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1849
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"Rural Life"
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
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<em>American Metropolitan Magazine, VI, 12-16</em>
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January 1849
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D. Gussman
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1834
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"All is best though oft we doubt,
What th' unsearchable dispose
Of highest wisdom brings about,
And ever best found in the close."
-MILTON.
"On trouve dans la chronique de Raoul, Abbe de Coggeshall, sous cette annee (1201) une histoire touchante qui montre a quel point I'enseignement religieux pouvoit etre perverti, et combien le Clerge etoit loin d'etre le gardien des moeurs publiques."
EARLY in the 13th century Agnes de Meran, the mistress-wife of Philip Augustus, held her court at the Chateau des roses Sur-Seine, not many leagues from Paris. The arts and luxuries of the time were lavished on this residence of the favourite. On one side of the Chateau, and leading out of the garden attached to it, was a winding walk, embowered by grape vines which, not being native in the north of France, and the art by which the gardener now triumphs over soil and climate being then in its infancy, were cultivated with great pains and royal expense. The walk, after extending some hundred yards, opened on a sloping ground, bounded by the Seine, and tastefully planted with shrubs and vines formed into arbours and bowers of every imaginable shape. The whole plantation was called Larigne. Parallel to a part of it ran the highway, hidden by a wall, excepting where it traversed an arched stone bridge that spanned the Seine, and which was itself almost embowered by tall acacias, planted at either end of it.
Late in the afternoon of a September day, when the warm air was perfumed with autumnal fruits, and the sun glancing athwart the teeming vines, shot its silver beams across the green sward, and seemed, by some alchemy of the flowers to become molten gold as it touched their leaves, tinted with deep autumnal dyes; two ladies, followed by a Moorish servant girl, issued from the walk.
The eldest was tall and thin. The soft round lines of youth had given place to the angles of forty; but though she had lost the beauty, she had retained the grace (happily that charm is perennial) of youth, and added to it the fitting quality of matronly dignity. Born in Provence, she was an exception to the general hue of its natives, her complexion having an extreme fairness, and a texture as delicate as that of infancy. She had that organ, to which the Phrenologist is pleased to assign the religious sentiment, strikingly developed; but a surer indication of a tendency to spiritual abstraction, was expressed in her deep set, intellectual, and rather melancholy eye. Her mouth, when closed, expressed firmness and decision, but, when in play, the gentlest and tenderest of human affections; and the voice that proceeded from it was the organ of her soul, and expressed its divine essence — love. Such was the lady Clotilde — the martyr, who would have been the canonized saint, had she died in the bosom of the Orthodox Church.
The other female was a girl of sixteen, Rosalie, the daughter of Clotilde, and resembling her in nothing but the purity and spirituality of her expression. Her complexion was of the tint which the vulgar call fair, and the learned Thebans in such matters, brunette; her eyes were the deepest blue, and her eye-lashes long and so black, that in particular lights they imparted their hue to her eyes. Her hair, we are told, was of the colour that harmonized with her skin — what that hue was we are left to imagine. Her features, neck, and whole person (the feet and hands are dilated on with a lover's prolixity) the chronicle describes as cast in beauty's mould, "so that he who once looked on this fair ladye Rosalie saw imperfection in all other creatures,"
Rosalie led, by her hand, a little girl of four years, a cherub in beauty.
"Why, dear mama," said Rosalie, "are you so silent and thoughtful? — and tell me — pray — why were you so cold to our sweet lady queen to-day, when she bade us prepare the fete for the king? — I would not pry into secrets, but when she spake low to you, did she not say something of sad looks not suiting festive days?"
"She did, Rosalie — and yet she well knows they are but too fitting. Let us seat ourselves here, my child, and while Zeba looks after Marie I will entrust you with what is better suited to your discretion than your years." — She beckoned to Zeba to relieve them from the child, but little Marie, a petted favourite of Rosalie's sprang on the bench and clung around her neck, till she was won away by a promise of a game of "hide and go seek," among the vines and shrubs.
"Rosalie," continued the mother, pointing to Marie, "that child is not the offspring of a union which man deems honourable, and calls marriage, and which it pleases heaven, my child, to authorize to humanity in some stages of its weakness and ignorance, but she is — I hesitate to speak it to your pure ears — the fruit of illicit love."
"Mother! what mean you? — She is surely the child of our good lord king and of his wife — our lady Agnes and our queen?"
"Our lady Agnes de Meran, Rosalie, but not his wife — nor our rightful queen."
"You should not have told me this! — you should not have told me this!" reiterated Rosalie, covering her eyes from which the tears gushed, "I loved her so well! — and Marie! — oh you should not have told me!"
"My dear Rosalie, I have withheld it as long as I dared. The world to you is as a paradise, and I shrunk from exposing to you the traces of sin and evil that are upon it. But evil — temptation must approach you and how are you to resist it, if you know not its existence? Listen patiently, my dear child. There is much in the story of our lady to excuse her with those compromising consciences that weigh sin against temptation; and much to make her pitied by those who weigh the force of temptation against the weakness of humanity."
"I am sure I shall pity her," interrupted Rosalie.
"Beware, my child. Pity, the gentlest spirit of heaven, sometimes loses her balance in leaning too far on the side of humanity."
"But pity is heaven-born, dear mother."
Clotilde did not reply, for she had not the heart to repress the instincts of Rosalie's affections; and Rosalie added, "I am sure our lady Agnes has sinned unwittingly."
"Alas, my child! — But listen — I must make my tale a brief one. Our royal master, who in his festive hours appears to us so kind and gracious, is stained with crimes, miscalled virtues by his blind guides and false friends."
"Crimes, mother?"
"Yes, Rosalie, crimes — persecution and murder misnamed, by his uncle of Rheims, zeal — cruelty, rapine, excess, and what I will not name to thy maiden ears. He was anointed king in the blood of his subjects — for les fetes de la Toussaint, when he was crowned, were scarcely past when, set on by the Arch bishop, he commanded his soldiers to surround the synagogues of the Jews, on their Sabbath-day, to drag them to prison, and rob them of their gold and silver to replenish the coffers which his father Louis had emptied for offerings to the church. The Jews hoped it was a passing storm, but the king ordered them to sell all they possessed, and with their wives and little ones to leave his dominions. Their property was sacrificed, not sold, and our royal master received the benedictions of the priests! The next objects of his zeal were the violators of the third commandment — the poor were drowned — the rich paid a fine into the king's treasury, for as our chronicle of St. Denis hath it, the king holds ' en horreur et abomination ces horribles sacremens que ces gloutons joueurs de des font souvent en ces cours, et ces tavernes.' "
"But, dear mother, was he not right to punish such?"
"To fine the rich, and drown the poor, Rosalie?" — Rosalie perceived that her shield was ineffectual, and her mother proceeded, but not till she had cautiously looked around her. "To fill up the measure of his obedience to sacerdotal pride and hatred, he published an edict renewing the persecution against the Paterins." —
"The Paterins, mother?"
Clotilde smiled faintly at her daughter's interrogatory. "The name of these much abused people you have not yet heard, for it is a perilous one to speak in our court; but they are the followers of those pious men who, having obeyed the commands of their Lord, and searched the Scriptures, have changed their faith and reformed their morals. They differ somewhat among themselves, having entered into the glorious liberty of the gospel, and being no longer bound to uniformity by the bulls of the Pope or the word of the Priest. They have all been marked by the purity of their lives — a few by their austerity. Some among them eat no meat, and others deem even marriage criminal."
"Mother!" exclaimed Rosalie, in a tone that indicated a revelation had burst upon her.
"I read your thoughts, Rosalie — yes — I am a Paterin. Here in the very bosom of the court I cherish the faith for which many that I loved were cast into prison, and afterwards 'made (I still quote from our Court Chronicle) to pass through material flames to the eternal flames which awaited them!'"
"And was it such as you, my mother," asked Rosalie, pressing her cheek to Clotilde's, "that thus suffered?"
"Such, and far better, Rosalie; and who," she added, the ecstasy of faith irradiating her fine countenance, "who would shrink from the brief material fire through which there is a sure passage to immediate and eternal glory?"
If there are moments of presentiment when the future dawns upon the mind with all the vividness of actual presence, this was one to Rosalie. She threw her arms around her mother's neck and said in a trembling voice, "God guard my mother!"
"He has guarded me," replied the lady Clotilde, gently unlocking Rosalie's arms, "and will while it is best that I continue like the prophet safe in a den of lions. 'Take no thought for the morrow,' Rosalie. — But I have been led far away from my main purpose, which was to give you a brief history of the lady Agnes."
"Our lord the king had contracted a marriage with Isemburg of Denmark, daughter of Waldemar le Grand. On his progress to receive her, he visited the castle of one of the Duke of Meranie's adherents, where a tournament was holding. His rank was carefully concealed. He was announced in the lists as le Chevalier affiance, and his motto was la bonne 'esperance.' — Our lady Agnes — then in her sixteenth year — just your present age — presided as queen of love and beauty. Philip was thrice victorious, and thrice crowned by the lady Agnes. At the third time there were vehement demands that his visor should be removed. He appealed to Berchtold, the father of our lady, and prayed permission to preserve his incognito to all but the lady Agnes, to whom, if she were at tended by only one of her ladies, he would disclose his name and rank. Berchtold allowing that nought should be refused to the brave and all conquering knight, granted the private audience of his daughter, and she selected me from among her ladies to attend her. Philip, affianced to another, and confessing himself bound to keep the letter of his faith, violated its spirit. He declared himself passionately in love with our lady, and vowed eternal faith to her. — Our poor lady, smitten with love, received and returned his vows. The marriage with Isemburg was celebrated four days after."
"Was he married to Isemburg?"
"Yes, if that may be called marriage, Rosalie, which is a mere external rite — where there is no union of heart — where vows are made to be broken."
"This surely is most sinful — but not so when hearts as well as hands are joined — think you, mother?"
The lady Clotilde proceeded without a reply to her daughter's interrogatory. "It was told through Christendom that the king of France, on receiving the hand of the beautiful Isemburg, was seen to turn pale and tremble, and shrink from her; and when her rare beauty and her many graces were thought on, there was much marvelling, and many there were who attributed the strange demeanour of the king to sorcery! The lady Agnes and I alone knew the solution of the mystery. — Eighty days after the marriage he appealed for a divorce to bishops and archbishops assembled at Compeigne — his own servile tools. The marriage was annulled on a mere pretext, and immediately followed by the outward forms of marriage with our fair lady."
"I comprehend not these matters; but, mother, were not the lawful forms observed?"
"Rosalie! beware how in your tenderness for your mistress you confound right and wrong. Priests may not, at their pleasure, modify the law of God. The rules of holy writ are few and inflexible. — Isemburg denied the validity of the divorce, and retired to a convent. The Pope, from worldly policy, has maintained her part. An interdict was lain upon the kingdom. Marriages and interments in consecrated ground were forbidden. Weeping and mourning pervaded Philip's dominions — all for this guilty marriage. Then followed reconciliation with the Pope — then fresh animosities and perjuries — and through all Philip has adhered to our lady."
"Faithful in that, at least, mother."
"Yes, faithful where faith was not due. The lady Isemburg still lives and claims her rights— every true heart in Christendom is for her, and it is only here, in the court of Our Lady, that her wrongs are unknown, or never mentioned."
"And why, my dear mother," asked Rosalie, recurring to her first feelings, "why, since you have so long kept this sad tale from me, why did you tell it now?"
"I kept it because that, yet a child in years, it was not essential you should know it, and I could not bear to throw a shade over your innocent and all-trusting love for our lady. Now you are entering on the scene of action yourself. Temptation will assault you from which I cannot shield you. Even your mother, my child, cannot keep your account with your Judge."
"Alas, no. — But what temptations have I to fear, dear mother?"
"You are endowed with rare beauty, Rosalie, and in this court there will be many smooth tongues to tell you this."
"They have already told me so," said the ingenuous Rosalie, slightly blushing.
"Who? — who?" asked her mother.
"The lord Thiebant, and the young knights Arnold and Beaumont, and the king himself; but indeed, mother, it moved me not half so much as when my lady Agnes commends the manner of my hair, or the fitting of my kerchief."
"Ah, Rosalie, these flattering words have been as yet lightly spoken — as it were to a child, but when they are uttered in words of fire, par amour!"
"Oh, if you fear for me, mother," said Rosalie, dropping on her knees, and crossing her arms in her mother's lap, "I will now vow myself to the Virgin."
"Will you, Rosalie?"
"In sooth I will. Not to immure myself within the walls of a convent, shut out from that communion which the Creator holds with his creatures through his visible works ; and that still better communion vouch safed to us when we are fellow-workers with Him in missions of mercy and love to His creatures."
"You are somewhat of a Paterin too, my Rosalie," said her mother, rejoicing that her indirect lessons were so definitely impressed on her daughter's mind. "But have you comprehended the perfect spirituality of the Christian's law? Do you know there is no virtue in external obedience, however self-denying and self-afflicting that obedience may be, if the affections, the desires, the purposes, are not in perfect subjection to the will of God? Do you know that if you now vow yourself to a vestal's life, it would be sin should you hereafter, even in thought, repent this vow and sorrow for it."
"But, dear mother that cannot be. I can never love another so well as I love you, and our poor lady Agnes. Now, therefore, in this quiet Temple of God let me make the vow."
Clotilde's face was convulsed with thick coming conflicting thoughts and feelings. In common with many of her sect, she had retained that tenderest and most poetic feature of the Catholic religion, a tender homage for the Virgin. She believed the holy mother would vouchsafe supernatural aid to her vestal followers, and this aid she thought might be essential to one who, with unsuspecting youth, and surpassing beauty, was beset by the dangers of a court of which virtue was not the presiding genius. But on the other hand, she feared to take advantage of the inexperience of her child. Her very willingness to assume the shackles, made her mother shrink from their imposition. Rosalie clasped her hands and raised her eyes. "Stay, my sweet child — not now," said her mother, "a vow like this demands previous meditation, and much communing with your own spirit. I trust you are moved by heavenly inspiration, and if so, the work now begun will be perfected. In eight days from this we celebrate the marriage of St. Catharine, that marriage which typifies the sacred spiritual union of the perfected saint with the author of her salvation. I have twice dreamed the day had arrived, and marvellous, and spirit-stirring fancies, if they be fancies, have mingled with my dreams. I witnessed the holy marriage. I gazed at the sacred pair, when suddenly, as St. Catharine was receiving the bridal ring, it was you, my Rosalie, and not the saint; your face was as vivid as it is now to my actual sense, and instead of the pale slender hand of the saint, was your's — dimpled and rose tinted as it now is; but alas! the ring would not go upon your finger. While I marvelled and sorrowed, flames crackled around me; you, the celestial bridegroom, all vanished from my eyes, clouds of smoke rose around me, as I looked up for help, their dense volume collected over my head parted and I beheld a crown as bright as if it were of woven sun beams, a martyr's crown."
"Dear mother! I like not this dream."
"Be not disquieted, my child. Our dreams are sometimes heavenly inspirations, but oftener compounded of previous thoughts and impressions. Martyrdom has ere now been within the scope of my expectations, and that your marriage may be like that of the blessed St. Catharine, is my continual prayer. Look not back, but forward. If it please heaven to strengthen and confirm the good purpose now conceived, on St. Catharine's Eve you shall make your vow."
"So be it, mother, yet I would it were now." The ladies were interrupted by a page from the queen who came to summon the lady Clotilde to his mistress' presence.
Little Marie seeing her favourite at liberty left her attendant and insisted, with the vehemence of a petted princess as she was, that Rosalie should take a stroll with her along the bank of the river. Rosalie, scarcely past childhood herself, felt her spirits vibrate to the touch of her little friend, and they ran on sportively together, followed by the Moorish servant, till they came to the shore, where beneath a clump of trees, overgrown with flowering vines, a bench had been placed to afford a paste restante, which a painter might have selected, as affording, on one side a view of the turrets of the castle, towering above the paradise in which it was embosomed, and on the other, of the windings of the Seine and the picturesque bridge that crossed it. Just before Rosalie arrived at this point of sight, a cavalcade had passed the bridge on their way to the castle — the Archbishop of Rheims and his retinue. One of them had lagged behind the rest, and stopping on the bridge to survey the river, he had caught a glimpse of what seemed to him the most poetic personifications of youth and childhood that his eye had ever rested on. The spectator was mounted on a Spanish jennet, caparisoned with the rich decorations which the knights of the time, who regarded their steeds almost as brothers in arms, were wont to lavish on them. The bridle was garnished with silver bells, so musical that they seemed to keep time to the graceful motions of the animal. It might have puzzled an observer to decide to which of the two great faineant classes that then divided the Christian world, knights, or monks, to assign the rider. Beneath a long monastic mantle, fastened by a jewelled clasp, a linked mailed shirt might be perceived. The face of the wearer had the open gay expression of a preux chevalier, with a certain softness and tenderness that indicated a disposition rather to a reflective, that an active life. He had become wearied of the solemn and silent pomp of the archbishop's retinue, and had resigned the distinction of riding beside his highness for a gayer companion and a freer position in the rear of the train.
"By my faith, Arnaud," said he, "I find these lords, bishops and archbishops very stupid, in propria persona."
"Ah, Gervais, had you heeded me! but as the proverb says ' good counsel has no price.' "
"But my good master priest, we have yet to see whether my hope will not give the lie to your experience."
"Bravo!" retorted Arnaud, laughing louder than one would have dared to laugh nearer the archbishop. "St. Catharine's is the day you doff that mailed shirt of yours, forever? When that day comes round again, we shall see whether dame Experience has forfeited a name for speaking truth, and lying Hope has gained one."
"Holy Mary!" exclaimed Gervais de Tilbery, checking his horse as he entered upon the stone bridge. "What hour is that!"
"Softly, Sir Gervais," replied his friend," it is scarcely prudent to utter oaths, and gaze after houris within a bow-shot of my lord archbishop, — within seven days of St. Catharine's Eve! Are you spell bound, Gervais?"
Gervais heeded not the prudent caution of his friend, but asking him to bid Hubert (his attendant) come to him, he permitted Arnaud to proceed alone. Hubert came. Gervais gave him the horse to lead to the castle.
Hubert disappeared, and Gervais succeeded in scaling the bridge and letting himself down within the paradise that enclosed the houri, whom he approached (unseen by her) through a walk enclosed by tall flowering shrubs. As he issued from it, he perceived his magnet still standing near where he had first seen her, but now in a state of great alarm. The bench, mentioned above, had been taken from its supporters, and one end of it was projecting over the precipitous bank. An eddy in the river had worn away the bank beneath, and the water there was deep and rapid. Little Marie with the instinct which children seem to possess to find, or make danger, had run on to the bench, and when Rosalie stepped on to draw her back she darted forward to its extremity, beyond Rosalie's reach; she perceiving that if she advanced one inch farther the bench would lose its balance and they must both be precipitated into the river. The child perfectly unconscious of danger was diverted at Rosalie's terror, and clapping her hands and jumping up and down was screaming "Why don't you catch me, Rosalie?" The Moorish girl threw herself on her knees and supplicated the child to come back, in vain. Rosalie was pale and trembling with terror, when she felt a firm tread on the bench, behind her, and turning, saw the stranger, who said to her "fear not, sweet lady, give me your hand — I am twice your weight — the board will not move — now advance a step and grasp the little girl." This was done in an instant, and the mischievous little gypsey was dragged from her tormenting position. Rosalie after she had kissed and chidden her, bade her return with Zeba to the castle, saying she would instantly follow, and then turned to thank the stranger for his timely interposition. A bright flush succeeded her momentary paleness. It may be that the joy of transition from apprehension to security was enhanced by its being effected by a young and handsome stranger-knight, for the young ladies of the middle ages were as richly endowed with the elements of romance as the fair readers of our circulating libraries, who find in many a last new novel but little besides a new compound of the songs of troubadours, and tales of trouveurs.
The thanks given, and most graciously received, Rosalie felt embarrassed by the stranger continuing to attend her. "Think me not discourteous, sir knight," said she, " if I apprise you that you are within the private pleasure grounds of our lady queen — sacred to herself and the ladies of her court." While Gervais paused for some pretext for lingering, Rosalie kindly added, " I know not how you came here, but I am sure you were heaven-directed."
"Surely then, fair lady, I should follow Heaven's guidance, and not leave the celestial companion vouch safed me."
"But," asked Rosalie, smiling, "is not thy mission accomplished?"
"It would be profane in me to say so, while I am within superhuman influence."
"Well," thought Rosalie, "since he persists, there is no harm in permitting him to go as far as the grapery — there we must separate." Some conversation followed, by which it appeared that the stranger was of the Archbishop of Rheims' household, and Rosalie asked him "if he knew aught of Gervais de Tilbery?"
"Aye, lady," replied Gervais, "both good and evil."
"Evil? I have heard nought but good of him."
"What good can you have heard of one scarce worthy to be named before you?"
"This must be sheer envy," thought Rosalie, but the thought was checked when, glancing her eye at the stranger's face she saw a sweet pleasurable smile there. "Many," she said," have brought us report of his knightly feats, and some, who note such matters, of his deeds of mercy. Our ladies call him the handsome knight, and the brave knight, and the knight of the spotless escutcheon."
"Oh, believe them not — believe them not!" said Gervais, laughing.
"Seeing is believing, saith the musty adage," replied Rosalie. "Gervais de Tilbery is coming to the Chateau des Roses with the Archbishop."
"And is here, most beautiful lady!" cried Gervais, dropping on one knee, "to bless heaven for having granted him this sweet vision — to ask thy name — and to vow eternal fealty."
"Oh, stop — rise, Sir," said Rosalie, utterly disconcerted and retreating from Gervais, "I am a stranger to thee."
" Nay," said he, rising, and following her, " I care not for thy name, nor lineage — no rank could grace thee — do not, I beseech you, thus hasten from me — hear my vows."
"You are hasty, Sir," said Rosalie, drawing up her little person with a dignity that awed Gervais;" and now I think of it — have I not heard that it was your purpose to enter the church?"
Gervais became suddenly as grave as Rosalie could have wished. "It was my purpose," he replied, in a voice scarcely audible.
"Then you are already bound by holy vows."
"Not yet — the ceremony of the tonsure is appointed for the festival of St. Catharine."
"St. Catharine!" Rosalie's exclamation was involuntary. Her own purposed vow recurred to her, and she may be pardoned if she (being sixteen) deemed the coincidence a startling one.
They proceeded together: Gervais, in spite of her remonstrances, attending her through the grapery to the garden gate, where Marie stood awaiting her. "Come in, Rose — come in,"said the impatient child,"and you, sir stranger, go back — I hate you, and mama will hate you for stealing away my Rose." So saying, she shut the gate in poor Gervais's face, before he had time to speak, or even look a farewell to Rosalie. He had leisure, during his long, circuitous walk to the castle, to meditate on his adventure, to see bright visions of the future, and to decide, if necessary to sacrifice the course of ambition opened by the Archbishop's patronage to the attainment of Rosalie. Gervais de Tilbery was of noble birth; a richly endowed, gay, light-hearted youth, who was guided by his impulses; but, fortunately, they were the impulses of a nature that seemed, like a fine instrument, to have been ordained and fitted to good uses by its author. A word in apology of his sudden passion, and its immediate declaration: In that dark sera when woman was sought (for the most part) only for her beauty, a single view was enough to decide the choice; the wife was elected as suddenly as one would now pronounce on the beauty of a fabric or a statue. Gervais de Tilbery, for the first time in his life, felt that woman was a compound being, and that within the exquisite material frame, there dwelt a spirit that consecrated the temple.
It was on the evening of the day following Rosalie's meeting with the young knight, that Clotilde was officiating at her daughter's toilette. She was preparing for a masked ball, where she was to appear as a nymph of Diana. She was dressed in a light green china silk robe, fitted with exquisite skill to a form so vigorous, graceful and agile, that it seemed made for sylvan sports. Her luxuriant hair was drawn, a la Grecque, into a knot of curls behind, and fastened by a small silver arrow. A silver whistle, suspended by a chain of the same material, richly wrought, hung from her girdle. Her delicate feet were buskined, her arms bare. She had a silver bow in her hand, and to her shoulder was attached a small quiver of the finest silver network, filled with arrows. After her mother had finished her office of tire-woman, which she would permit none to share with her, and before tying on Rosalie's mask, she gazed at her with a feeling of pride and irrepressible triumph. A sigh followed this natural swelling of her heart.
"Why that sigh, dear mother?" asked Rosalie.
"I sighed, my child, to think how little you appear in this heathen decoration, like a promised votary of the blessed Virgin."
"Not promised," replied Rosalie hastily, and blushing deeply.
"Not quite promised, my child, but meditated."
"Mother," said Rosalie and paused, for the first time in her life hesitating to open her heart to her parent; but the good impulse prevailed, and she proceeded. "Mother, in truth the more I meditate on that, the less am I inclined to it."
"Rosalie!"
"So it is, dear mother; and is it not possible that you directed me to defer the vow in obedience to a heavenly intimation? — I have thought it might be so."
Clotilde fixed her penetrating eye on Rosalie's. "There is something new in your mind, Rosalie; keep it not back from me, my child; be it weakness or sin, I shall sorrow with, not blame you."
"It may be weakness, mother, but I am sure it is not sin. I told you of my meeting with Gervais de Tilbery, in la Vigne."
"Yes, and of his rescuing our little Marie, but nought else."
"There was not much else — and yet his words and looks, and not my vow to the Virgin, have been in my mind ever since." Rosalie, after a little stammering and blushing, gave her mother a faithful relation of every particular of the meeting, and though she most dreaded her mother's comments on that part of her story, she did not disguise that Gervais was destined for holy orders.
Her mother embraced her, and thanked her for her confidence. "Dear child," she said, "forewarned, I trust you will be forearmed. This young Gervais 1 will see no barrier to his pursuit of you in the holy vows he assumes. The indulgence and absolutions of our corrupted church license all sin; but we are not thus taught of the Scriptures, whose spiritual essence has entered into hearts that we believe marriage, even performed with all holy ceremony and legal rites, is not permitted to the saint, albeit allowed to human infirmity."
"I always believe what you say to me, mother; yet"-
"Yet — speak freely, Rosalie."
"Yet it does seem to me incomprehensible, that the relation should be wrong, from which proceeds the tie that binds you to me and me to you; which opens a fountain of love that in its course is always becoming sweeter and deeper — hark! the bell is sounding — I must hasten to the queen's saloon — tie on my mask, and be assured no mask shall ever hide a thought or feeling from you, my mother."
How did the aspect and the spirit of the scene change to Rosalie, from the quiet apartment of her saintly mother, to the queen's saloon brilliantly illuminated, filled with the flower of French chivalry and with the court beauties, whom the lady Agnes, either from a real passion for what was loveliest in nature, or to show how far her conjugal security was above all envy, delighted to assemble about her in great numbers. She was seated at the king's right hand, under a canopy of crimson and gold. The king was in his royal robes and both he and the lady Agnes were without masks. She was dressed in the character of Ceres, and her rich and ripened beauty personified admirably the Queen of Summer. Her crown (an insignia which, probably from her contested right to it, she was careful never to omit,) was of diamonds and gold, formed into wheat-heads, the diamonds representing the berry, and the gold the stem and beard. Her robe was of the finest Flanders cloth, glittering with embroidery, depicting the most beautiful productions of the earth which, as her ample train followed her, seemed to spring up at her tread. The young Philip sat at his father's feet on an embroidered cushion, Marie at her mother's, both personifying Bacchantes. The ladies of the court, in the costume of nymphs, muses, and graces, were at the queen's right hand; the lords and knights, in various fantastical characters, at the king's left. It was suspected, from several persons wearing the symbols of a holy profession, that the Archbishop's party was present, but as he was precise in observances, and severe in discipline to cruelty, none ventured to assert it. Rosalie was met at the door by one of the appointed attendants, and led to the Lady Agnes' side, a station always assigned her as the favourite of her mistress. "Ah, my little nymph of the chase," said the queen, as Rosalie knelt at her feet and lay down her bow in token of homage, "you are a rebel tonight; what has Ceres to do with Diana's followers?"
"True," said a young knight who had a pilgrim's staff in his hand," one is the bountiful mother, and the other the nun of mythology — more unkind than the nun, for she does not immure the charms which it is profanity to admire."
"Gervais de Tilbery," thought Rosalie, instantly recognising his voice, "your words seem to me prophetic."
"There is no false assumption in this character of yours," continued the pilgrim knight, "for the arrow loosed from thy bow is sure to pierce thy victim's heart."
"Hush all!" cried the queen. "Our minstrel begins, and our ears would drink his strain, for his is the theme welcomest and dearest."
Philip Augustus, as in some sort the founder of the feudal monarchy, has made an epoch in history. His reign seemed to his subjects to revive the glorious era of Charlemagne. It was the dawn of a brilliant day after a sleep of four centuries. He enlarged and consolidated his dominions. France, till his reign, had been divided into four kingdoms, of which that governed by the French king was the smallest. He made a new era in the arts and sciences. He founded colleges and erected edifices which are still the pride of France. Notre Dame was reconstructed and enlarged by him. He conveyed pure water by aqueducts to the city of Paris, and in his reign that city was first paved and redeemed from a pestilential condition. His cruelties, his intolerance, and his infidelities were the vices of his age. His beneficent acts were a just theme of praise, but that which made him an inspiring subject to his poet laureate minstrel was his passion for chivalric institutions, his love of the romances of chivalry, and the patronage with which he rewarded the inventive genius of the Trouveres. "In truth," says his historian, "it was during his reign that this brilliant creation of the imagination, (chivalry,) was in some sort complete." — The court minstrel, with such fertile themes, sung long, and concluded amidst a burst of applause.
The dancing began, and again and again the pilgrim knight was seen dancing with Diana's nymph.
“Ah, Gervais!" whispered a young man to him,” she of the silver-net quiver is I suspect your houri. A dangerous preparation this for your canonicals."
“Why so, Arnaud? Do angels never minister to priests?"
"Never, my friend, in such forms," replied Arnaud, laughing.
"Then heaven forfend that I should be a priest!"
A Dominican friar, in mask, approached Gervais, and said in a startling voice, "Thou art rash, young man — thou hast lain aside thy badge of sanctity," alluding to his pilgrim's staff.
"What signifies it, good friar," replied Gervais, "if I part with the sign, so long as I retain the thing signified? I am not yet a priest."
