and looked
at my grandfather.
“ `My friend,' said he to the manager, `I beg your
pardon, I forgot.'
“The next day, my grandfather was seen promenading
in full ball dress along the streets of the
little town.
“ `They ought to know,' said he, `that I have a
proper coat, and that not contempt, nor poverty,
but forgetfulness, sent me to a ball in my dressing-gown.'
“He did not much frequent social festivals after
this failure, but he always told the story with satisfaction
and a quiet smile.
“To a stranger, life upon those little islands is
uniform even to weariness. But the old native
dons, like my grandfather, ripen in the prolonged
sunshine, like the turtle upon the Bahama banks,
nor know of existence more desirable. Life in the
tropics, I take to be a placid torpidity.
“During the long, warm mornings of nearly half
a century, my grandfather Titbottom had sat in his
dressing-gown, and gazed at the sea. But one calm
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June day, as he slowly paced the piazza after
breakfast, his dreamy glance was arrested by a
little vessel, evidently nearing the shore. He called
for his spyglass, and, surveying the craft, saw that
she came from the neighboring island. She glided
smoothly, slowly, over the summer sea. The warm
morning air was sweet with perfumes, and silent
with heat. The sea sparkled languidly, and the
brilliant blue sky hung cloudlessly over. Scores of
little island vessels had my grandfather seen coming
over the horizon, and cast anchor in the port.
Hundreds of summer mornings had the white sails
flashed and faded, like vague faces through forgotten
dreams. But this time he laid down the spyglass,
and leaned against a column of the piazza, and
watched the vessel with an intentness that he could
not explain. She came nearer and nearer, a graceful
spectre in the dazzling morning.
“ `Decidedly, I must step down and see about
that vessel,' said my grandfather Titbottom.
“He gathered his ample dressing-gown about
him, and stepped from the piazza, with no other
protection from the sun than the little smoking-cap
upon his head. His face wore a calm, beaming
smile, as if he loved the whole world. He was not
an old man; but there was almost a patriarchal
pathos in his expression, as he sauntered along in
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the sunshine towards the shore. A group of idle
gazers was collected, to watch the arrival. The
little vessel furled her sails, and drifted slowly landward,
and, as she was of very light draft, she came
close to the shelving shore. A long plank was put
out from her side, and the debarkation commenced.
“My grandfather Titbottom stood looking on, to
see the passengers as they passed. There were but
a few of them, and mostly traders from the neighboring
island. But suddenly the face of a young
girl appeared over the side of the vessel, and she
stepped upon the plank to descend. My grandfather
Titbottom instantly advanced, and, moving briskly,
reached the top of the plank at the same moment,
and with the old tassel of his cap flashing in the
sun, and one hand in the pocket of his dressing-gown,
with the other he handed the young lady
carefully down the plank. That young lady was
afterwards my grandmother Titbottom.
“For, over the gleaming sea which he had
watched so long, and which seemed thus to reward
his patient gaze, came his bride that sunny
morning.
“ `Of course, we are happy,' he used to say to
her, after they were married: `For you are the gift
of the sun I have loved so long and so well.' And
my grandfather Titbottom would lay his hand so
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tenderly upon the golden hair of his young bride,
that you could fancy him a devout Parsee, caressing
sunbeams.
“There were endless festivities upon occasion of
the marriage; and my grandfather did not go to
one of them in his dressing-gown. The gentle
sweetness of his wife melted every heart into love
and sympathy. He was much older than she, without
doubt. But age, as he used to say with a smile
of immortal youth, is a matter of feeling, not of
years.
“And if, sometimes, as she sat by his side on the
piazza, her fancy looked through her eyes upon that
summer sea, and saw a younger lover, perhaps some
one of those graceful and glowing heroes who occupy
the foreground of all young maidens' visions by
the sea, yet she could not find one more generous
and gracious, nor fancy one more worthy and loving
than my grandfather Titbottom.
“And if, in the moonlit midnight, while he lay
calmly sleeping, she leaned out of the window,
and sank into vague reveries of sweet possibility,
and watched the gleaming path of the moonlight
upon the water, until the dawn glided over it—it
was only that mood of nameless regret and longing,
which underlies all human happiness; or it was
the vision of that life of cities and the world, which
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she had never seen, but of which she had often read,
and which looked very fair and alluring across the
sea, to a girlish imagination, which knew that it
should never see that reality.
“These West Indian years were the great days
of the family,” said Titbottom, with an air of majestic
and regal regret, pausing, and musing, in our
little parlor, like a late Stuart in exile, remembering
England.
Prue raised her eyes from her work, and looked
at him with subdued admiration; for I have observed
that, like the rest of her sex, she has a singular
sympathy with the representative of a reduced
family.
Perhaps it is their finer perception, which leads
these tender-hearted women to recognize the divine
right of social superiority so much more readily than
we; and yet, much as Titbottom was enhanced in
my wife's admiration by the discovery that his dusky
sadness of nature and expression was, as it were, the
expiring gleam and late twilight of ancestral splendors,
I doubt if Mr. Bourne would have preferred
him for book-keeper a moment sooner upon that
account. In truth, I have observed, down town,
that the fact of your ancestors doing nothing, is not
considered good proof that you can do anything.
But Prue and her sex regard sentiment more than
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action, and I understand easily enough why she is
never tired of hearing me read of Prince Charlie.
If Titbottom had been only a little younger, a little
handsomer, a little more gallantly dressed—in fact,
a little more of a Prince Charlie, I am sure her eyes
would not have fallen again upon her work so tranquilly,
as he resumed his story.
“I can remember my grandfather Titbottom,
although I was a very young child, and he was a
very old man. My young mother and my young
grandmother are very distinct figures in my memory,
ministering to the old gentleman, wrapped in
his dressing-gown, and seated upon the piazza. I
remember his white hair, and his calm smile, and
how, not long before he died, he called me to
him, and laying his hand upon my head, said to
me:
“ `My child, the world is not this great sunny
piazza, nor life the fairy stories which the women
tell you here, as you sit in their laps. I shall soon
be gone, but I want to leave with you some memento
of my love for you, and I know of nothing
more valuable than these spectacles, which your
grandmother brought from her native island, when
she arrived here one fine summer morning, long
ago. I cannot tell whether, when you grow older,
you will regard them as a gift of the greatest value,
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or as something that you had been happier never to
have possessed.'
“ `But, grandpapa, I am not short-sighted.'
“ `My son, are you not human?' said the old
gentleman; and how shall I ever forget the thoughtful
sadness with which, at the same time, he handed
me the spectacles.
“Instinctively I put them on, and looked at my
grandfather. But I saw no grandfather, no piazza,
no flowered dressing-gown; I saw only a luxuriant
palm-tree, waving broadly over a tranquil landscape;
pleasant homes clustered around it; gardens teeming
with fruit and flowers; flocks quietly feeding;
birds wheeling and chirping. I heard children's
voices, and the low lullaby of happy mothers. The
sound of cheerful singing came wafted from distant
fields upon the light breeze. Golden harvests
glistened out of sight, and I caught their rustling
whispers of prosperity. A warm, mellow atmosphere
bathed the whole.
“I have seen copies of the landscapes of the
Italian painter Claude, which seemed to me faint
reminiscences of that calm and happy vision. But
all this peace and prosperity seemed to flow from
the spreading palm as from a fountain.
“I do not know how long I looked, but I had,
apparently, no power, as I had no will, to remove
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the spectacles. What a wonderful island must
Nevis be, thought I, if people carry such pictures
in their pockets, only by buying a pair of spectacles!
What wonder that my dear grandmother
Titbottom has lived such a placid life, and has
blessed us all with her sunny temper, when she has
lived surrounded by such images of peace!
“My grandfather died. But still, in the warm
morning sunshine upon the piazza, I felt his placid
presence, and as I crawled into his great chair, and
drifted on in reverie through the still tropical day,
it was as if his soft dreamy eye had passed into my
soul. My grandmother cherished his memory with
tender regret. A violent passion of grief for his
loss was no more possible than for the pensive decay
of the year.
“We have no portrait of him, but I see always,
when I remember him, that peaceful and luxuriant
palm. And I think that to have known one good
old man—one man who, through the chances and
rubs of a long life, has carried his heart in his hand,
like a palm branch, waving all discords into peace,
helps our faith in God, in ourselves, and in each
other, more than many sermons. I hardly know
whether to be grateful to my grandfather for
the spectacles; and yet when I remember that
it is to them I owe the pleasant image of him
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which I cherish, I seem to myself sadly ungrateful.
“Madam,” said Titbottom to Prue, solemnly,
“my memory is a long and gloomy gallery, and only
remotely, at its further end, do I see the glimmer
of soft sunshine, and only there are the pleasant
pictures hung. They seem to me very happy along
whose gallery the sunlight streams to their very
feet, striking all the pictured walls into unfading
splendor.”
Prue had laid her work in her lap, and as Titbottom
paused a moment, and I turned towards her, I
found her mild eyes fastened upon my face, and
glistening with many tears. I knew that the tears
meant that she felt herself to be one of those who
seemed to Titbottom very happy.
“Misfortunes of many kinds came heavily upon
the family after the head was gone. The great
house was relinquished. My parents were both
dead, and my grandmother had entire charge of me.
But from the moment that I received the gift of the
spectacles, I could not resist their fascination, and
I withdrew into myself, and became a solitary boy.
There were not many companions for me of my
own age, and they gradually left me, or, at least,
had not a hearty sympathy with me; for, if they
teased me, I pulled out my spectacles and surveyed
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them so seriously that they acquired a kind of awe
of me, and evidently regarded my grandfather's gift
as a concealed magical weapon which might be
dangerously drawn upon them at any moment.
Whenever, in our games, there were quarrels and
high words, and I began to feel about my dress and
to wear a grave look, they all took the alarm, and
shouted, `Look out for Titbottom's spectacles,' and
scattered like a flock of scared sheep.
“Nor could I wonder at it. For, at first, before
they took the alarm, I saw strange sights when I
looked at them through the glasses.
“If two were quarrelling about a marble or a
ball, I had only to go behind a tree where I was
concealed and look at them leisurely. Then the
scene changed, and it was no longer a green meadow
with boys playing, but a spot which I did not recognise,
and forms that made me shudder, or smile.
It was not a big boy bullying a little one, but a
young wolf with glistening teeth and a lamb cowering
before him; or, it was a dog faithful and famishing—
or a star going slowly into eclipse—or a rainbow
fading—or a flower blooming—or a sun rising—
or a waning moon.
“The revelations of the spectacles determined
my feeling for the boys, and for all whom I saw
through them. No shyness, nor awkwardness, nor
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silence, could separate me from those who looked
lovely as lilies to my illuminated eyes. But the
vision made me afraid. If I felt myself warmly
drawn to any one, I struggled with the fierce desire
of seeing him through the spectacles, for I feared
to find him something else than I fancied. I longed
to enjoy the luxury of ignorant feeling, to love
without knowing, to float like a leaf upon the eddies
of life, drifted now to a sunny point, now to a
solemn shade—now over glittering ripples, now
over gleaming calms,—and not to determined ports,
a trim vessel with an inexorable rudder.
“But sometimes, mastered after long struggles,
as if the unavoidable condition of owning the spectacles
were using them, I seized them and sauntered
into the little town. Putting them to my eyes I
peered into the houses and at the people who passed
me. Here sat a family at breakfast, and I stood at
the window looking in. O motley meal! fantastic
vision! The good mother saw her lord sitting
opposite, a grave, respectable being, eating muffins.
But I saw only a bank-bill, more or less crumbled
and tattered, marked with a larger or lesser figure.
If a sharp wind blew suddenly, I saw it tremble
and flutter; it was thin, flat, impalpable. I removed
my glasses, and looked with my eyes at the wife. I
could have smiled to see the humid tenderness with
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which she regarded her strange vis-à-vis. Is life
only a game of blindman's-buff? of droll crosspurposes?
“Or I put them on again, and then looked at the
wives. How many stout trees I saw,—how many
tender flowers,—how many placid pools; yes, and
how many little streams winding out of sight,
shrinking before the large, hard, round eyes opposite,
and slipping off into solitude and shade, with a
low, inner song for their own solace.
“In many houses I thought to see angels,
nymphs, or, at least, women, and could only find
broomsticks, mops, or kettles, hurrying about, rattling
and tinkling, in a state of shrill activity. I
made calls upon elegant ladies, and after I had
enjoyed the gloss of silk, and the delicacy of lace,
and the glitter of jewels, I slipped on my spectacles,
and saw a peacock's feather, flounced, and furbelowed,
and fluttering; or an iron rod, thin, sharp,
and hard; nor could I possibly mistake the movement
of the drapery for any flexibility of the thing
draped.
“Or, mysteriously chilled, I saw a statue of perfect
form, or flowing movement, it might be alabaster,
or bronze, or marble,—but sadly often it was
ice; and I knew that after it had shone a little, and
frozen a few eyes with its despairing perfection, it
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could not be put away in the niches of palaces for
ornament and proud family tradition, like the alabaster,
or bronze, or marble statues, but would
melt, and shrink, and fall coldly away in colorless
and useless water, be absorbed in the earth and utterly
forgotten.
