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Dublin Core
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1838
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To Mr. T. W. WHITE,
Editor of Southern Literary Messenger.
My Dear Sir.-—Being at present much occupied with domestic duties, and never in the habit of writing for more dignified periodicals than souvenirs, and having nothing better to send you than the following passages, I should have foreborne, but that I wished to express to you my desire to comply with your request, and my very grateful sense of your repeated attentions in sending your valuable Journal to me, and that during this hot season I imagine quantity may sometimes be desirable to you (as filling up) Independent of quality.
Believe me, my dear sir,
Very respectfully and gratefully, yours,
C. M. SEDGWICK.
Stockbridge, Mass. July 20, 1838.
If there is any time at which the love of nature is felt to be an universal passion—a love to which all other loves should be sacrificed—it is at the coming on of Spring, when Nature is to our senses a manifestation of the Creator—a realization of that belief of ancient philosophy, that in nature the Almighty Spirit lived and moved and had it's being. Even the poor pent-up denizen of the city, cabined, cribbed, confined as he is, at this season, when nature visibly begins her beautiful processes—makes some demonstrations that the love of her is not dead within him : the trees he has planted, (God's witnesses amidst brick walls) the birds (albeit stolen from their natural habitations in the green wood) in their cages, and the carefully tended plants at the open windows are signs of this love.
Those who have passed their childhood where Nature's choicest temples are fixed—who may be said, in some humble sort, to have served at her altars, are most impatient at the actual discomforts as well as privations of a summer city life. I do not know that I ever experienced a more delightful sensation than that produced a few days since by a change from New York to Rockaway—from frying in the city, to the life-giving breezes of this magnificent sea-shore. Perhaps neither heat nor cold should be positive evils to those in tolerable health; but who is stoical enough to be independent of them? No topic, not morals, politics, nor even religion, is, from the beginning to the end of life, so often and so thoroughly discussed as the weather. It is the breath of life to old and young, to rich and poor, and when it comes so fiercely hot as during the last week, we suffer—and suffering there are few that do not complain. Besides, is it not a positive evil during the month of June, when the summer is in the freshness and beauty of her youth, the only month that in our northern region shadows forth a poet's spring, is it not an evil to be imprisoned in a city, to have your senses deprived of the nutriment prepared by Heaven to restore them to their natural ministry to the mind; for, do not the odors and the music of June (to say nothing of the strawberries!) awaken the dullest imagination?
A week in the city, in June, is then always a loss, but a week like the last, when the mercury, in our coolest apartments, stood at 80°, and in the warmest at a point that would not have seemed enviable to the wretches in the hottest circle of Dante's Inferno: after such a week's experience in town, the change to Rockaway makes one feel, as Dives might have felt if the gulph had not been impassable that divided him from Lazarus. For the last seven days not a drop of rain had fallen, the air was thick and heavy with impalpable dust, the very leaves on the trees seemed to feel it too hot to move—and the poor little caged birds that had been singing themselves and us into forgetfulness of our exile from Nature, were withdrawn from their airings, and were silently languishing in darkened apartments. We had cast off every garment that could be dispensed with; our flannels were forgotten friends. I was suddenly summoned here to join a very dear invalid friend, and I set off to do the most agreeable thing in the world with the delightful self-complacency resulting from the performance of a duty. The golden cup given to the miser in Parnell's apologue is an illustration of the profuseness, with which Providence throws golden pleasures into the scale of our duties. My companion was a charming school-girl, who enjoyed with a school-girl's relish the unexpected transition from her tasks to our excursion. As we hurried down Broadway to lake the four o'clock rail-car at Brooklyn, the heat was intense. In the ferry-boat we felt the life-restoring sea-breeze that came sweeping up the bay; and when the cars began their flight, we were cooled down to the temperate point. At Jamaica, where we were transferred to Mott's waggon and entered on the pretty country road that leads to the beach, the wind was so cool that we wrapped our blanket shawls close around us, and here we have found them sitting with the windows down, and we feel as if we had jumped from a hot bath into a snow-bank.
And here before my window is the "great and wide sea." What an image of eternity it is at this moment shrouded in mist! You hear it's mighty voice—you know it's reality, and that "therein are things innumerable ;" but beyond the line where human feet tread, you see nothing—There where the breakers fall, as upon the borders of human life, is all the din and uproar. Beyond, through that immeasurable distance, all seems repose; and seems so only because it is like eternity, hidden from our vision.