"Have a care, sir," replied the friar, in a tone that indicated he was deeply offended by Gervais's slur upon the priesthood, "speak not lightly of the office that hath a divine commission!"
"And assumes divine power, good master friar!"
The friar turned away, murmuring something of which Gervais heard only the words "edge tools." His mind was full of other matters, and they would have made no impression, had not his friend Arnaud whispered to him, as soon as the friar was again lost in the crowd, "Are you mad, Gervais? Knew you not the Archbishop?"
"The Archbishop! — in that humble suit, how should I?" — "N'importe," added the gay youth, after a moment's panic, "the devil, as the proverb says, must hear truth if he listens.
”And the proverb tells us too, to 'bow to the bush we get shelter from.' "
"My thanks to you, Arnaud. I have changed my mind, and shall not seek the bush's shelter.
"Then beware! for that which might have afforded shelter, may distil poison."
"Away with you and your croaking, Arnaud. This night is dedicated to perfect happiness, and you shall not mar it."
"Alas, my friend! — the brightest day is often followed by the darkest night."
But Gervais heard not this word of prophecy. The dance was finished, and he was leading off his beautiful partner. She permitted him to conduct her through the open suite of apartments, each one less brilliantly illuminated than the last, till they reached an apartment with a single lamp, and one casement window which opened upon a balcony that overlooked the garden. The transition was a delicious one from the heated and crowded apartments, to the stillness of nature, and the privity of moonlight — from the stifling atmosphere to the incense that rose from the unnumbered flowers of the garden beneath them. Rosalie involuntarily threw aside her mask, and disclosed a face, lit as it was by the sweet emotions and enthusiasm of the occasion, more beautiful than the memory and imagination of the enraptured lover had pictured it. It was a moment when love would broak no counsel from prudence; and Gervais, obeying his impulses, poured out his passion in a strain to which Rosalie, in a few, faintly spoken words, replied. The tone and the words sunk to the very depths of Gervais's heart, assuring him that he was beloved.
An hour flew, while to the young lovers all the world but themselves seemed annihilated — then followed the recollection of certain relations and depen dencies of this mortal life. “My first care shall be," said Gervais, " to recede from this priesthood."
“Thank kind heaven for that," replied Rosalie. "As they say in Provence, anything is better than a priest.'"
The lovers both fancied they heard a rustling near them. They turned their heads, and Gervais stepped within the embrasure of the window. “It is nothing — we are unobserved," he said, returning to Rosalie's side. "But tell me, my Rosalie, (my Rosalie!) where heard you this Provence scandal?"
“From my dear mother, who spent her youth at the court of the good Raymond."
"St. Denis aid us! I believed Treres, Gui, and Regnier had plucked up heresy by the roots in Languedoc. Heaven forbid that she be infected with heresy!"
"I know not what you call heresy, Sir Gervais de Tilbery, but my dear mother drinks at the fountain of truth, the Scriptures, and receives not her faith from man, be he called bishop, archbishop, or pope."
"By all the saints, I believe she has reason in that. But, dear Rosalie, we will eschew heresy — it is a thorny road to heaven, and we will keep the safe path our fathers have trodden before us, in which there are guides who relieve us of all the trouble of self-direction — will we not?"
"My mother is my guide, Sir Gervais."
"So be it, my lovely Rosalie, till her guidance is transferred to me — and thereafter you will be faithful to God, St. Peter, and the Romish Church? And when shall your orthodoxy begin — on St. Catharine's Eve?"
“I know not — I know not. All these matters must be referred to my dear mother and the queen. Rise, Sir Gervais, (her lover had knelt to urge his suit) — we linger too long here." Again there was a sound near them, and Gervais sprang forward to ascertain whence it proceeded — Rosalie followed him, and they both perceived the figure of the friar crossing the threshhold of the next apartment. "Could he have been here?" exclaimed Gervais — "he might have been hidden behind the folds of this curtain — but would he?"
Gervais paused, — "Whom do you mean?"
“The friar," answered Gervais, warily, for he feared to alarm Rosalie by the intimation of the possibility that the Archbishop of Rheims had overheard their conversation.
Rosalie did not sleep that night till she had confided all, without the reservation of a single particular, to her mother. The lady Clotilde grieved that she must resign her cherished, dearest hope of seeing Rosalie self-devoted to a vestal's life, but true to her spiritual faith, that all virtue and all religion were in the mind, and of the mind, she would not persuade — she would not influence Rosalie to an external piety.
She saw much advantage would result to Rosalie from an alliance with Gervais. It would remove her at once and forever from the contagion of the court atmosphere — from Lady Agnes's influence, so intoxicating to a young and confiding nature. Gervais was of noble rank and fortune, and when that distinction was almost singular among the young nobles of France, he was distinguished for pure morals. "It is possible," thought Clotilde, as she revolved in her mind all the good she had heard of him, "that the renovating Spirit of Truth has already entered his heart. It has not pleased heaven to grant my prayer, but next best to what I vainly asked, is this union of pure and loving hearts." The ingenuous disclosure Rosalie had made, awakened in her mind a vivid recollection of a similar experience of her youth, and produced a sympathetic feeling that perhaps, more than her reason, governed her decision. Rosalie that night fell asleep on her mother's bosom with the sweet assurance that her love was authorized.
The next was a busy, an important, and a happy day to the lovers. “Time trod on flowers." Alas, the periods of perfect happiness are brief, and one might say with the fated Moor —
"If it were now to die
'Twere now to be most happy; for I fear
My soul hath her content so absolute,
That not another comfort like to this
Succeeds in unknown fate."
Everything seemed to go well and as it should. The Archbishop, with a gloomy brow, but without one comment or hesitating word, acquiesced in Gervais's relinquishing his purpose of entering the church. The lady Agnes, loath to part with her favourite, yet graciously gave her consent, and persuaded the king to endow the young bride richly, and even the little Marie, though she at first stoutly and with showers of tears, refused to give up her own Rose, yet was at last brought over to the party of the lovers, by the promise of officiating as bridesmaid on St. Catharine's Eve.
Would that we could end our tale here; but the tragic truth which darkens the page of history must not be suppressed.
The Archbishop of Rheims was devoted to the aggrandizement of his own order — to extending and securing the dominion of the priesthood. His faith might be called sincere, but we should hardly excuse that man who, having been born and educated in a dark room, should spend his whole life in counteracting the efforts of others to communicate the light of heaven to him, and in stopping the little crevices by which it might enter. He was ready to grant any indulgence to errors, or even vices, that did not interfere with the supremacy of the church. He was the uncle of Philip, and, contrary to his inclination, he had been induced by that powerful monarch to countenance him in his rejection of the queen Isemburg, and had thereby involved himself in an unwilling contest with Innocent III. This pontiff, whose genius, his historian says, “embraced and governed the world," was equally incapable of compromise and pity. He had a few years antecedent to the events we have related, proclaimed the first crusade against the Albigeois, and had invested the dignitaries of the church throughout Christendom with the power "to burn the chiefs (of the new opinions) to disperse their followers, and to confiscate the property of all that did not think as he did. All exercise of the faculty of thinking in religious matters was forbidden." The Archbishop of Ilheims was eager to wipe out his offences against the head of the church by his zealous cooperation with him in this persecution. As has been seen, he was nettled by Gervais's contemptuous hit at the priesthood. It was an indication that the disease of heresy had touched even the healthiest members of the spiritual body, as the general prevalence of corresponding symptoms announced the approach of a wide wasting epidemic. He became restless and uneasy, and, in wandering alone through the apartments of the chateau, he had found his way to the window of the balcony occupied by our lovers, just in time to hear poor Rosalie's betrayal of her mother. He devoted the following day to a secret inquisition into the life and conversation of Clotilde. He found that she had long ceased to be a favourite of the lady Agnes, who tolerated her only on account of her daughter, and who felt somewhat the same aversion to her (and for analogous reasons) that Herodias cherished against John the Baptist. This feeling of the lady Agnes was rather discerned by the acute prelate than expressed by her, for there was not a fault of which she could accuse the pure and devout woman. Her offences were the rigid practice of every moral virtue. Her time and her fine faculties were all devoted to the benefit of her fellow creatures, so that she fell under the common condemnation, as set forth by a contem porary writer. "L'espritde mensonge, par la seule apparence d'une vie nette, et sans tache, soustrayoit ces inprudcns a la verite. Besides this, she was found deficient in the observance of the Romish ritual, and she ate no meat.
This last sin of omission, being in accordance with the practice of 'the strictest among those early reformers, was an almost infallible sign of heresy; and on the day following the arrangements for Rosalie's marriage, the lady Clotilde was summoned before the Archbishop and a council of priests. Her guilt was assumed, and she was questioned upon the several points of the prevailing heresy. We cannot go into details. Our story has already swelled beyond due bounds. The lady Clotilde, unsupported and alone, answered all the questions of her inquisitors, with a directness, simplicity, a comprehension of the subject, and a modesty, that, as a cotemporary chronicler confesses, astounded all who heard her. But it availed nought. She was convicted of denying the right of the Romish church to grant indulgences and absolution, and, in short, of wholly rejecting its authority. The Archbishop condemned her as deserving the penalty of death, and the pains of everlasting fire, but he offered her pardon upon a full recantation of her errors.
"I fear not him who only can kill the body," she replied, with blended firmness and gentleness, "but Him who can destroy both soul and body, and to Him," she added, raising her eyes and folding her hands, "I commend that spirit to which it hath pleased Him to vouchsafe the glorious liberty of the gospel." Her celestial calmness awed her judges — even the Archbishop hesitated for a moment to pronounce her doom, when a noise and altercation with the guard was heard at the door. It opened, and Rosalie rushed in, threw herself into her mother's arms, and all natural timidity, all fear of the tribunal before which she stood, merged in one overwhelming apprehension, she demanded, "what they were doing, and why her mother was there?"
“Peace, rash child!" answered the Archbishop. "Shame on thy intrusion — know that thy mother is a convicted heretic."
"What wrong has she ever done? Who has dared to accuse my mother?" cried Rosalie, still clinging to Clotilde, who in vain tried to hush and calm her.
"Who was her accuser?" retorted the Archbishop, with a cruel sneer — "dost thou remember, foolish girl, who revealed the source of the Provence scandal?"
The recollection of the sound she had heard during her fatal conversation with Gervais in the balcony, at once flashed upon Rosalie. She elevated her person, and, stretching out her arm towards the Archbishop, exclaimed, with ineffable indignation, "Thou wert the listener?"
For an instant his cheeks and lips were blanched with shame, and then stifling this honest rebuke of conscience, he quoted the famous axiom of Innocent III. — "Dost thou not know, girl that 'it is to be deficient in faith, to keep faith with those that have no faith?' — Stand back, and hear the doom of all those who renounce the Romish church."
"Pronounce the doom, then, on me too!" cried Rosalie, kneeling and clasping her hands. "I too renounce it — I hate it — I deny all my mother denies — I believe all she believes."
"Mother, I do! — have you not taught me? — have we not prayed and wept together over the holy gospels, so corrupted and perverted by the priesthood?"
"Enough!" said the Archbishop — "be assured we will not cut down the dry tree, and leave the green one to flourish."
"Thanks! — then we shall die together," said Rosalie, locking her arms around her mother's neck. The delirious excitement had exhausted her — her head fell on her mother's bosom, and she was an unconscious burden in her arms. Clotilde laid her on a cushion at her feet, and knelt by her while the Archbishop, after a few words of consultation, doomed the mother and daughter "to pass through material to immaterial flames," on St. Catharine's day.
They were together conveyed to a dungeon appertaining to the chateau.
St. Catharine's Eve arrived. The houri that had been destined for Rosalie's bridals found her in a dungeon, seated at her mother's feet, her head resting on her mother's breast, and her eyes fixed on her face, while Clotilde read by the light of their lamp the fourteenth chapter of St. John. She closed the book. The calmness that she had maintained till then forsook her. She laid her face to Rosalie's, and the tears from her cheeks dropped on her child's. "Oh!" she ex claimed, nature subduing the firmness of the martyr, "it is in vain! I read, and pray, and meditate, but still my "heart is troubled" — the spirit is not willing."
"Dear mother!" cried Rosalie, feeling as if the columns against which she leaned were tottering.
"My child, it is not for myself I fear or feel. My mission on earth is finished — and I have an humble, but assured hope, that my Saviour will accept that which I have done in his service. For me death has no terrors. I should rejoice in the flames that would consume this earthly tabernacle and set my spirit free; but oh, my child!" She closed her eyes as if she would exclude the dreadful vision, "when I think of thy sweet body devoured by elemental fire my heart fails. I am tempted, sorely tempted. I fear that in that hour I shall deny the faith, and give up heaven for your life."
"Mother, mother, do not say so. I hoped it was only I had sinful thoughts, and affections binding me to earth." The weakness of nature for a moment triumphed over the sublime power of religion, and the mother and child wept, and sobbed violently.
So absorbed were they in their emotions that they did not hear the turning of the bolts of their prison, nor were they conscious of any one's approach till Rosalie's name was pronounced in a low voice; when they both started and saw, standing before them, Gervais de Tilbery, the lady Agnes and her confessor. Gervais threw himself on his knees before Rosalie, took her hand and pressed it to his lips. She returned the pressure, but spoke not.
"There is no time to be lost, my dear friends," said the lady Agnes. "Clotilde," she continued, "I have vainly begged the boon of your life — it is denied me — but your child's — yours — my own dear Rosalie, I can preserve. It boots not now to say by what means I shall effect it."
"Can she live," cried Clotilde vehemently, "without renouncing her faith? without denying her Lord?"
"Without any condition but that she now give her hand to Gervais de Tilbery — the priest is ready."
"Oh tempt me not! tempt me not," exclaimed Rosalie, throwing herself on her mother's bosom. "I will not leave her. I will die with her."
"Hear me, my child," said her mother in a voice so firm, sweet, and tranquillizing that it spoke peace to the storm in Rosalie's bosom. "Hear me. I have already told you that for myself this dispensation has no terror, but my spirit shrinks from your enduring it — spare me, my child. God has condescended to my weakness and opened for you a way of escape — do you still hesitate? On my knees, Rosalie, I beg you to live — not for Gervais — not for yourself — for me — for your mother — give me your hand." Rosalie gave it. Now God bless thee my child — shield thee from temptation and deliver thee from evil! She put Rosalie's hand into Gervais's, and bidding the priest do his office, she supported her child on one side while Gervais sustained her on the other. Rosalie looked more like a bride for heaven than earth, her face as pale as the pure white she wore, and her lips faintly, and inaudibly, repeating the marriage vows.
As the ceremony proceeded, her mother whispered again, and again, "courage my child! courage! It is for my sake, Rosalie." The priest pronounced the benediction. Rosalie had lost all consciousness. Her mother folded her in one fond, long protracted embrace, and then, without one word, resigned her to Gervais.
The lady Agnes signed to the priest. A female attendant appeared. Rosalie was enveloped in a travelling cloak and hood and conveyed out of the prison. Clotilde remained alone. We may say, without presumption that angels came and ministered to her.
We have only to add the conclusion of the cotemporary record. "One of the condemned escaped from punishment, and it is maintained that she was carried off by the devil; the other without shedding a tear or uttering a complaint submitted to death with a courage that equalled her modesty."
Dublin Core
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Title
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"St. Catharine's Eve"
Subject
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Religion, Faith and Sacrifice
Description
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A loving mother tells her daughter the truth about her own religious beliefs which are later used to condemn both mother and daughter to death. The mother sacrifices herself to save the life of her daughter.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss Sedgwick
Source
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The Token (Boston) pp. 7-36
Publisher
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Gray and Bowen
Date
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1834
Contributor
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J. Robinson
Relation
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Also collected in:
Tales and Sketches, series one (Philadelphia, 1835), pp. 205-235.
Language
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English
Type
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Document
God
heaven
infidelity
John the Baptist
morals
Orthodox Church
pious
priest
tears
Temptation
The Token
-
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3bd02176d8e31744eaa0d53a63344f10
Dublin Core
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Title
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1842
Subject
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Stories published in 1842.
Document
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The Irish Girl.
By the author of “Hope Leslie,” &c.
“My peace is gone,
My heart is heavy;
I shall find it never
And never more.”
“Now sit down, Margaret, child, and rest you—here by my bedside. How comfortable my bed feels! It always has the right lay when you fix it, Margaret. Come, sit down; the work is all done up, and done as well as I could do it myself—even the outside of the teakettle is as clean as a china cup. It’s a mystery to me, Margaret, how you learned such tidy ways in a shanty.”
“It’s not always that I have lived in a shanty, Mrs. Ray.”
“Don’t turn your back to me, Margaret; draw your chair closer to my bed. I want to have a little talk with you, Margaret. I feel myself going down hill, and I don’t know how long I may be spared.”
“God forbid you should be taken, Mrs. Ray, dear—you, that are so good to them that’s near and them that’s far off.”
“You must not flatter me, Margaret,” said the old woman, in a tone of voice that indicated anything but displeasure.
“And do you think I’d be after flattering you, Mrs. Ray—you, that are mother-like to me? God knows you are kind, and it’s James says the same; and you know yourself James—God forgive him!—loves no Yankee besides you in the world.”
“But I mistrust, Margaret,” said the old lady, fixing her faded gray eye on the young creature, “I mistrust James’s sister can’t say the same.” Margaret’s cheek, ordinarily pale, turned to a deep crimson. The old lady cleared her voice and continued: “It’s no crime, nor nothing like it, Margaret, to love what’s good—hem—if what’s good is what’s suitable.” This seemed a mere common-placeism, but Margaret’s cheek turned pale again, and a tear trickled over it.
“You say you have not always lived in a shanty, Margaret, and that’s what l have said to our people. Says I to Sister Maxwell, ‘Margaret has had as good opportunities as the most of our mountain girls;’ says I, ‘ she can read handsomely— there’s few can read like her;’ says I, ‘I wish the minister could read so;’ says I, ‘ her reading sinks right down into the heart.’ ”
“Who is flattering now, Mrs. Ray, dear?”
[p. 130]
“Not I, Margaret—-’tis not our way to flatter.”
“Nor ours. God knows, Mrs. Ray, it’s what we feel we speak, be it good or bad.”
“Well, well, Margaret, I know some does call real kind heart-words flattery, but they are no such thing, I know—we won’t talk about that now. As I was saying, judging from your reading and writing, you have seen better days—haven’t you, Margaret?”
“Some ways they were better, and other ways not. I had an aunt was housekeeper at Lady Kavenagh’s—and my lady respected my aunt, and she would have me to come and live with her in the housekeeper’s room; and Miss Grace took a fancy to me, and taught me to read and write, and so forth.”
“Then, after all,” said Mrs. Ray, with manifest disappointment, “your parents have always lived in a shanty?”
“They lived in what we call a cabin, ma’am —thank God.”
“Margaret, you forget: I’ve often told you it’s not right to use the name of God in vain as you do. You should not say ‘thank God’ when you mean nothing by it.”
“Indeed, Mrs. Ray, dear, and I do mean something. I never think of my home in that cabin without thanking God in my heart, and God forgive me if I don’t thank him with my lips too. That cabin was my home, Mrs. Ray; there was a kind father and the kindest of mothers always working and caring for us. There it was my little sister—God bless her! —died; there was James, my mate, always glad to see me, and sorry to part from me; there was never a harsh word among us—we laughed and we cried together—what one loved, the other loved, and what one hated, all hated: hadn’t we what’s best in castle and palace, and not always found there? I’ve often thought, wouldn’t my Lady Kavenagh gladly change with-my mother, and rough it with loving hearts and happy faces?”
“Oh, I dare say, Margaret, ladies in the old countries have it hard enough, as everyone knows who reads the newspapers; but that is nothing to the purpose. What I want to come at, Margaret, is, would you—could you be content to live in a cabin again? You would hold your head above it, wouldn’t you?”
Margaret’s form dilated as she impulsively rose from her seat, and raising and clasping her hands, appealingly exclaimed, “God strike me dead, then, if I would! -- it was in a cabin that my father and mother that’s gone lived -- it was in a cabin that James and l grew up together, with one heart between us. Oh, Mrs. Ray, dear, God forgive you! -- it’s such a long time ago, I think you have forgotten what a happy thing it is to be a child at home, in your own father’s place—be it castle or cabin, it’s all the same.”
“Don’t be affronted, child, and don’t cry,” said kind Mrs. Ray, wiping her eyes, and somewhat overpowered by Margaret’s vehe—
[p. 131]
mence; “your feelings are natural, and quite right, but there is no need of such a hurricane. I am sure my sons and daughters love me and are dutiful to me, but it’s in a quiet, regular way.”
“And that’s the way of your people, Mrs. Ray, dear; but our feelings come in a storm, and you may as easy keep the winds that come howling over your Becket hills quiet, as keep them still -- but it’s not always we are feeling, and God forgive me if I have said anything to fret you—you, that are so kind to me.”
“It’s a satisfaction to be kind to you, Margaret, and I don’t like to leave my work half done—so sit down again. I'll be candid with you, Margaret, and you must be candid with me, and open your heart to me as if I were your own mother.”
“Ah, Mrs. Ray, dear!” Margaret kissed the old lady.
“I am going to use freedom, child: who gave you that blue guard-chain that you wear round your neck day and night?”
“Sure it was William Maxwell, then,” replied Margaret, in a voice scarce above her breath. Margaret was learning that some of our feelings, and those of the strongest too, are stillest.
“And what have you hanging by it, Margaret?”
Margaret answered by drawing out a small crucifix appended to the guard-chain, kissing it, and crossing herself. “0 Margaret, Margaret! That’s to be a cross to you indeed, I fear! I must tell you the truth; there is no thing William Maxwell’s parents have such a horror of as a Romanist, and there is nothing his father despises like an Irish person.”
“But it’s not William Maxwell that’s after fearing the one or despising the other,” said Margaret.
“No, that’s true. William is not a serious young man: he’s thought little about religion yet, one way or the other; but when he comes to consider, Margaret, he will feel, as we all do, that it’s a dreadful thing to be a Romanist, and pray to saints, and worship images, and so forth. And besides, I know William better than you do, Margaret—I’ve known him from his cradle—he’s my own sister’s son, and I love him, and he’s a pretty young man, but William has not resolution to go against his parent’s will, be it right or wrong. Take care, child, you’ve dropped your stitches. Now, Margaret, child, hear me patiently: consider, to-day is not forever, and them that’s young and soft like you, if their feelings are cast in one mould, they can be cast over in another.”
“Will ye speak plain what you are after saying to me, “Mrs. Ray, dear?”
“Be patient, child—slow and sure, you know. We can’t have everything just right in this world, Margaret: when one door is opened, another is shut—young folks must be conformable.” Margaret sighed with irrepressible impatience, and Mrs.
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Ray proceeded more directly: “It’s my opinion, Margaret, that William can nowhere find a likelier girl than you are. You have just the disposition to please Sister Maxwell, and Providence somehow seems to have set you down here, making the place for you, and you for the place, as it were; and somehow you have taken an unaccountable hold of my heart, and I can’t blame William; and so I was thinking, Margaret, as the railroad is almost done, the shanties will soon be broke up, and James will have to look for work elsewhere: you’ll have a good chance, as it were, to break up your connexions with all these people, and after a little while you will be no more an Irish girl than Belinda Anne Tracy.” Margaret’s face was turned quite away, or probably Mrs. Ray would not have proceeded: “And then as to your beads, your crucifix, your confessions, &c., the sooner you give them all up, the better, my child, for soul and body too” —
“Say no more, Mrs. Ray; God forsake me if I forsake Him, and deny my parents and my people, and cast off James—heart of my heart! Better for my soul, say ye! And what would be left of my soul if all faith towards God and love to man were out of it? Oh, Mrs. Ray, I would not have thought it of you!” The poor girl wept as if her heart were broken. Mrs. Ray tried in vain to soothe her. She no more argued or persuaded; she was ashamed that she had done either. Her strong innate sense of right triumphed over the prejudices of education and society; and having begun with proposing to her young friend to abjure her faith and forsake her people, she ended with respecting the loyalty that kept her true to both.
Little need be said in explanation of the relations and history of the parties introduced to our readers. Margaret O’Brien had belonged to one of the encampments of Irish that are found along the lines of our railroads, while those great works are constructing by the people who, driven forth from their own land by misery and multiplied oppressions, come here to do our roughest work, and share our bread and freedom. Their shanties, built for transient use, are constructed with the least possible expense and labour; and though perhaps adequate to their ideas of comfort, are a sad contrast to the humblest homes of our own people. There is little found in them besides strong, healthy bodies and warm hearts —the best elements of happiness in any home.
Would it not be well for our people to consider more maturely than they have yet done, the designs of, Providence in sending these swarms of Irish people among us? Is it not possible that their vehement feelings, ardent affections, and illimitable generosity might mingle with our colder, and (we say it regretfully)
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more selfish natures, to the advantage of both? And at any rate, by losing the opportunity of promoting their happiness, of binding them to us by the blessed links of humanity, are we not doing a wrong to our own souls? Can good be elected to them or to ourselves by condemning their nation and deriding their religion?
Margaret’s father lost his life while working on the Western Railroad by the blasting of a rock. Margaret’s mother was ill at the time: the shock of seeing his mangled body brought home without warning, occasioned, as was believed, her death. The report of the melancholy fate of these people spread through the neighbourhood, and Mrs. Ray, impelled by her Christian heart, went to look after the orphan girl. She was struck with the loveliness of her countenance, her sweet manners, and the superior decency of her habitation.
“Why,” said she afterward to the Maxwells, who expressed their surprise that she should take a girl from the shanties into her family, “it wasn’t like a shanty! They were not all herded together like cattle, as they commonly are, but the place was parted off into three rooms; there were bedsteads—rough, to be sure—and there were clean sheets and decent spreads; and they had some chairs; and Margaret a little table with a drawer, all made by her brother, and a work-basket, and everything tidy on it, and a picture hanging over it”—
“A picture! Some saint I dare say,” interrupted Maxwell, his lip curling.
“It might be, for aught I know,” replied Mrs. Ray, meekly, “but I should not think anyone need to be the worse for a saint—the picture of one, I mean, hanging up before them. I assure you, Brother Maxwell, everything had a becoming appearance; there was considerable earthenware and silver teaspoons, and it was evident they had lived like folks; and as to the poor orphan girl, she is as neat as the neatest of our Becket girls—Belinda Anne don’t exceed her—and she is so pretty spoken and pretty looking! and as I wanted help that would be company too, I was glad to get her; and her brother having to go to work on the next section, was glad to leave her in a suitable place for one so young and comely. I hope you don’t think I did wrong, Brother Maxwell,” concluded Mrs. Ray, who, though very apt to do right from her own impulses, was rather weakly nervous as to the judgment of others.
“You are an independent woman, and must judge for yourself, Mrs. Ray. Everybody knows ’tis my principle to keep clear of the Paddies. I neither eat nor drink with them, and I go not in nor out among them.”
“But you sell to them,” said Mrs. Ray, with a smile that faintly
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indicated what she did not say, and what she retained, because she was a woman of peace, and rarely struck a discord ant note. The complaints she had heard from these poor strangers and wayfarers in the land, of the exorbitant prices demanded by “Brother Maxwell” for his pork and potatoes, were fermenting in her mind.
“Yes, I sell to them—I take care of number one. As the Bible says, he that don’t provide for his own household is worse than an infidel.”
“I take that passage in another sense, Brother Maxwell; I provide for my family by buying of them: I buy Margaret’s services, and she throws in her love, and I would not change bargains with you.”
“And I should not be afraid to show books with you, Widow Ray,” retorted the sordid man.
“I don’t keep any books,” replied Mrs. Ray; “there are books where both accounts are kept, and where the widow’s will probably show fairest.”
Maxwell is one of those who bring dishonour on the good name of his people. His industry runs into anxious toil, his enterprise into avarice, his economy into miserliness, his sagacity into cunning, his self-preserving instincts into selfishness. Having one of the largest farms in Becket, his ruling passion is to make it larger. Enjoying and imparting never enter into his calculations; and, as was said of a far loftier person, “he had not so much joy in what he had, as trouble and agony for what he had not.” His only son and heir, William, though resembling his father, had an infusion of his mother’s more generous disposition—a sprinkling of her more attractive qualities. How the proportions were balanced, and which preponderated, will be seen by his conduct.
Margaret O’Brien was much less hopeful than most young people. Early changes and sorrows had superinduced a reflectiveness and sadness on the natural vehemence and cheerfulness of her character. Life seemed to her a dark and tangled path, and she shrunk from pursuing it. She had not yet learned that there is an inner light, which always shines on the patient soul. She was silent and abstracted all the day after her conversation with Mrs. Ray. She performed her usual domestic duties negligently. “I saw plainly,” Mrs. Ray afterward said, “that the poor girl’s heart was not in them; but then, Sister Maxwell, I was only thinking how pretty she looked, and what a blessing she would be to the man—be he who he would—that should marry her. Well, we are short-sighted creatures.”
As the day declined, Margaret became more restless. She was
[p. 135]
continually going to the door, and looking up the road. “Who are you expecting?” asked Mrs. Ray.
“It’s James I am looking for—he promised he would be down some day this week.” Margaret blushed deeply, conscious that, though telling the truth, it was not the whole truth. No James came. No approaching footstep, hoof, or wheel, broke the dismal silence that surrounded the widow’s dwelling. Margaret became more and more unquiet, and at last said she would go and meet James; “that would shorten the time; and if I am not at home at tea-time, don’t wait for me, Mrs. Ray, dear; it is not very far to the shanties, and if I should be late home, there is a bright moon to-night.”
Margaret was already on the threshold. Mrs. Ray called her back. “My child,” she said, “don’t stay out late; you know I am of an anxious make, and easily startled, and you are not looking yourself, Margaret, since our talk this morning; and I’m not superstitious, and don’t really believe in such things, but there has been one of the neighbor’s dogs howling unaccountably lately; and last evening I fully meant to put on my purple shawl, and when I came to take it off, it was my black one, trimmed with crape! I don’t believe in signs, but they make one feel—and if any evil were to happen to you, Margaret, I should feel just as wounded as if it were one of my own daughters.”
“God—the God of the fatherless—bless you, Mrs. Ray, dear, and keep all trouble far from your door.” Margaret kissed her old friend, and promised to return as early as possible, and that promise Mrs. Ray afterward said was a great comfort to her, for she was sure “she meant to keep it.” Margaret walked hastily up the road, and took a horse-path that, passing through a wood, led by a cross cut to the railroad.