“But the true sadness was rather in seeing those
who, not having the spectacles, thought that the
iron rod was flexible, and the ice statue warm. I
saw many a gallant heart, which seemed to me brave
and loyal as the crusaders, pursuing, through days
and nights, and a long life of devotion, the hope of
lighting at least a smile in the cold eyes, if not
a fire in the icy heart. I watched the earnest, enthusiastic
sacrifice. I saw the pure resolve, the
generous faith, the fine scorn of doubt, the impatience
of suspicion. I watched the grace, the ardor,
the glory of devotion. Through those strange spectacles
how often I saw the noblest heart renouncing
all other hope, all other ambition, all other life, than
the possible love of some one of those statues.
“Ah! me, it was terrible, but they had not the
love to give. The face was so polished and smooth,
because there was no sorrow in the heart,—and
drearily, often, no heart to be touched. I could
not wonder that the noble heart of devotion was
broken, for it had dashed itself against a stone. I
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wept, until my spectacles were dimmed, for those
hopeless lovers; but there was a pang beyond tears
for those icy statues.
“Still a boy, I was thus too much a man in
knowledge,—I did not comprehend the sights I was
compelled to see. I used to tear my glasses away
from my eyes, and, frightened at myself, run to
escape my own consciousness. Reaching the small
house where we then lived, I plunged into my
grandmother's room, and, throwing myself upon
the floor, buried my face in her lap; and sobbed
myself to sleep with premature grief.
“But when I awakened, and felt her cool hand
upon my hot forehead, and heard the low sweet
song, or the gentle story, or the tenderly told
parable from the Bible, with which she tried to
soothe me, I could not resist the mystic fascination
that lured me, as I lay in her lap, to steal a glance
at her through the spectacles.
“Pictures of the Madonna have not her rare and
pensive beauty. Upon the tranquil little islands
her life had been eventless, and all the fine possibilities
of her nature were like flowers that never
bloomed. Placid were all her years; yet I have
read of no heroine, of no woman great in sudden
crises, that it did not seem to me she might have
been. The wife and widow of a man who loved
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his home better than the homes of others, I have
yet heard of no queen, no belle, no imperial beauty,
whom in grace, and brilliancy, and persuasive courtesy,
she might not have surpassed.
“Madam,” said Titbottom to my wife, whose
heart hung upon his story; “your husband's young
friend, Aurelia, wears sometimes a camelia in her
hair, and no diamond in the ball-room seems so
costly as that perfect flower, which women envy,
and for whose least and withered petal men sigh;
yet, in the tropical solitudes of Brazil, how many a
camelia bud drops from the bush that no eye has
ever seen, which, had it flowered and been noticed,
would have gilded all hearts with its memory.
“When I stole these furtive glances at my grandmother,
half fearing that they were wrong, I saw
only a calm lake, whose shores were low, and over
which the sun hung unbroken, so that the least star
was clearly reflected. It had an atmosphere of
solemn twilight tranquillity, and so completely did
its unruffled surface blend with the cloudless, starstudded
sky, that, when I looked through my spectacles
at my grandmother, the vision seemed to me
all heaven and stars.
“Yet, as I gazed and gazed, I felt what stately
cities might well have been built upon those shores,
and have flashed prosperity over the calm, like
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coruscations of pearls. I dreamed of gorgeous fleets,
silken-sailed, and blown by perfumed winds, drifting
over those depthless waters and through those
spacious skies. I gazed upon the twilight, the
inscrutable silence, like a God-fearing discoverer
upon a new and vast sea bursting upon him through
forest glooms, and in the fervor of whose impassioned
gaze, a millenial and poetic world arises, and
man need no longer die to be happy.
“My companions naturally deserted me, for I
had grown wearily grave and abstracted: and,
unable to resist the allurements of my spectacles,
I was constantly lost in the world, of which those
companions were part, yet of which they knew
nothing.
“I grew cold and hard, almost morose; people
seemed to me so blind and unreasonable. They
did the wrong thing. They called green, yellow;
and black, white. Young men said of a girl, `What
a lovely, simple creature!' I looked, and there
was only a glistening wisp of straw, dry and hollow.
Or they said, `What a cold, proud beauty!'
I looked, and lo! a Madonna, whose heart held the
world. Or they said, `What a wild, giddy girl!'
and I saw a glancing, dancing mountain stream,
pure as the virgin snows whence it flowed, singing
through sun and shade, over pearls and gold dust,
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slipping along unstained by weed or rain, or heavy
foot of cattle, touching the flowers with a dewy
kiss,—a beam of grace, a happy song, a line of
light, in the dim and troubled landscape.
“My grandmother sent me to school, but I
looked at the master, and saw that he was a smooth
round ferule, or an improper noun, or a vulgar fraction,
and refused to obey him. Or he was a piece
of string, a rag, a willow-wand, and I had a contemptuous
pity. But one was a well of cool, deep
water, and looking suddenly in, one day, I saw the
stars.
“That one gave me all my schooling. With him
I used to walk by the sea, and, as we strolled and
the waves plunged in long legions before us, I
looked at him through the spectacles, and as his
eyes dilated with the boundless view, and his chest
heaved with an impossible desire, I saw Xerxes and
his army, tossed and glittering, rank upon rank, multitude
upon multitude, out of sight, but ever regularly
advancing, and with confused roar of ceaseless
music, prostrating themselves in abject homage.
Or, as with arms outstretched and hair streaming
on the wind, he chanted full lines of the resounding
Iliad, I saw Homer pacing the Egean sands of the
Greek sunsets of forgotten times.
“My grandmother died, and I was thrown into
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the world without resources, and with no capital
but my spectacles. I tried to find employment, but
everybody was shy of me. There was a vague
suspicion that I was either a little crazed, or a good
deal in league with the prince of darkness. My
companions, who would persist in calling a piece
of painted muslin, a fair and fragrant flower, had no
difficulty; success waited for them around every
corner, and arrived in every ship.
“I tried to teach, for I loved children. But if
anything excited a suspicion of my pupils, and
putting on my spectacles, I saw that I was fondling
a snake, or smelling at a bud with a worm in it, I
sprang up in horror and ran away; or, if it seemed
to me through the glasses, that a cherub smiled
upon me, or a rose was blooming in my buttonhole,
then I felt myself imperfect and impure, not
fit to be leading and training what was so essentially
superior to myself, and I kissed the children and
left them weeping and wondering.
“In despair I went to a great merchant on the
island, and asked him to employ me.
“ `My dear young friend,' said he, `I understand
that you have some singular secret, some charm, or
spell, or amulet, or something, I don't know what,
of which people are afraid. Now you know, my
dear,' said the merchant, swelling up, and
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apparently prouder of his great stomach than of his large
fortune, `I am not of that kind. I am not easily
frightened. You may spare yourself the pain of
trying to impose upon me. People who propose to
come to time before I arrive, are accustomed to
arise very early in the morning,' said he, thrusting
his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, and
spreading the fingers like two fans, upon his bosom.
`I think I have heard something of your secret.
You have a pair of spectacles, I believe, that you
value very much, because your grandmother brought
them as a marriage portion to your grandfather.
Now, if you think fit to sell me those spectacles, I
will pay you the largest market price for them.
What do you say?'
“I told him I had not the slightest idea of selling
my spectacles.
“ `My young friend means to eat them, I suppose,'
said he, with a contemptuous smile.
“I made no reply, but was turning to leave the
office, when the merchant called after me—
“ `My young friend, poor people should never
suffer themselves to get into pets. Anger is an expensive
luxury, in which only men of a certain
income can indulge. A pair of spectacles and a
hot temper are not the most promising capital for
success in life, Master Titbottom.'
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“I said nothing, but put my hand upon the door
to go out, when the merchant said, more respectfully—
“ `Well, you foolish boy, if you will not sell your
spectacles, perhaps you will agree to sell the use of
them to me. That is, you shall only put them on
when I direct you, and for my purposes. Hallo!
you little fool!' cried he, impatiently, as he saw
that I intended to make no reply.
“But I had pulled out my spectacles and put
them on for my own purposes, and against his wish
and desire. I looked at him, and saw a huge, baldheaded
wild boar, with gross chaps and a leering
eye—only the more ridiculous for the high-arched,
gold-bowed spectacles, that straddled his nose.
One of his fore-hoofs was thrust into the safe, where
his bills receivable were hived, and the other into
his pocket, among the loose change and bills there.
His ears were pricked forward with a brisk, sensitive
smartness. In a world where prize pork was
the best excellence, he would have carried off all
the premiums.
“I stepped into the next office in the street, and
a mild-faced, genial man, also a large and opulent
merchant, asked me my business in such a tone,
that I instantly looked through my spectacles, and
saw a land flowing with milk and honey. There I
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pitched my tent, and staid till the good man died,
and his business was discontinued.
“But while there,” said Titbottom, and his voice
trembled away into a sigh, “I first saw Preciosa.
Despite the spectacles, I saw Preciosa. For days,
for weeks, for months, I did not take my spectacles
with me. I ran away from them, I threw them up
on high shelves, I tried to make up my mind to
throw them into the sea, or down the well. I could
not, I would not, I dared not, look at Preciosa through
the spectacles. It was not possible for me deliberately
to destroy them; but I awoke in the night,
and could almost have cursed my dear old grandfather
for his gift.
“I sometimes escaped from the office, and sat for
whole days with Preciosa. I told her the strange
things I had seen with my mystic glasses. The
hours were not enough for the wild romances which
I raved in her ear. She listened, astonished and
appalled. Her blue eyes turned upon me with
sweet deprecation. She clung to me, and then
withdrew, and fled fearfully from the room.
“But she could not stay away. She could not
resist my voice, in whose tones burnt all the love
that filled my heart and brain. The very effort to
resist the desire of seeing her as I saw everybody
else, gave a frenzy and an unnatural tension to my
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feeling and my manner. I sat by her side, looking
into her eyes, smoothing her hair, folding her to my
heart, which was sunken deep and deep—why not
for ever?—in that dream of peace. I ran from her
presence, and shouted, and leaped with joy, and sat
the whole night through, thrilled into happiness by
the thought of her love and loveliness, like a windharp,
tightly strung, and answering the airiest sigh
of the breeze with music.
“Then came calmer days—the conviction of deep
love settled upon our lives—as after the hurrying,
heaving days of spring, comes the bland and benignant
summer.
“ `It is no dream, then, after all, and we are
happy,' I said to her, one day; and there came no
answer, for happiness is speechless.
“ `We are happy, then,' I said to myself, `there
is no excitement now. How glad I am that I can
now look at her through my spectacles.'
“I feared least some instinct should warn me to
beware. I escaped from her arms, and ran home
and seized the glasses, and bounded back again to
Preciosa. As I entered the room I was heated, my
head was swimming with confused apprehensions,
my eyes must have glared. Preciosa was frightened,
and rising from her seat, stood with an inquiring
glance of surprise in her eyes.
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“But I was bent with frenzy upon my purpose.
I was merely aware that she was in the room. I
saw nothing else. I heard nothing. I cared for
nothing, but to see her through that magic glass,
and feel at once all the fulness of blissful perfection
which that would reveal. Preciosa stood before the
mirror, but alarmed at my wild and eager movements,
unable to distinguish what I had in my
hands, and seeing me raise them suddenly to my
face, she shrieked with terror, and fell fainting upon
the floor, at the very moment that I placed the
glasses before my eyes, and beheld—myself, reflected
in the mirror, before which she had been
standing.
“Dear madam,” cried Titbottom, to my wife,
springing up and falling back again in his chair,
pale and trembling, while Prue ran to him and took
his hand, and I poured out a glass of water—“I saw
myself.”
There was silence for many minutes. Prue laid
her hand gently upon the head of our guest, whose
eyes were closed, and who breathed softly like an
infant in sleeping. Perhaps, in all the long years of
anguish since that hour, no tender hand had touched
his brow, nor wiped away the damps of a bitter sorrow.
Perhaps the tender, maternal fingers of my
wife soothed his weary head with the conviction
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that he felt the hand of his mother playing with the
long hair of her boy in the soft West India morning.
Perhaps it was only the natural relief of expressing
a pent-up sorrow.
When he spoke again, it was with the old subdued
tone, and the air of quaint solemnity.
“These things were matters of long, long ago,
and I came to this country soon after. I brought
with me, premature age, a past of melancholy memories,
and the magic spectacles. I had become
their slave. I had nothing more to fear. Having
seen myself, I was compelled to see others, properly
to understand my relations to them. The lights that
cheer the future of other men had gone out for me;
my eyes were those of an exile turned backwards
upon the receding shore, and not forwards with hope
upon the ocean.
“I mingled with men, but with little pleasure.
There are but many varieties of a few types. I did
not find those I came to clearer-sighted that those I
had left behind. I heard men called shrewd and
wise, and report said they were highly intelligent
and successful. My finest sense detected no aroma
of purity and principle; but I saw only a fungus
that had fattened and spread in a night. They went
to the theatres to see actors upon the stage. I went
to see actors in the boxes, so consummately cunning,
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that others did not know they were acting, and they
did not suspect it themselves.
“Perhaps you wonder it did not make me misanthropical.
My dear friends, do not forget that I
had seen myself. That made me compassionate not
cynical.
“Of course, I could not value highly the ordinary
standards of success and excellence. When I went
to church and saw a thin, blue, artificial flower, or
a great sleepy cushion expounding the beauty of
holiness to pews full of eagles, half-eagles, and three-pences,
however adroitly concealed they might be in
broadcloth and boots: or saw an onion in an Easter
bonnet weeping over the sins of Magdalen, I did not
feel as they felt who saw in all this, not only propriety
but piety.