Monday, P. M.—I went alone to walk on the beach. There had been a storm, and the clouds that were wildly scudding over the heavens here and there, broke away, and the sunbeams poured from the bright world abate them and kindled in the east a rainbow that dropped its column of colored light into the ocean. I would commend any one afflicted with self-exaggeration to a solitary walk on a sea-beach. All selfism is lost in an overpowering sentiment of reverence. I had an almost painful feeling of illimitable power, but as I turned from the surf which was breaking magnificently, a sweet breath from the landward clover-fields met me, and filled my eyes with tears and my heart with sensations like those that answer the voices of kindred, or are called forth by the little beam that greets us from the candle in our own home, when we return from a stranger's dwelling.
Monday evening brought me three letters. Where do letters not come except, as Johnson lamented, not to the grave? Chance could hardly throw together the productions of three more remarkable women than my correspondents—the least of them in the world's eye is the greatest, perhaps in the kingdom of heaven. has many high faculties, some almost preternatural powers that does not approach; clearer moral perceptions and loftier aspirations no one has. They are not unlike in that quality that, like a pure atmosphere gives vigor and effect to all others—naturalness. Neither has the varied and enriching experience, the glowing imagination and the almost unlimited acquisitions of Mrs.__ but she has a healthier and therefore a happier spirit. She has the spontaneous richness and goodness that are God's gifts, and as superior to any acquired talents or results of virtuous efforts as sunlight to lamplight, or the gracious showers from the clouds to the pourings from a watering-pot. Her mind seems, without an effort (for you see no fluttering of the wings) to rise to the highest altitude: and, kind and patient, without any apparent stooping, to come down to the least duty. While poor ___ is beating her golden feathers off against every limit as if limits were prison walls, ___ is singing on every bough, feathering every nest as well as her own, and feeding every chance bird.
Tuesday.—The gay season for watering-places has not yet come, and beside the untiring and ever-exciting view of the sea, there is little to vary life here; there are drives oh the beach, and when the tide is up, round the pretty rural lanes of the interior, past the farmhouses, where you see plenty of pig-nurseries and hencoops, where generations are preparing for the all devouring jaws of the New York market. Then we have those three great daily events of all watering-places, breakfast, dinner and tea, diversified by the liberality of Messrs. Blake & Mead, and the ingenuity of French cooks. And we have arrivals and departures. At this moment there is standing before the piazza a carriage built upon the model of an English mail-coach with four grey horses, their master sealed on the box with a friend; the coachman and footman in frock coats, shorts, and white top boots in the dickey, and the lady, her nurses and children, inside. The coach and harness are blazoned with stags' heads and other heraldic devices. Some impertinent whispers asking from which side of the house these anti-republican emblems are derived, are suppressed from respect to the unpretending lady, who, with her pretty children, the picture of an American matron, is courteously and bowing her adieux. The sarcasm is changed to a regret at the bad taste of appropriating unmeaning emblems.
Wednesday morning.—Would that some one who had Charles Lamb's art of putting les petits morales in picturesque lights, would write an essay upon the moralities of a watering-place! Essays have been written demonstrating that the most common extravagance consisted in the thoughtless expenditure of hours and shillings. Is there not a similar waste from carelessness of those lesser moralities, which make up the sum of most people's virtues? There are few (certainly few women,) born to "point a moral or adorn a tale"—few Charlotte Cordays or Elisabeth Frys; but all, by economising small but abundant opportunities of producing, not great good, but agreeable sensations, may add materially to the sum of human happiness. At a watering-place, for example, if a gentleman, instead of casting a doubtful or sarcastic glance at a newly arrived stranger, bestow some trifling courtesy—if it be but a bow or a word of kind greeting, enough to express "we are fellow-beings"—especially if the new comer happen to be not fashionable, not comme il faut, and the saluter be so—it will be seen that a sunbeam has fallen across the stranger's path: and who can estimate the value of a sunbeam, a moral sunbeam?
All the world are purveyors of pleasure for the fashionable and beautiful; but there are at all watering-places, unknown, unattractive and solitary beings, who are cheered by a slight courtesy expressing the courtesy of the heart. An invalid may be relieved of weary moments by a patient listener to his complaints: this is perhaps weakness, but never mind; let the weak profit by the strength of the strong, and an easy obedience will be rendered to the great precept, "Bear ye one another's burdens." An old man may be gratified (at small expense,) by the offer of precedence at table, or a privileged seat on a sofa.