Winter comes on prematurely in Becket, a high, cold mountain town. Though it was yet October, the glow and almost metallic brightness of our autumn foliage had passed away. The leaves, the summer’s wealth, lay in piles on the ground, or hung in sadly-thinned companies rustling on the branches; leaden clouds were driving over the sky, and snow falling in scattered flakes.
Margaret’s way lay along a leaping and gushing mountain-stream, which to the ear of the happy called up images of courage and joy, but to Margaret it may have sounded mournful and ominous. May, we say; but there is reason to think that the poor girl was deaf to the sympathies of nature; that her mind was possessed with one idea, and that it mattered not to her whether the voices of nature were cheering or sad. She did not even pause at “Hardy’s Rock,” though that had been her “trysting-tree.” This
[p. 136]
was a rock easy of access from the road, but precipitous towards the stream, with a broad, flat summit. The stream below it was dammed, partly by a natural accumulation of brush and stones brought from above, and partly by art, and it set back in a deep basin. The stream, swollen to a torrent by late rains, had overflowed the margin of the basin, and covered the little strip of level ground around it to the very edge of a steep cliff, whose pines and firs were darkly reflected in it. But a few weeks before Margaret had sat on this rock with William Maxwell, and while she listened to him, had woven a wreath for her bonnet of the asters and golden-rod that were now withered like her hopes.
Below the dam was a saw-mill belonging to William, and he often came down to it towards evening to see what work had been accomplished during the day. It was nearly two weeks since Margaret had seen him, and in that interval she had heard that, in rustic phrase, he was “paying attention” to a young girl, who, by the recent death of her father, had become sole proprietor of a farm adjoining Maxwell’s, and was heiress to herds, pasture-land, and much rural wealth. This young person was the Belinda Anne Tracy, of whom Mrs. Ray had spoken in the morning to Margaret with more meaning than met the ear. Uncertainty was intolerable to Margaret’s impatient Irish nature, and “It will now be ended!” she exclaimed, as, listening intently, she heard the tramp of William Maxwell’s horse long before she saw him. She was hidden by a projecting point of the rock, and he did not perceive her till he was arrested by her voice, not in a loud, but thrilling tone, pronouncing his name.
“Margaret! is it you? I did not think of meeting you, but I was going this evening to see you."
Margaret raised her eyes to his, and a gleam of pleasure shot through them, but they were quickly cast down again, and her lips trembled as she said, “There’s many a lonesome evening come and gone since I have seen you, William Maxwell.”
“That’s true, Margaret—and it is true, too, that a man may be in one place, and his heart in another.”
“Where was your heart then, William, when you was after going down to Westfield with Belinda Anne Tracy!”
“With you, Margaret, and with none but you, and that’s as true as that I stand here on this solid ground; but one can’t—that is—I mean—”
Margaret, with hurried and trembling hands, untied the guard-chain by which her crucifix was suspended, and kissing it, and then holding it up, she said, “I have sworn on this that I would know your true mind, William Maxwell; and if you respect yourself—if ever you respected me—if you respect this sign, of what
[p. 137]
is best and holiest—if you respect Him that’s above, then tell it to me.”
Maxwell felt the solemnity of the adjuration, and dared not evade it; and it may be that he was glad to be forced, by a superior will, to make a communication for which he had been in vain trying to summon resolution for the last two weeks.
“Margaret,” he began, in a faltering voice “it is true, as I have told you many times, I do love you as I never did, nor ever shall love another. I never spoke a false word to you: you are my first love, and you will be my last; but—but—there are others to consult; I am not free to follow my own wishes; the truth is, Margaret, my father has feelings about your people, and he never will give them up. He took a solemn oath before me and my mother: ‘I swear,’ he said, ‘I’ll cast you off forever if you marry one of the Paddy folks!’ My mother, you know, is sickly, and I am her only child; and if it went to this, it would break her heart, and so she told me— and, Margaret, if I can’t marry you, I don’t care who I marry; and so, this being the true state of the case, and no help for it that I can see, I have made as—as good as an engagement with Belinda Anne Tracy.”
Margaret kept her eye steadily fixed on him till he had finished. She then drew the guard chain from the crucifix, threw it away, and pressing the crucifix to her bosom, turned off without speaking a word. William followed her. “Margaret—Margaret,” he said, “do let us part friends; you cannot be more sorry than I am; only say you forgive me!” But he spoke in vain. Margaret made no reply, except by motioning to him to leave her; and, glad to escape from the piercing rebuke of that sweet countenance—more in sorrow than in anger—he mounted his horse and rode away, bearing with him—to be forever borne —the conviction that the heaviest visitation of his father’s anger would have been light in comparison with the sense of a violated faith to this loving, true-hearted orphan stranger.
Maxwell had but just disappeared when Margaret met her brother James. “Is it you, Margaret?” he said: “God’s blessing on you, then! but what are you fretting at!”
“I’m not fretting, James, dear.”
“Now, Margaret, what’s the use of telling me that, when you don’t so much as lift your eye to me, and your cheek is as white as that bit of muslin round your neck? Is it Mrs. Ray that’s been after chiding you?”
“Mrs. Ray! No, no, James; she’s every way like our own mother to me.”
“Margaret, my sister, my child—for you’ve neither father nor
[p. 138]
mother but me—I never yet spake his name to you; if it’s William Maxwell that frets you—if it’s true, as the boys say, that he’s false to you, I’ll break every bone in his body.”
“James! you’ll break my heart speaking so. Oh, James, dear, keep God’s peace, I pray you; it’s you only in the world I love now. It’s a black world. Good-night, James. You are far from your place, and you have been hard at work; don’t go farther with me.”
“I would not leave you, Margaret, dear, a step short of Mrs. Ray’s, but I have promised Mr. John Richards to meet him above the bridge there. l’ll come down tomorrow and remember, Margaret, we two are alone in the world; and for my sake, and for the sake of them that’s in their graves, keep up a brave heart. Good-night.”—“She did not answer me,” thought James. He stopped and looked after her till she was hidden from him by a turn in the road: “God’s heaviest curse will surely fall on him if he’s broke her heart, and she so young, and innocent, and beautiful to look upon!” Such blistering thoughts were in James’s mind till he joined Mr. Richards.
In the meantime Margaret retraced her steps along the margin of the stream till she reached again Hardy’s Rock. The heavy clouds had rolled down over the setting sun, and left the eastern sky, where the full moon was rising, cloudless. The moonbeams glanced athwart the firs, silvering their branches, and fell on the summit of the rock; the water under it was still in deep shadow. It was on this rock that, two months before, the moon shining as it now shone, but then on summer beauty, that Margaret met her lover
“With hinnied hopes around her heart,
Like simmer blossoms—”
there and then she had plighted faith with William Maxwell. Again she felt herself drawn to that spot—probably without any ill design—with only an intolerable sense of disappointment and misery. The scene brought back with intense vividness her past happiness. What it is to remember that under the pressure of present wretchedness, most have felt, and one has described in words never to be forgotten:
“Nessun maggior delore
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria;”
James met Mr. Richards at the appointed place. After a few moments, he said, “James, you are thinking of one thing and talking of another. What is the matter?”
James confessed he was anxious; said he had just met his sister, and that he had left her to go home alone, that she
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seemed very unhappy—and he was sorry he had left her to go home alone. Mr. Richards is a young engineer of most kind and active sympathies. James had worked under him on the railroad, and he particularly liked him. He at once entered into the good brother’s feelings. “Let us walk down the road, James,” he said; “you can easily overtake your sister, and we can as well talk over our business walking as standing here.” Accordingly, they proceeded. When they reached the little bridge we have mentioned, Mr. Richards involuntarily paused and looked down the stream, which here and there seemed playing with the moonbeams. “Why, there is your sister, James,” he said, “sitting on Hardy’s Rock."
“The Lord bless ye! and so she is!” said James.
The words were scarcely uttered out of his lips when Margaret slid down the steep side of the rock into the pool beneath. James uttered a wild scream, and both young men ran down the road together at their utmost speed. The place was soonest accessible by the road, but that was winding, and the distance was full an eighth of a mile. When they reached the spot, a white muslin scarf Margaret had worn was floating on the water. Both jumped in. James, impelled by the instinct of his affection, forgot he could not swim, and Richards, to his dismay, saw him sinking. He dragged him out, bade him remain quiet, and plunging in again, he very soon brought up Margaret’s body. But the time had been fatally prolonged by poor James, and every effort to restore her was unavailing. A company of Irishmen coming from their work below joined them. They entered into the scene with hand, heart, and tongue. “Ha!” said one of them, “it was Judy yesterday was afther saying, ‘He’ll never marry Margaret’ -- maning William Maxwell. It’s that Thracy girl, with houses and lands, he’s afther. Curse the Yankees, there’s no sowl in them!”
“It’s not William Maxwell at all,” said another: “he’s a dacent young man; it’s his father’s rule upon him!” Richards bade them all be silent, saying it was no time now for such a discussion. “Sure that’s rasonable,” said one—“And sure I did not mane you at all, Mr. Richards,” said the man of the sweeping anathema, “for it’s an Irish heart you have, anyway, and that’s what all the boys say.”
James seemed to hear nothing. He was rubbing and kissing alternately one of Margaret’s hands that was firmly closed, and he at last succeeded in taking from it the crucifix which it firmly grasped. Just at this moment a man had alighted from a wagon, and was looking on. “The Almighty be praised!” cried James, pressing the disengaged crucifix vehemently to his lips. Mar-
[p. 140]
garet having died with it in her hand was to him a token of infinite good.
The looker on, at this action of James, turned to his companion in the wagon, saying -- “It’s only a Paddy girl,” * got in, and drove on. The Irishmen, who till then had been too much absorbed to notice him, looked up, and perceiving it was the elder Maxwell,, they uttered curses deep and loud, and threatening summary vengeance, they were following, when James interposed. “No, no,” he said, with fearful calmness, “lave him to me, boys—when her wake is over will be time enough.” Richards saw him turn away, murmur something in a low voice, lay the crucifix on Margaret’s hand, and kiss them both together.
Margaret was carried to the dwelling of an Irish friend; a priest was brought, and the ceremonies of their religion were strictly observed.
Immediately after the funeral, Mr. Richards, who had scarcely lost sight of James, took him aside—poor fellow, he looked as if he had lived twenty years in the three preceding days. “James,” he said, “tell me truly, did you not make a vow to revenge your sister’s death?”
“Sure I did that same, sir—on her crucifix, and on the poor, dead cold hand that held it. God forgive me—but could I help it? There she lay-- dead! -- dead! -- the sweetest flower that ever blossomed trampled under their feet—when I heard the very man that had done it say, ‘ it’s only a Paddy girl!’ Oh, Mr. Richards, my heart’s blood boiled, and my father and my mother it was, and all my people, I heard crying me on to vengeance, and I did swear to take their lives—father and son; and I have made confession of the same to Father Brady.”
“And that has saved you from this horrid crime, James”
“Not that, sir.”
“What then!”
“It’s just yourself, Mr. Richards—you and Mrs. Ray. --It was just your goodness to me that stilled the howling tempest in my breast -- and for your sake and Mrs. Ray’s, I forgave all your people. It was Margaret said—they were almost her last words—‘Mrs. Ray is every way mother-like to me;’ and didn’t I see the old lad after crying hot tears over her? Sure, Mr. Richards, if there were more like you and the old lady—God bless her!—there would be an end of cruelty and hate, and love would bind all hearts together—even your people’s and mine!”
-------------------------------------------------
*This expression was in fact uttered by one of our people, and heard by the brother of the girl at such a moment as we have described.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
"The Irish Girl"
Subject
The topic of the resource
Prejudice against Irish immigrants, Catholics, Protestants, love, Christian virtue.
Description
An account of the resource
A young Irish servant is in love with a man whose father will not let him marry her because she is a “Paddy girl.” The young woman drowns, shortly after learning of her beloved's decision to marry a non-Irish woman. Her brother vows revenge, but changes his mind.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine M.
By the author of "Hope Leslie," &c.
Source
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United States Magazine and Democratic Review, Vol. X, P. 129-140
Publisher
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John L. O'Sullivan
Date
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February 1842
Contributor
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J. Robinson, D. Gussman
Relation
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Also collected (with revisions) in:
The Dollar Magazine, Vol. II, 1842
Tales and Sketches, Series two, New York. 1842. P. 191-244
Language
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English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
1842
Becket
Catholics
crucifix
drowning
God
Immigrants
Irish
orphan
Pittsfield
prejudice
Protestants
Providence
railroad
religion
servant
shanty
snow
The United States Democratic Review
widow
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/16ce29c58ebf4a7a454b607474f0bada.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=oyvIA8353rtGvJ1YcwQV-feu1Pns9ciugQV1xUYNht768pTMx4pwYIIzyC3ed5ieuEhxUrMNmAUkVgGWgKmc3LDQUtRwgUlWcpCFZnuwzWM8Ue4oM9iVN2W6JVP03B9oGH%7EW4wt3zyawCLYQWWYmyYq1iDfqtYuqLqymCmYbKv2jp6%7EJioGs4c5yEy%7EtSorC6NlIp6-OELKy2UCPEIRBQEFk3K8wJarKSn-mrr3a49be2IMdc8MM3rCGQWZd9Vu5tHrd7Dx9Fyj7gk9ac%7EJR1R0gErRvL9fEdjO%7EhvszXaQ4V4NbSl5ULOh9rGmv3qc2hYodiFfVK9k4FPt86ZQW1A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
d081a5a0ae4a2185d059030b940d23be
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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1846
Subject
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Stories published in 1846.
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
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“The Patch-Work Quilt”
BY MISS C.M. SEDGWICK
THE Germans are the best economists in all the small details of life. They have the true husbandry of social means. Their faculties as well as their outer world are under the dominion of a wise economy. They carry it into the work of their imaginations. An every-day household circumstance, a piece of relic furniture or a common domestic event will supply them warp and woof for a complicated fabric, which they adorn with quaint or, it may be, brilliant fancies. In their illustrations of homely domestic life, they have the great advantage of awakening general sympathy and appealing to universal experience. Rare events and great deeds are for the few, while all share in the family history—the daily bread of life. The furniture and utensils of our childhood's home are idealized by affection and consecrated in after life. Poetry may chance to be written about them, but if it be not, they are poetry to us. They have life and a living agency. In the German fable "needles and pins come out of the tailor's shed and lose themselves in the dark, and the shovel and the broom stand upon the step and quarrel and fight." Our fancies are more subdued, but still old household things are instinct with our early lives. They embody hopes and memories long ago faded; laughs that rang out in merrier days, forgotten like the thrush's song, or the Summer's rose. What woman but can recall some bundle-drawer, or piece-bag, into which, as a girl, she was permitted to dive when a new doll was to be dressed, to explore its rolls of chintz and silk, and to gather up bits of fringe and fragments of lace, muslin and embroidery: and in long after years when the chapter of life is nearly read out, when the eye is dim and the hand tremulous, a fragment of these stuffs, made to perish in the using, which, nevertheless, have survived the frames fearfully and wonderfully made, meets the eye and unseals the fountains of emotion. A piece of puttied china will recall the family gathering and the festive dinner, and the whole array of the pantry to which the hungry school-child was admitted for the bit of pudding that thoughtful kindness had set aside.
I went, a few mornings since, to see an old family servant who had passed her childhood and youth in the service of my parents. M__, 'Little Lil' as she was called, and is even now, though a bulky old woman, was not born to serve, but to enjoy. She is the very incarnation of hilarity. She has floated down the current of life without dread, anxiety, or regret. Not 'sans reproche,' for Lilly lives in a strict community, and her morals are not of the sternest, but feeling no responsibility (that she evidently looks upon as the exclusive privilege of "white folks") she has escaped anxiety and remorse. She is the most vivacious of that race whom God seems to have endowed with cheerfulness, as a divine armor against the evils of man's infliction. Lil, at three score and ten, has a face as smiling as a child's— not a mark of time or sorrow upon it. One of the boasted Saxon race, one of our New England matrons, who had met with a tithe of the dark events of Lilly's life would never smile again. She lives in a wretched hut where food and clothing seem to come to her by happy chances. She is the survivor of nearly all her cotemporaries; she has buried parents, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and has lost some half dozen husbands, by death or desertion, yet, I doubt not, she would dance like a girl of eighteen to a merry measure. She is as earnest and indefatigable as she ever was in all good natured gossiping, and if, by any chance, she sheds a tear, it is like the rain when the sun shines—a smile chases it. She loves her old friends, but when they drop off she turns to new ones. Like most of the colored people she is fond of merry-making and all social cheerfulness—all gatherings of human beings together, except in churches or at funerals. Solemnity is night and darkness to Lilly. She likes the excitement of a camp-meeting, but she likes it not for its religious purposes, but for any little chance crum of folly or absurdity that may be dropped there. She can even tolerate a funeral if there is a gleam of fun upon it. I once saw her at one where her side glances and stolen gesticulations were subjects for Wilkie, or Mount, the true painter of our home humorous scenes. The chief mourner, being of our Saxon race, Lilly pointed out to me as the white widow. The ceremony was marshaled by a servant of a militia colonel, and the procession of wretched one-horse vehicles, equestrians mounted on broken-down hacks, and pedestrians scrambling after, ranged with as much show of ceremony as a
[p. 124]
Roman ovation. Our master of ceremonies—being mounted on a black steed of " the colonel's"—calling out, as if he were commanding forces at a battle of Waterloo, now " to the right! " and now " to the left!" and now " close your ranks, gentlemen and ladies ! "—himself, sometimes a hundred yards in advance of the procession, and then curveting and galloping among the old women and children to their infinite dismay. "It is as good as 'lection-day,'" said Lilly, aside, to me.
Though Lilly is a precious element in our country contentments, I rarely visit her. She saves her friends the trouble of looking after her, by dropping in once or twice a week, with an ample basket on her arm, which goes much heavier than it comes, for Lilly is in good fellowship with the servants, and she pays the heads of the house in sunshine (the best of coins) for all she gets. She is to the kitchen what the newspaper is to the parlor, and better, inasmuch as the spoken is better than the written word.
I met Lilly outside her door, and without her wonted smile, and on my asking her why she had been absent for a week, she answered:
"Why, Miss__, don't you know Hector is dying!" Hector was a' fiddler by profession, and was dying, as most of our colored people do, of a galloping consumption. After adding a few particulars of his illness, Lilly led the way in and I followed. Her little room, its rafters blackened with smoke, was darker than usual, being filled with men, women and little children of her own color. Any occasion, it matters not much what, calls these social people together. A mess was boiling over the fire for their future cheer, the only future they look to, and the dying man was very gently sinking away. He was bolstered with pillows on a chair, and he kindly nodded to me as his friends, with their customary civility, fell back to give me a view of him. He beckoned to Lilly and said something to her, but so faintly that I did not hear him. She gave me a significant glance, and going to the other side of the room took Hector's fiddle from the case in which it was hanging and brought it to him. He dimly smiled and took the bow—he could not hold the fiddle—Lilly held it for him. He essayed a last tune, and, the ruling passion strong in death, attempted a lively one, but he was too far gone: the notes were few and solemn—the bow fell from his hand and he breathed his last. There was one moment of death-stillness, then Lilly taking up the instrument as reverently as if it contained a living spirit, replaced it in its case and, brushing away a tear, said:
"I wish you all to take notice that Hector said to me last night, ' Lilly,' says he,' do you keep my violin as long as you live'—and I will, and let the select men and Deacon Bates talk!"
She then went into her bed-room, beckoning to me to follow her. She selected in a hurried and troubled manner the articles necessary to the last offices for Hector, and having given them to his friends in the next room, she said to me:
"This is the worst of taking boarders, having them die, and seeing to things. It’s a chore I don't like, but then I ought not to complain, for Hector was lively as long as he lived. It’s only a week ago he played for our folks to dance, and come what would, there was always a pleasant tone in Hector's fiddle! We shall be lonesome now. He's gone—he drew company as the sun draws water, and shone on them when they came. It was always bright where Hector was!"
"Has he saved anything," I asked her," to pay the expenses of his sickness?"
"Saved, Miss! Fiddlers never save—they enjoy themselves—and what's the use of saving? What would he be the better for it now if he had gold in his trunk and two full suits? He was welcome every where, and the best was set before him. Nobody grudged Hector, and why should they? He paid in fiddling; he was the best fiddler that ever walked the country, and if he had laid up clothes, as some foolish folks do, what good would they do him now! A very little serves now, you see, and while he wanted it he had enough. Major Smith gave him that military coat he died in. The collar was silk velvet and the old epaulette kept bright to the last. That red and yellow plaid handkerchief round his neck was given to him by a New York lady at the Pittsfield Hotel. Old Aunt Esther wanted me to take them off from him this morning. She said they did not seem suitable for a dying man to die in. ' Pooh!' says I, ' what's that to Hector? He likes to look lively as long as he lives.' 'Lilly,' she whined out, ' it will be a solemn change to his winding-sheet!' ' Never mind, Aunt Esther,' says I,' he won't see that, and you can enjoy it as much as you please.' You are thinking I am wicked, Miss, but white folks does enjoy such things! I heard old Aunt Esther say to Miss Babcock the other day:— 'Sally,' says she, 'you and I have enjoyed a great many sicknesses and a great many deaths together,' says she."
The difference in the spirit of the two races as elucidated by Lilly is certainly striking. Those who look farthest back and forward may be most exalted in the intellectual scale, but there is a blessed compensation for a lower graduation, in the buoyant, cheerful, enjoying spirit, that gilds the dark cloud, makes pleasant waters to spring from rocks, and plucks away flowers from thorns.
It was evident that Lilly was ingeniously prolonging our conversation to escape from the solemnities of death in the next room, and I smiled at
[p. 125]
the eagerness she betrayed when having, as I fancied, listened, to the last thing she could have to say, she cut short my leave-taking by "Oh ! Miss, don't you want to see that quilt I
told you about, that's made of pieces of all our folks' gowns ?" "Our folks" is, you know, Lilly's designation for my own family, of which she was a member for the first thirty years of her life. I did wish to see the quilt. It was one of those memorials that in a German household would have been held a sacred history. Lilly produced it from among a store of quilts which she has been her whole life amassing, not as property—no saint or hermit was ever freer from the desire of accumulation than Lilly. Diogenes himself had not a truer contempt for it. Her instincts are limited to the present. She has not the power of forecast. She is grateful to any one who will give her a present pleasurable sensation, but she would not thank her best friend for an ample annuity to become due a year hence. The quilts are not in her eye property. They are not the means of warmth and comfort—they are never used as such—they are story-books—family legends—illustrated traditions. Lilly reverses the French maxim," I'l n'ya a run de beau que utile;" with her there is nothing useful but the beauty that touches the spring of her imagination. The Italians have a saying that a transplanted tree will not take root till it has been danced around. The merry gathering that forms the quilt perpetuates its pleasant associations to Lilly. The quilt in question is what is called a beggar's patch-work, formed of hexagonal bits of calico and silk. Being originally made of unwashed materials and wisely kept for show, it has preserved its original gloss. Yes, these base, perishable materials have remained unchanged, when those of whose garments they were the fragments, have long ago, played out their parts in life, and are now clothed in the white robes of the saints. In these little bits of silk and cotton is stored the memory of many a tear or smile.
"There, Miss__," said Lilly, "there is a bit of your mother's wedding-gown, worn long before you were born, of course, or I either, as to that matter; but 1 have heard my mother say there was not such another this side of Boston.
"Woman, or gown, Lilly!"
"Either, Miss__, either, but I mean gown. Gowns was gowns then, that could stand alone. It was a merry time they had, ma'am." Thus, Lilly, always calls her beloved mistress. "Ma'am's grandmother, old as the hills, she came over from Hampshire, came to the wedding—riding all the way on a pillion behind her grandson—a deal pleasanter that, than railway-ing. That is a bit of the old lady's chintz. Mother has told me how straight she stood in it, and how she curtsied to show your mother and Miss Susan—Kin—Ken— Kemp—Oh, I forget her name. The young folks learned manners in her day. The old lady did not live to mount her pillion again. She died soon after the wedding and was buried here, and her tombstone is one of the oldest in the burying ground. It does not stand as straight as the old lady did. Is not that square pretty? pink shot on white. That was a bit of Miss Susan's dress. She came all the way from New York to be your mother's bride's-maid. She was the beauty of the city, and gay as a bird, or butterfly. She sang, and danced and frolicked, but for all that, she gained the old lady's heart and her son's too. Your uncle, he was a young minister then—a missionary to the Stockbridge Indians. They were here yet, and he had them all dressed up in the fine scarlet and purple broadcloths Queen Anne sent them, to show off to Miss Susan. But the old lady was the master hand, she did the courting, and one bright day she had two horses brought for them to ride together. She had given him a hint to tell his love-tale, as they rode up the hill and through the woods by the green pond. But when the horses came, the one for the minister was prancing and gay, and when he would have mounted he could not or dared not. So Miss Susan, a little fear-naught she was, ordered the saddles changed, and rode away laughing and cheering, and he, poor creature, after her. But they were not to hitch their horses together, for us often as he began to hem and ha, and stammer and so on, Miss Susan's horse would get the deuce into him, and off he would go, and at last it got through poor Mr. John's hair, that for love of his kin, she did not want to say him no and she could not say yes. Now, Miss__, can't you see her in that silk square! so rosy and so lively! "
I wiped away a tear that Lilly's bright vision had called forth. I saw this "Miss Susan" a few weeks since, now, herself, a granddame past ninety and blind! But that precious oil of a glad disposition that burned SO brightly in her youth still burns cheerily on; and though the fire of her earlier days be somewhat diminished, she is still the central light of her home circle.
"That's a piece of ma'am's dressing-gown," resumed Lilly, "that your father brought her from Philadelphia. It was handsome enough to wear to meeting, but ma'am always took most pains to look well at home. Your father's eyes was her looking-glass. She had it on when the little girl you were named for died. I can see her now as she bent down over the dead child, and I heard her soft voice saying 'The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be his name.' I had heard the minister preach from that text a thousand times, but it seemed to me then that I heard those words for the first time, as they rose
[p. 126]
out of her heart. She was bending over—that was the way she always took trouble—rising up against it only makes the blow the harder you know. They named you after her, but I minded it was long and long before ma'am called your name. It was Russy, or Rosy, or any thing but that name. "All the children had frocks like that," she continued, pointing to a pink and green plaid; "I can see them all now. One running out to feed the chickens, another bringing in eggs, one dressing dolls, and little Harley telling how many lions and tigers he had killed. Oh, dear, dear! Miss__, can it be they have all grown up, men and women, and are dead, gone forever! But that," she added, turning instinctively from these sad thoughts, "that is a bit of the gown your cousin Olive wore when the French Doctor came to court her, and slipped into the saddle-room to put on his nankins. Ben, unknowingly locked the door, and when the poor little fellow was let out he was as blue as indigo, and his teeth chattered so that Miss Olive could not tell whether he talked French or English."
"He got his answer in the shortest of all English words, did he not, Lilly?"
"Why, yes, he was French," reason enough, Lilly would have thought, had he issued from a Parisian dressing-room instead of a country saddle-house. " Miss Olive was odd," continued Lilly. "She kept 'on saying, no, no, to every one that came. I used to say, it’s just like winding a tangled skein, Miss Olive; if you begin with putting through your thread, so you will do to the 'end. But that Miss Olive did not mean, for she vowed if she lived to turn the old maid's corner she would kill herself. She did for all go fairly round it, and married a widower at last, who was looking out, as he said, for a permanent housekeeper. Even ma'am could not help smiling when she heard that. There's a season for all things," wisely added Lilly, though she had herself, tried the conjugal experiment at all seasons. Lilly now came down to the epoch of my own memories, and visions of the past crowded upon me. My school days, our breakfasts and dinners, our meetings and partings at the old home, our merry-makings and our tragedies, my school-mates, the partners of my life, the partners of my hoped-for immortality, all were brought forth into actual presence and glowing life by these little talismans! My blinding tears fell thick and heavy over them. Lilly dashed off the great drops that came in spite of her, and rolling up the quilt thrust it back into the old cupboard, muttering something about there being no use in crying. We parted without exchanging another word.
As I retraced my way to the village I marked the changes since this patchwork history was constructed. The Indians that figured in Queen Anne's broadcloths have been driven from their loved homes here farther and farther into the shadowy West and are melted away. The wooded sides of our mountains have been cleared to feed yonder smoking furnace. Those huge fabrics for our friend H.'s chemical experiments indicate discoveries in science that have changed the aspect of the world. The whistle reached my ear from the engine plying over the very track where our good old granddame found but a bridle-path. The meadows enriched by the overflowings of the river, and ploughed by the sun-beams remain, much as they were, when the Indians planted their corn here; but the white man has let the sun in upon the hill-side, has made his plantations and his drainings. Churches have been built and decayed and built again. The Bishop visits his Diocesan where 'Miss Susan's' missionary lover preached in an Indian dialect, and Puritanism holds kindly fellowship with the church. Houses have decayed and new ones have been built over the old hearthstone. New friends almost as good as the old have come among us. Families have multiplied, and sent forth members to join the grand procession towards the Oregon, and at this very moment the bell is ringing for a meeting of the town to extend the limits of our burying-ground, it being full!
All these changes, and the patch-work-quilt remains in its first gloss!
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
"The Patch-Work Quilt"
Subject
The topic of the resource
Servants and family history
Description
An account of the resource
An elderly Black woman's story of a patchwork quilt that was sewn during the thirty years she worked in the home of a White family.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss C. M. Sedgwick
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The Columbian Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine [edited by John Inman and Robert A. West] p. 123-26.
Publisher
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Columbian Magazine
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
March 1846
Contributor
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J. Robinson
Relation
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Also collected in:
Sedgwick, Catharine M. "The Patch Work Quilt." Love of Quilts: A Treasury of Classic Quilting Stories. Ed. Margaret Aldrich. Minneapolis: Voyageur, 2004. 24-33. Google Books. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
1846
Columbian Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine
Consumption
Death
Germans
God
Indians
marriage
missionaries
Patch-work
quilts
Race
Relics
Saxon
servant
Stockbridge
Waterloo
West
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
1858
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories published in 1858.