“Or when at public meetings an eel stood up on
end, and wriggled and squirmed lithely in every
direction, and declared that, for his part, he went in
for rainbows and hot water—how could I help seeing
that he was still black and loved a slimy pool?
“I could not grow misanthropical when I saw
in the eyes of so many who were called old, the
gushing fountains of eternal youth, and the light of
an immortal dawn, or when I saw those who were
esteemed unsuccessful and aimless, ruling a fair realm
of peace and plenty, either in their own hearts, or
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in another's—a realm and princely possession for
which they had well renounced a hopeless search
and a belated triumph.
“I knew one man who had been for years a by-word
for having sought the philosopher's stone. But
I looked at him through the spectacles and saw a
satisfaction in concentrated energies, and a tenacity
arising from devotion to a noble dream which was
not apparent in the youths who pitied him in the
aimless effeminacy of clubs, nor in the clever gentlemen
who cracked their thin jokes upon him over
a gossiping dinner.
“And there was your neighbor over the way,
who passes for a woman who has failed in her career,
because she is an old maid. People wag solemn
heads of pity, and say that she made so great a mistake
in not marrying the brilliant and famous man
who was for long years her suitor. It is clear that
no orange flower will ever bloom for her. The
young people make their tender romances about her
as they watch her, and think of her solitary hours of
bitter regret and wasting longing, never to be satisfied.
“When I first came to town I shared this sympathy,
and pleased my imagination with fancying her
hard struggle with the conviction that she had lost
all that made life beautiful. I supposed that if I had
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looked at her through my spectacles, I should see
that it was only her radiant temper which so illuminated
her dress, that we did not see it to be heavy
sables.
“But when, one day, I did raise my glasses, and
glanced at her, I did not see the old maid whom
we all pitied for a secret sorrow, but a woman
whose nature was a tropic, in which the sun shone,
and birds sang, and flowers bloomed for ever.
There were no regrets, no doubts and half wishes,
but a calm sweetness, a transparent peace. I saw
her blush when that old lover passed by, or paused
to speak to her, but it was only the sign of delicate
feminine consciousness. She knew his love, and
honored it, although she could not understand it
nor return it. I looked closely at her, and I saw
that although all the world had exclaimed at her
indifference to such homage, and had declared
it was astonishing she should lose so fine a match,
she would only say simply and quietly—
“ `If Shakespeare loved me and I did not love
him, how could I marry him?'
“Could I be misanthropical when I saw such
fidelity, and dignity, and simplicity?
“You may believe that I was especially curious
to look at that old lover of hers, through my glasses.
He was no longer young, you know, when I came,
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and his fame and fortune were secure. Certainly I
have heard of few men more beloved, and of none
more worthy to be loved. He had the easy manner
of a man of the world, the sensitive grace of a poet,
and the charitable judgment of a wide-traveller.
He was accounted the most successful and most
unspoiled of men. Handsome, brilliant, wise, tender,
graceful, accomplished, rich, and famous, I
looked at him, without the spectacles, in surprise,
and admiration, and wondered how your neighbor
over the way had been so entirely untouched by
his homage. I watched their intercourse in society,
I saw her gay smile, her cordial greeting; I marked
his frank address, his lofty courtesy. Their manner
told no tales. The eager world was baulked, and I
pulled out my spectacles.
“I had seen her already, and now I saw him.
He lived only in memory, and his memory was a
spacious and stately palace. But he did not oftenest
frequent the banqueting hall, where were endless
hospitality and feasting,—nor did he loiter
much in the reception rooms, where a throng of
new visitors was for ever swarming,—nor did he
feed his vanity by haunting the apartment in which
were stored the trophies of his varied triumphs,—
nor dream much in the great gallery hung with
pictures of his travels.
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“From all these lofty halls of memory he constantly
escaped to a remote and solitary chamber,
into which no one had ever penetrated. But my
fatal eyes, behind the glasses, followed and entered
with him, and saw that the chamber was a chapel.
It was dim, and silent, and sweet with perpetual
incense that burned upon an altar before a picture
forever veiled. There, whenever I chanced to look,
I saw him kneel and pray; and there, by day and
by night, a funeral hymn was chanted.
“I do not believe you will be surprised that I
have been content to remain a deputy book-keeper.
My spectacles regulated my ambition, and I early
learned that there were better gods than Plutus.
The glasses have lost much of their fascination now,
and I do not often use them. But sometimes the
desire is irresistible. Whenever I am greatly interested,
I am compelled to take them out and see
what it is that I admire.
“And yet—and yet,” said Titbottom, after a
pause, “I am not sure that I thank my grandfather.”
Prue had long since laid away her work, and had
heard every word of the story. I saw that the
dear woman had yet one question to ask, and had
been earnestly hoping to hear something that
would spare her the necessity of asking. But
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Titbottom had resumed his usual tone, after the momentary
excitement, and made no further allusion
to himself. We all sat silently; Titbottom's eyes
fastened musingly upon the carpet, Prue looking
wistfully at him, and I regarding both.
It was past midnight, and our guest arose to go.
He shook hands quietly, made his grave Spanish
bow to Prue, and, taking his hat, went towards the
front door. Prue and I accompanied him. I saw
in her eyes that she would ask her question. And
as Titbottom opened the door, I heard the low
words:
“And Preciosa?”
Titbottom paused. He had just opened the door,
and the moonlight streamed over him as he stood,
turning back to us.
“I have seen her but once since. It was in
church, and she was kneeling, with her eyes closed,
so that she did not see me. But I rubbed the
glasses well, and looked at her, and saw a white
lily, whose stem was broken, but which was fresh,
and luminous, and fragrant still.”
“That was a miracle,” interrupted Prue.
“Madam, it was a miracle,” replied Titbottom,
“and for that one sight I am devoutly grateful for
my grandfather's gift. I saw, that although a
flower may have lost its hold upon earthly
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moisture, it may still bloom as sweetly, fed by the dews
of heaven.”
The door closed, and he was gone. But as Prue
put her arm in mine, and we went up stairs together,
she whispered in my ear:
“How glad I am that you don't wear spectacles.”
-- -- p535-156
A CRUISE IN THE FLYING DUTCHMAN.
“When I sailed: when I sailed.”
Ballad of Robert Kidd.
[figure description] Divisional Title-Page.[end figure description]
-- --
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-- 141 --
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A CRUISE IN THE FLYING DUTCHMAN.
“When I sailed: when I sailed.”
Ballad of Robert Kidd.
With the opening of spring my heart opens. My
fancy expands with the flowers, and, as I walk down
town in the May morning, toward the dingy counting-room,
and the old routine, you would hardly
believe that I would not change my feelings for
those of the French Barber-Poet Jasmin, who goes,
merrily singing, to his shaving and hair cutting.
The first warm day puts the whole winter to
flight. It stands in front of the summer like a young
warrior before his host, and, single-handed, defies
and destroys its remorseless enemy.
I throw up the chamber-window, to breathe the
earliest breath of summer.
“The brave young David has hit old Goliah
square in the forehead this morning,” I say to
Prue, as I lean out, and bathe in the soft sunshine.
My wife is tying on her cap at the glass, and, not
quite disentangled from her dreams, thinks I am
speaking of a street-brawl, and replies that I had
better take care of my own head.
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“Since you have charge of my heart, I suppose,”
I answer gaily, turning round to make her one of
Titbottom's bows.
“But seriously, Prue, how is it about my summer
wardrobe?”
Prue smiles, and tells me we shall have two
months of winter yet, and I had better stop and
order some more coal as I go down town.
“Winter—coal!”
Then I step back, and taking her by the arm,
lead her to the window. I throw it open even
wider than before. The sunlight streams on the
great church-towers opposite, and the trees in the
neighboring square glisten, and wave their boughs
gently, as if they would burst into leaf before dinner.
Cages are hung at the open chamber-windows
in the street, and the birds, touched into song by
the sun, make Memnon true. Prue's purple and
white hyacinths are in full blossom, and perfume
the warm air, so that the canaries and the mocking
birds are no longer aliens in the city streets,
but are once more swinging in their spicy native
groves.
A soft wind blows upon us as we stand, listening
and looking. Cuba and the Tropics are in the air.
The drowsy tune of a hand-organ rises from the
square, and Italy comes singing in upon the sound.
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My triumphant eyes meet Prue's. They are full of
sweetness and spring.
“What do you think of the summer-wardrobe
now?” I ask, and we go down to breakfast.
But the air has magic in it, and I do not cease to
dream. If I meet Charles, who is bound for Alabama,
or John, who sails for Savannah, with a
trunk full of white jackets, I do not say to them, as
their other friends say,—
“Happy travellers, who cut March and April
out of the dismal year!”
I do not envy them. They will be sea-sick on the
way. The southern winds will blow all the water
out of the rivers, and, desolately stranded upon mud,
they will relieve the tedium of the interval by tying
with large ropes a young gentleman raving with
delirium tremens. They will hurry along, appalled
by forests blazing in the windy night; and, housed
in a bad inn, they will find themselves anxiously
asking, “Are the cars punctual in leaving?”—
grimly sure that impatient travellers find all conveyances
too slow. The travellers are very warm,
indeed, even in March and April,—but Prue doubts
if it is altogether the effect of the southern climate.
Why should they go to the South? If they only
wait a little, the South will come to them. Savannah
arrives in April; Florida in May; Cuba and the
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Gulf come in with June, and the full splendor of
the Tropics burns through July and August. Sitting
upon the earth, do we not glide by all the constellations,
all the awful stars? Does not the flash
of Orion's scimeter dazzle as we pass? Do we not
hear, as we gaze in hushed midnights, the music of
the Lyre; are we not throned with Cassiopea; do
we not play with the tangles of Berenice's hair, as
we sail, as we sail?
When Christopher told me that he was going to
Italy, I went into Bourne's conservatory, saw a
magnolia, and so reached Italy before him. Can
Christopher bring Italy home? But I brought to
Prue a branch of magnolia blossoms, with Mr.
Bourne's kindest regards, and she put them upon
her table, and our little house smelled of Italy for a
week afterward. The incident developed Prue's
Italian tastes, which I had not suspected to be so
strong. I found her looking very often at the magnolias;
even holding them in her hand, and standing
before the table with a pensive air. I suppose she
was thinking of Beatrice Cenci, or of Tasso and
Leonora, or of the wife of Marino Faliero, or of some
other of those sad old Italian tales of love and woe.
So easily Prue went to Italy!
Thus the spring comes in my heart as well as in
the air, and leaps along my veins as well as through
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the trees. I immediately travel. An orange takes
me to Sorrento, and roses, when they blow, to Pæstum.
The camelias in Aurelia's hair bring Brazil
into the happy rooms she treads, and she takes me
to South America as she goes to dinner. The pearls
upon her neck make me free of the Persian gulf.
Upon her shawl, like the Arabian prince upon his
carpet, I am transported to the vales of Cashmere;
and thus, as I daily walk in the bright spring days,
I go round the world.
But the season wakes a finer longing, a desire that
could only be satisfied if the pavilions of the clouds
were real, and I could stroll among the towering
splendors of a sultry spring evening. Ah! if I could
leap those flaming battlements that glow along the
west—if I could tread those cool, dewy, serene
isles of sunset, and sink with them in the sea of
stars.
I say so to Prue, and my wife smiles.
“But why is it so impossible,” I ask, “if you go
to Italy upon a magnolia branch?”
The smile fades from her eyes.
“I went a shorter voyage than that,” she answered;
“it was only to Mr. Bourne's.”
I walked slowly out of the house, and overtook
Titbottom as I went. He smiled gravely as he
greeted me, and said:
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“I have been asked to invite you to join a little
pleasure party.”
“Where is it going?”
“Oh! anywhere,” answered Titbottom.
“And how?”
“Oh! anyhow,” he replied.
“You mean that everybody is to go wherever he
pleases, and in the way he best can. My dear Titbottom,
I have long belonged to that pleasure party,
although I never heard it called by so pleasant a
name before.”
My companion said only:
“If you would like to join, I will introduce
you to the party. I cannot go, but they are all on
board.”
I answered nothing; but Titbottom drew me
along. We took a boat, and put off to the most
extraordinary craft I had ever seen. We approached
her stern, and, as I curiously looked at it, I could
think of nothing but an old picture that hung in
my father's house. It was of the Flemish school,
and represented the rear view of the vrouw of a
burgomaster going to market. The wide yards were
stretched like elbows, and even the studding-sails
were spread. The hull was seared and blistered,
and, in the tops, I saw what I supposed to be strings
of turnips of cabbages, little round masses, with
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tufted crests; but Titbottom assured me they were
sailors.
We rowed hard, but came no nearer the vessel.
“She is going with the tide and wind,” said I;
“we shall never catch her.”
My companion said nothing.
“But why have they set the studding-sails?”
asked I.
“She never takes in any sails,” answered Titbottom.
“The more fool she,” thought I, a little impatiently,
angry at not getting nearer to the vessel.
But I did not say it aloud. I would as soon have
said it to Prue as to Titbottom. The truth is, I
began to feel a little ill, from the motion of the boat,
and remembered, with a shade of regret, Prue and
peppermint. If wives could only keep their husbands
a little nauseated, I am confident they might
be very sure of their constancy.