I have known ladies, long disused to such courtesies, brightened for half an hour by a courteous picking up of a dropped pocket-handkerchief. There are small sins of commission, as well as of omission, thoughtlessly enacted. For instance, a wretched dyspeptic complained to me this morning that he lost his two hours' sleep (all the fiend allows him,) by reason of one of his neighbors taking a fancy to walk the gallery half the night in creaking boots. And at this moment half a dozen lawless children are shouting and screaming in the gallery adjoining the room of an invalid who is vainly trying to sleep. Are not these violations of the laws of humanity? and should creaking boots be worn by any but the confessed enemies of their race? and is it not enough to make a misanthrope of a Burchell, to have the music of children's footsteps converted into such an annoyance?
Ah when shall we see the principle of brotherhood, that informs the great operations of philanthropists, brought to bear upon the common charities of life— upon the social relations in these summer resorts, where people "most do congregate?"—How it would annihilate distances between man and man, bring down the loftiness of the lofty, and exalt the depressed!—How it would kindle up the evening horizon of the aged, and disperse the mists from the dawn of the young!
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
"Passages From a Journal at Rockaway"
Subject
The topic of the resource
The beauty and pleasure of nature.
Description
An account of the resource
A sketch that contrasts June in New York City with Rockaway Beach.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss Sedgwick
Source
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<em>Southern Literary Messenger</em>, [edited by T. H. White], (September 1838): 573-575.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1838
Contributor
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J. Robinson, D. Gussman
Relation
A related resource
Reprinted in: <em>New-Yorker</em> (8 September 1838): 386-387
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
Beach
Charles Lamb
Charlotte Corday
City
Dante's Inferno
Dr. Samuel Johnson
Elizabeth Fry
God
Nature
New York
Rev. Thomas Parnell
Southern Literary Messenger
Spring
Summer
watering-places
William John Burchell
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d1b3fcd22f7faa30a09169e8e7bdeebc
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
1830
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories published in 1830.
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.
Glory and gain the industrious tribe provoke.--Pope.
The little secluded and quiet village of H. lies at no great distance from our “literary emporium.” It was never remarked or remarkable for anything, save one mournful preeminence, to those who sojourned within its borders — it was duller even than common villages. The young men of the better class all emigrated. The most daring spirits adventured on the sea. Some went to Boston; some to the south; and some to the west; and left a community of women who lived like nuns, with the advantage of more liberty and fresh air, but without the consolation and excitement of a religious vow. Literally, there was not a single young gentleman in the village — nothing in manly shape to which these desperate circumstances could give the form and quality and use of a beau. Some dashing city blades, who once strayed from the turnpike to this sequestered spot, averred that the girls stared at them as if, like Miranda, they would have exclaimed —
“What 1st? a spirit?
Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir,
It carries a brave form: — But 'tis a spirit.”
A peculiar fatality hung over this devoted place. If death seized on either head of a family, he was sure to take the husband; every woman in H. was a widow or maiden; and it is a sad fact, that when the holiest office of the church was celebrated, they were compel led to borrow deacons from an adjacent village. But, incredible as it may be, there was no great diminution of happiness in consequence of the absence of the nobler sex. Mothers were occupied with their children and housewifery, and the young ladies read their books with as much interest as if they had lovers to discuss them with, and worked their frills and capes as diligently, and wore them as complacently, as if they were to be seen by manly eyes. Never were there pleasanter gatherings or parties (for that was the word even in their nomenclature) than those of the young girls of H. There was no mincing — no affectation — no hope of passing for what they were not — no envy of the pretty and fortunate — no insolent triumph over the plain and demure and neglected, — but all was good will and good humour. They were a pretty circle of girls — a garland of bright fresh flowers. Never were there more sparkling glances, — never sweeter smiles — nor more of them. Their present was all health and cheerfulness; and their future, not the gloomy perspective of dreary singleness, for somewhere in the passage of life they were sure to be mated. Most of the young men who had abandoned their native soil, as soon as they found themselves getting along, loyally returned to lay their fortunes at the feet of the companions of their childhood.
The girls made occasional visits to Boston, and occasional journeys to various parts of the country, for they were all enterprising and independent, and had the characteristic New England avidity for seizing a “privilege;” and in these various ways, to borrow a phrase of their good grandames, a door was opened for them, and in due time they fulfilled the destiny of women.