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
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<p>[Miss Sedgwick]</p>
<p>THE SLAVE AND SLAVE-OWNER.</p>
<p> "I would rather be anything than a slave, — except a slave-owner!" said a wise and good man. The slave-owner inflicts wrongs, — the slave but suffers it. He has friends and champions by thousands. Some men live only to defend and save him. Many are willing to fight for him. Some even to die for him. </p>
<p> The most effective romance of our times has been written for slaves. The genius of more than one of our best poets has been consecrated to them. They divide the hearts and councils of our great nation. They are daily remembered in the prayers of the faithful. They are the most earnest topic of the christian world.</p>
<p> But the slave-owner! who weeps, who prays, who lives, who dies for him! True, he is of the boasted Saxon race, or descended from the brilliant Gaul, or gifted Celt. He is enriched by the transmitted civilization of all ages. He has been nurtured by christian institutions. To him have been opened the fountains of Divine truth. But</p>
<p>[25]</p>
<p>from this elevation he is to be dragged down by the mill-stone of slavery.</p>
<p> If he be a rural landlord, he looks around: upon, his ancestral possessions, and sees the curse of slave-ownership upon them, — he knows the time must come when "the field shall yield no meat, the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stall." To him the onward! tendencies of the age are reversed. His movement is steadily backward.</p>
<p> To the slave are held out the rewards of fortitude, of long suffering, of meekness, of patience in tribulation. What and where are the promises to the slave-owner?</p>
<p> Thousands among them are in a false position. They are the involuntary maintainers of wrong, and transmitters of evil. Hundreds among them have scrupulous consciences and tender feelings. They use power gently. They feed their servants bountifully. They nurse the sick kindly,—and devote weary days to their instruction. But alas! they live under the laws of slave-owners. They are forbidden to teach the slave to read, write, or cipher, to give them the means of independent progress and increasing light. Their teaching; is as bootless as the labor of Sysyphus! most wearisome and disheartening.</p>
<p> The great eras of domestic life, bright to the thoughtless slave, are dark with forecasting shadows to the slave-owner. The mother cannot for-</p>
<p>[26]</p>
<p>get her sorrows, because a man-child is born. If she dare contemplate his future, she sees that the activities of his nature must be repressed, his faculties but half developed, his passions stimulated by irresponsible power, inflamed by temptation, and solicited by convenient opportunity. She knows that his path in life must be more and more entangled as he goes onward, — darker and darker with the ever-deepening misery of this cruel institution.</p>
<p> Is it a “merry marriage-bell' that rings in the ear of a slave-owning mother for the bridal of her daughter? Does not her soul recoil from the possible (probable?) evils before her child; to be placed, perchance, on an isolated plantation, environed by natural enemies to; see, it may be, the brothers and sisters of her own children follow their slave-mother to the field, or severed from her to be sold at the slave-market ?</p>
<p> Compared with these miseries of the slave-owner, what are the toils and stripes of the slave? what his labor without stimulus or requital? what his degradation to a chattel? what the deprivation of security to the ties of kindred, and the annulling of that relation which is their source and chiefest blessing ?</p>
<p> The slave looks forward with ever-growing hope to the struggle that must come. He joyfully "smells the battle afar off." The slave-owner folds his arms, and shuts his eyes in paralyzing</p>
<p>[27]</p>
<p>despair. He hears the fearful threatenings of the gathering storm. He knows it must come, — to him fatally. It is only a question of time!</p>
<p>Who would not " rather be a slave than a slave-owner ? "</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
"The Slave and Slave Owner"
Subject
The topic of the resource
Abolitionism, slavery.
Description
An account of the resource
Abolitionist sketch published in a giftbook created for the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society (1858).
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<em>Autographs for Freedom,</em> ed. Julia Griffiths.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
John P. Jewett and Company
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1858
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
D. Gussman
1858
abolitionism
anti-slavery
Autographs for Freedom
Celt
gift book
Julia Griffiths
plantation
Saxon
slave-owners
slavery
slaves
Sysyphus
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
1844
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document.
A long period must elapse before the accumulation of human existences and the progress of society shall carry the New-England people forward to that philosophical indifference to individual character and history which characterizes an older civilization. They are as yet but an extended family circle. Even our huge railroad cars, which very nearly reduce humanity to floating particles, have not yet divested our travellers of their customary social charities and interests. I was struck with some illustrations of this truth during a day’s travel over the railroad that traverses Massachusetts. This road passes through the most populous part of our state after its magnificent passage over the hills of Berkshire, where a work of immense labour and beautiful art is brought into striking contrast with savage nature, and set off with the accessories of fir-covered hills, wild glens, and headlong mountain streams. Along this road some of the peculiarities of our stirring population are manifested. At each village there is a swarm of fresh passengers, and at each station a dispersion; and however brief their transit may be,
[169 [P]]
there is some trifling intercommunication that discloses the condition and objects of the parties. In a similar situation in Europe, the individuals, each comprising in his own existence a world of interests, purposes, and hopes, would make their entrances and exits without exciting more sensation or inquiry than the luggage thrown into the baggage-car.
I like this social life; it is the beating of a healthy human heart that sends pulsations throughout the frame of society. It may occasionally license idle and inconvenient curiosity, but this is a trifling evil, and so considerably mitigated by the progress of civilization, that, since the death of the Dutchman who, according to the veracious chronicler of such matters, Diedrich Knickerbocker, was put to the question by a Yankee, we have never heard of its involving fatal consequences.
On the occasion to which I have alluded, a young friend and myself started from Pittsfield for Boston. In a few minutes we had glided from a neighbourhood where each house and tree has the familiar look of an old acquaintance. The passengers were all strangers to us, and we probably betrayed the stiffness and reserve incident to a new position; for one of those active-minded people, who assume to themselves the breaking down of all conventional fences, took pity on us, and, looking over my companion’s shoulder at a volume of Childe Harold which she was reading, ask-
[170]
ed her “if she were fond of poetry?” The sort of smile that accompanied her inaudible answer did not encourage him to proceed, and he broke ground with me by asking me “if I knew a young person in black who was sitting alone at the end of the car?” “I had never seen her before.” “So I expected, ma’am,” said he; “I don’t think there is any one in the car does know her, for I have asked several. The conductor says she came aboard at Albany. I asked her if she lived there. ‘No,’ she said. I asked her where she did live. She seemed to sigh, as it were, and said she had lived Far West. She is alone, and so bashful that I did not love to ask her many questions; maybe you will be able to find her out, ma’am.” As I looked again at the timid girl, and caught the expression of a face of most striking sweetness and modesty, I secretly wished I might.
But my friend’s lively interests did not all settle down on this pretty young creature. “You know that old gentleman, of course, ma’am?” he said, pointing to an elderly gentleman a little in advance and on one side of us, with a velvet cap on his head, and an eye, remarkable for its acuteness, riveted to the newspaper he was reading. I confessed I did not. “Why, is it possible! He is the ex-President, Mr. Adams!” I naturally manifested so much pleasure at this information, and gazed at the venerated statesman with such excited attention, that my new friend offered
[171]
to introduce me to him! I rather impertinently asked if he were acquainted with him. “Not much,” he said; “I got into the car at Pittsfield only; but I have had some talk with him upon the petition question, and find him quite sociable.” I was saved the pain of refusing the proffered hospitality by a call for the Westfield passengers; and my new friend left us, regretting so much the sudden disruption of our acquaintance, that if we should ever meet again, it will probably be on the most intimate footing.
Mr. Adams was not left long in the quiet enjoyment of his newspaper; the rumor of the great presence had spread through all the passenger-cars, and a lady, attended by some dozen men and women, came from a forward car into ours, and, while her companions stood in the vacant space above the stove, made her way between furred cloaks and Macintoshes to Mr. Adams. “She could not lose so good an opportunity,” she said, “to express her admiration of his course in Congress; all her friends admired it; she read every one of his speeches, and she made her children read them, and her son John knew a great many passages by heart - her son’s name was John Quincy Adams!” All this was urbanely received, and as the lady turned to go to her place, her eyes fell on the little girl in black, who had moved her seat to a chair near us. “Oh, how do you do, my dear?” said she; “I did not know you
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had come on to-day: so, you did not find your friends in Albany?” “No, ma’am.” “Dear me! ‘twas a trial to you, was not it?” The girl made no answer, except by a slight quivering of her lips, and the good-natured woman proceeded to propose she should migrate into the next car with her. “The places are all full there, to be sure,” she said; “but I’ll ask Mr. Smith to take your place here; and it will be so much more sociable for you to be with those you are acquainted with.” It was quite evident the young person was not inclined to this mode of sociability. She made a pretext of some luggage she had by her for not wishing to quit her seat, and declined moving. I made a bold push, and arresting the stranger-lady for a moment, said, in a whisper, “You are acquainted with that young person?” “Oh, yes - that is, she rode in the car with us from Utica to Albany. I live in Utica; my father is one of the oldest inhabitants.” She was proceeding to give me the statistics of Utica, when I again recurred to the pretty stranger. “You have only, then, a three hours’ acquaintance with her?” “Not much more; she went into the hotel with me at Albany, and left me to look up some relations - on the father’s side, I think she said - I guess she is an orphan. Somehow I did not like to ask her direct; but orphans, you know, always have a peculiar look. Amanda-Anne asked her her name - Amanda-Anne is my daughter - she took such
[173[P 2]]
an interest in her, and so did Miss Gilchrist - Miss Gilchrist, of Bond-street -” “What is her name?” I asked. “Oh, yes, I was speaking of that; her name is Lizzy Dale. It is not a distinguished, sounding name - do you think it is, ma’am? however, my interest in her was the same: it must be a trial to travel alone so far.” “Far! do you know where she comes from?” “Not exactly; she told us she came down Lake Erie, so it must be to the west of that. Excuse me, ma’am, I seem to be in the conductor’s way here.” It was no seeming; our whispered confab was broken off; and the good lady returned to her car, much to the conductor’s relief.
We stopped an age, by railroad time, at Springfield - that is, some half hour. Some of the passengers went, post-haste, to steam down a dinner at the hotel; other flocked to a feeding-house close at hand; and Lizzy Dale, my friend, and myself, were left alone in the car. We begged her to partake our substantial sandwiches. She took the offer in kindness, not as an intrusion, thanked us very sweetly, but declined, saying she had no appetite, and taking a biscuit from the little basket she carried in her lap, she said she “ate only to get rid of a sensation of faintness.” We fell into conversation on the convenient neutral ground of strangers, the weather, the beauty of the country, &c. She expressed herself with a propriety and delicacy that indicated educa-
[174]
tion, and increased my interest in her. My companion and myself referred to old friends in Springfield, and pointed out places familiar to us. Lizzy Dale sighed, and said, half to herself, “I wish I could see any place I have ever seen before.” I involuntarily looked at her, hoping for something farther from her. She turned away, went to a window on the opposite side, and put her handkerchief to her eyes. Just then there came a rattling up to the car an open barouche, bringing a gentleman to be forwarded to Boston, as it appeared, a grandfather, whose wife, and daughter-in-law with three or four lovely children, had come to see him off. It was evident they were not familiar with railroads, and this was a marked moment in the family history. “Is this a car, grandpa?” exclaimed one of the little girls, scrambling over the sofas and chairs; “it seems more like a house.” “Julia, my dear,” called out the mother, “keep close by the door; they won’t give us a minute’s time to get off.” “Oh, let the children enjoy themselves,” said the good grandpa; “you’ll have ample warning.” “My dear,” said his careful wife, “are you sure this is the safest car?” “I take it for granted it is,” he replied, half bowing to us, “for I see the ladies are here: I always trust to their looking out for the safe places.” “My dear husband, you should select one of the last passenger-cars, for I read all the railroad accidents, and they always es-
[175]
cape; and you must sit about in the middle of the car, to avoid some danger, I forget what it is -” “And near a window, to avoid some other,” replied the husband, laughing; “I forget what that is - suffocation, probably; but I’ll keep a good look-out, rely on’t.”
“Oh, don’t look out! that is the most dangerous of all. You remember that dreadful accident?”
“Yes, I remember them all.”
“Ah! you may laugh now; but promise me one thing: you’ll be prepared for a collision - now pray don’t laugh again - I mean, be on your guard - keep it in mind.”
“I have pleasanter things, my dear, to keep in mind. Hal, take good care of the chickens while I am gone.”
“Yes, sir, I will; and I don’t mean to ask you to bring me anything, grandpa; but if you should see a drum - I don’t ask you to buy it, sir - but if you should happen to try it, and it makes a good thumping sound -”
“Then you would like it, Hal?”
“Yes, sir, I should.”
“Ah, Annie, come here,” said the grandfather to a little girl, apparently not more than three years old, who, with the instinctive sympathy of childhood, had crept onto the seat beside Lizzy Dale, and, putting her arm over her shoulder, was saying, “What are you so sorry for?” “Excuse the child, my dear,” he added, with a glance at Lizzy Dale’s blushing face that involuntarily expressed the same inquiry.
[176]
There began to be some movement preparatory to the resumption of our journey, and, after many huggings and kissings, the family parted, and the wagon drove off, and as long as we could see them the little people were waving handkerchiefs and kissing hands to grandpa; and I did not wonder he was so cherished when I looked in his fresh, kindly face, which indicated that the goodly fruits the heart bears were all ripened, none decayed. He too, like the rest of us, was attracted by the little magnet, Lizzy Dale, and opening a basket, which he informed us his grandchildren had prepared for his refreshment, he discovered among fine pears and apples a single bunch of grapes. “Now that’s pretty,” said he; “The boy you saw here, my Hal, has picked the only bunch of grapes on his vine - the dog shall have his drum - take them, my dear,” to Lizzy: “you refuse the pears and apples; you can’t refuse these - they were put here on purpose for you.” Lizzy Dale took them; and I believe, if she had followed the bidding of her heart, she would have laid her head on his kind bosom and “cried it out,” so much was the solitary girl evidently touched by his fatherly tone and manner. But this was neither a time nor place for such demonstrations. The cars filled up, and a young woman, with a profusion of pink ribands on a blue silk bonnet, and flowers of all colours resting on plump cheeks that outbloomed them all, dashing earrings,
[177]
and a painted brooch - an American imitation of Roman mosaic - dropped into a seat beside Lizzy Dale; first, however, carefully stowing away a bandbox and parasol, and arranging on her lap a basket, a reticule, and a pocket-handkerchief trimmed with broad Swiss lace. She was alone too, but so self-sufficient and self-protecting a person as to save us from painful sympathy. One could hardly look at her and Lizzy Dale, brought into this accidental juxtaposition, without thinking of the china and earthen jars of the fable. The earthen jar soon began sundry knocks in the guise of questions, such as, “Do you know that young gentleman in a frock-coat, with whiskers? Do you admire whiskers? Is not that tuft of hair what they call an imperial, or is it a mousetache? Do you know who that young lady is in a Leg’orn? Do you think Leg’orns, or Tuscans, or Rutland braid, will be fashionable next summer? Did you ever work in a factory? Do you like tending the looms, or spinning best? Oh, I didn’t understand you - you ain’t acquainted with either? Perhaps you prefer the paper business?” Getting very brief and negative answers to this torrent of questions, she changed to the narrative style, and proceeded to detail her own experience. She stated the relative advantages of a residence at North Adams, Chicopee, and Lowell; enumerated their several educational advantages and “society privileges,” and concluded
[178]
with a digression on the profits of female factory labour, rather implying that hers was performed en amateur.
To this part of her discourse Lizzy Dale lent an attentive ear, and in return asked several questions. “Were there private boarding-houses where a young person might be retired when not at work? Could she name any widow, or elderly persons keeping such a boarding-house? Could a person quite unacquainted with that sort of labour soon learn it?” These questions, though uttered in a low and tremulous voice, were distinctly heard by our good grandpa. Hearing in some cases is wonderfully preserved by keeping the heart free from incrustation. He sat directly before Lizzy Dale, and after fidgeting on his seat, he turned to her and said, “My dear, my dear, factory business is a very good business: there’s no one respects our factory girls more than I do; they are an honour to the country. It is a very suitable business for those - for those it’s suitable to. But I would not advise you, my dear, to be thinking of it: excuse me, my dear, I speak to you as if you were my child - old folks, you know, take liberties.”
“Oh, sir, I am sure it’s no liberty, and you are very, very kind.” And from that moment the poor child looked less timid, less desolate; at least till we were entering the Boston depôt, when the factory girl said to her, “My cousin
[179]
Ferdinand Pease will be at the depôt; I suppose there’ll be some one expecting you?”
“No one expects me,” she replied.
“Well, good-night,” said the factory lady, marching off with her bandbox to put herself in cousin Ferdinand’s field of vision. “The conductor will take care of you; he takes care of everybody that’s got nobody to take care of them.”
“That’s not your case, my dear,” said Lizzy’s friend. “We old people are not good for much, but we are the safest protectors for pretty young girls. I am going to get a carriage to take me to my lodgings, and you must let me set you down at your stopping-place.”
Lizzy Dale replied with many thanks, that she was afraid it was too far; that she was going to a boarding-house in Charlestown, kept by a lady her father had once known. “So much the better, my dear; I want a little ride after being shut up here, and we shall get better acquainted;” and off he ran, active as a boy, for the carriage. I imitated the good man so far as to give Lizzy Dale my card, and beg her to come and see me, and we went away to our different destinations.
I seized upon the next morning as unappropriated time to make a visit to a very old friend of my family, Miss Stuart, familiarly known to three generations as Miss Priscy, a name that always strikes a chord of cheer-
[180]
ful and most pleasant vibrations. I had not seen her for many years, and in the mean while time and chance had done some of their unkindest work upon her, stripping her of her nearest kindred, diminishing her little fortune to a mere pittance, and maiming her by the incurable fracture of one of her limbs, besides heaping on her the common infirmities of age. I confess I wished the meeting over; I dreaded seeing her with her hopeful temper vanquished, and her pleasant stream of cheerfulness all dried away. She lived alone, in a boarding-house, the most desolate of all lives. The servant who opened the door said, if I were not a stranger Miss Priscy would thank me to walk up stairs, as it was troublesome for her to get up and down. “Here I am, a wreck,” she said, after the first salutations were over; “but I keep my flag flying, as my uncle, the old commodore, used to say he would, as long as there was a timber of his ship floating.” Miss Priscy has had her day of harmless vanities and innocent triumphs, and there are tokens that they still dwell pleasantly in her memory in the rose-coloured ribands on her cap, and the earrings she still wears when even our young beauties have discarded these barbaric ornaments. She spoke of her losses since we had last met, but without complaint or repining. “I find it difficult getting about,” she said, “but I have few friends left to go and see, and so that does not much matter.
[181 [Q]]
My little income has dwindled; but you know the poet says, ‘Man wants but little here below’ and I am sure woman wants less, especially a lone woman like me, who has no one to share it with. And then there is such a pleasure in making a little last; in having all your calculations come out right; in paying your debts as they come due - a luxury nowadays that seems left to poor people; and in having a little something over for those that want it more than you do. I sometimes feel like a monument written all over with the names of the departed - but they are the names of the good and loved; and one at threescore and ten must expect to be journeying on alone, and thankful if they can look up to the celestial city and see their people gathered there. But make the best of it, my dear; this loneliness is cold and sad.” A tear stole down the furrows of her cheek. I asked her if she had not a niece that could live with her. “You forget,” she said, “how time flies: the girls are all married long ago. No, I must rough it out alone as well as I can; but,” she added, as if to check my too sad sympathy, “I have not got into the ‘Dismal Swamp’ yet; I live among the living; come down stairs with me, and see my little parlour. This is not a boarding-house; I have my own rooms and a maid, and a privilege in the kitchen; so that I can keep my tea-table, and have something like a home, and house-keeping, and hos-
[182]
pitality. Boarding-house life is too much on the community plan. I believe the association people reckon some sixteen hundred individuals to a perfect being; and to tell you the truth, I think a woman who passes her life in a boarding-house is about the sixteen hundredth part of the mistress of a well-ordered household.”
“You seem not to approve, my dear Miss Priscy, of this mode of living in community which is just going into operation in your neighbourhood, under such high auspices.”
“I don’t, my dear, I don’t. There’s no use in trying to be wiser than Providence. ‘God set the solitary in families,’ and I think it is the prettiest contrivance for happiness and virtue that ever was hit upon.” She hobbled down stairs slowly, her tongue going much faster than her feet, and opening the door into her little parlour, “Here,” she said, “is many a memorial of family life and love, which keep alive and fresh in my heart the sense of home - a solitary old woman as I am, I dwell in its atmosphere. There is the picture of my grandfather: how well I remember him in his judicial robes: there are no such men nowadays. This is the picture of my mother; she was the beauty of her time. As I remember her, she was not so young, nor quite so beautiful, but I think no one ever had so sweet a look.” Thanks to Him who “set the solitary in families,” thought I, that unequalled sweet
[183]
look belongs to most mothers. “This,” she said, pointing to one of Copley’s most brilliant portraits, “was my eldest sister Esther: she was painted in her bridal dress. That white brocade, with that single maiden-blush rose in her bosom - it would not seem quite the thing nowadays to wear a dress made like that, but then it was the custom, and custom is everything. There never was a lovelier woman to look at, or a modester: I believe she would have blushed at an immodest thought passing through another person’s mind.”
This rather ultra proof of modesty caused me to look more attentively at the beautiful face of the young bride, separate from her dress; which being painted in Copley’s most elaborate style, rather impaired the effect of a face of such exquisite delicacy that it might have been taken for that of an ideal vestal. I was struck with its resemblance to some face I had recently seen, but before I had time to arrest the floating image and verify the fancied resemblance, Miss Priscy passed on to another picture, and another, and another, illustrating each with some family trait or anecdote. “I am never alone in this room,” said she; “they are not pictures to me. I talk to them, and if they don’t answer me, I am sure they hear me.” She drew me to a corner of the room where stood a little round mahogany table covered with family relics. “Here,” said she, opening a rich old ebony
[184]
knife-case, inlaid with ivory, “here are the first silver forks that ever came into the Province of Massachusetts. Ah! there has been many a pleasant gathering round this table. I remember when first Esther made tea at it - my father called her the little Queen - there’s nothing to compare with her nowadays. Here is one more thing you must examine.” She drew to the window a high-backed chair, covered with a patch she had recently made of relics of the family brocades, and in the centre of the upright back, the family heraldry, emblazoned in silver embroidery. There is nothing that brings back the past to a woman’s memory more vividly than bits of gowns worn on family festivals or great social epochs; but just at the moment Miss Priscy was dilating on them, my attention was caught (we were standing at the window) by two figures crossing the street: the one was an elderly gentleman, holding by one hand, with a sort of Roger de Coverley courtesy, a young girl, and in the other a large paper parcel from which two drum-sticks peeped! My friend’s eyes followed the direction of mine. “Do you know those people?” she asked. “Yes - that is, I came to town in the car with them.” “Ah!” said she, and reverted to the chair, and my car acquaintances disappeared turning round the house which made the corner of the street. Presently there was a ringing of the door-bell, and a moment after
[185 [Q 2]
Miss Priscy’s maid brought in Lizzy Dale. Her face lighted up on seeing me, but after we had shaken hands and exchanged greetings, she looked more sad and embarrassed than I had seen her at any moment on the previous day. “I am sorry, my dear,” said Miss Priscy, “that I don’t recollect you, but you must not mind that; tell me your grandmother’s name, and I dare say I shall; I tell all the girls, I knew your grandmothers, girls; a generation (turning to me), like Jonah’s gourd, grows up in one day and perished the next, but I should know you, my child; your face comes over me somehow like an old song.”
“My name is Dale, ma’am - Lizzy Dale.”
“Dale! Dale! I have heard that name, but when or where I can’t remember. Dale!”
“You will remember my mother’s name, ma’am better. Esther Vassal, the second daughter of Miss Stuart’s sister, Esther Stuart.”
My old friend sunk down into the patch-chair, took both Lizzy’s hands, and “fell to perusing of her face” with deep and silent emotion. After a brief space, “Kiss me, my dear little girl,” she said; “I see through it all. Is she not the image of that picture!” Copley’s lovely bride.
“I thought so,” I said, “when first I saw it.”
“Did you, now? well how providential! You are not so handsome though, my dear;
[186]
grandchildren never are so handsome as their grandparents. Take off your bonnet and shawl, my dear. You are mine for to-day, at any rate.”
I rose to go.
“Don’t you wish to stay and hear her story?” asked my friend.
“She will tell it better to you alone,” I replied.
“So she will - that’s natural; but come soon again, and I will tell you all about her.”
I whispered a congratulation to Lizzy upon having found so kind a relative, and came away, leaving Miss Priscy in the antique patch-chair, and Lizzy on a low ottoman at her feet, a picture ready for a painter’s hand.
In the evening I received the following note from Miss Stuart.
“My dear friend: - I feel how happy the woman in Scripture was when she found her lost piece of silver. I cannot sleep till I tell you about my found treasure. The story of my little angel (I must call her so to you), if it were written by Charles Dickens, would, bating that Lizzy is living, be as heart-breaking as Nelly’s. You must come and hear it. All that I can say at present is, that we lost sight of my sister Esther’s children, she dying in England, and leaving them young among her husband’s relations. One of her daughters married her music-master, one Dale, a worth-
[187]
less man - this poor Lizzy did not tell me, though - and they came, when Lizzy was twelve years old, to New-Orleans; her mother died there, and from that time her father has been going with her from pillar to post, and finally he died in St. Louis, and left her with nothing under heaven but a harp and a piano.
“Some good people there turned them into money, and advising her to come to Boston and look up her mother’s relations, they forwarded her on, and hither she came, by stagecoaches, steamers, and rail-cars, without meeting with accident, insult, or impertinence - this beautiful, young, unprotected girl. It brought to my mind certain lines. You know I was fond of committing poetry in my youth.
‘So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity,
That when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveried angels lackey her?’
“Well, thanks to a kind Providence, she is here, and here she shall stay - my sofa-bed fits her as if it were made for her. It was of no use to me before, and I hate useless things. In fact, she seems to fit in everywhere. She will be eyes, feet, memory to me; how have I lived without her! She is so bright and happy to-night that I can hardly keep my eyes off from her. She is - almost - as handsome as her grandmother. Come and drink tea with us before you leave town, and see how happy we are - how grateful I am.
“Ever yours affectionately,
Priscy S - .
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“P.S. - I forgot to tell you that Lizzy’s father, who never gave her anything else, did give her a first-rate musical education; and that my kind friend Mrs. Lee, who has just been in here, has promised her the instruction of her little girls; so that, if I grow old and crusty, she will never have the pain of dependance on me:”
My friend is certainly a living proof that the Italian proverb is not always true:
“Il piu sapienti è il piu beato.”
“The wisest is the most blessed.”
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
A Day in a Railroad Car
Subject
The topic of the resource
New England, railroads, travel, women, orphans
Description
An account of the resource
The protagonist of the story encounters a peculiar young girl traveling alone by the name of Lizzy Dale when she takes a train car into Boston to see an old friend.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Author of "Hope Leslie," "Home", "Letters from Abroad," &c.
Source
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<em>Tales and Sketche</em>s, second series
Publisher
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Harper & Brothers
Date
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1844
Contributor
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L. Damon-Bach
Language
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English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
boarding house
children
factory
family
grandparents
New-England
orphan
railroad
Tales and Sketches
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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1842
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories published in 1842.
Document
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Text
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A HUGUENOT FAMILY.
By Miss C. M. Sedgwick.
[p. 144]
Louis XIV., in the beginning of his career, refrained from touching the privileges that had been conceded to the Protestants. He added nothing, but he took nothing away. By degrees, as the generous temper of youth wore off, and the bigotries infused by Anne of Austria and Mazarin came out, his course changed. Louis wanted indulgence in his licentious pleasures, and his confessor shut his eyes to his master’s profligate and changing loves, on condition that heresy should be extirpated. He wanted money for his costly wars, and from the industrious and virtuously frugal Protestants Colbert filled the royal coffers which were to be drained by the prodigal Louvois. The Huguenots were robbed of the fruits of their industry in their modest provincial homes, that the monarch might encompass himself with the pomp and pageantry which was then the grand “Cherry and Fair Star” spectacle of the world. “Every room is divinely furnished,” writes Madame de Sevigné from Versailles, “everything is magnificent. We rove from apartment to apartment without encountering heat or a press. The king, Madame Montespan, &c., &c., are engaged at a game; a thousand louis are thrown on the carpet; no other counters are used,” &c., &c.
This was a picture of the court when that portion of Louis’s subjects which had earned the golden counters were, by royal edicts, beset on every side with obstruction and disappointment. The avenues of industry were closed upon them; the dearest offices of domestic life were converted into sorrows. “Take care and make a fortune out of the sales of the Huguenot property,” writes Madame de Maintenon to a brother in a Protestant province— this “property” being the ancestral homes from which the Protestants were driven forth.
Some of the best blood in our own country is derived from these exiled Protestants, and in many a family are preserved traditions and legends that need no embellishment from fiction to awaken a thrilling interest. The following has at least the merit of being a true record of some of the harassing persecutions which the Protestants endured. We are anxious to preserve it as a proof that, through all these fiery trials, christian love (which must run in concentric circles) was, in some instances, maintained between Catholics and Reformers.
At the period of the events we are about to transcribe the persecution had not reached its height. The Dragonnades, when the licentious soldiery, fresh from the Spanish campaigns, were, like dogs of war, set upon the homes of the Huguenots to worry and waste at will, were not yet proclaimed; one after another of the guarantees of the edict of Nantes had been removed, but Louis had not yet come to that most despotic and impotent resolve of tyranny, “to have but one religion in his kingdom.”* [1 ]
But to our story. Arnauld d’Argile was the son of a gentleman of Languedoc, who by engaging in a profitable branch of manufactures, and living with simplicity and frugality, had amassed a large fortune. Arnauld, preferring the quiet enjoyment of a man of letters to the bustle with the profits of business, resigned a partnership in his father’s concerns, and all claims to the paternal inheritance, to the younger branches of his family, for a sufficient provision to secure to him independence and leisure. Arnauld proposed, at a convenient season, to take that domestic commodity, a wife. He had the notion, sufficiently prevalent now, but then universal, that the wife’s duty is limited to providing for the physical comfort of her husband, and that she is exempted by Providence from participation in his intellectual pursuits, and sympathy in his higher pleasures. Of course, at any time he might find some pretty rustic adequate to these moderate demands. But we are often as wide of the mark in casting the fashion of uncertain good as uncertain evil.