But, somehow, the strange ship was gained, and
I found myself among as singular a company as I
have ever seen. There were men of every country,
and costumes of all kinds. There was an indescribable
mistiness in the air, or a premature twilight,
in which all the figures looked ghostly and unreal.
The ship was of a model such as I had never seen,
and the rigging had a musty odor, so that the whole
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craft smelled like a ship-chandler's shop grown
mouldy. The figures glided rather than walked
about, and I perceived a strong smell of cabbage
issuing from the hold.
But the most extraordinary thing of all was the
sense of resistless motion which possessed my mind
the moment my foot struck the deck. I could have
sworn we were dashing through the water at the
rate of twenty knots an hour. (Prue has a great,
but a little ignorant, admiration of my technical
knowledge of nautical affairs and phrases.) I looked
aloft and saw the sails taut with a stiff breeze, and
I heard a faint whistling of the wind in the rigging,
but very faint, and rather, it seemed to me, as if it
came from the creak of cordage in the ships of Crusaders;
or of quaint old craft upon the Spanish
main, echoing through remote years—so far away it
sounded.
Yet I heard no orders given; I saw no sailors
running aloft, and only one figure crouching over
the wheel. He was lost behind his great beard as
behind a snow-drift. But the startling speed with
which we scudded along did not lift a solitary hair
of that beard, nor did the old and withered face of
the pilot betray any curiosity or interest as to what
breakers, or reefs, or pitiless shores, might be lying
in ambush to destroy us.
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Still on we swept; and as the traveller in a nighttrain
knows that he is passing green fields, and
pleasant gardens, and winding streams fringed with
flowers, and is now gliding through tunnels or darting
along the base of fearful cliffs, so I was conscious
that we were pressing through various climates
and by romantic shores. In vain I peered into the
gray twilight mist that folded all. I could only see
the vague figures that grew and faded upon the
haze, as my eye fell upon them, like the intermittent
characters of sympathetic ink when heat
touches them.
Now, it was a belt of warm, odorous air in which
we sailed, and then cold as the breath of a polar
ocean. The perfume of new-mown hay and the
breath of roses, came mingled with the distant
music of bells, and the twittering song of birds, and
a low surf-like sound of the wind in summer woods.
There were all sounds of pastoral beauty, of a tranquil
landscape such as Prue loves—and which shall
be painted as the background of her portrait whenever
she sits to any of my many artist friends—and
that pastoral beauty shall be called England; I
strained my eyes into the cruel mist that held all
that music and all that suggested beauty, but I
could see nothing. It was so sweet that I scarcely
knew if I cared to see. The very thought of it
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charmed my senses and satisfied my heart. I smelled
and heard the landscape that I could not see.
Then the pungent, penetrating fragrance of blossoming
vineyards was wafted across the air; the
flowery richness of orange groves, and the sacred
odor of crushed bay leaves, such as is pressed from
them when they are strewn upon the flat pavement
of the streets of Florence, and gorgeous priestly
processions tread them under foot. A steam of incense
filled the air. I smelled Italy—as in the
magnolia from Bourne's garden—and, even while
my heart leaped with the consciousness, the odor
passed, and a stretch of burning silence succeeded.
It was an oppressive zone of heat—oppressive not
only from its silence, but from the sense of awful,
antique forms, whether of art or nature, that were
sitting, closely veiled, in that mysterious obscurity.
I shuddered as I felt that if my eyes could pierce
that mist, or if it should lift and roll away, I should
see upon a silent shore low ranges of lonely hills,
or mystic figures and huge temples trampled out of
history by time.
This, too, we left. There was a rustling of distant
palms, the indistinct roar of beasts, and the
hiss of serpents. Then all was still again. Only
at times the remote sigh of the weary sea, moaning
around desolate isles undiscovered; and the howl of
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winds that had never wafted human voices, but had
rung endless changes upon the sound of dashing
waters, made the voyage more appalling and the
figures around me more fearful.
As the ship plunged on through all the varying
zones, as climate and country drifted behind us, unseen
in the gray mist, but each, in turn, making
that quaint craft England or Italy, Africa and the
Southern seas, I ventured to steal a glance at the
motley crew, to see what impression this wild career
produced upon them.
They sat about the deck in a hundred listless
postures. Some leaned idly over the bulwarks, and
looked wistfully away from the ship, as if they
fancied they saw all that I inferred but could not
see. As the perfume, and sound, and climate
changed, I could see many a longing eye sadden
and grow moist, and as the chime of bells echoed
distinctly like the airy syllables of names, and, as it
were, made pictures in music upon the minds of
those quaint mariners—then dry lips moved, perhaps
to name a name, perhaps to breathe a prayer.
Others sat upon the deck, vacantly smoking pipes
that required no refilling, but had an immortality of
weed and fire. The more they smoked the more
mysterious they became. The smoke made the
mist around them more impenetrable, and I could
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clearly see that those distant sounds gradually grew
more distant, and, by some of the most desperate
and constant smokers, were heard no more. The
faces of such had an apathy, which, had it been human,
would have been despair.
Others stood staring up into the rigging, as if
calculating when the sails must needs be rent and
the voyage end. But there was no hope in their
eyes, only a bitter longing. Some paced restlessly
up and down the deck. They had evidently been
walking a long, long time. At intervals they, too,
threw a searching glance into the mist that enveloped
the ship, and up into the sails and rigging
that stretched over them in hopeless strength and
order.
One of the promenaders I especially noticed.
His beard was long and snowy, like that of the
pilot. He had a staff in his hand, and his movement
was very rapid. His body swung forward, as
if to avoid something, and his glance half turned
back over his shoulder, apprehensively, as if he
were threatened from behind. The head and the
whole figure were bowed as if under a burden,
although I could not see that he had anything upon
his shoulders; and his gait was not that of a man
who is walking off the ennui of a voyage, but rather of
a criminal flying, or of a startled traveller pursued.
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As he came nearer to me in his walk, I saw that
his features were strongly Hebrew, and there was
an air of the proudest dignity, fearfully abased, in
his mien and expression. It was more than the dignity
of an individual. I could have believed that
the pride of a race was humbled in his person.
His agile eye presently fastened itself upon me,
as a stranger. He came nearer and nearer to me,
as he paced rapidly to and fro, and was evidently
several times on the point of addressing me, but,
looking over his shoulder apprehensively, he passed
on. At length, with a great effort, he paused for an
instant, and invited me to join him in his walk.
Before the invitation was fairly uttered, he was in
motion again. I followed, but I could not overtake
him. He kept just before me, and turned occasionally
with an air of terror, as if he fancied I were
dogging him; then glided on more rapidly.
His face was by no means agreeable, but it had
an inexplicable fascination, as if it had been turned
upon what no other mortal eyes had ever seen. Yet
I could hardly tell whether it were, probably, an
object of supreme beauty or of terror. He looked
at everything as if he hoped its impression might
obliterate some anterior and awful one; and I was
gradually possessed with the unplesant idea that his
eyes were never closed—that, in fact, he never slept.
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Suddenly, fixing me with his unnatural, wakeful
glare, he whispered something which I could not
understand, and then darted forward even more
rapidly, as if he dreaded that, in merely speaking,
he had lost time.
Still the ship drove on, and I walked hurriedly
along the deck, just behind my companion. But
our speed and that of the ship contrasted strangely
with the mouldy smell of old rigging, and the listless
and lazy groups, smoking and leaning on the
bulwarks. The seasons, in endless succession and
iteration, passed over the ship. The twilight was
summer haze at the stern, while it was the fiercest
winter mist at the bows. But as a tropical breath,
like the warmth of a Syrian day, suddenly touched
the brow of my companion, he sighed, and I could
not help saying:
“You must be tired.”
He only shook his head and quickened his pace.
But now that I had once spoken, it was not so
difficult to speak, and I asked him why he did not
stop and rest.
He turned for moment, and a mournful sweetness
shone in his dark eyes and haggard, swarthy face.
It played flittingly around that strange look of
ruined human dignity, like a wan beam of late sunset
about a crumbling and forgotten temple. He
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put his hand hurriedly to his forehead, as if he were
trying to remember—like a lunatic, who, having
heard only the wrangle of fiends in his delirium,
suddenly, in a conscious moment, perceives the
familiar voice of love. But who could this be, to
whom mere human sympathy was so startlingly
sweet?
Still moving, he whispered with a woful sadness,
“I want to stop, but I cannot. If I could only
stop long enough to leap over the bulwarks!”
Then he sighed long and deeply, and added,
“But I should not drown.”
So much had my interest been excited by his
face and movement, that I had not observed the
costume of this strange being. He wore a black
hat upon his head. It was not only black, but it
was shiny. Even in the midst of this wonderful
scene, I could observe that it had the artificial newness
of a second-hand hat; and, at the same moment,
I was disgusted by the odor of old clothes—
very old clothes, indeed. The mist and my sympathy
had prevented my seeing before what a singular
garb the figure wore. It was all second-hand
and carefully ironed, but the garments were obviously
collected from every part of the civilized
globe. Good heavens! as I looked at the coat, I
had a strange sensation. I was sure that I had
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once worn that coat. It was my wedding surtout—
long in the skirts—which Prue had told me,
years and years before, she had given away to the
neediest Jew beggar she had ever seen.
The spectral figure dwindled in my fancy—the
features lost their antique grandeur, and the restless
eye ceased to be sublime from immortal sleeplessness,
and became only lively with mean cunning.
The apparition was fearfully grotesque, but the
driving ship and the mysterious company gradually
restored its tragic interest. I stopped and leaned
against the side, and heard the rippling water that
I could not see, and flitting through the mist, with
anxious speed, the figure held its way. What was
he flying? What conscience with relentless sting
pricked this victim on?
He came again nearer and nearer to me in his
walk. I recoiled with disgust, this time, no less
than terror. But he seemed resolved to speak, and,
finally, each time, as he passed me, he asked single
questions, as a ship which fires whenever it can
bring a gun to bear.
“Can you tell me to what port we are
bound?”
“No,” I replied; “but how came you to take
passage without inquiry? To me it makes little
difference.”
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“Nor do I care,” he answered, when he next
came near enough; I have already been there.”
“Where?” asked I.
“Wherever we are going,” he replied. “I have
been there a great many times, and, oh! I am very
tired of it.”
“But why are you here at all, then; and why
don't you stop?”
There was a singular mixture of a hundred conflicting
emotions in his face, as I spoke. The
representative grandeur of a race, which he sometimes
showed in his look, faded into a glance of
hopeless and puny despair. His eyes looked at me
curiously, his chest heaved, and there was clearly a
struggle in his mind, between some lofty and mean
desire. At times, I saw only the austere suffering
of ages in his strongly-carved features, and again I
could see nothing but the second-hand black hat
above them. He rubbed his forehead with his
skinny hand; he glanced over his shoulder, as if
calculating whether he had time to speak to me;
and then, as a splendid defiance flashed from his
piercing eyes, so that I know how Milton's Satan
looked, he said, bitterly, and with hopeless sorrow,
that no mortal voice ever knew before:
“I cannot stop: my woe is infinite, like my
sin!”—and he passed into the mist.
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But, in a few moments, he reappeared. I could
now see only the hat, which sank more and more
over his face, until it covered it entirely; and I
heard a querulous voice, which seemed to be quarrelling
with itself, for saying what it was compelled
to say, so that the words were even more appalling
than what it had said before:
“Old clo'! old clo'!”
I gazed at the disappearing figure, in speechless
amazement, and was still looking, when I was
tapped upon the shoulder, and, turning round, saw
a German cavalry officer, with a heavy moustache,
and a dog-whistle in his hand.
“Most extraordinary man, your friend yonder,”
said the officer; “I don't remember to have seen
him in Turkey, and yet I recognize upon his feet
the boots that I wore in the great Russian cavalry
charge, where I individually rode down five hundred
and thirty Turks, slew seven hundred, at a moderate
computation, by the mere force of my rush,
and, taking the seven insurmountable walls of
Constantinople at one clean flying leap, rode straight
into the seraglio, and, dropping the bridle, cut the
sultan's throat with my bridle-hand, kissed the
other to the ladies of the hareem, and was back
again within our lines and taking a glass of wine
with the hereditary Grand Duke Generalissimo
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[figure description] Page 159.[end figure description]
before he knew that I had mounted. Oddly enough,
your old friend is now sporting the identical boots
I wore on that occasion.”
The cavalry officer coolly curled his moustache
with his fingers. I looked at him in silence.
“Speaking of boots,” he resumed, “I don't remember
to have told you of that little incident of
the Princess of the Crimea's diamonds. It was
slight, but curious. I was dining one day with the
Emperor of the Crimea, who always had a cover
laid for me at his table, when he said, in great perplexity,
`Baron, my boy, I am in straits. The Shah
of Persia has just sent me word that he has
presented me with two thousand pearl-of-Oman
necklaces, and I don't know how to get them over,
the duties are so heavy.' `Nothing easier,' replied
I; `I'll bring them in my boots.' `Nonsense!' said
the Emperor of the Crimea. `Nonsense! yourself,'
replied I, sportively: for the Emperor of the
Crimea always gives me my joke; and so after
dinner I went over to Persia. The thing was easily
enough done. I ordered a hundred thousand pairs
of boots or so, filled them with the pearls; said at
the Custom-house that they were part of my private
wardrobe, and I had left the blocks in to keep
them stretched, for I was particular about my
bunions. The officers bowed, and said that their
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own feet were tender, upon which I jokingly remarked
that I wished their consciences were, and
so in the pleasantest manner possible the pearl-of-Oman
necklaces were bowed out of Persia, and the
Emperor of the Crimea gave me three thousand of
them as my share. It was no trouble. It was
only ordering the boots, and whistling to the infernal
rascals of Persian shoe-makers to hang for
their pay.”