We spoke strictly, and a la lettre, when we said that in the village of H. there was not a single beau. But on the outskirts of the town, at a pleasant farm, embracing hill and valley, upland and meadow land ; in a neat house, looking to the south, with true economy of sunshine and comfort, and overlooking the prettiest winding stream that ever sent up its sparkling beauty to the eye, and flanked on the north by a rich maple grove, beautiful in spring and summer, and glorious in autumn, and the kindest defence in winter; — on this farm and in this house dwelt a youth, to fame unknown, but known and loved by every inhabitant of H., old and young, grave and gay, lively and severe. Ralph Hepburn was one of nature's favourites. He had a figure that would have adorned courts and cities; and a face that adorned human nature, for it was full of good humour, kindheartedness, spirit, and intelligence; and driving the plough or wielding the scythe, his cheek flushed with manly and profitable exercise, he looked as if he had been moulded in a poet's fancy — as farmers look in Georgics and Pastorals. His gifts were by no means all external. He wrote verses in every album in the village, and very pretty album verses they were, and numerous too — for the number of albums was equivalent to the whole “female” population. He was admirable at pencil sketches; and once with a little paint, the refuse of a house painting, he achieved an admirable portrait of his grandmother and her cat. There was, to be sure, a striking likeness between the two figures, but he was limited to the same colours for both; and besides, it was not out of nature, for the old lady and her cat had purred together in the chimney corner, till their physiognomies bore an obvious resemblance to each other. Ralph had a talent for music too. His voice was the sweetest of all the Sunday choir, and one would have fancied, from the bright eyes that were turned on him from the long line and double lines of treble and counter singers, that Ralph Hepburn was a note book, or that the girls listened with their eyes as well as their ears. Ralph did not restrict himself to psalmody. He had an ear so exquisitely susceptible to the “touches of sweet harmony,” that he discovered, by the stroke of his axe, the musical capacities of certain species of wood, and he made himself a violin of chestnut, and drew strains from it, that if they could not create a soul under the ribs of death, could make the prettiest feet and the lightest hearts dance, an achievement far more to Ralph's taste than the aforesaid miracle. In short, it seemed as if nature, in her love of compensation, had showered on Ralph all the gifts that are usually diffused through a community of beaux. Yet Ralph was no prodigy; none of his talents were in excess, but all in moderate degree. No genius was ever so good humoured, so useful, so practical; and though, in his small and modest way, a Crichton, he was not, like most universal geniuses, good for nothing for any particular office in life. His farm was not a pattern farm — a prize farm for an agricultural society, but in wonderful order considering — his miscellaneous pursuits. He was the delight of his grandfather for his sagacity in hunting bees — the old man's favourite, in truth his only pursuit. He was so skilled in woodcraft that the report of his gun was as certain a signal of death as the tolling of a church bell. The fish always caught at his bait. He manufactured half his farming utensils, improved upon old inventions, and struck out some new ones; tamed partridges — the most untameable of all the feathered tribe; domesticated squirrels; rivalled Scheherazade herself in telling stories, strange and long — the latter quality being essential at a country fireside; and, in short, Ralph made a perpetual holiday of a life of labour.
Every girl in the village street knew when Ralph's wagon or sleigh traversed it; indeed, there was scarcely a house to which the horses did not, as if by instinct, turn up while their master greeted its fair tenants. This state of affairs had continued for two winters and two summers since Ralph came to his majority and, by the death of his father, to the sole proprietorship of the “Hepburn farm,” — the name his patrimonial acres had obtained from the singular circumstance (in our moving country) of their having remained in the same family for four generations. Never was the matrimonial destiny of a young lord, or heir just come to his estate, more thoroughly canvassed than young Hepburn's by mothers, aunts, daughters, and nieces. But Ralph, perhaps from sheer good heartedness, seemed reluctant to give to one the heart that diffused rays of sunshine through the whole village.
With all decent people he eschewed the doctrines of a certain erratic female lecturer on the odious monopoly of marriage, yet Ralph, like a tender hearted judge, hesitated to place on a single brow the crown matrimonial which so many deserved, and which, though Ralph was far enough from a coxcomb, he could not but see so many coveted.
Whether our hero perceived that his mind was becoming elated or distracted with this general favour, or that he observed a dawning of rivalry among the fair competitors, or whatever was the cause, the fact was, that he by degrees circumscribed his visits, and finally concentrated them in the family of his Aunt Courland.
Mrs. Courland was a widow, and Ralph was the kindest of nephews to her, and the kindest of cousins to her children. To their mother he seemed their guardian angel. That the five lawless, daring little urchins did not drown themselves when they were swimming, nor shoot themselves when they were shooting, was, in her eyes, Ralph's merit; and then he was so attentive to Alice, her only daughter — a brother could not be kinder. But who would not be kind to Alice? she was a sweet girl of seventeen, not beautiful, not handsome perhaps, — but pretty enough — with soft hazel eyes, a profusion of light brown hair, always in the neatest trim, and a mouth that could not but be lovely and loveable, for all kind and tender affections were playing about it. Though Alice was the only daughter of a doting mother, the only sister of five loving boys, the only niece of three single, fond aunts, and, last and greatest, the only cousin of our only beau, Ralph Hepburn, no girl of seventeen was ever more disinterested, unassuming, unostentatious, and unspoiled. Ralph and Alice had always lived on terms of cousinly affection — an affection of a neutral tint that they never thought of being shaded into the deep dye of a more tender passion. Ralph rendered her all cousinly offices. If he had twenty damsels to escort, not an uncommon case, he never forgot Alice. When he returned from any little excursion, he always brought some graceful offering to Alice.