During an excursion into Switzerland, accident threw Arnauld into the society of the Baron de Villette and his daughter Emilie. Some romantic incidents brought them into intimate intercourse. The baron, though a Protestant himself, had, according to a contract with his wife, permitted her daughter to be educated in the Catholic faith, the religion of her mother. Madame de Villette died a year after her marriage, and her husband added to the fond affection of a father, for the child she left him, the devotion of a lover. When the Church, comprising all sects, was literally a church militant, and every inch of the religious world debateable ground, M. de Villette contented himself with maintaining his faith by the eloquence of his example. He committed his daughter’s religious education to her mother’s confessor, a worthy Franciscan, who, imitating her father’s forbearance, was more intent on making her a good Christian than a good Catholic. She was attended by
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Léonie, a worthy creature, who had been her mother’s nurse, and who loved M. de Villette so well as a master that she forgot he was a heretic. Thus left to the generous dictates of her own heart, Emilie grew up without suspicion of others’ faith, or bigotry in respect to her own. Her intimate companionship with her father led to tastes and pursuits not common to women of that period, and after a few months’ acquaintance with her, Arnauld d’Argile’s horizon had wonderfully enlarged; the rustic little housekeeper had vanished from his perspective, and a woman whom he could honor as well as love filled her place. By what process Mademoiselle de Villette’s mind was affected the family archives do not inform us, but in due time she joined the Reformers in the little Protestant church at Poitou, much to the grief of Father Clement, her confessor, and the scandal of the Church, and was soon after married to Arnauld d’Argile. As far as we can gather from her letters, and the few incidents recorded of the happy years that followed, the change of her faith seems rather to have been an emancipation from the shackles of rites and forms, and an enlargement of her charities, than any vehement abjuration of the old religion, or adoption of the new one. It was merely a passage to a simpler service, and a wider horizon of hope and love.
There are few entries in the log-book in fair weather. The family at the château de Villette remained in retirement and unbroken happiness. They lived unmolested themselves, extending their sympathy and aid to such of their church as suffered for their faith; and without question of creeds, to others who needed their charities. Father Clement continued to be, as he had always been, the Lady Emilie’s almoner; and in many a Catholic cottage penance was done for her, and prayers sent before many a saint’s shrine.
Madame d’Argile had but one child, a son named Eugene, who was entered in one of the few colleges of all those instituted by the Protestant noblesse which were yet permitted to remain.
We said that fourteen prosperous years followed, but on recurring to the records we find that a few months previous to this the Baron de Villette died, and that soon after a suit was instituted by one Camille Savery, his cousin, for the succession to his estate. This iniquitous claim was founded on a then recent la forbidding the descent of property to the issue of a marriage between a Catholic and Protestant, which law the plaintiff pretended invalidated Madame d’Argile’s right to her father’s property. But, however inalienable and indisputable was the justice of her title, there was little hope of sustaining it; the appeal was to a Catholic tribunal, and its decisions were uniformly against the Protestants. It was with little hope and with sad forebodings that Monsieur d’Argile prepared to leave his wife to go to Paris to defend her rights. His forebodings were not causeless. Emilie’s health and spirits had been much broken by her father’s death; she was now near a second confinement, and the harassed and uncertain state of their affairs converted her hopes into anxieties.
The eve of Monsieur d’Argile’s departure was the anniversary of a fête champêtre which the family de Villette had been accustomed to give to their dependants from time immemorial.
“A fête is not fitting these bothering times,” said Léonie; “give it to the go-by, my dear Lady Emilie; you are full of trouble with my master’s going away.”
“But Léonie, I have heard you say that the very best way to forget our own griefs and dry our own tears is to light smiles on others’ faces.”
“Perhaps I did say so—though that sounds a deal more like you than me, my lady; but there are exceptions to all cases, and indeed, you have not strength for it, and they know why, and that you’ll soon give the occasion for another guise fête than this.”
“Ah! Léonie!” Madame d’Argile checked the expression of forebodings naturally arising from her dejected spirits and infirm health, and merely added, “no fête can be so good as that which our fathers and our fathers’ fathers have enjoyed. No! this shall go forward; remember if the suit at Paris goes against us, this will be the last time that I preside over it. So, dear Léonie, see to the preparations. I will distribute the gifts when the dancing is over. Put the basket containing little Marie’s gear under the almond-trees.”
“Yes, my lady; but perhaps—I mean— that is—”
“What do you mean, Léonie?”
“I was just thinking, if the child Marie is not here, it will be no fête to my lady— that’s all.”
“You turning jealous, too, of my little favourite, Léonie?”
“No, truly, my lady, I am not; but there are those that, for every good turn you do her, would do her ten times an evil one. Dame Carmeau can’t forget that Marie’s mother was Master Eugene’s foster-mother.”
“Ah! Yes; I know Dame Carmeau thinks heretical blood is bad enough without being fed with heretical milk.”
“A fig cares she for that, my lady. All the babies born in France might feed and thrive on the milk of heretics, if she could get the silver spoons and silk gown that go to the foster-mother.”
“Well! You are right, Léonie; we must not provoke her envy; she is an ill-favoured creature, and, I fear, malicious. Marie shall have her apron and slippers with Dame Carmeau’s girls; after the fête is over will be enough to give her the basket and the gold chain Eugene has sent for her. Alas for these times, that make my favour of far more peril than advantage!”
The fête went on; there was dancing, and feasting, and general gayety. Madame d’Argile exerted herself to the utmost. She had a kind word for every one, and a special favour added to the customary gift. The painful conviction that this was
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the last time she should appear before her people as the representative of her house was not manifest in selfish sadness, but in unusual eagerness to promote their pleasures. So, in its very nature sun-like, bright and cheering is goodness.
“What is the meaning of tears in your eyes, Marie?” said Madame d’Argile to her little favourite.
“All this time you have not spoken to me, dear lady, and that is why I cannot help my tears.”
“Wipe them away; I never loved you better, Marie.”
This was enough. Marie joined the sports, and was the gayest of the gay. Madame d’Argile’s eye followed her. She had lived at the chateau as Eugene’s companion. She had shared his earliest studies; not that Madame d’Argile had any quixotic notions of educating the little peasant girl, but she served as whip, spur, and reward (if those discordant things may be conjoined) to Eugene. By this domestication at the castle she had acquired, in addition to the loveliest gifts of nature, a certain refinement of manners, which has well been styled one edge of the sword of aristocracy.
“Eugene has gone from us in good time for Marie,” said Monsieur d’Argile, apart to his wife; “we should have spoiled her for a peasant’s wife!”
“I wonder if that little minx Marie fancies she is made of porcelain,” said Dame Carmeau, “that she won’t let my boy Hugh touch her with the tips of his fingers. We’ll bring down their pride, before the sun rises again.”
The fête was over. Marie had received a basket piled with a year’s garments, and, dearer far than all these, she had got Eugene’s gold chain. She had kissed it, and kissed over and over again the hand that hung it around her neck, and had followed her mother, who had preceded her by half an hour, to her cottage home, a short distance from the château.
Monsieur d’Argile set out early the next morning for Paris. His wife was overcome by her foreboding fears at parting, and was still weeping when Dame Méru, Marie’s mother, entered her apartment, wringing her hands, and crying that her child was stolen from her. Madame d’Argile put aside her own sorrows to inquire into the poor mother’s.
What Méru, in her bold despair, called theft, was authorized by law. One of the edicts, now daily issued against the Protestants, authorized the seizing the child or children of any Huguenot found from under its parents’ roof, and placing it under Catholic tutelage, to be brought up in the true faith at the parents’ cost.
Little Marie, at Dame Carmeau’s instigation, had been seized on the preceding night, as she was returning from the castle, and was bound as a servant to the daughter of that evil-eyed and evil-hearted woman, the wife of a jailer in Poitu. There was no redress.*[ 2]
The first despatches from her husband brought Madame d’Argile information that the suit was decided against them, and that the influence of their relative, Marshal Schomberg, then second only in military renown to Turenne, and himself a Protestant, had secured to her, as the only attainable boon, the family plate and jewels. Madame d’Argile submitted to her loss of fortune with a fortitude which (we thank Heaven) is a virtue too common in women to be much wondered at or praised.
Another and heavier trial soon followed. The church within whose sacred cemetery Madame d’Argile’s father and his forefathers lay, was torn down, and its pastor ejected from his charge. It fell under the edict which ordained that all churches within whose walls a relapsed heretic worshipped or a Catholic had abjured his faith, should be razed to the ground. Madame d’Argile had there first publicly worshipped with the Reformers. It was enough. The churches of Montpelier, Poissan, Melguil, and Pignan, had fallen before it, on quite as frivolous pretexts.
These were but faint preludes to the shock that followed. Monsieur Martin assembled his frightened flock in the garden of the chateau on the following Sunday for worship. For this offence he was seized and sent to Paris, where he was (that being the penalty inflicted in such cases) to be led before the king’s palace with a rope round his neck, and then banished the kingdom. Madame d’Argile had forborne to acquaint her husband with this new calamity, and his first knowledge of it was at meeting the venerable old man thus led, and followed by a mob who treated him with every indignity. Monsieur d’Argile interposed by demanding of an officer of the guard the reason of this persecution. The officer answered him insolently; M. d’Argile retorted; the officer drew his sword; an encounter followed, and D’Argile received a fatal wound.
“Oh, what have you done?” cried Léonie, rushing into her mistress’s room, where she found her fainted and lying on the floor. “You have killed my lady.”
The messenger who had brought the fatal tidings stood aghast: he had been employed simply as a machine to carry the letter, and was ignorant of its contents. It was lying on the floor: neither he nor Léonie could read it. Happily, the heart needs no instructions to do its offices. Madame d’Argile was conveyed to her bed, and the common restoratives used, which so far produced their effect that she recovered from the fainting. On her return to partial consciousness she asked for the letter, and on seeing it exclaimed “It is not a dream, then—he is dead—Léonie, my husband is dead!” She struggled with her emotion, and for a moment was still,
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and then fell into sobbings, which were followed by convulsions. Léonie, strong-minded and strong-hearted, saw the danger that threatened her mistress, and took such measures as she could to avert it. She despatched a servant to Poitou for the physician, and another for the sage-femme, with such entreaties for speed as one makes when life or death is felt to hang on every minute. The servant, on arriving at the physician’s, found a parchment affixed to the door bearing the royal seal; the writing annexed to it he could not read. After repeated knockings he was admitted, and found the physician sitting amid his family and dependants, who were weeping around him, and he looked as if paralyzed by a sudden stroke. “Please, sir,” said the servant, “Madame d’Argile is ill.”
The physician did not move or raise his eyes, but said coldly, “I am sorry for it.”
“Sorry!” said the man, who had been accustomed to see the doctor breathless at the news of a finger-ache at the chateau; “and indeed ye must be something more than sorry. Léonie says my mistress must die if she has not your aid, and that right soon.”
“It matters not—I cannot go. I am forbidden to exercise my profession; the edict is nailed to my door. My patients must die, my family starve, because it pleased God I should be born and bred a Protestant. It was not of my own choosing.”
Nor was it like to be of his own keeping; but the history follows him no farther than to say that he wrote certain cabalistic prescriptions, which the servant carried to the apothecary. He found the ground before his door strewn with jars, unguents, pill-boxes, and gallipots; the door closed and barred, and a document affixed to it similar to that on the physician’s, which, with the comment of the ruin before him, he easily understood.
In the mean time Jean, the other servant, proceeded to the dwelling of Dame Alix, the midwife, which, luckily, was just without the gate. The evening was already considerably advanced. Dame Alix’s door and windows were barred and bolted; but the messenger, seeing a light through the crevices of an upper window, knocked sturdily, and was admitted by the old woman herself. When he told his errand, --
“Now God help us!” said the good creature, “that ever the day should come when I must say nay to my Lady Emilie—to her who never said nay to any human soul in need. The edict, as they call it, Jean, is nailed to my door, and it forbids me to help the women of my people by word or deed. They know that by tying up my hands they may kill two birds with one stone.
Jean represented the extraordinary urgency of the case; he told the dreadful news that had reached the chateau, and wept and wrung his hands as he spoke of the peril and helplessness of his mistress. It is a blessed truth, that whereas bad feeling is anti-social, good feeling is contagious. Alix wavered at the sight of Jean’s distress.
“It is a pity,” she said, “to sit here with folded hands and let her die. There may be two deaths; and if I lose my life, it is but one, and the fag end on’t, scarce worth the keeping, since I can no more earn bread for others as well as for myself. I’ll go, Jean; it’s my duty; and duty and God’s will are the same—there’s no mistake in that.”
Though a prison, the stocks, and a public whipping hung over her if she were discovered, Alix’s face brightened as soon as she had decided on the strong and right side, and she was soon mounted on the horse Jean had brought, and they proceeded towards the chateau through by-ways sheltered by close lines of mulberry-trees, and favoured by the darkness. As some ruggedness of the road obliged them to proceed more slowly—
“I have been thinking, Jean,” said the old woman. “It’s the year of our Lord 1662 [ 3] —just one hundred years since the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s eve—a black year in the calendar. It was on that cruel eve that my grandame was at the château on the same business I am going on now. It was the old baron’s grandmother that came into the world that night, and her father was massacred, and her mother, poor lady! died of a broken heart. Hark! is not that the tramping of horses?” They halted and listened, and, the sounds ceasing, they hastened onward, and soon emerged upon the highway, and approached the gate of the château by a long green archway, made by the interlacing of flexile branches of trees. As they wound around a turn in this arboured approach, they found themselves in the midst of mounted soldiers, drawn up close to the gate.
“Ha!” said their leader, seizing Jean’s bridle, “you ride fast, fellow. What is your business here?”
“We are servants belonging to the chateau; pray let us enter.”
“And who is master of the chateau?”
“Monsieur Arnauld d’Argile.”
“Ah ha! well and truly spoken! But when the bell of St. Agnes tolls twelve, the chateau passes to Monsieur de Savery, and so we are here to proclaim it.”
“Be it so: but for the love of mercy, let us pass. Leave the château in peace to-night, for–”
“Say not your mistress is ill!” whispered Alix, in time to break off the end of his sentence.
“No secrets from us, young woman,” cried the officer. “Let us see if your gallant fancies brown or fair for the companion of his night ride,” and, suiting the action to the word, he touched old Alix’s hood with the point of his rapier and pushed it off her face; as he did so, a straggling moonbeam fell on her white locks and wrinkled brow. An old woman is fair game; and, accordingly, the men gave a shout, which one of them ended by exclaiming, “By our Lady! It’s the old midwife Alix: how now, old beldame! did I not bar thy door yesterday, and affix an edict thereto that should put fetters on thy feet?” He added sundry scurvy jests relating to the multiplying heretics through her ministrations
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unfit to be copied from the mouldering paper on which they are recorded. Alix protested that she came not to practise her science, but, in default of a physician, to attend the lady of the château, who had been seized with convulsions; a sickness that might occur to man or child. The official replied with the deafness of heart incident to his calling, “We know not how true your excuse is: we neither make nor abrogate the law, we only execute it. Turn your horse’s head the other way, old mother. Gerard, lodge her in the prison, and report her to-morrow morning.”
Alix’s courage rose as her hope fell. “Jean,” she said. “Tell not the Lady Emilie what has befallen me: fifteen hundred seventy-two—sixteen hundred seventy-two! I told you so, Jean. On, caitiff! Conduct me to my lodging; such a night’s ride as this will make e’en a prison floor welcome to an old woman of threescore and ten.” No farther molestations being offered to Jean he entered the gate and proceeded immediately to inform Léonie of all that had befallen. Having no other help, Léonie fell back on her own resources. “You, Jean, go below,” she said, “and beseech these men, by the mothers that bore them, to do their office here quietly. Our dear lady has intervals when she asks for her husband and master Eugene, and a sudden sound sends her off into these fits again. God guide and teach me. I will myself let blood: that may save her.” Léonie had such assistance as the female servants of the chateau could give her, but she was too good a Christian and Catholic to trust alone to human aid. She had already despatched a servant to Father Clement, her mistress’s former confessor, to give him notice of her peril, well knowing the good man would pass his night in vigil and prayer for the wandering child he so well loved. She hung a crucifix at the head of the bed, and murmuring prayers to her favourite saints, she proceeded boldly in her duties, believing that each success was a prayer answered. Before morning dawned her fidelity was rewarded, a female child was born, and the mother, though with some alarming symptoms, sunk into deep repose.
(To be continued.)
-------------------
A HUGUENOT FAMILY.
By Miss C. M. Sedgwick.
(Concluded from page 148.)
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The officer, after taking possession of the cattle[4 ] in the name of Monsieur de Savery, returned to Poitou, and all remained quiet till towards evening, when Léonie was told that Monsieur Bertrand, Syndic of Poitou, demanded admittance to her mistress’s apartment. Léonie, with indefinite forebodings, descended to the hall, where she found the man of authority attended by two soldiers, and a curate bearing the Host.
“I have come,” said the syndic, “to enforce the salutary law which orders that a magistrate shall enter the apartment of every Protestant dangerously ill, and demand a renunciation of their heresies; and such righteous demand being continently complied with, a holy man is at hand to do the sacred offices.”
Léonie protested that the visitation could do her mistress no good, and might kill her. The syndic was inexorable. Léonie threw herself on the compassion of the curate, and entreated him to interfere.
“It will be to no purpose,” said the syndic; “law goeth before the Gospel in this case.”
“And villany before both,” cried Léonie, her indignation mastering her prudence; “but after that will come the gospel and its judgments; tell him so, Monsieur Curate. I know you, Master Syndic, and how you have pettifogged your way to the magistrate’s chair; and it is because my master has wrested from you your ill-gotten gains, and saved many an honest man from your clutches, that you hasten hither to wreak your vengeance on his falling house.”
“Give way, woman, said the syndic, pushing Léonie from the door, against which she had planted herself: “and you, Monsieur Curate, if this wolf in sheep’s clothing be of your flock, look to her. Show us your lady’s apartment,” he added, turning to a servant, who led the unwelcome visitor through a long corridor and into a chamber adjoining that of his mistress. There, against her door, stood a lad in a travelling cap and cloak, and with a pale and anxious countenance.
“My God! Eugene!” exclaimed Léonie, in a suppressed voice.
The colour suffused the boy’s cheek; he recognised Bertrand, and knew he was an intruder. Subduing his voice to a hoarse whisper, he advanced to the syndic and demanded why he was there?
“He is a villain! murderer! devil!” said Léonie. “He is forcing his way to your mother’s room; he will surely kill her.”
“He dare not enter there! he shall not. Back! on peril of your life!” cried Eugene, drawing his sword.
“Seize him, fellows!” said the syndic to his attendants.
“No, do not!” exclaimed Léonie, frightened at the consequence of her own imprudence. “He is a boy—a child. Eugene, my darling, put up thy sword; there is no use. Nay, nay, my good fellows, do not seize him.” She wrenched the weapon from Eugene’s hand, and holding it up to shield him, she besought him, for his mother’s sake, to save himself. She whispered a word to him, and added aloud, “begone! begone!”
The sword was wrested from her; she clutched the men by the hair like a wildcat, and while they were struggling for extrication Eugene disappeared.
This encounter had no tendency to soften the syndic. Léonie in vain entreated for a few preparatory moments with her mistress: finding her entreaties unavailing, she asked for penance, death, anything to save her mistress. The syndic, impatient of the delay, pushed her aside and opened the door; but he involuntarily stopped on the threshold. There is no heart quite obdurate to all those sorrows or joys that are common to all humanity. A mother with a new-born child is a sight to subdue a savage, to touch with reverence the rudest boor. Madame d’Argile, wakened by the noise, had raised her head from the pillow, put aside her curtain, and instinctively stretched one arm over her infant, which Léonie had left, enveloped in its baby covering, on the bed beside her. The light of the lamp fell on her bloodless face, and her eye and brow expressed bewilderment and inquiry. At the head of the bed, close to her, but concealed from his mother by the folds of the curtain, stood poor Eugene. The light glanced athwart his round cheek and rich, curling hair. The fire had gone out of his eyes; they were brimming with tears. The poor boy had intended to conceal himself, but, in passing by a private entrance to his mother’s apartment, the impulse to enter it was too strong to be resisted, and he looked now as if he were stationed by his mother’s bed to do an angel’s office; alas! without an angel’s power.
The syndic was the first to speak. “Madame Emilie d’Argile,” he said, “I come in the name of his majesty, Louis our King, and of our holy Church, of which he is the most gracious defender, to summon you, now on the brink of the grave,
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and in peril of eternal damnation, to renounce your errors, abjure your heresies, and return to the condescending love and grace which our venerable and holy church offers to the penitent.”
“What does he say, Léonie?” asked Madame d’Argile, sinking back on her pillow.
“I say,” replied the syndic, and he reiterated in a louder and harsher tone what he had already said.
Madame d’Argile seemed to have received but one idea. “If I am dying, Léonie,” she said, feebly, “why is not my husband here?”
Léonie made no reply, and the truth flashed on her mistress’s recollection. She pressed both hands to her head as if a thunderbolt had fallen there, and groaned, but did not speak. After a moment she looked up imploringly, saying, “Eugene! cannot I see him once more, Léonie?”
Eugene bit his lips, but neither spoke nor moved. “He will be here to-morrow, my dear lady.”
“Believe it not, Madame,” said the curate, stepping forward, and motioning to the syndic to withdraw. “Death has already laid his icy hand upon you. But fear him not; fear him only who can kill both soul and body. I open to you a way of escape. Will ye have me do my holy office, that ye may die in peace and hope?”
“I would die in peace and hope,” she faintly replied.
The curate drew a crucifix from his bosom; Eugene raised his hand in earnest deprecation; Léonie, crossing herself, gently repressed him, and said, “Dear Master Curate, she cannot rightly comprehend you; wait till the morning.”
“Wait, woman! where will her soul be then?”
Léonie’s lip quivered with the reply that rose to it, but her religious awe overpowered the strong impulses of affection, and she was silent. The priest held the crucifix before Madame d’Argile while he pronounced a solemn abjuration to repentance in a monotonous ecclesiastical tone.
Madame d’Argile’s mind seemed to have been in part stunned by her husband’s death, and in part paralyzed by her illness. It was powerless. All her recent impressions had vanished, and in their place her old associations returning, she drew the crucifix to her lips, and kissed it with a faint smile. This, to Léonie, the Catholic, seemed the consummation she had devoutly wished; she fell on her knees, and gave her mind half to earth and half to heaven, her eyes turning incessantly from Madame d’Argile to Eugene, and her lips moving in prayer. The priest proceeded, according to the prescribed ritual of the church, to repeat a formal renunciation of heresy, and at the close of each sentence he said, “And to this you assent, Emilie d’Argile?” She replied by a scarcely audible affirmative. When this part of the service was ended, Léonie became alarmed by signs of exhaustion which no experienced eye could mistake, and she entreated the priest to suspend the service, but he bade her be silent, and proceeded to repeat the articles of faith, ending each with “say ‘I believe;’” and each time Madame d’Argile faintly responded “I believe.” Poor Eugene! he looked like a martyr at the stake, as by turns love, despair, or indignation possessed him. The priest proceeded, and finally summed all up in the consoling doctrine that every son and daughter of the true Church inherited eternal life, and every heretic, by whatsoever name named, eternal damnation. As he concluded, Madame d’Argile, instead of responding “I believe,’ started from the half death of unconsciousness to life and intelligence. She fixed her eyes on the priest and on the symbols of his office. “What does this mean?” she asked. He affected not to notice her altered voice and expression, but proceeding, offered the consecrated wafer to her lips. She gently put it aside, saying, “Nay, good curate.”
“Daughter, beware of sacrilege! thou art damning thy soul with double damnation if thou now relapsest.”
“Has he tampered with me, Léonie?” I go with my account to God. He will not mark against me what I have unknowingly said or done; but do thou, Léonie, bear witness for me to my son that I die in our reformed faith. Tell him—tell my dear boy to keep his conscience void of offense towards God, and to live in love and charity with all men; and oh! dear Léonie, tell him that if, by the grace of God, he does so, his mother, bred a Catholic, dying a Protestant, believes it matters not by what name he is named; and for my baby—this little lamb—God guide and guard her. Lay her close to my bosom, Léonie.”
Léonie rose to do so. The priest pushed her rudely aside. “Madame d’Argile,” he said, “dost thou think of the manifold perils to which thou exposest thy children by refusing to make thy peace with the Church?”
“I commit them to God’s care.”
“Thou art obdurate. Dost thou know that by sacrilegiously rejecting and contemning this holy sacrament, thou dost, by a late edict, render thy dead body liable to be dragged through the street, and dishonoured like that of the guiltiest wretch that dies on the gibbet?”
“The body is but a cast-off garment.”
“But so it shall not seem to thy boy, when he sees thee dragged along the ground like a dead dog.”
“Wretch! begone! out of my mother’s presence!” cried Eugene, involuntarily starting forward, and, as he did so, oversetting a little table on which the crucifix stood, with a lamp, the sacred ointment, the chalice, and the host.
“Oh! Eugene, hush!” said Léonie, looking aghast at these consecrated things lying dishonoured on the ground. “Oh! on thy knees to the good curate.”
But Eugene did not even hear her: his mother’s arm was around him, his cheek was on hers, and both mother and son were unconscious of poor Léonie’s entreaties.
“Good curate,” she said, “you have had a
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mother, and she is dead. Pity the poor boy! Do not report what he has done! he so loves her—and she is dying. She is—alas! I know it—a sinner against the holy Church; but indeed, indeed, she is a saint in her own home.”
The curate vouchsafed not one word, but darting malicious glances at the bed, and angry ones at Léonie, he departed, Léonie muttering, as she closed the door after him, “He has far more dishonoured the cross than this poor fatherless boy; his is a black heart under a fair outside; all he cares for the converts is the price he gets for them.”* [ 5]
“My dear child, raise my head a little, and let me lay it on your breast,” said Madame d’Argile; “there—I breathe easier; I can speak to you now. It is God’s will, my dear boy—we must part.”
“Oh no! dear mother, it must not be! do not say so!”
“Yes, Eugene; and it is in mercy that God takes us.”
“Mercy! Oh mother!”
“Hear me, dear child; and if you love me, be more calm: your heart throbs so that I cannot rest my head on your breast, dear, if you do not quiet it.”
“I will, mother; I will try.”
“There is a cruel persecution opened upon us, Eugene, and God in infinite mercy removes your parents from it to the peace and love of Heaven. If I could I would stay with you, and with this poor little unconscious thing; but this is the weakness of a mother’s love; I could do nothing for you. Seek the truth, and hold fast to it, my dear boy.”
“Dear mother, I will; but how shall I be sure when I find it? our good pastor called one thing truth, and dear Father Clement another, and when I have no longer you nor my father to tell me which it is, what am I to do?”
“Hold fast ever, my dear child, to the great truth that is above all—love, supreme love to God, and self-sacrificing love to your fellow-creatures. This is the great unchanging truth. While you hold to this, God abideth with you, and you have no need of man’s direction. My strength is going fast; do you understand me, Eugene?”
“Yes, dear mother.”
“All evil will finally be overcome, but in the mean time there will be much sin and sorrow. If it be possible, Eugene, escape from this old world, and go to that fresh western land where you may serve God as your conscience directs.”
“Anything will be possible that you wish me to do, mother.”
“Thank God! I believe so, Eugene; but my poor baby—you can do nothing for her.”
“Oh! do not think so, dear mother. She will be all that I have left. God will help us, mother.”
“He will, my child, he will—take her little hand in yours—I commit you both to him.”
The hope that rose in the mother’s heart, above every fear, brightened her countenance, and lit her eye as she raised it in prayer that no words can express.
Léonie had admitted Father Clement by the private entrance, and he had heard the words of faith and love; the little sectarian mist that hung about the clear atmosphere of the good man’s soul was dissipated, and he involuntarily uttered the words that rose to his lips—they might have been the inspiration of his long fast, vigil, and prayers—“Daughter, thy sins are forgiven thee!”
“Dear Father Clement!” said Madame d’Argile, faintly, and taking his hand, “thank you for your parting blessing; there is but one faith, one hope on the deathbed; dividing lines end here.” She pressed his hand to her lips, and then her faithful servant’s, “my good Léonie.”
A deep silence followed. It was too late for the holy offices of the church, even if there had been any hope the patient would receive them; and the saintly, sorrow-stricken priest stood bent forward, his hands folded over his breast, and his eyes raised to heaven. Léonie knelt at the foot of the bed, her hands clasped and her tears pouring down like rain. The mother’s head still rested on the breast of her boy. His close set teeth and purple cheek betrayed his effort to suppress the tumult in his heart, and contrasted with the celestial peace on his mother’s countenance. No cloud of fear or anxiety hung over her clear brow; her hair was parted from it, and lay in rich dark tresses on her pillow. The dawn of immortality was on her, converting the paleness of death into light. The baby’s tiny hand was clasped in Eugene’s, and both rested on their mother’s breast; she raised them to her lips, and breathed her last breath upon them.
The first knell of death, the thrilling silence of the death-chamber, struck on Eugene. He turned to Father Clement, and from him to Léonie; neither spoke; their eyes were closed for a moment; then Léonie gently raised his mother’s head from his breast, and laid it back on the pillow, and Father Clement laid his hand on the poor boy’s throbbing temple, and said, “She is gone, my child.” Eugene buried his face in the clothes beside his mother, while his two faithful friends, kneeling before a crucifix, prayed for the departed with a fervour so sincere and so soothing that a Protestant might have envied them the faith that extended the exercise and power of affection beyond the grave.
On the day after Madame d’Argile’s death as little Marie, who, from living a life happy and free as the birds and flowers, had become the hard driven drudge of the Poitou prison, was doing one of her daily tasks, filling the water-jugs for the prisoners’ cells, she received a cuff on the side of her head (happily somewhat protected by masses of curls), followed by a surly “what are you spilling that water for? can’t you pour it in the jug as well?”
“No, I can’t, Master Arnaud,” she replied,
[p. 192]
dropping her pitcher, whose cool contents, flowing over her master’s feet and ankles, had no tendency to cool his temper. “I can’t,” she replied, striking one dimpled hand into the palm of the other; “I can’t, and I won’t—”
“Won’t! you impertinent little minx!” he cried, breaking off her sentence by striking her half a dozen blows, first on one side of her head, and then on the other.