I could reply nothing to my new acquaintance,
but I treasured his stories to tell to Prue, and at
length summoned courage to ask him why he had
taken passage.
“Pure fun,” answered he, “nothing else under
the sun. You see, it happened in this way:—I
was sitting quietly and swinging in a cedar of
Lebanon, on the very summit of that mountain,
when suddenly, feeling a little warm, I took a brisk
dive into the Mediterranean. Now I was careless,
and got going obliquely, and with the force of such
a dive I could not come up near Sicily, as I had
intended, but I went clean under Africa, and came
out at the Cape of Good Hope, and as Fortune
would have it, just as this good ship was passing.
So I sprang over the side, and offered the crew to
treat all round if they would tell me where I started
from. But I suppose they had just been piped to
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grog, for not a man stirred, except your friend
yonder, and he only kept on stirring.”
“Are you going far?” I asked.
The cavalry officer looked a little disturbed. “I
cannot precisely tell,” answered he, “in fact, I wish
I could;” and he glanced round nervously at the
strange company.
“If you should come our way, Prue and I will
be very glad to see you,” said I, “and I can promise
you a warm welcome from the children.”
Many thanks,” said the officer,—and handed me
his card, upon which I read, Le Baron Munchausen.
“I beg your pardon,” said a low voice at my
side; and, turning, I saw one of the most constant
smokers—a very old man—“I beg your pardon, but
can you tell me where I came from?”
“I am sorry to say I cannot,” answered I, as I
surveyed a man with a very bewildered and wrinkled
face, who seemed to be intently looking for
something.
“Nor where I am going?”
I replied that it was equally impossible. He
mused a few moments, and then said slowly, “Do
you know, it is a very strange thing that I have not
found anybody who can answer me either of those
questions. And yet I must have come from somewhere,”
said he, speculatively—“yes, and I must
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be going somewhere, and I should really like to
know something about it.”
“I observe,” said I, “that you smoke a good
deal, and perhaps you find tobacco clouds your
brain a little.”
“Smoke! Smoke!” repeated he, sadly, dwelling
upon the words; “why, it all seems smoke to
me;” and he looked wistfully around the deck, and
I felt quite ready to agree with him.
“May I ask what you are here for,” inquired I;
“perhaps your health, or business of some kind;
although I was told it was a pleasure party?”
“That's just it,” said he; “if I only knew where
we were going, I might be able to say something
about it. But where are you going?”
“I am going home as fast as I can,” replied I
warmly, for I began to be very uncomfortable.
The old man's eyes half closed, and his mind seemed
to have struck a scent.
“Isn't that where I was going? I believe it is;
I wish I knew; I think that's what it is called.
Where is home?”
And the old man puffed a prodigious cloud of
smoke, in which he was quite lost.
“It is certainly very smoky,” said he, “I came
on board this ship to go to—in fact, I meant, as I
was saying, I took passage for—.” He smoked
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[figure description] Page 163.[end figure description]
silently. “I beg your pardon, but where did you
say I was going?”
Out of the mist where he had been leaning over
the side, and gazing earnestly into the surrounding
obscurity, now came a pale young man, and put his
arm in mine.
“I see,” said he, “that you have rather a general
acquaintance, and, as you know many persons, perhaps
you know many things. I am young, you
see, but I am a great traveller. I have been all over
the world, and in all kinds of conveyances; but,”
he continued, nervously, starting continually, and
looking around, “I haven't yet got abroad.”
“Not got abroad, and yet you have been everywhere?”
“Oh! yes; I know,” he replied, hurriedly; “but
I mean that I haven't yet got away. I travel constantly,
but it does no good—and perhaps you can
tell me the secret I want to know. I will pay any
sum for it. I am very rich and very young, and, if
money cannot buy it, I will give as many years of
my life as you require.”
He moved his hands convulsively, and his hair
was wet upon his forehead. He was very handsome
in that mystic light, but his eye burned with eagerness,
and his slight, graceful frame thrilled with the
earnestness of his emotion. The Emperor Hadrian,
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[figure description] Page 164.[end figure description]
who loved the boy Antinous, would have loved the
youth.
“But what is it that you wish to leave behind?”
said I, at length, holding his arm paternally; “what
do you wish to escape?”
He threw his arms straight down by his side,
clenched his hands, and looked fixedly in my eyes.
The beautiful head was thrown a little back upon
one shoulder, and the wan faced glowed with yearning
desire and utter abandonment to confidence, so
that, without his saying it, I knew that he had
never whispered the secret which he was about to
impart to me. Then, with a long sigh, as if his
life were exhaling, he whispered,
“Myself.”
“Ah! my boy, you are bound upon a long journey.”
“I know it,” he replied mournfully; “and I cannot
even get started. If I don't get off in this
ship, I fear I shall never escape.” His last words
were lost in the mist which gradually removed him
from my view.
“The youth has been amusing you with some of
his wild fancies, I suppose,” said a venerable man,
who might have been twin brother of that snowybearded
pilot. “It is a great pity so promising a
young man should be the victim of such vagaries.”
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He stood looking over the side for some time,
and at length added,
“Don't you think we ought to arrive soon?”
“Where?” asked I.
“Why, in Eldorado, of course,” answered he.
“The truth is, I became very tired of that long process
to find the Philosopher's Stone, and, although
I was just upon the point of the last combination
which must infallibly have produced the medium,
I abandoned it when I heard Orellana's account,
and found that Nature had already done in Eldorado
precisely what I was trying to do. You see,”
continued the old man abstractedly, “I had put
youth, and love, and hope, besides a great many
scarce minerals, into the crucible, and they all dissolved
slowly, and vanished in vapor. It was
curious, but they left no residuum except a little
ashes, which were not strong enough to make a lye
to cure a lame finger. But, as I was saying,
Orellana told us about Eldorado just in time, and
I thought, if any ship would carry me there it must
be this. But I am very sorry to find that any one who
is in pursuit of such a hopeless goal as that pale
young man yonder, should have taken passage. It
is only age,” he said, slowly stroking his white
beard, “that teaches us wisdom, and persuades us
to renounce the hope of escaping ourselves; and just
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[figure description] Page 166.[end figure description]
as we are discovering the Philosopher's Stone, relieves
our anxiety by pointing the way to Eldorado.”
“Are we really going there?” asked I, in some
trepidation.
“Can there be any doubt of it?” replied the old
man. “Where should we be going, if not there?
However, let us summon the passengers and
ascertain.”
So saying, the venerable man beckoned to the
various groups that were clustered, ghost-like, in the
mist that enveloped the ship. They seemed to
draw nearer with listless curiosity, and stood or sat
near us, smoking as before, or, still leaning on the
side, idly gazing. But the restless figure who had
first accosted me, still paced the deck, flitting in
and out of the obscurity; and as he passed there
was the same mien of humbled pride, and the air of
a fate of tragic grandeur, and still the same faint
odor of old clothes, and the low querulous cry,
“Old clo!' old clo'!”
The ship dashed on. Unknown odors and
strange sounds still filled the air, and all the world
went by us as we flew, with no other noise than
the low gurgling of the sea around the side.
“Gentlemen,” said the reverend passenger for
Eldorado, “I hope there is no misapprehension as
to our destination?”
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As he said this, there was a general movement
of anxiety and curiosity. Presently the smoker,
who had asked me where he was going, said,
doubtfully:
“I don't know—it seems to me—I mean I wish
somebody would distinctly say where we are
going.”
“I think I can throw a light upon this subject,”
said a person whom I had not before remarked. He
was dressed like a sailor, and had a dreamy eye.
“It is very clear to me where we are going. I
have been taking observations for some time, and I
am glad to announce that we are on the eve of
achieving great fame; and I may add,” said he,
modestly, “that my own good name for scientific
acumen will be amply vindicated. Gentlemen, we
are undoubtedly going into the Hole.”
“What hole is that?” asked M. le Baron Munchausen,
a little contemptuously.
“Sir, it will make you more famous than you
ever were before,” replied the first speaker, evidently
much enraged.
“I am persuaded we are going into no such absurd
place,” said the Baron, exasperated.
The sailor with the dreamy eye was fearfully
angry. He drew himself up stiffly and said:
“Sir, you lie!”
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M. le Baron Munchausen took it in very good
part. He smiled and held out his hand:
“My friend,” said he, blandly, “that is precisely
what I have always heard. I am glad you do me
no more than justice. I fully assent to your theory:
and your words constitute me the proper historiographer
of the expedition. But tell me one thing,
how soon, after getting into the Hole, do you think
we shall get out?”
“The result will prove,” said the marine
gentleman, handing the officer his card, upon
which was written, Captain Symmes. The two
gentlemen then walked aside; and the groups
began to sway to and fro in the haze as if not quite
contented.
“Good God,” said the pale youth, running up to
me and clutching my arm, “I cannot go into any
Hole alone with myself. I should die—I should
kill myself. I thought somebody was on board,
and I hoped you were he, who would steer us to
the fountain of oblivion.”
“Very well, that is in the Hole,” said M. le
Baron, who came out of the mist at that moment,
leaning upon the Captain's arm.
“But can I leave myself outside?” asked the
youth, nervously.
“Certainly,” interposed the old Alchemist; “you
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may be sure that you will not get into the Hole,
until you have left yourself behind.”
The pale young man grasped his hand, and gazed
into his eyes.
“And then I can drink and be happy,” murmured
he, as he leaned over the side of the ship,
and listened to the rippling water, as if it had been
the music of the fountain of oblivion.”
“Drink! drink!” said the smoking old man. “
Fountain! fountain! Why, I believe that is
what I am after. I beg your pardon,” continued
he, addressing the Alchemist. “But can you tell
me if I am looking for a fountain?”
“The fountain of youth, perhaps,” replied the
Alchemist.
“The very thing!” cried the smoker, with a
shrill laugh, while his pipe fell from his mouth,
and was shattered upon the deck, and the old man
tottered away into the mist, chuckling feebly to
himself, “Youth! youth!”
“He'll find that in the Hole, too,” said the Alchemist,
as he gazed after the receding figure.
The crowd now gathered more nearly around us.
“Well, gentlemen,” continued the Alchemist,
“where shall we go, or, rather, where are we
going?”
A man in a friar's habit, with the cowl closely
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drawn about his head, now crossed himself, and
whispered:
“I have but one object. I should not have been
here if I had not supposed we were going to find
Prester John, to whom I have been appointed
father confessor, and at whose court I am to live
splendidly, like a cardinal at Rome. Gentlemen,
if you will only agree that we shall go there, you
shall all be permitted to hold my train when
I proceed to be enthroned as Bishop of Central
Africa.
While he was speaking, another old man came
from the bows of the ship, a figure which had been
so immoveable in its place that I supposed it was
the ancient figure-head of the craft, and said in a
low, hollow voice, and a quaint accent:
“I have been looking for centuries, and I cannot
see it. I supposed we were heading for it. I
thought sometimes I saw the flash of distant spires,
the sunny gleam of upland pastures, the soft undulation
of purple hills. Ah! me. I am sure I heard
the singing of birds, and the faint low of cattle.
But I do not know: we come no nearer; and yet I
felt its presence in the air. If the mist would only
lift, we should see it lying so fair upon the sea, so
graceful against the sky. I fear we may have
passed it. Gentlemen,” said he, sadly, “I am
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afraid we may have lost the island of Atlantis for
ever.”
There was a look of uncertainty in the throng
upon the deck.
“But yet,” said a group of young men in every
kind of costume, and of every country and time,
“we have a chance at the Encantadas, the Enchanted
Islands. We were reading of them only
the other day, and the very style of the story had
the music of waves. How happy we shall be to
reach a land where there is no work, nor tempest,
nor pain, and we shall be for ever happy.”
“I am content here,” said a laughing youth, with
heavily matted curls. “What can be better than
this? We feel every climate, the music and the
perfume of every zone, are ours. In the starlight I
woo the mermaids, as I lean over the side, and no
enchanted island will show us fairer forms. I am
satisfied. The ship sails on. We cannot see but
we can dream. What work or pain have we here?
I like the ship; I like the voyage; I like my company,
and am content.”
As he spoke he put something into his mouth,
and, drawing a white substance from his pocket,
offered it to his neighbor, saying, “Try a bit of this
lotus; you will find it very soothing to the nerves,
and an infallible remedy for home-sickness.”
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“Gentlemen,” said M. le Baron Munchausen, “I
have no fear. The arrangements are well made;
the voyage has been perfectly planned, and each
passenger will discover what he took passage to find,
in the Hole into which we are going, under the auspices
of this worthy Captain.”
He ceased, and silence fell upon the ship's company.
Still on we swept; it seemed a weary way.
The tireless pedestrians still paced to and fro, and
the idle smokers puffed. The ship sailed on, and
endless music and odor chased each other through
the misty air. Suddenly a deep sigh drew universal
attention to a person who had not yet spoken.
He held a broken harp in his hand, the strings fluttered
loosely in the air, and the head of the speaker,
bound with a withered wreath of laurels, bent over
it.