He had lately paid a visit to Boston. It was at the season of the periodical inundation of annuals. He brought two of the prettiest to Alice. Ah! little did she think they were to prove Pandora's box to her. Poor simple girl! she sat down to read them, as if an annual were meant to be read, and she was honestly interested and charmed. Her mother observed her delight. "What have you there, Alice?" she asked, "Oh the prettiest story, mamma! — two such tried faithful lovers, and married at last ! It ends beautifully: I hate love stories that don't end in marriage."
"And so do I, Alice," exclaimed Ralph, who entered at the moment, and for the first time Alice felt her cheeks tingle at his approach. He had brought a basket, containing a choice plant he had obtained for her, and she laid down the annual and went with him to the garden to see it set by his own hand.
Mrs. Courland seized upon the annual with avidity. She had imbibed a literary taste in Boston, where the best and happiest years of her life were passed. She had some literary ambition too. She read the North American Review from beginning to end, and she fancied no conversation could be sensible or improving that was not about books. But she had been effectually prevented, by the necessities of a narrow income, and by the unceasing wants of five teasing boys, from indulging her literary inclinations; for Mrs. Courland, like all New England women, had been taught to consider domestic duties as the first temporal duties of her sex. She had recently seen some of the native productions with which the press is daily teeming, and which certainly have a tendency to dispel our early illusions about the craft of authorship. She had even felt some obscure intimations, within her secret soul, that she might herself become an author. The annual was destined to fix her fate. She opened it — the publisher had written the names of the authors of the anonymous pieces against their productions. Among them the found some of the familiar friends of her childhood and youth.
If, by a sudden gift of second sight, she had seen them enthroned as kings and queens, she would not have been more astonished. She turned to their pieces, and read them, as perchance no one else ever did, from beginning to end — faithfully. Not a sentence — a sentence! not a word was skipped. She paused to consider commas, colons, and dashes. All the art and magic of authorship were made level to her comprehension, and when she closed the book, she felt a call to become an author, and before she retired to bed she obeyed the call, as if it had been, in truth, a divinity stirring within her. In the morning she presented an article to her public, consisting of her own family and a few select friends. All applauded, and every voice, save one, was unanimous for publication — that one was Alice. She was a modest, prudent girl; she feared failure, and feared notoriety still more. Her mother laughed at her childish scruples. The piece was sent off, and in due time graced the pages of an annual. Mrs. Courland's fate was now decided. She had, to use her own phrase, started in the career of letters, and she was no Atalanta to be seduced from her straight onward way. She was a social, sympathetic, good hearted creature too, and she could not bear to go forth in the golden field to reap alone.
She was, besides, a prudent woman, as most of her countrywomen are, and the little pecuniary equivalent for this delightful exercise of talents was not over looked. Mrs. Courland, as we have somewhere said, had three single sisters — worthy women they were — but nobody ever dreamed of their taking to authorship. She, however, held them all in sisterly estimation. Their talents were magnified as the talents of persons who live in a circumscribed sphere are apt to be, particularly if seen through the dilating medium of affection.
Miss Anne, the oldest, was fond of flowers, a successful cultivator, and a diligent student of the science of botany. All this taste and knowledge, Mrs. Courland thought, might be turned to excellent account; and she persuaded Miss Anne to write a little book entitled “Familiar Dialogues on Botany.” The second sister, Miss Ruth, had a turn for education (“bachelor's wives and maid's children are always well taught”), and Miss Ruth undertook a popular treatise on that subject. Miss Sally, the youngest, was the saint of the family, and she doubted about the propriety of a literary occupation, till her scruples were overcome by the fortunate suggestion that her coup d'essai should be a Saturday night book entitled “Solemn Hours,” — and solemn hours they were to their unhappy readers. Mrs. Courland next besieged her old mother. "You know, mamma," she said, "you have such a precious fund of anecdotes of the revolution and the French war, and you talk just like the “Annals of the Parish,” and I am certain you can write a book fully as good."
"My child, you are distracted! I write a dreadful poor hand, and I never learned to spell — no girls did in my time."