“No, I won’t,” she resumed, unmoved by this brutality; “you may beat me, you may lay me dead at your feet, but I will never do another stroke for you or yours if you persist in refusing to let me go to the chateau to look once more upon my mistress Emilie before they bury her. Oh! that one so good and kind should ever be buried up in the ground!”
“You may think her well off if she can keep buried in the ground, for there she is already.”
“Buried already, and only dead yester-night! Nay, it cannot be; you only say this, Master Arnaud, just to keep me here.”
“Hussy! What need have I to lie to such as thee? have not I the strong hand, and the whip in it? No, no, I tell you, they shovelled your lady there into the grave at the dawn of day, for since the new edicts the heretic people may only bury their dead at dawn and twilight.”
“And is she buried? my dear, dear mistress! shall I never see her again? never? never?”
Poor little Marie gave way to tears and cries.
“What ails the girl? has she heard of it?” asked a man who just turned in at the street door, addressing Arnaud.
“Heard of what? anything new going on at the château? I thought all was done there.”
The new comer, in his eagerness to tell news, was heedless of Marie’s presence, to whom each word he uttered was a serpent’s tooth; and he proceeded to state that the magistrates had been informed by the curate of certain outrages against him, and the holy offices of the church, at the chateau. How Madame d’Argile had, in her last moments, refused and derided his services, and made a mock of the charities offered to her perishing soul. And how the boy, her son, instigated by her evil example, had committed the boldest sacrilege, strewing on the ground and trampling under foot the holiest symbols of the church, and had proceeded to offer the grossest indignities to its representative the curate. These enormities being duly considered, the occasion was deemed a fitting one for the most appalling manifestation of the power of the true church. Accordingly, an order was issued for disinterring the body of Madame Emilie d’Argile, and dragging it around the public square of Poitou. And that this vindictive vengeance might lack none of the accessories to give it the picturesque effect for which the French have been always rather remarkable, measures had been taken that the guard sent to the château to convey Eugene to prison should meet the procession in face of that edifice, that the loving boy might see the mother on whose bosom he had hung, whose every hair was to him a sacred relic, dragged at the tail of a cart round the public square of Poitou! And this was done that heretics might be brought back to the true faith in Jesus! Like acts have been done with a like purpose, by many sects called Christian!
“Here will be the best place to see the meeting,” said the jailer’s friend, in conclusion. “This young gallant will come into the square by that street, and his mother’s body by this,” pointing to the streets that, running parallel, entered the square on each side the prison; “and they will naturally halt in front of us, as the boy is to be given into your keeping. How the good people love a pretty show like this, now! they are gathering from all points; see them settling round St. John’s steps like flies round honey—a sweet sight it will be. See those old women hobbling up to the shrine of the Virgin— it may be to pray for her soul; her carriage never passed that alms wer’n’t thrown to them. Lord help us! see old Valet smiting his breast; he’s thinking of all she did for him when his boys were killed in the Spanish war. They’d better have left the poor lady in her grave, to my mind.”
Poor little Marie had been effectually silenced by the first words of this communication. Not a word, tear, or sob came from her. Shivering as if an ague had seized her, she stole across the apartment, and, climbing on to a stone window-seat, she opened a casement-window, and stretched her little body half out of it, looking wildly on one side and on the other. It was a touching sight to see that little dimpled, rosy, laughing, shouting, creature, impressed with horror, and colourless as marble. She had not long stood there when she heard a rush, and then a maddening shout, and a troop of mounted soldiers wheeled into the square, and halted before the jailer’s house. As there was some little manœuvering to clear the space before them, Marie saw Eugene stationed at the very front, every object removed that could intercept his view of the ghastly spectacle preparing for him; there he was, helpless, his hands bound behind him, and his bridle-rein held by soldiers. Then, on the other side, through the narrow street, came the sound of tramping horses, and every head turned that way, and every eye in that direction; all was silence and expectation; life seemed suspended this moment for the sensation of the next.
“Master Eugene!” screamed Marie, “shut your eyes! look not that way! Oh! hear what I say!”
Eugene looked wildly round, but he saw nothing; half a dozen horsemen had drawn up between him and Marie, and there was no familiar sound in her strained and terror-struck voice. A soldier struck her, blow after blow, on her head and shoulders, with the hilt of his sword, till, overcome by the general feeling, she too turned her eyes to the troop now pouring into the square. They came—all—but where were the spoils of the grave? not there! A general buzz of inquiry and exclamation
[p. 193]
rose from the crowd. Little Marie, overcome by the sudden revulsion of feeling, rolled back from the window on to the stone floor and fainted away.
It was a few evenings after, that this same child, in the dead of night, stole into the jailer’s apartment. She dreaded the man as a child dreads an ogre, and it was gratitude and feudal devotion, fortifying a love stronger than the love of life, which inspired a girl of ten years with courage to do what she was now bent on doing. The jailer was asleep in his bed. A lamp was suspended from the ceiling, which, sending a broad light in every direction, left no friendly shadow for a moment’s shelter. The keys, of which Marie was to possess herself, were under the jailer’s pillow. They were attached to a single ring made of a series of small, clear-toned bells, that rung at the slightest touch. Marie stood for a moment hesitating.
“If he should wake!” thought she. “Heaven grant good father Clement has well drugged his wine!” She slid her arm under his pillow. He started, muttered in his sleep, and turned. She did not move, nor even tremble, but firmly grasped the ring and pulled it towards her. The bells tinkled. The jailer threw off the bedclothes and cried “help!” but it was the cry of a troubled dream; and, assured of this, after a moment’s breathless listening to his heavy breathing, Marie drew out the keys, and muffling the bells in her apron, she glided out of the room. Away she went through, long dark corridors, and up and down winding stairs, till she came to an apartment doubly locked, barred, and bolted. She did her task with a hand so skillful and a step so light that she entered the cell without breaking the slumbers of the prisoner. Eugene’s cheek rested on his hand, in which he held a miniature of his mother, and the expression of his face was as peaceful and contented as if the illusions of his dream were a reality, and he were actually enfolded in his mother’s arms. “He could not sleep so,” thought Marie, “if he knew that poor Alix died on this straw he lies on, and died for the will to serve dear mistress Emilie!” She knelt down and wakened him with a kiss. A few sentences passed between them, and he rose and followed her out of the cell. She replaced the fastening, and after many turns and windings, they came to a secret door that opened into a subterranean passage, connecting the prison with a neighbouring monastery, a passage known only to a Father Clement and a few of his brotherhood. There Father Clement received him, and there, with many tears and embraces, Eugene parted from Marie, who returned and replaced the keys, and who, as she afterwards told, secretly laughed many a time at the general conclusion that the devil had spirited away the prisoner.
It was on the following night that Eugene stood with Father Clement under the cloister of St. Francois, beside his mother’s grave. “Here, my dear child,” said the good man, “she will rest in peace. Léonie and I foresaw what must happen. The coffin which you believed contained your mother’s body was buried in the Protestant burial-place beside her father. A sufficient weight was in it to delude those who bore it there. There, by a cruel order, it was unearthed, but, as you know, your mother’s precious body was not found within it. Here she lies beside her mother and her mother’s kindred.”
“But, dear Father Clement, do not you—does not your church, I mean, forbid consecrated ground to those she calls heretics?”
“She does, my son; but it seemeth to me that if the prayers and alms of the heathen man, Cornelius, went up as a memorial before God, that your mother’s life of good deeds has expiated her error of faith; perhaps, my child,” added the good father, with a faint smile, “unshed tears, tears stayed by love and charity, may wash out these light stains on the soul.”
It was not for his mother’s soul, but the precious sanctuary which once contained it, that Eugene was anxious. “And will she rest here, dear Father Clement?” he asked; “will no one dare—”
“Softly, my son: no one knows but Léonie and I, and Léonie, if she were drawn by wild horses, would not betray the secret. There will be no disturbance here till the great day when the dead shall rise from their graves. While I live, this shall be holy ground to me, and I will tend it with vigil and prayer.”
“Oh, Father Clement, you are not a Catholic—you are nothing but a Christian.”
Father Clement smiled through his tears. “Truly, my son,” he said, “I would be nothing else. Every other name by which Christ’s followers is called is subordinate to that, and I would that all others were abolished, and that his disciples were known and bound together, by that on earth, as they will be in heaven. But, my son, we must not linger; danger is here, safety hence.”
Eugene knelt beside the grave, he kissed the stone that covered it, and love and faith mingled in silent prayer. He was there but a moment, but it was one of those moments that gives its stamp to the whole of after life.
Our extracts, with the necessary amplifications, have extended beyond the limits prescribed to us, and we can only add that, strictly obeying Father Clement’s instructions, and sheltered by disguises, Eugene passed from one Protestant house to another till he embarked for England. The wreck of his maternal property, with his father’s small patrimony, were afterward transmitted to him; and keeping steadily in mind his mother’s dying wish, after getting his education in England, and, in consequence of the interposition of powerful friends being joined by Léonie, his young sister, and Marie, he associated with other Huguenot families who emigrated to America. After being a few years here, and forgetting or disregarding the conventional ranks of the old world, he married Marie, and, if we may judge by their descendants, secured the transmission of such beauty, wit, and worth as seldom goes by royal patent, though stamped with ducal coronet.
---------------
1 [Author’s note] “Le roi commence à penser sérieusement à son salut, et à celui de ses sujets; si Dieu nous le conserve il n’y aura plus qu’ une religion dans son royaume. C'est le sentiment de Monsieur Louvois,” &c.—Lettres à la Contesse de St. Géran. [Translated by Elmore, et. al.: "The king starts to think seriously about his salvation and that of his subjects: if God intends it for us, there will only be one religion in his kingdom. This is Mr. Louvois' intuition. - Letters to the Countess of Saint Geran."]
2 [Author’s note] Madame de Maintenon, under authority of this law, took possession of the children of a Protestant uncle, and, adding hypocrisy to the cruelest treachery, pretended that she did it to express her gratitude to her aunt and benefactress!
3 [Editor’s note: Changed to “1672” in Tales and Sketches, 1844.]
4 [Editor’s note: Changed to “chateau” in Tales and Sketches, 1844.]
5 [Author’s note] The priest made lists of his converts, and in the margin marked the price affixed to each head, which was paid by the office appointed to receive these returns.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
A Huguenot Family
Subject
The topic of the resource
Catholic persecution of French Protestants in the 17th century.
Description
An account of the resource
A story that chronicles the trials of the d’Argile family during the Catholic persecution of the Huguenots—French Protestants—in 1672 under the reign of the “Sun King,” Louis XIV.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine Maria.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Godey's Lady's Book [edited by Sarah Josepha Hale], September and October 1842, pp. 144-48 and 189-93.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1842
Contributor
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Jenifer Elmore, Miriam Alcala, Madison Brockman, Stephanie Daniels, Olivia Taylor, D. Gussman
Relation
A related resource
Collected (with minor revisions) in Catharine Sedgwick, Tales and Sketches, Second Series, 249-89, New York: Harper & Bros., 1844; collected in Catharine Sedgwick, The Irish Girl and Other Tales, 54-94, London: Kent & Richards, and Edinburgh: J. Menzies, 1850.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
1842
Catholic
childbirth
crucifix
Edict of Nantes
emigration
France
Godey's Lady's Book
heretic
Historical fiction
Huguenot
Louis XIV
Madame de Maintenon
Madame de Sevigne
Madame Montespan
martyrs
midwife
mother
New World
persecution
physician
Poitu
Prison
prison escape
Protestant
Sarah Josepha Hale
servants
sons
Tales and Sketches - Second Series
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83d523480cf2e68565a85cf9e9bd19b8
Dublin Core
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Title
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1827
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document.
A NEW-ENGLAND SABBATH.
(By Miss Sedgwick.)
[p. 412]
The observance of the Sabbath began with the Puritans, as it still does with a great portion of their descendants, on Saturday night. At the going down of the sun on Saturday, all temporal affairs were suspended; and so zealous did our fathers maintain the letter, as well as the spirit of the law, that according to a vulgar tradition in Connecticut, no beer was brewed in the latter part of the week, lest it should presume to work on Sunday.
It must be confessed, that the tendency of the age is to laxity; and so rapidly is the wholesome strictness of primitive times abating, that should some antiquary, fifty years hence, in exploring his garret rubbish, chance to cast his eye on our humble pages, he may be surprized to learn that even now the Sabbath is observed in the interior of New-England, with an almost judicial severity.
On Saturday afternoon an uncommon bustle is apparent. The great class of procrastinators are hurrying to and fro to complete the lagging business of the week. The good mothers, like Burn’s matron, are plying their needles, making “ault claes look amaist as weel as the new;” while the domestics, or help, (we prefer the national descriptive term,) are wielding, with might and main, their brooms and mops, to make all tidy for the Sabbath.
As the day declines, the hum of labor dies away, and after the sun is set, perfect silence reigns in every well ordered household, and not a foot-fall is heard in the village street. It cannot be denied, that even the most spiritual, missing the excitement of their ordinary occupations, anticipate their usual bed-time. The obvious inference from this fact, is skillfully avoided by certain ingenious reasoners, who allege that the constitution was original-
[p. 413]
ly so organized as to require an extra quantity of sleep on every seventh night. We recommend it to the curious to inquire, how this peculiarity was adjusted, when the first day of the week was changed from Saturday to Sunday.
The Sabbath morning is as peaceful as the first hallowed day. Not a human sound is heard without the dwelling, and but for the lowing of the herds, and the crowing of the cocks, and the gossiping of the birds, animal life would seem to be extinct, till, at the bidding of the church-going bell, the old and young issue from their habitations, and with solemn demeanor, bend their measured steps to the meeting house.
The family of the minister—the squire—the doctor—the merchant—the modest gentry of the village, and the mechanic and laborer, all arrayed in their best; all meet on even ground, and all with the consciousness of independence and equality, which breaks down the pride of the rich and rescues the poor from servility, envy, and discontent. If a morning salutation is reciprocated, it is in a suppressed voice, and if perchance, nature, in some reckless urchin, bursts forth in laughter, “my dear, you have forgot it’s Sunday!” is the ever ready reproof.
Though every face wears a solemn aspect, we once chanced to see even a deacon’s muscles relaxed by the wit of a neighbor, and heard him allege in a half-deprecating, half-laughing voice, “the squire is so droll that a body must laugh, though it be Sabbath day.”
The farmer’s ample waggon, and the little one-horse vehicle, bringing in all who reside at an inconvenient walking distance—that is to say, in our riding community, half a mile from the church. It is a pleasing sight to those who love to note the happy peculiarities of their own land, to see the farmer’s daughters blooming, intelligent, and well bred, pouring out of these homely coaches, with their nice white gowns, prunella shoes, leghorn hats, fans and parasols, and the spruce young men with their plaited ruffles, blue coats, and yellow buttons.
The whole community meet as one religious family, to offer their devotions at the common altar. If there is an outlaw from the society—a luckless wight, whose vagrant taste has never been subdued, he may be seen stealing along the margin of some little brook, far away from the condemning observation and troublesome admonitions of his fellows.
Towards the close of the day or (to borrow a phrase descriptive of his feelings who first used it) “when the Sabbath begins to abate,” the children cluster about the windows. The eyes wander from their catechism to the western sky, and though it seems to them as if the sun would never disappear, his broad disk does slowly sink behind the mountain, and while his last ray lingers on the eastern summits, merry voices break forth, and the ground resounds with boundless footsteps. The village belle arrays herself for her twilight walk; the boys gather on “the green;” the lads and girls throng to “singing school;” while some coy maiden lingers at home, awaiting her expected suitor;--and all enter upon the pleasure of the evening with as keen a relish as if the day had been a preparatory penance.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
A New-England Sabbath
Subject
The topic of the resource
Sabbath observance, village life.
Description
An account of the resource
The narrator describes how the Sabbath is observed by the descendants of the Puritans in a typical New-England village.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The Casket
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Philadelphia : Atkinson & Alexander
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1827
Contributor
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D. Gussman
Relation
A related resource
Excerpted from Sedgwick's Hope Leslie; or Early Times in the Massachusetts, [by the author of "Redwood," 2 vols., New York: White, Gallaher, and White, 1827, vol. 1, ch. 12. Collected as "The Sabbath in New England," in Female Prose Writers, edited by John S. Hart, 24-25, Philadelphia: E.H. Butler & Co., 1864, 1866.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
1827
Hope Leslie
New-England
Puritans
Robert Burns
Sabbath
The Casket
village life
-
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51cb66a62bd05ddfe28adee6b0f075d5
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
1833
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories published in 1833.
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document.
A REMINISCENCE OF FEDERALISM
By Miss Sedgwick
‘O shame on men! devil with devil damn’d,
Firm concord holds: men only disagree
Of creatures rational, though under hope
Of heavenly grace: and God proclaiming peace,
Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife.’
Milton.
A calm observer who has scarcely lived half the age of man, must look back with a smile at human frailty, rather than with a harsher feeling upon the subjects that have broken the world in which he has lived, (be it a little or a great one,) into opposed and contending parties. The stream for a while glides on with an unbroken surface, a snag interposes, and the waters divide, and fret, and foam around it till chance or time sweep it away, when they again commingle, and flow on their natural unruffled union. This is the common course of human passions. The subject in dispute may be more of less dignified; the succession to an empire, or to a few acres of sterile land; the rival claims of candidates for the presidency, or competitors for a village clerkship; the choice of a minister to England, or the minister of our parish; the position of a capital city, or of an obscure meeting house;* [1] the excellence of a Catalani, or of a rustic master of psalmody; a dogma
[103]
in religion or politics; in short any thing, to which, as with the shield in the fable, there are two sides.
Some who have lived to swell the choral song to Adams and Jefferson, and blend their names in one harmonious peal, will remember when the one, in his honest distinction, was a patriot hero, and the other the arch enemy of his country. For myself, having been bred, according to the strictest sect of my political religion, a federalist, I regarded Mr. Jefferson, (whom all but his severest enemies do not now deny, to have been a calm, and at least well-intentioned philosopher,) as embodying in his own person whatever was impracticable, heretical and corrupt in politics, religion and morals. Some impressions of my early childhood which were connected with the subsequent fate of obscure but interesting individuals, have preserved a vivid recollection of those party strifes that should now only be remembered to assuage the heat of present controversies.
I was sent when a very young child, (I am not the hero of my own story, my readers must therefore bear with a little prefatory egotism,) to pass the summer in a clergyman’s family in Vermont, in a village which I shall take the liberty to call Carrington. Whether I was sent there for the advantage of a better school than my own village afforded, or for the flattering reason that governs the disposition of most younger children in a large family, to be got out of the way, the domestic archives do not reveal. Whatever was the motive I am indebted to the fact for some of the most interesting recollections of my life. The first absence from home
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is a period never forgotten, and always vivid. How well do I remember the aspect of that long, broad, and straight street that traversed the village of Carrington, as it appeared to me when I first entered it. The meeting house, with its tall, grenadier looking steeple; the freshly painted school house, the troop of shouting boys springing from its portal; the neat white houses with Venetian blinds, and pretty court-yards and gardens, the dwellings of the physician, the lawyer, and the merchant, the modest gentry of the place; and that, to my youthful vision, colossal piece of architecture, a staring flaming mansion, (I afterwards learned that Squire Hayford was its master,) with pilasters, pillars and piazzas, a balustrade, cupola, and four chimneys! Even then I turned my eyes from this chef-d’oeuvre of rustic art to the trees by the way side, whose topmost boughs in their freshest green, (for summer was still in its youth,) were flushed with the beams of the setting sun. And I eagerly gazed at the parsonage which stood at the extremity of the plain, flanked by an orchard of scrawny neglected apple-trees, its ill-proportioned form, and obtrusive angles sheltered by the most ample elm that ever unfolded its rich volume of boughs. A willow there was too, I remember, that hung its tresses over the old well-curb, for there Fanny Atwood and I have cracked may a ‘last year’s butternut,’ sweeter to us far than the freshest, most flavorous nuts of the south, or any thing else would now be.
It is difficult, in our leveling and disenchanted days, to recal the awe that thirty years ago the puritan clergy of New England inspirited in the minds of children.
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Who is there bred in the land of pilgrims, that has not in his memory an immaculate personage, tall or short but always erect, with a three-cornered cocked hat, long blue yarn stockings drawn over the knee, silver shoe buckles and a silver headed cane, looking stern and unrelenting, as if he embodied the terrors of the law? Who does not remember depressing his voice and checking the ‘little footsteps that lightly pressed the ground,’ as he passed the minister’s house, the domain that seemed to him to shut out all human sympathies, to stand between heaven and earth, a certain purgatory, at least to all youthful sinners?
With such prepossessions I entered Doctor Atwood’s family. The Doctor himself was absent on some pastoral duty when I arrived. I was soon put at my ease by the hospitalities of his social family. How the prejudices of childhood melt away and disappear in the first beam of kindness! A most kind and simple hearted race were the Atwoods. Miss Sally, the oldest, was housekeeper; a bountiful provider of ‘spring beer,’ cherry pies and gingerbread. Man and woman too, and above all a child, is an eating animal. The record of culinary virtues remains long after every other trace of good Miss Sally has faded from my mind. The second sister was Miss Nancy, a ‘weakly person’ she was called, and truly was. I can see her pale serious face now, in which sensibility to her own ailments, and solicitude for those of her fellow mortals, were singularly blended; her slender tall figure, as she stood shaking that vial with contents so mysterious to me, which she called her ‘mixture;’ her hands all veins and chords
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that seemed to have been made to spread plasters. Miss Nancy, in poetic phrase, was a ‘culler of simples.’ She gathered herbs, (for my friend Fanny called them sickness,) for all the village, and administered them too. She could tell with unerring certainty when motherwort would kill, and boneset would cure. Forgive me, gentle reader, (for Miss Nancy could not,) if I have mistaken an alias for a species. In brief, Miss Nancy was one of those prudent apprehensive people peculiarly annoying to children. Her memory was a treasure house of hair breadth escapes and fatal accidents; and her eye would fix upon that imaginative column in the newspapers devoted to the enumeration of such fancy articles as ‘caution to youths;’ ‘fatal sport;’ ‘hydrophobia!’ &c. &c., as a speculator devours the price of stocks. Malvina was the third daughter; I knew little of her, for she was a lady of the shears, and pursued her calling by keeping the even tenor of her way through the neighborhood, making ‘auld claiths look amaist as weel’s the new.’ I should have said that Malvina was among the few who would go through life content with the sphere providence had assigned her, without one craving from that ‘divinity that stirs within;’ limiting her ambition to pleasing the little boys, and satisfying their mammas, and her desires to her well earned twenty-five cents per day. But Malvina married and emigrated. Her husband was, as I have heard, a disciple of Tom Paine, and poor Malvina, who was only adequate to shape a sleeve or collar, began to reason of ‘fate and free will,’ foreknowledge absolute; and afterwards, when she visited her friends, she bewailed their irrational
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views, wondered they could believe the bible! and would have enlightened them with that precious textbook, the Age of Reason, had not Dr. Atwood consigned it forthwith to an auto-d-fé.
The doctor, according to the common custom of New England clergymen, who have an income of four or five hundred dollars a year, had educated several sons at college. One was a thriving attorney and counselor at law, in New York, and two others, (who closed the account of the doctor’s first marriage,) were keeping school, and qualifying themselves for the learned professions. The doctor in middle life, as it is by courtesy called, but long after his sun had declined from its meridian, had married a young and very pretty girl, who, by all accounts, looked much beside her autumnal consort, like a fresh blown rose attached to a stalk of sere and yellow leaves. The human frailty the doctor betrayed in his preference of this lamb of his flock over certain quite mature candidates for his conjugal favor, gave such scandal to his parish that the good man was fain to leave Connecticut, the land of his forefathers, and remove to Vermont, then called the new state, where his domestic arrangements were viewed with more indulgence. His wife, who seems to have had no fault but that one which was mending every day, died in the course of a few years, after having augmented the doctor’s wealth by the addition of one child.
This child was the gem of the family, and a gem of ‘purest ray serene,’ was my little friend Fanny. Fanny Atwood! Writing her name even at this distance of
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time makes my heart beat quicker. Affection has its bright, its immortal names, that will live after the trump of fame is a broken instrument, and the names it has pealed over the world are with all forgotten things. Perhaps I commit a mistake in making Fanny Atwood the heroine of a story. It may be that like those wild flowers she so much resembled, that are so delicate and sweet in their native green wood, but so fragile that they fade and droop as soon as they are exposed to the eye of the sun, and appear spiritless and insignificant when compared with the splendid belles of the greenhouse, on which the art of the horticulturist has been exhausted, so my little rustic favorite may seem tame, and she and her fortunes be derided by the fine ladies, if any such grace my humble tale with a listening ear.
I have known those who have drank of the tainted waters of a city till they confessed that the pure element as it welled up from the green turf, or sparkled in the crystal fountain of a mountain rock, was tasteless and disagreeable! But I know those too, who, though they have mastered the music of Rossini, have yet ears and hearts for wood notes wild. Nature is too strong for art, and those who are accustomed to the refinements of artificial life, may look without a ‘disdainful smile’ on Fanny Atwood as she was when I first saw her; as she continued, the picture of simplicity and all lovable qualities. She had a little round Hebe form. Her neck, chest, shoulders and arms were the very beau ideal of a French dress maker, so fair and fat; her hands were formed in the most delicate mould, and dimpled as an infant’s; her hair was of the tinge between flaxen
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and brown; glossy and wavy. Her mouth bore the signet of the sweet and playful temper that bade defiance to all the curdling tendencies of life, it was certainly the fittest organ for ‘words o’ kindness’ that could be formed. She had a slight lisp; graceful enough in childhood, but happily, as she grew up, it wore off. The line of her nose was sufficiently Grecian to be called so by her admirers, but her eyes, I am compelled to confess, even while I yet feel their warm and gentle beam upon me, were not according to the rule of beauty; they were clear and bright as health and cheerfulness could make them, but they lacked many shades of the violet, and were smaller than the orthodox heroine dimensions. If my bill of particulars fail to present the image of my friend, let my readers embody health, good humor, order, a disinterestedness, considerateness or mindfulness, a quick sympathy with joy and sorrow, in the image of a girl of nine years, and it cannot fail to resemble Fanny Atwood. She would have been a spoiled child, if unbounded love and indulgence could have spoiled her; but she was like those fruits and flowers which are only made more beautiful or flavorous by the fervid rays of the sun. She sometimes tried Miss Sally’s patience by a too free dispensation of the luxuries of her frugal pantry, and Miss Nancy’s by deriding her herb teas, even that ‘sovereignest thing on earth,’ her motherwort; and once, when in the act of raising a dose of the panacea, the mixture, to her lips, she let fall dose, vial and all; accidently, no doubt; but poor Miss Nancy! I think her nerves never quite recovered the shock. However,
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these offences were soon forgiven, and would have been, if magnified a hundred fold, for in the touching language of old Israel, she ‘was the only child of her mother, and her mother was dead.’
I was within a few months of Fanny’s age when we first met, and with the facility of childhood we became friends in half an hour. She had presented me to her two favorites, a terrier puppy and black cat, between whom she had so assiduously cultivated a friendship that she had converted their natural gall into honey, and they coursed up and down the house together to the infinite amusement of my friend, and the perpetual annoyance of the elderly members of the family. Nothing could better illustrate Fanny’s power than the indulgence she obtained for these little pests. Miss Sally prided herself on her discipline of animals, but she was brought to wink at Fido’s misdeeds, suffered him to sleep all day by the winter’s fire, and when she once or twice resolutely ordered him out for the night, she was persuaded by Fanny to get up with her and let him in. And the cat, though Miss Nancy’s aversion, fairly installed herself on a corner of Fanny’s chair, and was thrice a day fed from her plate.
As I have said, Fanny and I made rapid progress in our friendship. She had introduced me to her little family of dolls, which were all patriotic, all of home manufacture, and I had offered to her delighted vision my compagnon de voyage, a London doll; in our eyes the master piece of the arts. We were consulting confidently on some matters touching our respective families, when I heard the lumbering sound of the
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doctor’s chaise, and I felt a chill come over me like that of poor Jack, the bean-climber of aspiring memory, when seated at the giant’s hearth, and chatting with his lady, he first heard the homeward step of her redoubtable lord and master. My prejudices against the clerical order were certainly not dispelled by my first impressions of Doctor Atwood. He wore a thick set fozy wig, cut by a sort of equatorial line around the forehead. His chin was not a freshly mown stubble field, for it was Saturday, and the doctor shaved but once a week. His figure was tall and corpulent, and altogether he presented a lowering and most forbidding aspect to one who had been accustomed to a more advanced state of civilization than his person indicated. I had retreated to the farthest corner of the room, dropped my head and hidden my doll in my handkerchief, when Fanny, to my astonishment, dragging me into notice, exclaimed in the most affectionate tone, ‘Oh, father, how glad I am you have come! I wanted you to see C----‘s doll; she is the most perfect beauty! are you not glad she’s come?’ Now meaning me, not the doll.
The doctor made no reply for a moment, and when he did, he merely said, without a sign of courtesy or even humanity, ‘How d’ye do, child, pretty well?’
‘Father!’ exclaimed Fanny in a tone which betrayed her mortification and disappointment. I shrank away to my seat, abut Fanny remained hovering about the place where her father stood, lost apparently in sullen abstraction. The doctor sat down. Fanny seated herself on his knee, (I wondered she could.) ‘How
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funny your wig looks! father,’ she said, ‘its all awry.’ Then laughing and giving it a fearless twirl, she took a comb from the doctor’s waistcoat pocket, smoothed it down, threw her fat arms round his neck and kissed him first on one check, then on the other, saying, ‘you look quite handsome, now, father!’ Scanty as my literature was, a classical allusion occurred to me; ‘Beauty and the Beast!’ thought I, but far would it have been from the nature of that Beast to have been as dull to the caresses of Beauty as the doctor seemed to Fanny’s. She was evidently perplexed by his apparent apathy; for a moment she laid her check to his, then sprang from his knee and went to a cupboard about ten inches square, made in the chimney beside the fireplace, (an anomaly in the architecture, these puritan cupboards were,) and drew from it a long pipe, filled, lighted, and put it in her father’s lips. He received it passively, smoked it with continued unconsciousness, and when the tobacco was exhausted, threw pipe and all out of the window. Fanny looked at me and laughed, then suddenly changing to an expression of solicitude, she leaned her elbow on the doctor’s knee, looked up in his face, and said in a voice that must penetrate to the heart, ‘what is the matter, father?’