“No, no,” said he, “I will not eat your lotus,
nor sail into the Hole. No magic root can cure the
home-sickness I feel; for it is no regretful remembrance,
but an immortal longing. I have roamed
farther than I thought the earth extended. I have
climbed mountains; I have threaded rivers; I have
sailed seas; but nowhere have I seen the home for
which my heart aches. Ah! my friends, you look
very weary; let us go home.”
The pedestrian paused a moment in his walk, and
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the smokers took their pipes from their mouths.
The soft air which blew in that moment across the
deck, drew a low sound from the broken harp-strings,
and a light shone in the eyes of the old man of the
figure-head, as if the mist had lifted for an instant,
and he had caught a glimpse of the lost Atlantis.
“I really believe that is where I wish to go,” said
the seeker of the fountain of youth. “I think I would
give up drinking at the fountain if I could get there.
I do not know,” he murmured, doubtfully; “it is
not sure; I mean, perhaps, I should not have
strength to get to the fountain, even if I were near
it.”
“But is it possible to get home?” inquired the
pale young man. “I think I should be resigned if I
could get home.”
“Certainly,” said the dry, hard voice of Prester
John's confessor, as his cowl fell a little back, and a
sudden flush burned upon his gaunt face; “if there
is any chance of home, I will give up the Bishop's
palace in Central Africa.”
“But Eldorado is my home,” interposed the old
Alchemist.
“Or is home Eldorado?” asked the poet, with the
withered wreath, turning towards the Alchemist.
It was a strange company and a wondrous voyage.
Here were all kinds of men, of all times and
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countries, pursuing the wildest hopes, the most chimerical
desires. One took me aside to request that
I would not let it be known, but that he inferred
from certain signs we were nearing Utopia. Another
whispered gaily in my ear that he thought the water
was gradually becoming of a ruby color—the hue
of wine; and he had no doubt we should wake in
the morning and find ourselves in the land of Cockaigne.
A third, in great anxiety, stated to me that
such continuous mists were unknown upon the ocean;
that they were peculiar to rivers, and that, beyond
question, we were drifting along some stream,
probably the Nile, and immediate measures ought to
be taken that we did not go ashore at the foot of the
mountains of the moon. Others were quite sure
that we were in the way of striking the great
southern continent; and a young man, who gave his
name as Wilkins, said we might be quite at ease,
for presently some friends of his would come flying
over from the neighboring islands and tell us all we
wished.
Still I smelled the mouldy rigging, and the odor
of cabbage was strong from the hold.
O Prue, what could the ship be, in which such
fantastic characters were sailing toward impossible
bournes—characters which in every age have ventured
all the bright capital of life in vague
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speculations and romantic dreams? What could it be but
the ship that haunts the sea for ever, and, with all
sails set, drives onward before a ceaseless gale, and
is not hailed, nor ever comes to port?
I know the ship is always full; I know the graybeard
still watches at the prow for the lost Atlantis,
and still the alchemist believes that Eldorado is at
hand. Upon his aimless quest, the dotard still asks
where he is going, and the pale youth knows that
he shall never fly himself. Yet they would gladly
renounce that wild chase and the dear dreams of
years, could they find what I have never lost. They
were ready to follow the poet home, if he would
have told them where it lay.
I know where it lies. I breathe the soft air of
the purple uplands which they shall never tread. I
hear the sweet music of the voices they long for in
vain. I am no traveller; my only voyage is to the
office and home again. William and Christopher,
John and Charles sail to Europe and the South, but
I defy their romantic distances. When the spring
comes and the flowers blow, I drift through the
year belted with summer and with spice.
With the changing months I keep high carnival
in all the zones. I sit at home and walk with Prue,
and if the sun that stirs the sap quickens also the
wish to wander, I remember my fellow-voyagers on
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that romantic craft, and looking round upon my
peaceful room, and pressing more closely the arm
of Prue, I feel that I have reached the port for
which they hopelessly sailed. And when winds
blow fiercely and the night-storm rages, and the
thought of lost mariners and of perilous voyages
touches the soft heart of Prue, I hear a voice
sweeter to my ear than that of the syrens to the
tempest-tost sailor: “Thank God! Your only
cruising is in the Flying Dutchman!”
-- -- p535-194
FAMILY PORTRAITS
“Look here upon this picture, and on this.”
Hamlet.
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FAMILY PORTRAITS.
“Look here upon this picture, and on this.”
Hamlet.
We have no family pictures, Prue and I, only a
portrait of my grandmother hangs upon our parlor
wall. It was taken at least a century ago, and represents
the venerable lady, whom I remember in my
childhood in spectacles and comely cap, as a young
and blooming girl.
She is sitting upon an old-fashioned sofa, by the
side of a prim aunt of hers, and with her back to the
open window. Her costume is quaint, but handsome.
It consists of a cream-colored dress made
high in the throat, ruffled around the neck, and over
the bosom and the shoulders. The waist is just
under her shoulders, and the sleeves are tight, tighter
than any of our coat sleeves, and also ruffled at the
wrist. Around the plump and rosy neck, which I
remember as shrivelled and sallow, and hidden under
a decent lace handkerchief, hangs, in the picture,
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a necklace of large ebony beads. There are two
curls upon the forehead, and the rest of the hair
flows away in ringlets down the neck.
The hands hold an open book: the eyes look up
from it with tranquil sweetness, and, through the
open window behind, you see a quiet landscape—a
hill, a tree, the glimpse of a river, and a few peaceful
summer clouds.
Often in my younger days, when my grandmother
sat by the fire, after dinner, lost in thought—perhaps
remembering the time when the picture was really
a portrait—I have curiously compared her wasted
face with the blooming beauty of the girl, and tried
to detect the likeness. It was strange how the
resemblance would sometimes start out: how, as I
gazed and gazed upon her old face, age disappeared
before my eager glance, as snow melts in the sunshine,
revealing the flowers of a forgotten spring.
It was touching to see my grandmother steal
quietly up to her portrait, on still summer mornings
when every one had left the house,—and I, the
only child, played, disregarded,—and look at it wistfully
and long.
She held her hand over her eyes to shade them
from the light that streamed in at the window, and
I have seen her stand at least a quarter of an hour
gazing steadfastly at the picture. She said nothing,
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she made no motion, she shed no tear, but when
she turned away there was always a pensive sweetness
in her face that made it not less lovely than
the face of her youth.
I have learned since, what her thoughts must have
been—how that long, wistful glance annihilated
time and space, how forms and faces unknown to
any other, rose in sudden resurrection around her—
how she loved, suffered, struggled and conquered
again; how many a jest that I shall never hear,
how many a game that I shall never play, how
many a song that I shall never sing, were all renewed
and remembered as my grandmother contemplated
her picture.
I often stand, as she stood, gazing earnestly at the
picture, so long and so silently, that Prue looks up
from her work and says she shall be jealous of that
beautiful belle, my grandmother, who yet makes
her think more kindly of those remote old times.
“Yes, Prue, and that is the charm of a family portrait.”
“Yes, again; but,” says Titbottom when he hears
the remark, “how, if one's grandmother were a
shrew, a termagant, a virago?”
“Ah! in that case—” I am compelled to say, while
Prue looks up again, half archly, and I add gravely—
“you, for instance, Prue.”
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Then Titbottom smiles one of his sad smiles, and
we change the subject.
Yet, I am always glad when Minim Sculpin, our
neighbor, who knows that my opportunities are
few, comes to ask me to step round and see the
family portraits.
The Sculpins, I think, are a very old family.
Titbottom says they date from the deluge. But I
thought people of English descent preferred to stop
with William the Conqueror, who came from France.
Before going with Minim, I always fortify myself
with a glance at the great family Bible, in which
Adam, Eve, and the patriarchs, are indifferently
well represented.
“Those are the ancestors of the Howards, the
Plantagenets, and the Montmorencis,” says Prue,
surprising me with her erudition. “Have you any
remoter ancestry, Mr. Sculpin?” she asks Minim,
who only smiles compassionately upon the dear
woman, while I am buttoning my coat.
Then we step along the street, and I am conscious
of trembling a little, for I feel as if I were
going to court. Suddenly we are standing before
the range of portraits.
“This,” says Mimim, with unction, “is Sir Solomon
Sculpin, the founder of the family.”
“Famous for what?” I ask, respectfully.
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“For founding the family,” replies Minim gravely,
and I have sometimes thought a little severely.
“This,” he says, pointing to a dame in hoops
and diamond stomacher, “this is Lady Sheba Sculpin.”
“Ah! yes. Famous for what?” I inquire.
“For being the wife of Sir Solomon.”
Then, in order, comes a gentleman in a huge,
curling wig, looking indifferently like James the
Second, or Louis the Fourteenth, and holding a
scroll in his hand.
“The Right Honorable Haddock Sculpin, Lord
Privy Seal, etc., etc.”
A delicate beauty hangs between, a face fair, and
loved, and lost, centuries ago—a song to the eye—
a poem to the heart—the Aurelia of that old society.
“Lady Dorothea Sculpin, who married young
Lord Pop and Cock, and died prematurely in Italy.”
Poor Lady Dorothea! whose great grandchild, in
the tenth remove, died last week, an old man of
eighty!
Next the gentle lady hangs a fierce figure, flourishing
a sword, with an anchor embroidered on his
coat-collar, and thunder and lightning, sinking ships,
flames and tornadoes in the background.
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“Rear Admiral Sir Shark Sculpin, who fell in
the great action off Madagascar.”
So Minim goes on through the series, brandishing
his ancestors about my head, and incontinently
knocking me into admiration.
And when we reach the last portrait and our
own times, what is the natural emotion? Is it not
to put Minim against the wall, draw off at him
with my eyes and mind, scan him, and consider his
life, and determine how much of the Right Honorable
Haddock's integrity, and the Lady Dorothy's
loveliness, and the Admiral Shark's valor, reappears
in the modern man? After all this proving and
refining, ought not the last child of a famous race to
be its flower and epitome? Or, in the case that he
does not chance to be so, is it not better to conceal
the family name?
I am told, however, that in the higher circles of
society, it is better not to conceal the name, however
unworthy the man or woman may be who
bears it. Prue once remonstrated with a lady about
the marriage of a lovely young girl with a cousin of
Minim's; but the only answer she received was,
“Well, he may not be a perfect man, but then he
is a Sculpin,” which consideration apparently gave
great comfort to the lady's mind.
But even Prue grants that Minim has some
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reason for his pride. Sir Solomon was a respectable
man, and Sir Shark a brave one; and the Right
Honorable Haddock a learned one; the Lady Sheba
was grave and gracious in her way; and the smile
of the fair Dorothea lights with soft sunlight those
long-gone summers. The filial blood rushes more
gladly from Minim's heart as he gazes; and admiration
for the virtues of his kindred inspires and
sweetly mingles with good resolutions of his own.
Time has its share, too, in the ministry, and the
influence. The hills beyond the river lay yesterday,
at sunset, lost in purple gloom; they receded into
airy distances of dreams and fäery; they sank softly
into night, the peaks of the delectable mountains.
But I knew, as I gazed enchanted, that the
hills, so purple-soft of seeming, were hard, and gray,
and barren in the wintry twilight; and that in the
distance was the magic that made them fair.
So, beyond the river of time that flows between,
walk the brave men and the beautiful women of
our ancestry, grouped in twilight upon the shore.
Distance smooths away defects, and, with gentle
darkness, rounds every form into grace. It steals
the harshness from their speech, and every word becomes
a song. Far across the gulf that ever widens,
they look upon us with eyes whose glance is tender,
and which light us to success. We acknowledge
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our inheritance; we accept our birthright; we own
that their careers have pledged us to noble action.
Every great life is an incentive to all other lives;
but when the brave heart, that beats for the world,
loves us with the warmth of private affection, then
the example of heroism is more persuasive, because
more personal.
This is the true pride of ancestry. It is founded
in the tenderness with which the child regards the
father, and in the romance that time sheds upon
history.
“Where be all the bad people buried?” asks
every man, with Charles Lamb, as he strolls among
the rank grave-yard grass, and brushes it aside to
read of the faithful husband, and the loving wife,
and the dutiful child.
He finds only praise in the epitaphs, because the
human heart is kind; because it yearns with wistful
tenderness after all its brethren who have passed
into the cloud, and will only speak well of the departed.
No offence is longer an offence when the
grass is green over the offender. Even faults then
seem characteristic and individual. Even Justice
is appeased when the drop falls. How the old
stories and plays teem with the incident of the
duel in which one gentleman falls, and, in dying,
forgives and is forgiven. We turn the page with a
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tear. How much better had there been no offence,
but how well that death wipes it out.
It is not observed in history that families improve
with time. It is rather discovered that the whole
matter is like a comet, of which the brightest part
is the head; and the tail, although long and luminous,
is gradually shaded into obscurity.
Yet, by a singular compensation, the pride of
ancestry increases in the ratio of distance. Adam
was valiant, and did so well at Poictiers that he
was knighted—a hearty, homely country gentleman,
who lived humbly to the end. But young
Lucifer, his representative in the twentieth remove,
has a tinder-like conceit because old Sir Adam was
so brave and humble. Sir Adam's sword is hung
up at home, and Lucifer has a box at the opera.