"Spell! that is not of the least consequence — the printers correct the spelling."
But the honest old lady would not be tempted on the crusade, and her daughter consoled herself with the reflection that if she would not write, she was an admirable subject to be written about, and her diligent fingers worked off three distinct stories in which the old lady figured.
Mrs. Courland's ambition, of course, embraced within its widening circle her favourite nephew Ralph. She had always thought him a genius, and genius in her estimation was the philosopher's stone. In his youth she had laboured to persuade his father to send him to Cambridge, but the old man uniformly replied that Ralph was a smart lad on the farm, and steady, and by that he knew he was no genius. As Ralph's character was developed, and talent after talent broke forth, his aunt renewed her lamentations over his ignoble destiny. That Ralph was useful, good, and happy — the most difficult and rare results achieved in life — was nothing, so long as he was but a farmer in H. Once she did half persuade him to turn painter, but his good sense and filial duty triumphed over her eloquence, and suppressed the hankerings after distinction that are innate in every human breast, from the little ragged chimneysweep that hopes to be a boss, to the political aspirant whose bright goal is the presidential chair.
Now Mrs. Courland fancied Ralph might climb the steep of fame without quitting his farm; occasional authorship was compatible with his vocation. But alas! she could not persuade Ralph to pluck the laurels that she saw ready grown to his hand. She was not offended, for she was the best natured woman in the world, but she heartily pitied him, and seldom mentioned his name without repeating that stanza of Gray's, inspired for the consolation of hopeless obscurity. :
“Full many a gem of purest ray serene,”
Poor Alice's sorrows we have reserved to the last, for they were heaviest. “Alice,” her mother said, “was gifted; she was well educated, well informed; she was everything necessary to be an author.” But Alice resisted; and, though the gentlest, most complying of all good daughters, she would have resisted to the death — she would as soon have stood in a pillory as appeared in print. Her mother, Mrs. Courland, was not an obstinate woman, and gave up in despair. But still our poor heroine was destined to be the victim of this cacoethes scribendi; for Mrs. Courland divided the world into two classes, or rather parts — authors and subjects for authors; the one active, the other passive. At first blush one would have, thought the village of H. rather a barren field for such a reaper as Mrs. Courland, but her zeal and indefatigableness worked wonders. She converted the stern scholastic divine of H. into as much of a La Roche as she could describe; a tall wrinkled bony old woman, who reminded her of Meg Merrilies, sat for a witch; the school master for an Ichabod Crane; a poor half wilted boy was made to utter as much pathos and sentiment and wit as she could put into his lips; and a crazy vagrant was a God-send to her. Then every “wide spreading elm,” “blasted pine,” or “gnarled oak,” flourished on her pages. The village church and school house stood there according to their actual dimensions. One old pilgrim house was as prolific as haunted tower or ruined abbey. It was surveyed outside, ransacked inside, and again made habitable for the reimbodied spirits of its founders.
The most kind hearted of women, Mrs. Courland's interests came to be so at variance with the prosperity of the little community of H., that a sudden calamity, a death, a funeral, were fortunate events to her. To do her justice she felt them in a twofold capacity. She wept as a woman, and exulted as an author. The days of the calamities of authors have passed by. We have all wept over Otway and shivered at the thought of Tasso. But times are changed. The lean sheaf is devouring the full one. A new class of sufferers has arisen, and there is nothing more touching in all the memoirs Mr. D'Israeli has collected, than the trials of poor Alice, tragi-comic though they were. Mrs. Courland's new passion ran most naturally in the worn channel of maternal affection. Her boys were too purely boys for her art — but Alice, her sweet Alice, was preeminently lovely in the new light in which she now placed every object. Not an incident of her life but was inscribed on her mother's memory, and thence transferred to her pages, by way of precept, or example, or pathetic or ludicrous circumstance. She regretted now, for the first time, that Alice had no lover whom she might introduce among her dramatis personse. Once her thoughts did glance on Ralph, but she had not quite merged the woman in the author; she knew instinctively that Alice would be particularly offended at being thus paired with Ralph. But Alice's public life was not limited to her mother's productions. She was the darling niece of her three aunts. She had studied botany with the eldest, and Miss Anne had recorded in her private diary all her favourite's clever remarks during their progress in the science. This diary was now a mine of gold to her, and faithfully worked up for a circulating medium. But, most trying of all to poor Alice, was the attitude in which she appeared in her aunt Sally's “solemn hours.” Every aspiration of piety to which her young lips had given utterance was there printed. She felt as if she were condemned to say her prayers in the market place. Every act of kindness, every deed of charity, she had ever performed, were produced to the public. Alice would have been consoled if she had known how small that public was; but, as it was, she felt like a modest country girl when she first enters an apartment hung on every side with mirrors, when, shrinking from observation, she sees in every direction her image multiplied and often distorted; for, notwithstanding Alice's dutiful respect for her good aunts, and her consciousness of their affectionate intentions, she could not but perceive that they were unskilled painters. She grew afraid to speak or to act, and from being the most artless, frank, and, at home, social little creature in the world, she became as silent and as stiff as a statue. And, in the circle of her young associates, her natural gaiety was constantly checked by their winks and smiles, and broader allusions to her multiplied portraits; for they had instantly recognized them through the thin veil of feigned names of persons and places. They called her a blue stocking too; for they had the vulgar notion that everybody must be tinged that lived under the same roof with an author. Our poor victim was afraid to speak of a book — worse than that, she was afraid to touch one, and the last Waverley novel actually lay in the house a month before she opened it. She avoided wearing even a blue ribbon, as fearfully as a forsaken damsel shuns the colour of green.