The doctor seemed suddenly to recover his faculties; to come to himself, in the common phrase, and with tears gushing form his eyes, he said, ‘Fanny, my child, poor Randolph’s mother is dead.’
‘Dead, father! What will Randolph do?’
‘Do, Fanny? Replied the doctor, brushing off his tears, ‘why, he will do his duty; no easy matter in the
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poor boy’s case.’ The doctor then proceeded to relate the scene he had just come from witnessing, and which had melted one of the tenderest hearts that ever was in a human frame, uncouth and repelling as that frame was. The facts which will explain the doctor’s emotions are briefly these. There was a certain Squire Hayford residing in Carrington, the proprietor of the stately mansion we have noticed. He was a democrat, according to the classification of that day, and one of the most impassioned order. A democrat in theory, but in his own little sphere as absolute a despot as ever sat on a throne. He was the wealthiest man in Carrington, owned most land, and had most ready money; in short, he was the great man of the place, and, as was happily said on another occasion, ‘the smallest of his species.’ Of all the men I ever met with he had the most unfounded and absurd vanity. His opinions were all prejudices, and in each and all of them he held himself infallible. He was the centre of his world, the sun of his system, which he divided into concentric circles. Himself first, then his household, his town, his county, his state, &c. Fortunately for himself, he had adopted the popular side in politics, and with a character that would have been particularly odious to the sovereign people he made himself an oracle among them. This man had one child, a daughter, a gentle and lovely woman as she was described to me, who some fourteen years before my story begins, had married a Mr. Gordon, from one of the Southern States. It was a clandestine marriage. Squire Hayford having refused his consent, because
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Gordon was a ‘southerner,’ and he held all ‘southerners’ in utter contempt and aversion, and never graced them with any other name than slave drivers, with the addition of such expletives as might give force to the reproach. Gordon was a high spirited man and an ardent lover, and he easily persuaded Miss Hayford to escape from the unreasonable opposition of her father, and transfer her allegiance to him. This was her first disobedience, but disobedience to him was an unpardonable sin in the squire’s estimation, and he permitted his only child to encounter the severest evils, and languish through protracted sufferings, before he manifested the slightest relenting. She lost several children; she became a widow, was reduced to penury, and sacrificed her health in one of our southern cities, in an attempt to gain a livelihood as governess. Her father then sent her a pitiful sum of money, and the information that a small house in Carrington, belonging to him was vacant, and she might come and occupy it if she would. The kindness was scanty, and the manner of it churlish enough; but disease and penury cut off all fastidiousness, and Mrs. Gordon returned to Carrington with her only son Randolph.
Here she languished month after month. The bare necessities of existence were indirectly supplied by her father, but he never spoke to her, and, what affected her far more deeply, he never noticed her son, never betrayed a consciousness of his existence.
Adversity, if it does not sever the ties of nature, multiplies and strengthens them. Never was there a tenderer union than that which subsisted between
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Randolph and his mother, and nothing could have been more natural than Fanny’s exclamation when told of Mrs. Gordon’s death, for it seemed as if the life of parent and child were fed from the same fountain. As my readers are now acquainted with the relative position of the parties, I shall give the doctor’s account to Fanny in his own words. ‘I left the chaise at Mrs. Gordon’s door, my child,’ said he, ‘that Randolph might take her to ride. They had ridden but a short distance when she complained of faintness, and Randolph turned back. She had fainted quite away just as they stopped at their own door. There was a man riding past; Randolph called to him for help. He came and assisted in carrying the poor lady to her bed. When she recovered her senses, she looked up and saw the man; it was her father, Fanny!’
‘Her father! what, that hateful old Squire Hayford?’
‘Yes, my child. Providence brought him to her threshold at the critical moment. When I called for the chaise, I went in. I saw she was dying. Randolph was bathing her head with camphor, and his tears dropped on the pillow like rain. Her father stood a little way from the bed. He looked pale and his lip quivered. Ah, Fanny, my child, death takes hold of the heart that nothing else will reach. When Mrs. Gordon heard my step she looked up at me and said, “I believe I am dying; pray with me once more Doctor Atwood; pray that my father may forgive—that—he—may—” here her voice faltered, but she looked at Randolph, and I understood her, and went to prayer.
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‘But, father, what did Squire Hayford do? you know he swore a horrid oath last independence that he would never hear “Parson Fed* [2] pray again.” ’
‘Yes, yes; Fanny, I remember, and he remembered too, for he walked out of the door and stood in the porch, but I took care to raise my voice so loud that he could not help hearing me. The Lord assisted me, my child; words came to me faster than I could utter them; thoughts, but not my thoughts; words, but not of my choosing, for their pierced even my own heart. When I had done, Squire Hayford came in, walked straight to the bed, and said, “Mary, I forgive you; I wish your troubles may be all at an end, but I am not answerable for your past sufferings; I told you what you must expect when you married that southern beggar.” ’
‘Father,’ exclaimed Fanny, ‘why did you not stop him.’
‘I did long to knock him down, Fanny, and I though Randolph would, for his black eyes flashed fire; but oh, how quick they fell again when his mother looked up like a dying saint as she was, and said, “Father, let the past be past.” ’
‘ “Well,” said he, “so I will; and as I am a man of deeds and not of words, I promise you I will do well by your boy; I will take him home, and he shall be the same as a son to me, provided—” ’
‘Here he paused. I think she did not hear his last word, for her face lighted up, she clasped her hands
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and thanked God for crowning with such mercy her dying hour; then she drew Randolph down to her, kissed him, and said, “now, my son I can die in peace.”
“But,” said her father, “you have not heard me out, Mary. Randolph must give up the name of Gordon for that of Hayford—”’
‘Oh, father,’ interrupted Fanny, ‘he did not, did he?’
‘Let me finish, child. The poor lady at the thought of her son giving up his dead father’s name, heaved a sigh so deep and heavy, that I feared her breath would have gone with it. She looked at Randolph, but he turned away his eye. ‘My dear child,’ she said, ‘it must be; it is hard for me to ask and you to do, but it must be; speak Randolph, say you accept the terms.’
‘Thus pressed, the poor boy spoke, and spoke out his heart, “Do not ask me that, mother;” he said, “give up my dear father’s name! No, never, never.” ’
‘ “My child, you must, you will be destitute; without a home, a friend, a morsel of bread.” ’
‘ “I shall not be destitute, mother, I can work, and is not Doctor Atwood my friend? and besides, mother, I care not what becomes of me when you are gone.” ’
‘ “But I do my son; I cannot leave you so. Oh, promise me, Randolph.” ’
‘ “Do not ask me, mother; I cannot give up the name I love and honor above all others, for that—” ’ I know not what the poor boy might have said, for his mother stopped him. “Listen to me my son,” she said, “my breath is almost spent; you know how I have been punished for one act of disobedience; how much misery I brought on your dear father, on all of us; you may
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repair my fault. Oh, give me peace, promise to be faithful in your mother’s place to her father.” ’
‘ “I will promise any thing, dear mother; I will do any thing but take his name.” ’
‘ “All is useless without that;” her voice sunk to a whisper,--“dear, dear child,” she added, “it is my last wish.” I saw her countenance was changing, and I believe I said, ‘she is going,’ and poor Randolph cried out, ‘Mother, mother, I will do every thing you ask—I promise—’ a sweet smile spread over her face. He laid his cheek to her’s, she tried to kiss him, but her lips never moved again, and in a few moments, my dear Fanny, she was with the saints in heaven.’
Fanny’s tears had coursed down her cheeks as her father had proceeded in his narration. Soon after I heard her repeating to herself, ‘Randolph Hayford, Randolph Hayford; I will never call him any thing but Randolph; but I suppose I shall not often have a chance to call him any thing. That cross of Squire Hayford hates you so, father, he’ll never let Randolph come and see us; he’ll never let him go any where but to some dirty democrat’s.’
I now look back, almost unbelieving of my own recollections, at the general diffusion of the political prejudices of those times. No age nor sex was exempt from them. They adhered to an old man to the very threshold of another world, and they sometimes clouded the serene heaven of such a mind as my friend Fanny Atwood’s.
The rival parties in Carrington were so nearly balanced, that each individual’s weight was felt in the
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scale. All qualities and relations were merged in the political attribute. I have often heard, when the bell tolled the knell of a departed neighbor, the most kind hearted person, say, ‘we’ or ‘they have lost a vote!’ Good Doctor Atwood was as sturdy in his political as in his religious faith. He had a vein of humanity like my Uncle Toby’s, that tempered his judgment in individual cases, but in the abstract I rather think he believed that none but federalists and the orthodox, according to the sound school of the Mathers and Cottons, could enter the kingdom of heaven. With this creed, with an ardent temperament that glowed to the last hour of his life, and with the faculty of expressing pithily what he felt strongly, and without fear or awe of mortal man, he was, of course, loved almost to idolatry by his own party, and hated in equal measure by the rival faction.
I have said that the village street of Carrington traversed a hill and plain. The democrats for the most part occupied the hill. What an infected district it then seemed to me! The federalists, (alas! was it an augury of their descending fortunes?) lived in the vale. The most picturesque object in the village, and one as touching to the sentimental observer as Sterne’s dead ass, was a superannuated horse; a poor commoner, who picked up an honest living by the way side. His walk was as regular as Edie Ochiltree’s, or any other licensed gaberlunzie’s. He began in the morning, and grazing along, he arrived about midday at the end of his tour, he then crossed the street and returned, now
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and then resting his weary limbs in the shadow of a tree planted by the way side. Thus sped his innocent life. It was an edifying sight to see the patience and satisfaction with which he gleaned his scanty portion of the bounties of nature. Jacques would have moralized on the spectacle. The children called him Clover, why, I know not, unless it were an allusion to his green old age. He was a great favorite with the little urchins; the youngest among them were wont to make their first equestrian essays on Clover’s bare back. My friend Fanny’s gentle heart went out towards him in the respect that waits on age. Many a time have I known her to abstract a measure of oats from the parson’s frugal store, and set it under the elm tree for Clover, and as she stood by him while he was eating, patting and stroking him, he would look round at her with an expression of mute gratitude and fondness, that words could not have rendered more intelligible.
Strange as it may seem, even poor Clover was converted into a political instrument. This ‘innocent beast and of a good conscience,’ was made to supply continual fuel to the inflammable passions of the fiery politicians of Carrington. His sides were pasted over with lampoons in which the rival factions vented their wit or their malignity safe from personal responsibility, for Clover could tell no tales. Thus he trudged from the hill, a walking gazette, his ragged and grizzled sides covered with these militant missives, and returned bearing the responses of the valley, as unconscious of his hostile burden, as the mail is of its portentous
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contents. Sometimes, indeed, Clover carried that which was more accordant with his kind and loving nature.
As Fanny had predicted, after Randolph’s removal to the great house, his grandfather prohibited his visits at Doctor Atwood’s, but Fanny often met him in the lagging walk to school, berrying, nutting, and on all neutral ground, and when they did not meet, they maintained a continual correspondence by Clover. The art was simple by which they secured their billetdoux from the public eye, but it sufficed. The inside contained the effusion of their hearts. The outside was scribbled with some current political sarcasm or joke. The initial letter of Randolph’s superscription was always F., Fanny’s G., for she tenaciously adhered to the name of Gordon. The communications were attached by the corners to Clover. I found recently among some forgotten papers one of Fanny’s notes, and childish as it is, I shall make no apology for inserting it verbatim.
‘Dear Randolph—I thank you a thousand times and so does C--, for the gold eagles. There never was any thing in the world so beautiful, I do’nt believe. They are far before the grown up ladies. We shall certainly wear them to meeting next Sabbath, and fix them so every body in the world can see them, and not let the bow of ribbon fall down over them, as Miss Clarke did last Sabbath, cause she has got that old democrat, Doctor Star, for a sweetheart; but I managed her nicely, Randolph. In prayer time when she did not dare move, I whirled round the bow
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so the eagle stood up bravely, and flashed right in Doctor Star’s eyes. I did not care so very much about having an eagle for myself, (though I do now since you have given it to me,) but I thought it very important for C— to wear the federal badge, because her father is a senator in Congress. Father is almost as pleased as we are. I see Clover coming, and I must make haste; poor old fellow! I heard his tread when it stormed so awfully last night, and I got father to put him up in our stable. Was not he proper good? It was after prayers, too, and his wig was off and his knee buckles out. There, they all go out of Deacon Garfield’s to read Clover’s papers. Good bye, dear, dear Randolph. F.A.’
If my readers are inclined to smile at the defects of my heroine’s epistle, they must remember those were not the days when girls studied Algebra, and read Virgil in the original before they were ten years old. Besides, I have not claimed for Fanny intellectual brilliancy. The manifestations of her mind were (where some bel esprits last look for it,) in the conduct of her daily life.
But I am fondly lingering on the childhood of my friend. I must resolutely pass over the multitude of anecdotes that occur to me, to those incidents that are sufficiently dignified for publication.
Eight years flowed on without working any other change in the condition of my friends in Carrington than is commonly effected by the passage of time. Doctor Atwood continued his weekly ministrations, varied only by a slight verbal alteration in his prayer.
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During Mr. Adams’ presidency, he implored the Lord to continue to us rulers endued with the spirit of their station. When Mr. Jefferson became chief magistrate, he substituted ‘give’ for continue. Miss Sally still brewed and baked with her accustomed energy. Miss Nancy by the too lavish consumption of her own nostrums, had lost every thing but her shadow. Squire Hayford was more opinionated and insufferable than ever. Poor old Clover was dead, and at Fanny’s request, had been honorably interred beneath the elm tree, his favorite poste restante. Fanny had preserved the distinctive traits of her childhood, and at seventeen, was as good humored, as simple, as lovely and, (as more than one thought,) far more loveable than when I first knew her.
The sad trials of Randolph’s youth had early ripened his character, and had given to it an energy and self-government that he could have derived alone from the discipline of such circumstances. The lofty spirit of his father had fallen on him like the mantle of an ascending prophet. His mother’s concentrated tenderness had fostered his sensibility, and the influence of her dying hour passed not away with the days of mourning, but stamped his whole after life.
Who has ever lost a friend, without that feeling so natural, that a painter of nature has put it into the mouth of a man lamenting over a dead beast? ‘I am sure thou hast been a merciful master to him’ said I. ‘Alas!’ said the mourner, ‘I thought so when he was alive, but now that he is dead I think otherwise.’
The solution of this universal lamentation and just
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suffering, must be found in the fact that the very best fall far short of the goodness of which their Creator has made them capable. It is in the spirit of expiation that far more deference is paid to the wishes of the dead than the living; and affectionate and devoted as Randolph was to his mother, I doubt if she had lived, that she ever could have persuaded him to the sacrifices and efforts he made for her sake when she was dead. He immediately assumed the name of Hayford, without expressing a regret, even to Fanny; and accustomed as he had been to the control alone of his gentle mother, he submitted without a murmur to the petty and irritating tyrannies of his grandfather. He suppressed the expression of his opinions and surrendered his strongest inclinations at the squire’s command. Never was there a case in which the sanctifying influence of a pure motive was more apparent. The same deference which Randolph paid to his relative, might have been rendered by a sordid dependant, but then where would have been that moral power which gave Randolph an ascendancy even over the narrow and unperceiving mind of his grandfather, and which achieved another and a more honorable triumph.
A Mrs. Hunt, a widowed sister of the squire, presided over the female department of his family. She was a well intentioned woman, a meek and patient drudge, who had been content to toil in his house, year after year, for the poorest of all compensations, presents; the common and wretched requital for the services of relations. Mrs. Hunt had been sustained in her endurance by a largess that now and then fell upon her
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eldest son, and by the hope that ultimately her brother’s fortune would descend to her unportioned children. This hope was suddenly blighted by his adoption of Randolph; and Randolph, of course, became the object of her dislike, and he daily suffered those annoyances and discomforts, which a woman always has in her power to inflict. To these he opposed a respectful department; a mindfulness of her convenience and comfort, and a generous attention to her children, which smoothed her rugged path, and all unused as she was to such humanities, won her heart. It was not long before the good woman found herself going to him, whom she had regarded as her natural enemy, for aid and sympathy in all her troubles.
If I am prosing, my readers must forgive me. It has always seemed to me that we may get the most useful lessons from those who are placed in circumstances not uncommon, nor striking, but to which a parallel may be found in every day’s experience. It is a common doctrine, but one not favorable to virtue, that characters are formed by circumstances. If it be true, my friend Randolph was a noble exception; his character controlled circumstances; and, by the best of all alchymy, he extracted wholesome food out of the materials that might have been poison to another.
His boyish affection for Fanny Atwood had ripened into the tenderest love, and was fully returned, without my friend ever having endured the reserve and distrust that are supposed to be necessary to the progress of the passion. Trials their love had, but they came from without. Doctor Atwood had heard the squire had
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said, ‘the parson might try his best to get his heir for his daughter Fanny; he’d never catch his heir, though he caught Randolph!’ The good doctor was a proud father, and a poor man, and, though it cost him many a heartache, he shut his doors against Randolph.
Meanwhile, the squire’s self complacency (the squire had the art of making every body’s merit or demerit minister to this great end of his being,) in Randolph increased. He was proud of his talents, his scholarship and his personal elegance, though his fac-simile resemblance to his father was so striking, that the squire was never heard to speak of his appearance, except to say, ‘what a crop of hair he has, just like all the Hayfords!’
There was on peculiarity about Randolph, that puzzled his grandfather. ‘The fellow is so inconsistent,’ said he to himself one day, after he had been reviewing his account books; ‘when he has money of his own earning he pours it out like water; gave the widow fifty dollars last week, but he seems as afraid of spending my cash as if I exacted Jews’ usury; quite contrary to the old rule, ‘light come, light go.’ I have footed it right; eight years since Mary died—day after we lost Martin’s election by the parson’s vote; can’t be mistaken; he’s got through college, fitted for the law, and I have paid out cash for him but ninety-nine pounds, five shillings, and three pence, lawful! By George! the widow’s brood has cost me more in that time. Ah! it’s number one after all; is sure of it at last, and that southern blood can’t bear an obligation. Trust me for seeing into a millstone. I can tell him he’ll have to wait; I feel as young as I did thirty years
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ago; sound grinders, good pulse, steady gait. Ten years to run up to three score, and ten may last to eighty. Grandmother Brown lived to ninety and upwards; why should not I? when I quit, am willing Randolph, (wish his name was Silas,) should have it. If it was not for that southern blood he’d be about the likeliest of the Hayfords. All his obstinacy comes from that ‘I’ll not disobey you, sir, and even if I would, Miss Atwood would not marry me without your consent; but be assured, sir, I shall never marry any other!’ We’ll see, my lord; while I can say nay, you shall never marry that old aristocrat’s daughter. Just one-and-twenty now; guess you’ll sing another tune before you are twenty-five. Time to go up to the printing office; wonder if we shall have another Hampden this week; confounded smart fellow that.’
Then looking at his watch and finding the happy hour for country ennuyés, the hour for the mail and daily lounge, had arrived, the squire sallied forth to take his morning walk to the printing office, the village reading room.
There was a weekly journal published in Carrington, the ‘Star’ or ‘Sun,’ I forget which, but certainly the ascendant luminary of the democrat party. There had appeared, recently, in this journal, a series of articles written temperately, and with vigor and elegance, on the safety of a popular government.
The writer advocated an unlimited trust in the sanitive virtue of the people; he appeared familiar with the history of the republics that had preceded ours, and
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contended that there was no reason to infer our danger from their brief existence. He maintained, (and it will now perhaps be admitted with truth,) that distrust of the people was the great error of the federalists; that the prestiges of the old government still hung about them, and that they were committing a fatal mistake in applying old principles to a new condition of things.
These articles were read, lauded and republished. The name of the author was sought, but in vain. Even the printer and the editor, (I believe one person represented both these august characters,) were ignorant, and could only guess that it was a judge—, or lawyer—, the lights of the state. But conjecture is not certainty, and the author still remained the ‘great unknown,’ not only of Carrington, but of the county and state.
The squire returned from his morning lounge with a fresh journal, containing a new article from Hampden, the signature of the unknown author. A fresh newspaper! Its vapor was as sweet as a regale to the little vulgar pug-nose of our village politician as the dews of Helicon to the votaries of the muses. It so happened that Randolph was sitting in the parlor, reading, when the squire came in. ‘Have you seen the paper, this morning, Randolph?’ he asked.
‘No; I have not.’
‘I guess not, I have got the first that was struck off. Another article from Hampden, I understand. He is answered in the Boston Centinel. They own he writes ‘plausibly, ably and eloquently;’ the d—speaks truth for once I guess the Boston chaps find their
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match at last.’ The squire had a habit not peculiar to him, but rather annoying, of reading aloud a passage that either pleased or displeased him, without any regard to the occupations of those around him. His comments, too, were always expressed aloud. He drew out his spectacles and sat down to the paper. His sister, Mrs. Hunt, was sewing in one corner of the room, and Randolph sitting opposite to him, but apparently absorbed in his book. ‘Too deuced cool,’ grumbled the squire, after reading the first passage. ‘Ah, he warms in the harness; not up to the mark, though; I wish he’d give ‘em one of my pealers.’ ‘Good, good; wonder what the Centinel will say to that.’ ‘By George, capital! I could not have writ it better. I would have put in more spice, though.’
‘Ha! as good as the Scripture prophet.’ ‘Listen, Randolph.’ The squire then read aloud. ‘We are aware that prediction is not argument, but we venture to prophesy that in twenty years from this time the federal party will have disappeared. The grandsire will have to explain the turn—’
‘Term, sir,’ interposed Randolph.
‘Yes, yes, term. The grandsire will have to explain the term to the child at his knee. We shall be a nation of republicans, and whenever—’
‘Wherever, sir.’
‘So it is; wherever an American is found, at home or aboard—’
‘Abroad, sir.’ This time there was a slight infusion of petulance in Randolph’s tone, and still more in the squire’s at the repeated interruptions as he proceeded.
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‘At home or abroad, in office or out of it, in high station or low, he will claim to be a Republican, and cherish the title as the noblest and happiest a civilian⎯’
‘Citizen, sir⎯noblest and happiest a citizen can claim.’
‘Confound you, Randolph!” exclaimed the squire, dropping the paper and fixing his eyes on his grandson; ‘how do you know the words before I speak them?’ This was rather an exclamation of vexation than suspicion. Randolph was conscious that in involuntarily interposing to save his offspring from murder he had risked a secret, and he answered the squire’s exclamation with a look of confusion that at once flashed the truth upon his obtuse comprehension. He jumped up, clapped Randolph on the shoulder, exclaiming, ‘You wrote it yourself, you dog, you can’t deny it. It’s a credit to you, a credit to the name. But you might have known I should have found you out. Just like all the Hayfords, keep every thing snug till out it comes with a crack.’
‘I thought all along,’ meekly, said Mrs. Hunt, who had been plying her needle unobserved and unobserving, ‘I thought all along cousin Randolph wrote them pieces.’
‘Now shut up, widow,’ retorted the squire, ‘you did not think no such thing; just like all fore-thoughts, come afterwards. Now, ma’am please to step out; I must have a little private conversation with Mr. Hampden.’
‘Be kind enough before you go, aunt,’ said Randolph, ‘to promise me that you will say nothing of what has
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just passed. I have made no admissions, and I do not wish to be thought the writer of the Hampden articles.’
Mrs. Hunt, of course, promised to be faithful. As soon as she was out of hearing, ‘What does that mean?’ asked the squire. ‘It is all stuff to make a secret of it any longer.’
‘I think not, sir. The articles have far more reputation and influence, (if I may believe they have influence,) than if they were known to proceed from a young man whose name has no authority.’
‘Hoity-toity! who’s got a better name than yours? a’nt willing the Hayfords should have the credit, hey!’ Randolph did not vouchsafe any reply to the squire’s absurd mistake, and after a few moments his gratified vanity regained its ascendancy.
‘The pieces please me,” said he, “though if you had told me you were writing them I could have given you some hints that would have improved them. They want a little more said about men, less of principles. They want fire too; egad, I’d send ‘em red-hot bullets; but they’ll do; you’ve come out like a man, on the right side, and now I believe, what I felt scary about before.’ Here the squire paused, and fixed one of his most penetrating glances upon Randolph. ‘I believe you will vote to-morrow, and vote right.’ Randolph made no reply.
A few words will here be necessary to explain the dilemma in which Randolph was about to be placed. The annual election of a representative to the state legislature was to occur the next day. The rival parties in Carrington were known to their champions to be exactly balanced. There was not a doubtful vote
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except Randolph Hayford’s. He had never yet voted, not having till now arrived at the requisite age. He had not thrown himself into the scale of either party. His opinions were independent, and independently expressed. The squire’s hopes of his vote were very much encouraged by the Hampden articles, but still there were circumstances in this case that made him somewhat apprehensive.
‘Your vote,’ resumed the squire, ‘will decide the election to-morrow.’ Again he paused, but without receiving a reply. ‘I can’t have much doubt which way Hampden will vote, but I like to make all sure and fast. Randolph, I know what scion you want to see engrafted on that tree.’ The squire pointed to the only picture in his house, a family tree, that in a huge black frame stretched its frightful branches over the parlor fireplace. On these branches hung a regiment of militia captains, majors, colonels, sundry justices of the peace; precious fruit all, supported by an illustrious trunk, a certain Sir Silas Hayford, who flourished in the reign of Charles the First. Strange and inconsistent as it may appear with his ultra democracy, never was there a man prouder of his ancestral dignities, or more anxious to have them transmitted, than our village squire.
‘Randolph,’ he continued, assured of success by the falling of Randolph’s eye, and a certain half pleased, half anxious expression that overspread his face. ‘Randolph, I have always said that I never would give my consent to your marriage with that old aristocratic parson’s daughter. But circumstances alter cases. I am a man that hears to reason when I approve of it. I have no
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fault to find with the girl; never heard her speak; believes she’s well enough.’ Randolph bit his lips. How hard it is to hear an idolized object spoken of as if she were of the mass of human kind. ‘To come to the point, Randolph,⎯if you’ll go forward to-morrow like a man, and give in your vote for Martin and make Ross’ scale kick the beam, I’ll withdraw my opposition to this match. Hear me out. I’ll do more for you. I’m pleased with you, Randolph. I’ve just received the money for my Genesee lands. I’ll give you two hundred pounds to buy your law library, and you may go next week to any town in the state you like, and open your office, and be your own man, and take your girl there as soon as you like.’
‘Good Heaven!’ exclaimed Randolph, ‘you can offer nothing more; the world has nothing more to tempt me.’ And he left the room in a state of agitation in which the squire had never before seen him. The squire called after him,— ‘Take time to consider, Randolph. To-morrow morning is time enough for your answer.’
In the course of evening, Randolph met Fanny Atwood. Whether the meeting was accidental, I cannot pretend to say. It would seem to have been disobedience in my friend to have kept up her intercourse with Randolph after the doctor had shut his doors upon him. But Fanny well knew there was nothing beside herself, the doctor loved so well as Randolph; nothing that in his secret heart he so much desired as to see them united, and that his resolute and rather harsh procedure in excluding Randolph from his house had been a sacrifice of his own inclinations to his
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honest pride. This being the state of matter, it cannot appear strange that Fanny should be willing to meet him when ‘with rosy blush,
‘Summer eve is sinking;
When on rills that softly gush,
Stars are softly winking;
When through boughs that knit the bower,
Moonlight gleams are stealing.’
Or at any of those times and places which nature’s and our poet had appointed to tell, ‘Love’s delightful story.’
The lovers took a sequestered and favorite walk to a little waterfall at some distance from the village. Here, surrounded by moonlight, the evening fragrance and soft varying and playful shadows, they seated themselves on the fallen trunk of a tree, one of their accustomed haunts.
When they first met, Fanny had said, ‘So Randolph, your secret is out at last.’
‘Out! is it?’
‘Pshaw, you know it is. Your grandfather hinted it at the post office, and the town is ringing with it.’
‘I am sorry for it. I was aware that my grandfather knew it, but I have seen nobody else to-day. Has your father heard it, Fanny?’
‘Yes; finding it was out, I told him myself. Dear father! he both laughed and cried.’
‘Cried!’
‘Yes; you know that is no uncommon thing for him to do. He was grieved that you had to come out on the democratic side, for you know he thinks a democrat next to an infidel; but then he was pleased to find you could write such celebrated articles. He has said all
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along that they had more sense and reason in them than could be distilled from every thing else written by the democrats. Now he is amazed, he says, that a boy, (you know he calls every one a boy that is not forty,) should write so wisely, and above all, so temperately.’
‘Ah, my dear Fanny, adversity, though a ‘stern rugged nurse’ she be, enforces a discipline that makes us early wise. Heaven grant that her furnace may not be heated so hot as to consume instead of purifying.’
‘What do you mean, Randolph? you are very sad this evening. Are you not well? You are not troubled about this secret. I thought you looked very pale; what has happened to you?’
Randolph kissed the hand that Fanny in her earnestness had lain on his, ‘My dearest Fanny,’ he replied, ‘since you have exchanged those vows with me that pledge us to ‘halve our sorrows as well as double our joys,’ you have condemned yourself to trials too severe for your sweet and gentle spirit.’
‘Randolph, if my spirit is sweet and gentle, it can the better bear them; and besides, nothing can be a very, very heavy trial that I share with you. But tell me quick what it is? I am sure I shall think of some way of getting rid of it.’