On a thin finger he has a ring, cut with a match
fizzling, the crest of the Lucifers. But if he should
be at a Poictiers, he would run away. Then history
would be sorry—not only for his cowardice, but for
the shame it brigs upon old Adam's name.
So, if Minim Sculpin is a bad young man, he not
only shames himself, but he disgraces that illustrious
line of ancestors, whose characters are known.
His neighbor, Mudge, has no pedigree of this kind,
and when he reels homeward, we do not suffer the
sorrow of any fair Lady Dorothy in such a
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descendant—we pity him for himself alone. But genius
and power are so imperial and universal, that when
Minim Sculpin falls, we are grieved not only for
him, but for that eternal truth and beauty which
appeared in the valor of Sir Shark, and the loveliness
of Lady Dorothy. His neighbor Mudge's
grandfather may have been quite as valorous and
virtuous as Sculpin's; but we know of the one, and
we do not know of the other.
Therefore, Prue, I say to my wife, who has, by
this time, fallen as soundly asleep as if I had been
preaching a real sermon, do not let Mrs. Mudge feel
hurt, because I gaze so long and earnestly upon the
portrait of the fair Lady Sculpin, and, lost in dreams,
mingle in a society which distance and poetry immortalize.
But let the love of the family portraits belong to
poetry and not to politics. It is good in the one
way, and bad in the other.
The sentiment of ancestral pride is an integral part
of human nature. Its organization in institutions is
the real object of enmity to all sensible men, because
it is a direct preference of derived to original power,
implying a doubt that the world at every period is
able to take care of itself.
The family portraits have a poetic significance;
but he is a brave child of the family who dares to
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show them. They all sit in passionless and austere
judgment upon himself. Let him not invite us to
see them, until he has considered whether they are
honored or disgraced by his own career—until he
has looked in the glass of his own thought and scanned
his own proportions.
The family portraits are like a woman's diamonds;
they may flash finely enough before the world, but
she herself trembles lest their lustre eclipse her eyes.
It is difficult to resist the tendency to depend upon
those portraits, and to enjoy vicariously through
them a high consideration. But, after all, what
girl is complimented when you curiously regard her
because her mother was beautiful? What attenuated
consumptive, in whom self-respect is yet unconsumed,
delights in your respect for him, founded
in honor for his stalwart ancestor?
No man worthy the name rejoices in any homage
which his own effort and character have not deserved.
You intrinsically insult him when you make him
the scapegoat of your admiration for his ancestor.
But when his ancestor is his accessory, then your
homage would flatter Jupiter. All that Minim
Sculpin does by his own talent is the more radiantly
set and ornamented by the family fame. The
imagination is pleased when Lord John Russell is
Premier of England and a whig, because the great
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Lord William Russell, his ancestor, died in England
for liberty.
In the same way Minim's sister Sara adds to her
own grace the sweet memory of the Lady Dorothy.
When she glides, a sunbeam, through that quiet
house, and in winter makes summer by her presence;
when she sits at the piano, singing in the twilight,
or stands leaning against the Venus in the corner of
the room—herself more graceful—then, in glancing
from her to the portrait of the gentle Dorothy, you
feel that the long years between them have been
lighted by the same sparkling grace, and shadowed
by the same pensive smile—for this is but one Sara
and one Dorothy, out of all that there are in the
world.
As we look at these two, we must own that noblesse
oblige in a sense sweeter than we knew, and
be glad when young Sculpin invites us to see the
family portraits. Could a man be named Sidney,
and not be a better man, or Milton, and be a churl?
But it is apart from any historical association that
I like to look at the family portraits. The Sculpins
were very distinguished heroes, and judges, and
founders of families; but I chiefly linger upon their
pictures, because they were men and women. Their
portraits remove the vagueness from history, and
give it reality. Ancient valor and beauty cease to
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be names and poetic myths, and become facts. I
feel that they lived, and loved, and suffered in those
old days. The story of their lives is instantly full
of human sympathy in my mind, and I judge them
more gently, more generously.
Then I look at those of us who are the spectators
of the portraits. I know that we are made of the
same flesh and blood, that time is preparing us to
be placed in his cabinet and upon canvass, to be
curiously studied by the grandchildren of unborn
Prues. I put out my hands to grasp those of my
fellows around the pictures. “Ah! friends, we live
not only for ourselves. Those whom we shall never
see, will look to us as models, as counsellors. We
shall be speechless then. We shall only look at
them from the canvass, and cheer or discourage them
by their idea of our lives and ourselves. Let us so
look in the portrait, that they shall love our memories—
that they shall say, in turn, `they were kind
and thoughtful, those queer old ancestors of ours;
let us not disgrace them.' ”
If they only recognize us as men and women like
themselves, they will be the better for it, and the
family portraits will be family blessings.
This is what my grandmother did. She looked
at her own portrait, at the portrait of her youth,
with much the same feeling that I remember Prue
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as she was when I first saw her; with much the
same feeling that I hope our grandchildren will
remember us.
Upon those still summer mornings, though she
stood withered and wan in a plain black silk gown,
a close cap, and spectacles, and held her shrunken
and blue-veined hand to shield her eyes, yet, as she
gazed with that long and longing glance, upon the
blooming beauty that had faded from her form forever,
she recognized under that flowing hair and
that rosy cheek—the immortal fashions of youth
and health—and beneath those many ruffles and
that quaint high waist, the fashions of the day—
the same true and loving woman. If her face was
pensive as she turned away, it was because truth
and love are, in their essence, forever young; and
it is the hard condition of nature that they cannot
always appear so.
-- -- p535-210
OUR COUSIN THE CURATE.
“Why, let the stricken deer go weep,
The heart ungalled play;
For some must watch while some must sleep;
Thus runs the world away.”
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OUR COUSIN THE CURATE.
“Why, let the stricken deer go weep,
The heart ungalled play;
For some must watch while some must sleep;
Thus runs the world away.”
Prue and I have very few relations: Prue, especially,
says that she never had any but her parents,
and that she has none now but her children. She
often wishes she had some large aunt in the country,
who might come in unexpectedly with bags
and bundles, and eucamp in our little house for a
whole winter.
“Because you are tired of me, I suppose, Mrs.
Prue?” I reply with dignity, when she alludes to
the imaginary large aunt.
“You could take aunt to the opera, you know,
and walk with her on Sundays,” says Prue, as she
knits and calmly looks me in the face, without
recognizing my observation.
Then I tell Prue in the plainest possible manner
that, if her large aunt should come up from the
country to pass the winter, I should insist upon her
bringing her oldest daughter, with whom I would
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flirt so desperately that the street would be scandalized,
and even the corner grocery should gossip
over the iniquity.
“Poor Prue, how I should pity you,” I say triumphantly
to my wife.
“Poor oldest daughter, how I should pity her,”
replies Prue, placidly counting her stitches.
So the happy evening passes, as we gaily mock
each other, and wonder how old the large aunt
should be, and how many bundles she ought to
bring with her.
“I would have her arrive by the late train at
midnight,” says Prue; “and when she had eaten
some supper and had gone to her room, she should
discover that she had left the most precious bundle
of all in the cars, without whose contents she could
not sleep, nor dress, and you would start to hunt
for it.”
And the needle clicks faster than ever.
“Yes, and when I am gone to the office in the
morning, and am busy about important affairs—
yes, Mrs. Prue, important affairs,” I insist, as my
wife half raises her head incredulously—“then our
large aunt from the country would like to go shopping,
and would want you for her escort. And
she would cheapen tape at all the shops, and even
to the great Stewart himself, she would offer a
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shilling less for the gloves. Then the comely clerks
of the great Stewart would look at you, with their
brows lifted, as if they said, Mrs. Prue, your large
aunt had better stay in the country.”
And the needle clicks more slowly, as if the tune
were changing.
The large aunt will never come, I know; nor
shall I ever flirt with the oldest daughter. I
should like to believe that our little house will
teem with aunts and cousins when Prue and I are
gone; but how can I believe it, when there is a
milliner within three doors, and a hair-dresser
combs his wigs in the late dining-room of my
opposite neighbor? The large aunt from the
country is entirely impossible, and as Prue feels
it and I feel it, the needles seem to click a dirge for
that late lamented lady.
“But at least we have one relative, Prue.”
The needles stop: only the clock ticks upon the
mantel to remind us how ceaselessly the stream of
time flows on that bears us away from our cousin
the curate.
When Prue and I are most cheerful, and the
world looks fair—we talk of our cousin the curate.
When the world seems a little cloudy, and we
remember that though we have lived and loved
together, we may not die together—we talk of our
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cousin the curate. When we plan little plans for the
boys and dreamd reams for the girls—we talk of our
cousin the curate. When I tell Prue of Aurelia,
whose character is every day lovelier—we talk of
our cousin the curate. There is no subject which
does not seem to lead naturally to our cousin the
curate. As the soft air steals in and envelopes
everything in the world, so that the trees, and the
hills, and the rivers, the cities, the crops, and the
sea, are made remote, and delicate, and beautiful,
by its pure baptism, so over all the events of our
little lives, comforting, refining, and elevating, falls
like a benediction the remembrance of our cousin
the curate.
He was my only early companion. He had no
brother, I had none: and we became brothers to
each other. He was always beautiful. His face was
symmetrical and delicate; his figure was slight and
graceful. He looked as the sons of kings ought to
look: as I am sure Philip Sidney looked when he
was a boy. His eyes were blue, and as you looked
at them, they seemed to let your gaze out into a
June heaven. The blood ran close to the skin, and
his complexion had the rich transparency of light.
There was nothing gross or heavy in his expression
or texture; his soul seemed to have mastered his
body. But he had strong passions, for his delicacy
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was positive, not negative: it was not weakness,
but intensity.
There was a patch of ground about the house
which we tilled as a garden. I was proud of my
morning-glories, and sweet peas; my cousin cultivated
roses. One day—and we could scarcely have
been more than six years old—we were digging
merrily and talking. Suddenly there was some
kind of difference; I taunted him, and, raising his
spade, he struck me upon the leg. The blow was
heavy for a boy, and the blood trickled from the
wound. I burst into indignant tears, and limped
toward the house. My cousin turned pale and said
nothing, but just as I opened the door, he darted by
me, and before I could interrupt him, he had confessed
his crime, and asked for punishment.
From that day he conquered himself. He devoted
a kind of ascetic energy to subduing his own will,
and I remember no other outbreak. But the penalty
he paid for conquering his will, was a loss of
the gushing expression of feeling. My cousin became
perfectly gentle in his manner, but there was
a want of that pungent excess, which is the finest
flavor of character. His views were moderate and
calm. He was swept away by no boyish extravagance,
and, even while I wished he would sin only
a very little, I still adored him as a saint. The truth
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is, as I tell Prue, I am so very bad because I have
to sin for two—for myself and our cousin the curate.
Often, when I returned panting and restless
from some frolic, which had wasted almost all the
night, I was rebuked as I entered the room in which
he lay peacefully sleeping. There was something
holy in the profound repose of his beauty, and, as I
stood looking at him, how many a time the tears
have dropped from my hot eyes upon his face, while
I vowed to make myself worthy of such a companion,
for I felt my heart owning its allegiance to
that strong and imperial nature.
My cousin was loved by the boys, but the girls
worshipped him. His mind, large in grasp, and
subtle in perception, naturally commanded his companions,
while the lustre of his character allured
those who could not understand him. The asceticism
occasionally showed itself a vein of hardness, or
rather of severity in his treatment of others. He did
what he thought it his duty to do, but he forgot
that few could see the right so clearly as he, and
very few of those few could so calmly obey the
least command of conscience. I confess I was a
little afraid of him, for I think I never could be
severe.
In the long winter evenings I often read to Prue
the story of some old father of the church, or some
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quaint poem of George Herbert's—and every Christmas-eve,
I read to her Milton's Hymn of the Nativity.
Yet, when the saint seems to us most saintly,
or the poem most pathetic or sublime, we find ourselves
talking of our cousin the curate. I have
not seen him for many years; but, when we parted,
his head had the intellectual symmetry of Milton's,
without the puritanic stoop, and with the stately
grace of a cavalier.
Such a boy has premature wisdom—he lives and
suffers prematurely.
Prue loves to listen when I speak of the romance
of his life, and I do not wonder. For my part, I
find in the best romance only the story of my love for
her, and often as I read to her, whenever I come to
what Titbottom calls “the crying part,” if I lift
my eyes suddenly, I see that Prue's eyes are fixed
on me with a softer light by reason of their moisture.
Our cousin the curate loved, while he was yet
a boy, Flora, of the sparkling eyes and the ringing
voice. His devotion was absolute. Flora was flattered,
because all the girls, as I said, worshipped
him; but she was a gay, glancing girl, who had invaded
the student's heart with her audacious brilliancy,
and was half surprised that she had subdued
it. Our cousin—for I never think of him as my
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cousin, only—wasted away under the fervor of his
passion. His life exhaled as incense before her. He
wrote poems to her, and sang them under her window,
in the summer moonlight. He brought her
flowers and precious gifts. When he had nothing
else to give, he gave her his love in a homage so
eloquent and beautiful that the worship was like
the worship of the wise men. The gay Flora was
proud and superb. She was a girl, and the bravest
and best boy loved her. She was young, and the
wisest and truest youth loved her. They lived together,
we all lived together, in the happy valley
of childhood. We looked forward to manhood
as island-poets look across the sea, believing that
the whole world beyond is a blest Araby of
spices.