It was during the height of this literary fever in the Courland family, that Ralph Hepburn, as has been mentioned, concentrated all his visiting there. He was of a compassionate disposition, and he knew Alice was, unless relieved by him, in solitary possession of their once social parlour, while her mother and aunts were driving their quills in their several apartments.
“Oh! what a changed place was that parlour! Not the tower of Babel, after the builders had forsaken it, exhibited a sadder reverse; not a Lancaster school, when the boys have left it, a more striking contrast. Mrs. Courland and her sisters were all “talking women,” and too generous to encroach on one another's rights and happiness. They had acquired the power to hear and speak simultaneously. Their parlour was the general gathering place, a sort of village exchange, where all the innocent gossips, old and young, met together. “There are tongues in trees,” and surely there seemed to be tongues in the very walls of that vocal parlour. Everything there had a social aspect. There was something agreeable and conversable in the litter of netting and knitting work, of sewing implements, and all the signs and shows of happy female occupation.
Now, all was as orderly as a town drawing room in company hours. Not a sound was heard there save Ralph's and Alice's voices, mingling in soft and sup pressed murmurs, as if afraid of breaking the chain of their aunt's ideas, or, perchance, of too rudely jarring a tenderer chain. One evening, after tea, Mrs. Courland remained with her daughter, instead of retiring, as usual, to her writing desk. — "Alice, my dear," said the good mother, "I have noticed for a few days past that you look out of spirits. You will listen to nothing I say on that subject; but if you would try it, my dear, if you would only try it, you would find there is nothing so tranquillizing as the occupation of writing."
"I shall never try it, mamma."
"You are afraid of being called a blue stocking. Ah! Ralph, how are you?" — Ralph entered at this moment. — "Ralph, tell me honestly, do you not think it a weakness in Alice to be so afraid of blue stockings?"
"It would be a pity, aunt, to put blue stockings on such pretty feet as Alice's."
Alice blushed and smiled, and her mother said — "Nonsense, Ralph; you should bear in mind the celebrated saying of the Edinburgh wit — “no matter how blue the stockings are, if the petticoats are long enough to hide them."
"Hide Alice's feet! Oh aunt, worse and worse!"
"Better hide her feet, Ralph, than her talents— that is a sin for which both she and you will have to answer. Oh! you and Alice need not exchange such significant glances! You are doing yourselves and the public injustice, and you have no idea how easy writing is."
"Easy writing, but hard reading, aunt."
"That's false modesty, Ralph. If I had but your opportunities to collect materials" — Mrs. Courland did not know that in literature, as in some species of manufacture, the most exquisite productions are wrought from the smallest quantity of raw material — " There's your journey to New York, Ralph," she continued, "you might have made three capital articles out of that. The revolutionary officer would have worked up for the “Legendary;” the mysterious lady for the “Token;” and the man in black for the “Remember Me;” — all founded on fact, all romantic and pathetic."
"But mamma," said Alice, expressing in words what Ralph's arch smile expressed almost as plainly, "you know the officer drank too much; and the mysterious lady turned out to be a runaway milliner; and the man in black — oh! what a theme for a pathetic story! — the man in black was a widower, on his way to Newhaven, where he was to select his third wife from three re commended candidates."
"Pshaw! Alice: do you suppose it is necessary to tell things precisely as they are?"
"Alice is wrong, aunt, and you are right; and if she will open her writing desk for me, I will sit down this moment, and write a story — a true story — true from beginning to end; and if it moves you, my dear aunt, if it meets your approbation, my destiny is decided."