Randolph shook his head, and then related his morning’s conversation with his grandfather. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘you see the cruel predicament in which I am placed. You, my beloved Fanny, the object of my fondest hopes, all that makes life attractive and dear to me, are placed within my grasp; an honorable career is opened to me, escape from the galling thralldom of my
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grandfather’s house, from the perpetual annoyance of his vulgarity, his garrulity, jealousy, and petty tyrannies; and this, without the slightest deviation in the spirit or even the letter from my promise to my dying mother.’ Randolph paused. Fanny watched every motion of his countenance with breathless expectation; she could not speak; she did not know what remained to be said, but she ‘guessed and feared.’ He proceeded. ‘But the price, Fanny, the price I am to pay for these ineffable blessings! I must give my vote to an unprincipled demagogue, and withhold it from an honest man. I must sacrifice the principles that I have laid down to govern my conduct. They may be stigmatized as juvenile, romantic, and fantastical; as long as I believe them essential to integrity, I cannot depart from them without a consciousness of degradation. My moral sense is not yet dimmed by the fumes of party, and it seems to me as plain a proposition as any other, that we ought only to support such men and such measures as are for the good of the country, and the whole country. It seems to me, that no man enlists under the banner of a party without some sacrifice of integrity. My grandfather says to me, in his vulgar slang, ‘between two stools you will fall to the ground. Be it so. It will be ground on which I can firmly plant my foot, and look up to heaven with consciousness that I have not offended against the goodness that made me a citizen of a country destined to be the greatest and happiest the world ever saw, provided we are true to our political duties. Dearest Fanny, do not think I am haranguing and not feeling. God knows I have had a sore conflict;
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my heart has been wrung. You cover your face. Have I decided wrong?’
‘Oh, no, no;’ she replied in a voice broken by her emotion. ‘For all the world, I would not that you should have decided otherwise. And yet, is it not very, very hard? I mean for you, Randolph. For myself, I have a pleasant home, and I am happy enough while I can see you every day, and be sure each day that we love one another better than we did the last. Besides,’ she added, looking up with her sunny smile, ‘on some accounts it is best as it is; it would almost break father’s heart to part from me; and, as he says, dear Randolph, when the right time comes, ‘Providence will open up a way for us.’’
‘Then, Fanny, you approve my decision?’
‘Approve it, Randolph! I do not seem proud, perhaps; but it would humble me to the very dust to have you think even of acting contrary to what you believe to be right. Oh, if we could only live in a world where it was all love and friendship and no politics!’
Randolph smiled at the simplicity of Fanny’s wish, and expressed, with all a lover’s fervor, his admiration of the instinctive rectitude of her mind. He confessed that he had resolved and re-resolved his grandfather’s proposition, in the hope that he might hit upon some mode of preserving his integrity and securing the bright reward offered him, but in vain.
Our lovers must be forgiven if they protracted their walk long after the orthodox hour for barring a minister’s doors. My friend, still the ‘spoiled child,’
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found her old sister Sally sitting up for her; and as they crept up their rooms, ‘They say old maids are cross,’ said Fanny, ‘but they don’t know you who say so. You remember, sister, when you used to love to walk by the moonlight, with a certain Mr.⎯⎯⎯?’
‘Whisht, nonsense, Fanny,’ said our ‘nun demure,’ but she finished the ascent of the stairs with a lighter step, and as Fanny kissed her for good night, she saw that a slight blush had overspread her wan cheek at the pleasurable recollections called up. So true is woman to the instincts of her nature.
On the next morning, Randolph was absent, and Mrs. Hunt said, in answer to his grandfather’s inquiries that he had ridden to the next village on business, and had left word that he should return in time for the election. The squire was excessively elated. He was on the point of obtaining a party triumph by the casting vote of his grandson; he should exhibit him for the first time in the democratic ranks, ‘enlisted for the war,’ with the new blown honors of Hampden thick upon him. There are elevated points in every man’s life, and this morning was the Chimborazo of the squire’s.
At the appointed hour the rival parties assembled at the meeting house; that being in most of our villages the only building large enough to contain the voters of the town, is, notwithstanding the temporary desecration, used as a political arena. There the rival parties met as (with sorrow we confess it,) rival parties often meet in our republic, like the hostile forces of belligerent nations, as if they had no interest nor sentiment in common.
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The balloting began. Randolph had not arrived. The squire, though not yet distrustful, began to fidget. He had taken his station beside the ballot box; a station which, in spite of its violation of the courtesies if not the principle of voting by ballot, is often occupied by eager village politicians, for the purpose of peering into the box, and detecting any little artifice by which an individual may have endeavored to conceal his vote. Here stood the squire, turning his eyes from the door where they eagerly glanced in quest of Randolph, to the box, and giving a smile or scowl to every vote that was dropped in. ‘What keeps the parson back?’ thought he, knitting his gristled brows, as he looked at Doctor Atwood, ‘he is always the first to push forward.’ This was true. The doctor’s principles kindly coincided with his inclination in bringing him to the poll, but once having ‘put in his mite,’ as he said, ‘into the good treasury,’ he paid so much deference to his office, as immediately to withdraw from the battle-field.
The doctor had controlling reasons for lingering on this occasion. Fanny had acquainted him with Randolph’s determination. The old man was touched with his young favorite’s virtue, and the more (we must forgive something to human infirmity,) that Randolph’s casting vote would decide the election in favor of the federal party. The balloting was drawing to a close, and still Randolph did not appear. The doctor now fully participated the squire’s uneasiness. He took off his spectacles, wiped them over and over again, and strained his eyes up the road by which Randolph was to return. ‘It was not like him to flinch,’ thought the sturdy old man, ‘he is always up to the mark.’ Still,
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as the delay was prolonged his anxiety increased. ‘Better have come boldly out on their side than sneak off in this fashion. I might have known that no one tainted with this jacobinism could act an upright manly part. He writes well, to be sure; find sentiments, but nothing so namby pamby as sentiment that is not backed up by conduct. Well, well; we are all in the hands of the Lord, and he may see fit yet to turn his heart; poor little Fanny; I’ll throw in my vote and go home to her.’ The doctor gave one last look through the window, and now, to his infinite joy, he descried Randolph approaching. In a few moments more he entered the church. His vote had been a matter much debated and of vital interest to both parties. As he entered, every eye turned towards him, and a general murmur ran round the church. ‘He’ll vote for us!’ and ‘he’ll vote for us!’ passed from mouth to mouth, and as usual the confident assertions were vouched by wagers. Whatever wrestlings with himself Randolph might have had in secret, he was too manly to manifest his feelings to the public eye, and he walked up the aisle with his customary manners, revealing nothing by look or motion to the eager eyes of his observers; though there was enough to daunt, or at least to fluster a man of common mettle, in the well known sound of the doctor’s footsteps, shuffling after him, and in the aspect of the squire standing bolt upright before him; confidence and exultation seeming to elevate him a foot above his ordinary stature.
‘Ha,’ thought he, ‘every man has his price; bait your hook with a pretty girl, and you’ll be sure to catch these boys.’ At this critical moment, Randolph
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dropped in his vote. It was open, fairly exposed to the squire’s eye, and it bore in legible, indubitable characters, the name of the Federal candidate. The doctor involuntarily grasped his hand, and whispered, ‘You have done your duty, my son, God bless you!’
Words cannot describe either the squire’s amazement or his wrath. Randolph had presumed too far when he hoped that the decency due to a public meeting would compel his relative to curb his passion, till reflection should abate it. It burst forth in incoherent imprecations, reproaches, and denunciations; and Randolph, finding that his presence only served to swell the storm, retreated.
The votes were now counted, and notwithstanding Randolph’s vote, and, contrary to all expectation, there proved to be a tie. Some federalist had been recreant. The balloting was repeated. Doctor Atwood had gone, and the democratic candidate was elected by a majority of one.
This unexpected good fortune turned the tide of the squire’s feelings. His individual chagrin was merged in the triumph of his party. They adjourned to the tavern to celebrate their victory in the usual mode of celebrating events, by eating and drinking. Excitement had its usual effects on our unethereal squire, and he indulged his stimulated appetite somewhat beyond the bounds of prudence.
Even the tiger is said to be comparatively good natured on a full stomach. The squire’s wrath was appeased by the same natural means; and when Hampden was toasted, he poured down a bumper, saying
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to his next neighbor as he did so, ‘I might have known a fellow with his nonsensical notions would have voted for the man he thought best of.’ The conviviality of our politicians continued to a late hour. Libations were poured out to all the bright champions of their party. The moderns unfortunately swallow their libations. Finally, the squire proposed a parting glass to ‘the confusion and overthrow of all monarchists, aristocrats, federalists, or despots, by whatever name called,’ and in the very act of raising it to his lips, he was seized with an apoplexy, which, in spite of his ‘sound grinders, full pulse, steady gait and grandmother Brown having to lived to ninety,’ carried him off in the space of a few hours, leaving his whole estate real and personal to his legal and sole heir, Randolph Hayford.
And how did Randolph bear this sudden reverse of fortune in his favor? This versification, as it truly seemed, of the doctor’s prophecy, that ‘Providence would open up a way for them.’
In the first place, he laid the axe to the root of the Hayford tree, renouncing at once and forever the name, (of which he had so religiously preformed the duties,) and resuming with pride and joy his honored patronymic. He then, by a formal deed of quit claim, relinquished all right and title to the estate, real and personal, and goods and chattels of Silas Hayford, Esquire, in favor of Martha Hunt, said Silas’ sister.
Thus emancipated, and absolved from all farther duties and obligations to the name of Hayford, with a character improved and almost perfected by the exact performance of self-denying and painful duties, he
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began his professional career, depending solely on his own talents and efforts; thank heaven, a sure dependence in our favored country.
My sweet friend, Fanny, who seemed to be the pet of destiny, as well as of father, sisters, and friends, was thus indulged in bearing the name of Gordon, to which she so fondly adhered. She was soon transferred to Randolph’s new place of residence, and without breaking her father’s heart by a separation. He having rashly preached an ultra federal sermon on a fast day, that widened the breach between himself and the majority of his parish, so far, that it was impossible to close it without emulating the deed of Curtius. To this the good doctor had no mind, and just then most fortunately (we beg his pardon, his own word is best,) ‘providentially’ receiving a call to vacant pulpit in the place of Randolph’s residence, he once more transferred his home; spent his last days near his favorite child, and at last, in language of scripture, ‘fell asleep’ on her bosom.
----------
[Sedgwick’s notes]
[1] This fruitful subject of dispute, has rent asunder many a village society in New England.
[2] Federalist.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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A Reminiscence of Federalism
Subject
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Federalists and Democrats, partisanship, voting, friendship, courtship.
Description
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The narrator recounts the partisan divide between Federalists and Democrats in a New England town by reminiscing about a childhood friend, and her suitor's coming of age.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M. [By Miss Sedgwick]
Source
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The Token, edited by Samuel G. Goodrich.
Publisher
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Boston: Charles Bowen
Date
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1834 [pub. 1833]
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Jenifer Elmore, Naomi Lau, Kaylin Ricciardi, Abigail Skinner
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Collected in Catharine Sedgwick, Tales and Sketches. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, and Blanchard, 1835: pp. 9-43. Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, vol. 1, edited by Nina Baym, pp. 1017-38. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1998.
Language
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English
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Document
"Hymn to Adversity" (1782)
"Il Penseroso" (1645)
1833
1834
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768)
Acts 7.60
Angelica Catalani
anonymous publication
aristocracy
As You Like It
ballots
Beauty and the Beast
Chimborazo
clergy
coming of age
Cotton Mather
courtship
Curtius
Death
death-bed promise
Democrat
Edie Ochiltree
elections
Federalism
Gioachino Rossini
Helicon
herbalist
Increase Mather
inheritance
Jack and the Beanstalk
Jacobin
Jews
John Adams
John Cotton
John Milton
Judges 11:34
lampoons
Laurence Sterne
lawyer
letters
Love
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newspapers
Norton Anthology of American Literature
Paradise Lost
partisan
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Puritans
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Shakespeare
Sir Walter Scott
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spinster
Tales and Sketches -First Series
The Age of Reason (1794)
The Antiquary (1816)
The Token
Thomas Gray
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Paine
Tristam Shandy
Uncle Toby
Vermont
Virgil
widowers
William Cullen Bryant
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Dublin Core
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Title
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1832
Subject
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Stories published in 1832
Document
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Text
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A SKETCH OF A BLUE STOCKING.
BY MISS SEDGWICK.
Mrs Laight, till the respectable age of fifty, devoted her time and talents to the ordinary occupations of those ladies of our country who are favored with a numerous progeny; that is, to minute care of her children, and thrifty management of her household concerns. She was the daughter of a President of one of our literary institutions, and had early imbibed a taste for literary pursuits, which was apparent in a slight tinge of pedantry, though she was prevented from indulging it by the pressure of domestic affairs. This taste revived with renewed force, when, by the death of her husband, and the control of an abundant income, she became mistress of her time and inclinations; and it received a fresh impetus from a visit to the place of her nativity, where, as she said, all her mental powers had been restored, by inhaling her native atmosphere, and reviving her intimacies with the literary associates of her youth. Among these, was a lady whom I shall take the liberty to call Mrs Rosewell. Her friendship was Mrs Laight’s highest ambition, and she returned to Lawrentum (the classic name she had recently bestowed on her place, situated in the centre of a compact village), flushed with the expectation of a visit from her distinguished friend. Nothing could have been much more appalling to the younger members of her family than the annunciation
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of the approaching honor—Mrs Laight’s daughters- she has half a dozen of them—are pretty, intelligent, sufficiently well instructed, and very charming girls, but they have not—not one of them (for their mother’s sake I grieve to say it), a literary bias; and the ardor with which her ruling passion had recently broken forth, had inspired them with a horror of blue-stockingism. Frank Laight, their eldest brother, a spirited young man, just returned from a successful voyage to South America, foresaw that his glad holiday at home was to be overclouded. His younger brothers perceived that a universal gêne was expected; and their imaginations presented it in the form of the sacrifice of their fishing and sporting pleasures with Frank. Anne Milnor, a lovely girl, a guest at Lawrentum, who was secretly cherishing a well-requited tenderness for Frank, timidly shrunk from the observation of a learned lady, whose opinion, as she anticipated, would confirm that which she feared, with too much reason, Mrs Laight had already conceived against her. All were malecontents, but the most anxious among them, and with most reason, was Leonard Clay. Mrs Rosewell was the friend of Professor Lowe; he was to attend her to Lawrentum, and the Professor was an admirer of Sarah Laight, a dangerous rival to Leonard; for, in addition to qualities that commended him to a young lady’s favor, the Professor had Latin, Greek, science, and erudition, appliances and means to win the mother.
The mind of the majority at Lawrentum was unfavorable to poor Mrs. Rosewell, but the majority did not rule there; and, happily for her, hospitality was the genius
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of the place, and the whole family were perfectly amiable and dutiful to their mother.
‘ Heaven preserve us ! Clay, are you reading a review? ’ asked Frank Laight, who found his friend in his mother’s library, poring over a tri-monthly publication, with a most doleful aspect.
‘I am trying to read it; crawling through it. Your mother says we must be prepared with some topics suitable to this Mrs Rosewell, and she has set me down here to a rigmarole article, written by the lady herself.’
‘ Pshaw ! my dear fellow, you are irretrievably lost, if you undertake to meet these literary Amazons on their own ground. The only way to manage them is to talk them down on subjects they know nothing about. Take them out of books, Leonard, and they are as ignorant as you and I are in them. I ’ll lay a wager, I ’ll run this blue aground with rodomontade about my voyage, before she has been a day in the house; and do you rattle away on fishing and sporting. I ’ll answer for it; you ’ll tree her. Hang it! it is too absurd to be afraid of a woman, just because she happens to be a mannish writer of reviews.’—Frank was interrupted by his mother’s entrance. She requested the young men to leave the library, as she had scarcely time to put it in proper trim for Mrs Rosewell’s reception.
Frank and Leonard found the young ladies just going out to walk, and joined them. ‘ Well, Anne,’ asked Frank of Miss Milnor, ‘ have you prepared high converse for this benign cerulean ?’
‘ Not I—I shall not open my lips before her.’ ‘ You are right, Anne,’ replied Frank, and then added, in a low tone of earnest compliment, ‘modesty is the
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prettiest device in the world for the seal of a young lady’s lips—speaking of lips, girls,’ he continued, raising his voice, ‘ what sort of a looking person do you take this Mrs Rosewell to be ? '
‘ Of course,’ replied Sarah Laight, ‘ she has what is called an intellectual fine face.’
‘ That is to say,’ retorted Frank, ‘rolling black eyes, or deep-set gray ones, a nose like the tower of Lebanon, and cheeks ploughed with lines of thought, and furrows of reflection; in short, a striking countenance. Thank Heaven, Leonard, we have bright, round, dimpled cheeks, to refresh and repose our eyes upon; but have a care, Sarah, don’t you see that horse is frightened by your parasol? put it down, child !’ A horse and chaise were rapidly passing. Sarah attempted, as hidden, to lower the parasol, but the wind, which was blowing freshly, took it up, and carried it under the horse’s feet. He sheared, reared, and floundered, and would inevitably have overturned the chaise if Leonard Clay had not adroitly seized the bridle. He succeeded in holding the horse while a lady jumped from the chaise, and then springing in himself, he received the reins from the willing hands of the unskilled driver, and succeeded in subduing the terrified animal before such exclamations as,
‘Oh ! Leonard, do n’t get into the chaise !’ ‘ Leonard ! Leonard!‘ ‘Mr Clay!’ ‘Let Leonard alone; he can manage the horse.’ ‘Heavens! Sarah, how pale you are!’ Before such exclamations had well parted from the lips of his companions, another moment passed, and the young ladies’ eyes were asking ‘who this stranger could be,’ that had so suddenly descended among them?
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A lady she was, whose manner had that beautiful combination of grace, refinement, unaffectedness, and gentility, that is best described by the comprehensive word ladylike. Her countenance was bright, lovely, and still retained its symmetry and much of its early beauty, though the bloom and roundness of youth had long been gone. The stranger’s dress, a circumstance that first strikes a female eye, was arranged with taste, and just up to the suitable and becoming point of fashion, a very critical matter, one of the nicest of all the fine arts of women. ‘ Who can she be? ’ was plainly spoken by the glances of our young friends, and answered immediately by the lady’s companion, who, with a confession, that requires both courage and magnanimity, of his incompetency to manage his horse, alighted from the chaise, and was recognised by Sarah Laight as Professor Lowe. The lady, of course—the lady, who, at first sight, had captivated the bright eyes and warm hearts of the young people, was no other than the dreaded blue-stocking, the ‘ benign cerulean,’ the veritable author, the perpetrator of full-sized volumes, and, as Frank Laight had called her, the writer of mannish review – our friend, Mrs Rosewell! For a moment her sunbeams broke through the clouds of prejudice, that had settled over the minds of the group, but they had been too long gathering to be so suddenly dispersed. Frank proposed to Miss Milnor to hasten home with him, to announce Mrs Rosewell’s arrival to his mother; and by this pretext, as he thought, and said, ‘got his neck out of the scrape for the present.’ He had, however, the grace to remark to Anne, the little resemblance Mrs
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Rosewell bore to the figure he had sketched, and to confess she had the sweetest blue eye he had ever seen, save one. Anne Milnor assented to his opinion, by putting in a blushing, smiling demurrer to the exception. Sarah Laight, never less propitious to the Professor than at this moment, when he had resigned the post of honor and of danger to Leonard Clay, clung to her sister’s arm; and Miss Laight, though on ordinary occasions a young lady of exemplary propriety, only replied in monosyllables to Mrs Rosewell’s efforts to sustain a conversation, so that she and the Professor were finally condemned to a stately walk, and a dull téte a téte, for a distance of half a mile to Lawrentum. Arrived there, the fervid and circumstanced reception of Mrs Laight was even more oppressive to her friend than the reserve of the young people. But Mrs Rosewell was a lady of resources, and she took refuge with the children. They had had their prejudices too, but the prejudices of childhood vanished before a genial influence, like the dews of a summer’s morning. In the first hour’s acquaintance, Mrs Rosewell had been conducted by the two little girls to the extremity of the garden, to try a new swing, hung for them by Leonard Clay. Hal had given her a ride on his new rocking-horse, and the little slattern, Bessie, had slunk away from her mother’s reproving eye, and in the most confiding manner, thrust her foot into Mrs Rosewell’s lap to get her shoe tied! Dinner was soon announced, and, as philosophers, philanthropists, savans, and blue-stockings, at a dinner table, fall or rise to the level of ordinary mortals, the admiration and awe of mother and children were forgotten
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in the common courtesies of the table, and when the suspended conversation began to revive, it flowed on naturally, in spite of Mrs Laight’s efforts (to borrow her own ambitious phrase) to season it with Attic salt. Frank Laight found himself quite unexpectedly involved, and interested, too, in giving Mrs Rosewell a sketch of the modes of living among the South Americans, which somehow ended in Mrs Rosewell’s asking Leonard Clay if he liked macaroni? Clay never happened to have heard the name. Macaroni sounded like Italian. He encountered Frank’s eye; he fancied that his ever-ready smile was archly hovering on his lips; he was not yet disabused of the notion that an author must always talk of books; and, resolving not to be ashamed of his ignorance, he said, manfully, ‘l have never seen the work, Madam; I do not read Italian.’ Frank Rosewell shouted; Sarah blushed to her fingers ends, and poor Clay would have been thoroughly chagrined, if Mrs Rosewell had not graciously and gracefully assumed all the disgrace of the mistake to her blue-stocking reputation. Afterwards, when the parties came to understand one another better, Clay’s blunder was the occasion of many a merry allusion among them.
When they rose from the table, Mrs Laight conducted her friend to the library. Her children, as soon as they were left to the free interchange of their impressions of their dreaded visitor, exclaimed ;—‘ How unaffected she is ! ’ ‘ How very agreeable ! ’ ‘ I entirely forgot that she was anything uncommon!’ ‘ Who would suspect she had ever published a book?’ ‘ Or ever read one! ’ These may sound like equivocal compliments, but so
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Mrs Rosewell did not esteem them; and any unpretending fellow-sufferer, who has been invested with the repulsive name of blue-stocking, would prefer them to fifty diplomas from as many learned societies.
Mrs Laight had put her library into complete order for her friend’s reception. Alas! what a labor lost it was ! Books of scholastic divinity and philosophy, over which her father, the Doctor, had withered and dried away, body and spirit, for forty years, had been brought forth from the quiet oblivion which they had shared with their old proprietor, and were ostentatiously arranged on shelves where they bore the same relative interest to the fresh, tempting, unbound, and dog-eared volumes of modern writers, that mummies do to a beautiful piece of living and glowing humanity. ‘This apartment,’ said Mrs Laight, looking around her with a serene smile of enviable self-complacency, ‘this apartment is yours; your sanctum sanctorum; your imperium in imperio, as my dear father would have said. Here are books, a mine of wealth; and here, my dear,’ opening a writing- desk, ‘ are materials for more books; pens in abundance ; ink and folio paper. By the way, do tell me what was your last work?’
‘ My last work; really; I do not remember!’ replied Mrs Rosewell, hesitating and half smiling.
‘ Not remember? that ’s impossible ! ’
‘Pardon me; I do; my last work was cutting out some vests for my boys.’
The good lady looked crest-fallen, and replied so meekly, that Mrs Rosewell was conscience-stricken.
‘ It is very natural, I know it is, my dear, that you should think my knowledge limited to such works as
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you have mentioned; but I assure you I have always had a literary taste, and if I had been a man I should have devoted myself to books; but women, at least most of us, are condemned to obscure, if not useless, lives.’
‘ My good friend, you do your lot injustice; your life, according to Napoleon’s estimate in his celebrated reply to Madame de Stael, has been illustrious.’
‘ How ? what do you mean ?’ asked Mrs Laight, eagerly, hoping for some new revelation on her past destiny.
‘ Why, have you not given twelve children to the state? ’ Poor Mrs Laight’s countenance fell; her friend proceeded; ‘I cannot think there is any great merit in number, but a mother, who has twelve such children as yours, may make a Cornelian boast of them, and ought to be hailed as a benefactress to her country.’
The mother (Mrs Laight was a true-hearted one), for a moment, prevailed over her ruling passion. ‘ They are good children,’ she said, ‘ all of them; kind, affectionate, and dutiful, and I ought to be satisfied with them; but it is a disappointment, that not one of them takes after me; that not one of them has the least literary turn. Sarah, indeed—Sarah has, I think, a latent talent. She writes a pretty letter; she has quite a knack at quotation, and, if she were to get into the right kind of society, her ambition might be roused. Once a reader, she might become a writer.’
‘Ah! these possibilities look well for my friend, the Professor.’
‘ How? ' exclaimed Mrs Laight, and after turning the key of the door and drawing close to her friend, she added, ‘ do you think the Professor is attached to Sarah ? ’
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‘Not precisely attached, but if he believed he might gain her affections, and your approbation, he would soon be irretrievably in love.’
‘My approbation!’ exclaimed the good lady, ‘he has it already; it is the very thing. To tell you the truth, I have long had a secret hope this might be. How delightful for us again to be connected with the college ! You have my consent to give the Professor a hint that he will meet with no opposition.’
‘None from you, I perceive; but has he nothing to fear in another quarter? We have heard alarming rumors of an attachment between young Clay and Sarah, and I fancied I perceived some indications that confirmed them.’
‘ Oh, that’s nothing; a mere childish predilection, which has kept alive by Frank’s intimacy with Leonard; Sarah knows my opinion of Leonard.’
‘ He is a very pleasing young man. Is there any objection to him?’
‘ Very pleasing! You cannot think so. Recollect his blunder about the macaroni! a specimen of his ignorance, my dear. He has not one particle of erudition. He was, to be sure, a great favorite with my husband, because he was a lad of integrity, intelligent about affairs, and successful in managing his own. The young people like him because he is good humored and amiable. But he is no reader; and as to writing, I do not believe he ever wrote a paragraph for a newspaper—in short, my dear friend, he has nothing of what you and I should call mind.’
The scale by which Mrs Rosewell graduated mind was different from her friend’s. She thought it was
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best demonstrated by the wise and successful conduct of life; and conceiving a good opinion of Clay, and guessing truly at the real position of affairs, she placed the subject in the most favorable light to the mother, and so adroitly used her influence, that she obtained Mrs Laight’s acquiescence in the propriety of giving a hint to the Professor (whose affections were too precious to put to hazard), to make a timely retreat.
This subject dismissed, and by Mrs Laight, with a sigh of disappointment, she, after a misty preface, introduced another topic, still nearer to her heart. The preface I omit. The topic was a manuscript production, which no eye had yet seen, ‘on the intellectual faculties, comprising a view of their essence—modus operandi (a scrap of Latin from her father of blessed memory)—of their sublimity and beauty, and of their use to society in general.’
Mrs Rosewell’s heart sunk within her, as she read the ominous title, and promised her friend that she would examine the closely written pages to which it was prefixed and would give her honest opinion as to their publication.
I promised my reader’s a sketch; and I do not mean to take them in for a story; a sketch of a blue-stocking, falsely so-called, and I have merely given a few circumstances, to illustrate the common impressions against those who are infairly branded with an odious name. The are shown off as lions by the little flutterers (willing to scorch their own wings in a blaze), when they would rather pass for a sheep, or any other ‘very gentle beast, and of a good conscience.’ I can at least answer for my friend, Mrs Rosewell. She has all the
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most lovely qualities of her sex. She has well done those humble duties that lie in the obscure recesses of domestic life. She has genius without eccentricity, knowledge without pedantry, and enthusiasm without extravagance. Her colloquial gifts are hardly surpassed, yet I never detected her in the vanity of talking to display them. Her manners are so gentle and feminine, that she seems rather to ask sufferance than to claim admiration. None are impassive to her influence. It resembles the fabled effect of the sun on Memnon’s statue, eliciting melody from the cold and silent. This is by no miracle, but by the steady application of her powers to their legitimate objects. She loves her fellow creatures, and takes a benevolent interest in whatever elevates or makes them happier. She looks on the bright side of characters, as well as of events. She finds good in everything. I have sometimes thought she gave undue encouragement to the vanity of others, but it must be confessed to be difficult to be raised to a sodden elevation, without causing dizziness.
Mrs. Rosewell is literary, and –a blue-stocking. I cannot deny it; if the most ardent devotion to knowledge and talent, even though they chance to be found in books; if a love of science; if an occasional communication to the public of the result of her studies and observations, constitutes a blue-stocking. But if being the most honored and beloved of wives; the most tender and capable of mothers; the most efficient and least bustling of housewives; the truest of friends, and the most attractive of women, can rescue her from this repulsive name, she deserves it no more than the veriest ignoramus in the
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land. If any doubt the truth of my portrait, I appeal to our friends of Lawrentum. In a visit of a month, she worked wonders there. She entered heartily into the views of the young people, and, what was more important, brought their mother to their point of sight. Sarah was permitted to plight her troth to Leonard Clay, and Frank, his to the pretty orphan, Anne Milnor, without one sigh from their mother over their unlettered destiny. She even confessed, that her girls had talents, though not a literary turn; and that her boys were clever, in their way, though they preferred fishing and sporting to books. She ceased to express her surprise (never I believe to feel it), that Mrs Rosewell loved better to ramble over the country, or romp with the children, than to immure herself in the library with the Doctor’s rare books. My friend’s greatest achievement, she deems it her chef d’ouvre, was inducing Mrs Laight to suppress her metaphysical essay, and that, too, without wounding her vanity, or materially abating her self-complacency. Mrs Rosewell‘s conquest over the junior members of the family, if not as surprising, was as complete. The girls confided to her their most romantic sentiments. Leonard Clay secretly begged her to prescribe a course of reading to him, that would qualify him to elicit Sarah’s latent talents; and Frank was detected in purchasing the books she had published, to beguile the tediousness of his next voyage.
I have not ventured to grace my portrait with those minute touches that would have identified it, but I doubt not that its verisimilitude will be acknowledged by those who are familiar with any of the circles of the cultivated, useful, and happy women of our country.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
A Sketch of a Blue Stocking
Subject
The topic of the resource
Women writers, blue-stockings, stereotypes.
Description
An account of the resource
A famous woman writer visits a family and challenges their various assumptions about literary women and blue-stockings.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria; Miss Sedgwick
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<em>The Token </em>(edited by S[amuel] G. Goodrich), 334-46.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Boston: Gray & Bowen
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1832 [pub. 1831]
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
D. Gussman; L. Damon-Bach
Relation
A related resource
Also published in <em>Moral Tales, or A Selection of Interesting Stories, Volume 1</em>, (edited by S[amuel] G. Goodrich), New York: Nafish and Cornish, 1840, pp. 143-154, and in <em>Wielding the Pen: Writings on Authorship by American Women of the Nineteenth Century</em>, Ed. Anne E. Boyd, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2009, 28-35.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sketch
1832
blue stocking
courtship
Motherhood
The Token
women writers
writing