The months went by, and the young love continued.
Our cousin and Flora were only children
still, and there was no engagement. The elders
looked upon the intimacy as natural and mutually
beneficial. It would help soften the boy and
strengthen the girl; and they took for granted that
softness and strength were precisely what were
wanted. It is a great pity that men and women forget
that they have been children. Parents are apt
to be foreigners to their sons and daughters. Maturity
is the gate of Paradise, which shuts behind us;
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and our memories are gradually weaned from the
glories in which our nativity was cradled.
The months went by, the children grew older,
and they constantly loved. Now Prue always
smiles at one of my theories; she is entirely sceptical
of it; but it is, nevertheless, my opinion, that
men love most passionately, and women most permanently.
Men love at first and most warmly; women
love last and longest. This is natural enough; for
nature makes women to be won, and men to win.
Men are the active, positive force, and, therefore,
they are more ardent and demonstrative.
I can never get farther than that in my philosophy,
when Prue looks at me, and smiles me into
scepticism of my own doctrines. But they are true,
notwithstanding.
My day is rather past for such speculations; but
so long as Aurelia is unmarried, I am sure I shall indulge
myself in them. I have never made much
progress in the philosophy of love; in fact, I can
only be sure of this one cardinal principle, that
when you are quite sure two people cannot be in
love with each other, because there is no earthly
reason why they should be, then you may be very
confident that you are wrong, and that they are in
love, for the secret of love is past finding out. Why
our cousin should have loved the gay Flora so
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ardently was hard to say; but that he did so, was not
difficult to see.
He went away to college. He wrote the most
eloquent and passionate letters; and when he
returned in vacations, he had no eyes, ears, nor
heart for any other being. I rarely saw him, for
I was living away from our early home, and
was busy in a store—learning to be book-keeper—
but I heard afterward from himself the whole
story.
One day when he came home for the holidays, he
found a young foreigner with Flora—a handsome
youth, brilliant and graceful. I have asked Prue
a thousand times why women adore soldiers and
foreigners. She says it is because they love heroism
and are romantic. A soldier is professionally a hero,
says Prue, and a foreigner is associated with all unknown
and beautiful regions. I hope there is no
worse reason. But if it be the distance which is
romantic, then, by her own rule, the mountain which
looked to you so lovely when you saw it upon the
horizon, when you stand upon its rocky and barren
side, has transmitted its romance to its remotest
neighbor. I cannot but admire the fancies of girls
which make them poets. They have only to look
upon a dull-eyed, ignorant, exhausted roué, with an
impudent moustache, and they surrender to Italy,
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to the tropics, to the splendors of nobility, and a
court life—and—
“Stop,” says Prue, gently; “you have no right
to say `girls' do so, because some poor victims have
been deluded. Would Aurelia surrender to a bleareyed
foreigner in a moustache?”
Prue has such a reasonable way of putting these
things!
Our cousin came home and found Flora and the
young foreigner conversing. The young foreigner
had large, soft, black eyes, and the dusky skin of
the tropics. His manner was languid and fascinating,
courteous and reserved. It assumed a natural
supremacy, and you felt as if here were a young
prince travelling before he came into possession of
his realm.
It is an old fable that love is blind. But I think
there are no eyes so sharp as those of lovers. I am
sure there is not a shade upon Prue's brow that I
do not instantly remark, nor an altered tone in her
voice that I do not instantly observe. Do you suppose
Aurelia would not note the slightest deviation
of heart in her lover, if she had one? Love is the
coldest of critics. To be in love is to live in a crisis,
and the very imminence of uncertainty makes the
lover perfectly self-possessed. His eye constantly
scours the horizon. There is no footfall so light
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that it does not thunder in his ear. Love is tortured
by the tempest the moment the cloud of a hand's
size rises out of the sea. It foretells its own doom;
its agony is past before its sufferings are known.
Our cousin the curate no sooner saw the tropical
stranger, and marked his impression upon Flora,
than he felt the end. As the shaft struck his heart,
his smile was sweeter, and his homage even more
poetic and reverential. I doubt if Flora understood
him or herself. She did not know, what he instinctively
perceived, that she loved him less. But
there are no degrees in love; when it is less than
absolute and supreme, it is nothing. Our cousin
and Flora were not formally engaged, but their betrothal
was understood by all of us as a thing of
course. He did not allude to the stranger; but as
day followed day, he saw with every nerve all that
passed. Gradually—so gradually that she scarcely
noticed it—our cousin left Flora more and more
with the soft-eyed stranger, whom he saw she preferred.
His treatment of her was so full of tact, he
still walked and talked with her so familiarly, that
she was not troubled by any fear that he saw what
she hardly saw herself. Therefore, she was not
obliged to conceal anything from him or from herself;
but all the soft currents of her heart were setting
toward the West Indian. Our cousin's cheek
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grew paler, and his soul burned and wasted within
him. His whole future—all his dream of life—had
been founded upon his love. It was a stately palace
built upon the sand, and now the sand was sliding
away. I have read somewhere, that love will
sacrifice everything but itself. But our cousin sacrificed
his love to the happiness of his mistress. He
ceased to treat her as peculiarly his own. He made
no claim in word or manner that everybody might
not have made. He did not refrain from seeing her,
or speaking of her as of all his other friends; and,
at length, although no one could say how or when
the change had been made, it was evident and
understood that he was no more her lover, but that
both were the best of friends.
He still wrote to her occasionally from college,
and his letters were those of a friend, not of a lover.
He could not reproach her. I do not believe any
man is secretly surprised that a woman ceases to
love him. Her love is a heavenly favor won by no
desert of his. If it passes, he can no more complain
than a flower when the sunshine leaves it.
Before our cousin left college, Flora was married
to the tropical stranger. It was the brightest of June
days, and the summer smiled upon the bride. There
were roses in her hand and orange flowers in her
hair, and the village church bell rang out over the
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peaceful fields. The warm sunshine lay upon the
landscape like God's blessing, and Prue and I, not
yet married ourselves, stood at an open window in
the old meeting-house, hand in hand, while the
young couple spoke their vows. Prue says that
brides are always beautiful, and I, who remember
Prue herself upon her wedding-day—how can I
deny it? Truly, the gay Flora was lovely that
summer morning, and the throng was happy in the
old church. But it was very sad to me, although I
only suspected then what now I know. I shed no
tears at my own wedding, but I did at Flora's,
although I knew she was marrying a soft-eyed youth
whom she dearly loved, and who, I doubt not,
dearly loved her.
Among the group of her nearest friends was our
cousin the curate. When the ceremony was ended,
he came to shake her hand with the rest. His face
was calm, and his smile sweet, and his manner unconstrained.
Flora did not blush—why should she?—
but shook his hand warmly, and thanked him for
his good wishes. Then they all sauntered down the
aisle together; there were some tears with the
smiles among the other friends; our cousin handed
the bride into her carriage, shook hands with the
husband, closed the door, and Flora drove away.
I have never seen her since; I do not even know
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if she be living still. But I shall always remember
her as she looked that June morning, holding roses in
her hand, and wreathed with orange flowers. Dear
Flora! it was no fault of hers that she loved one
man more than another: she could not be blamed
for not preferring our cousin to the West Indian:
there is no fault in the story, it is only a tragedy.
Our cousin carried all the collegiate honors—but
without exciting jealousy or envy. He was so
really the best, that his companions were anxious
he should have the sign of his superiority. He
studied hard, he thought much, and wrote well.
There was no evidence of any blight upon his ambition
or career, but after living quietly in the
country for some time, he went to Europe and
travelled. When he returned, he resolved to study
law, but presently relinquished it. Then he collected
materials for a history, but suffered them to
lie unused. Somehow the mainspring was gone.
He used to come and pass weeks with Prue and me.
His coming made the children happy, for he sat
with them, and talked and played with them all day
long, as one of themselves. They had no quarrels
when our cousin the curate was their playmate, and
their laugh was hardly sweeter than his as it rang
down from the nursery. Yet sometimes, as Prue
was setting the tea-table, and I sat musing by the
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fire, she stopped and turned to me as we heard that
sound, and her eyes filled with tears.
He was interested in all subjects that interested
others. His fine perception, his clear sense, his
noble imagination, illuminated every question. His
friends wanted him to go into political life, to write
a great book, to do something worthy of his powers.
It was the very thing he longed to do himself; but
he came and played with the children in the nursery,
and the great deed was undone. Often, in the
long winter evenings, we talked of the past, while
Titbottom sat silent by, and Prue was busily knitting.
He told us the incidents of his early passion—
but he did not moralize about it, nor sigh, nor
grow moody. He turned to Prue, sometimes, and
jested gently, and often quoted from the old song
of George Withers, I believe:
“If she be not fair for me,
What care I how fair she be?”
But there was no flippancy in the jesting; I
thought the sweet humor was no gayer than a
flower upon a grave.
I am sure Titbottom loved our cousin the curate,
for his heart is as hospitable as the summer heaven.
It was beautiful to watch his courtesy toward him,
and I do not wonder that Prue considers the deputy
book-keeper the model of a high-bred gentleman.
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When you see his poor clothes, and thin, gray hair,
his loitering step, and dreamy eye, you might pass
him by as an inefficient man; but when you hear
his voice always speaking for the noble and generous
side, or recounting, in a half-melancholy chant,
the recollections of his youth; when you know that
his heart beats with the simple emotion of a boy's
heart, and that his courtesy is as delicate as a girl's
modesty, you will understand why Prue declares
that she has never seen but one man who reminded
her of our especial favorite, Sir Philip Sidney, and
that his name is Titbottom.
At length our cousin went abroad again to
Europe. It was many years ago that we watched
him sail away, and when Titbottom, and Prue, and
I, went home to dinner, the grace that was said that
day was a fervent prayer for our cousin the curate.
Many an evening afterward, the children wanted
him, and cried themselves to sleep calling upon his
name. Many an evening still, our talk flags into
silence as we sit before the fire, and Prue puts
down her knitting and takes my hand, as if she knew
my thoughts, although we do not name his name.
He wrote us letters as he wandered about the
world. They were affectionate letters, full of observation,
and thought, and description. He lingered
longest in Italy, but he said his conscience accused
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him of yielding to the syrens; and he declared that
his life was running uselessly away. At last he
came to England. He was charmed with everything,
and the climate was even kinder to him
than that of Italy. He went to all the famous
places, and saw many of the famous Englishmen,
and wrote that he felt England to be his home.
Burying himself in the ancient gloom of a university
town, although past the prime of life, he
studied like an ambitious boy. He said again that
his life had been wine poured upon the ground,
and he felt guilty. And so our cousin became a
curate.
“Surely,” wrote he, “you and Prue will be glad
to hear it; and my friend Titbottom can no longer
boast that he is more useful in the world than I.
Dear old George Herbert has already said what I
would say to you, and here it is.
“`I made a posy, while the day ran by;
Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie
My life within this band.
But time did beckon to the flowers, and they
My noon most cunningly did steal away,
And wither'd in my hand.
“`My hand was next to them, and then my heart;
I took, without more thinking, in good part,
Time's gentle admonition;
Which did so sweetly death's sad taste convey,
Making my mind to smell my fatal day,
Yet sugaring the suspicion.
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“`Farewell, dear flowers, sweetly your time ye spent,
Fit, while ye lived, for smell or ornament,
And after death for cures;
I follow straight without complaints or grief,
Since if my scent be good, I care not if
It be as short as yours.”'
This is our only relation; and do you wonder
that, whether our days are dark or bright, we
naturally speak of our cousin the curate? There
is no nursery longer, for the children are grown;
but I have seen Prue stand, with her hand holding
the door, for an hour, and looking into the room
now so sadly still and tidy, with a sweet solemnity
in her eyes that I will call holy. Our children have
forgotten their old playmate, but I am sure if there
be any children in his parish, over the sea, they
love our cousin the curate, and watch eagerly for
his coming. Does his step falter now, I wonder;
is that long, fair hair, gray; is that laugh as musical
in those distant homes as it used to be in our nursery;
has England, among all her good and great
men, any man so noble as our cousin the curate?
The great book is unwritten; the great deeds are
undone; in no biographical dictionary will you find
the name of our cousin the curate. Is his life, therefore,
lost? Have his powers been wasted?
I do not dare to say it; for I see Bourne, on the
pinnacle of prosperity, but still looking sadly for
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his castle in Spain; I see Titbottom, an old deputy
book-keeper, whom nobody knows, but with his
chivalric heart, loyal to whatever is generous and
humane, full of sweet hope, and faith, and devotion;
I see the superb Aurelia, so lovely that the Indians
would call her a smile of the Great Spirit, and as
beneficent as a saint of the calendar—how shall I
say what is lost, or what is won? I know that in
every way, and by all his creatures, God is served
and his purposes accomplished. How should I
explain or understand, I who am only an old book-keeper
in a white cravat?
Yet in all history, in the splendid triumphs of
emperors and kings, in the dreams of poets, the
speculations of philosophers, the sacrifices of heroes,
and the extacies of saints, I find no exclusive secret
of success. Prue says she knows that nobody ever
did more good than our cousin the curate, for every
smile and word of his is a good deed; and I, for my
part, am sure that, although many must do more
good in the world, nobody enjoys it more than
Prue and I.
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Curtis, George William, 1824-1892 [1856], Prue and I. (Dix, Edwards & co., New York) [word count] [eaf535T].