Mrs. Courland was delighted; she had slain the giant, and she saw fame and fortune smiling on her favourite. She arranged the desk for him herself; she prepared a folio sheet of paper, folded the ominous margins; and was so absorbed in her bright visions, that she did not hear a little by-talk between Ralph and Alice, nor see the tell-tale flush on their cheeks, nor notice the perturbation with which Alice walked first to one window and then to another, and finally settled herself to that best of all sedatives — hemming a ruffle. Ralph chewed off the end of his quill, mended his pen twice, though his aunt assured him “printers did not mind the penmanship,” and had achieved a single line when Mrs. Courland's vigilant eye was averted by the entrance of her servant girl, who put a packet into her hands. She looked at the direction, cut the string, broke the seals, and took out a periodical fresh from the publisher. She opened at the first article — a strangely mingled current of maternal pride and literary triumph rushed through her heart and brightened her face. She whispered to the servant a summons to all her sisters to the parlour, and an intimation, sufficiently intelligible to them, of her joyful reason for interrupting them.
Our readers will sympathize with her, and with Alice too, when we disclose to them the secret of her joy. The article in question was a clever composition written by our devoted Alice when she was at school. One of her fond aunts had preserved it; and aunts and mother had combined in the pious fraud of giving it to the public, unknown to Alice. They were perfectly aware of her determination never to be an author. But they fancied it was the mere timidity of an unfledged bird; and that when, by their innocent artifice, she found that her opinions could soar in a literary atmosphere, she would realize the sweet fluttering sensations they had experienced at their first flight. The good souls all hurried to the parlour, eager to witness the coup de theatre. Miss Sally's pen stood emblematically erect in her turban; Miss Ruth, in her haste, had overset her inkstand, and the drops were trickling down her white dressing, or, as she now called it, writing gown; and Miss Anne had a wild flower in her hand, as she hoped, of an undescribed species, which, in her joyful agitation, she most unluckily picked to pieces. All bit their lips to keep impatient congratulation from bursting forth. Ralph was so intent on his writing, and Alice on her hemming, that neither noticed the irruption; and Mrs. Courland was obliged twice to speak to her daughter before she could draw her attention.
"Alice, look here — Alice, my dear."
"What is it, mamma? something new of yours?”
"No; guess again, Alice."
"Of one of my aunts, of course?"
"Neither, dear, neither. Come and look for yourself, and see if you can then tell whose it is."
Alice dutifully laid aside her work, approached and took the book. The moment her eye glanced on the fatal page, all her apathy vanished — deep crimson overspread her cheeks, brow, and neck. She burst into tears of irrepressible vexation, and threw the book into the blazing fire.
The gentle Alice! Never had she been guilty of such an ebullition of temper. Her poor dismayed aunts retreated; her mother looked at her in mute astonishment; and Ralph, struck with her emotion, started from the desk, and would have asked an explanation, but Alice exclaimed — "Don't say anything about it, mamma — I cannot bear it now."
Mrs. Courland knew instinctively that Ralph would sympathize entirely with Alice, and quite willing to avoid an explanation, she said — "Some other time, Ralph, I'll tell you the whole. Show me now what you have written. How have you begun?"
Ralph handed her the paper with a novice's trembling hand.
"Oh! how very little! and so scratched and interlined! but never mind — “c'est le premier pas qui coute.”
"While making these general observations, the good mother was getting out and fixing her spectacles, and Alice and Ralph had retreated behind her. Alice rested her head on his shoulder, and Ralph's lips were not far from her ear. Whether he was soothing her ruffled spirit, or what he was doing, is not recorded. Mrs. Courland read and re-read the sentence. She dropped a tear on it. She forgot her literary aspirations for Ralph and Alice — forgot she was herself an author — forgot everything but the mother; and rising, embraced them both as her dear children, and expressed, in her raised and moistened eye, consent to their union, which Ralph had dutifully and prettily asked in that short and true story of his love for his sweet cousin Alice.
In due time the village of H. was animated with the celebration of Alice's nuptials: and when her mother and aunts saw her the happy mistress of the Hepburn farm, and the happiest of wives, they relinquished, without a sigh, the hope of ever seeing her an AUTHOR.
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
"Cacoethes Scribendi"
Subject
The topic of the resource
Women writers, love and marriage, village life.
Description
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A young woman is embarrassed when her writing is published by her family without her knowledge.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss Sedgwick
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<em>The Atlantic Souvenir</em>. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Lea, 17-38.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1830
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
J. Robinson
D. Gussman
Relation
A related resource
Also collected in: <em>Stories of American Life</em>, vol. 3, Ed. Mary Russell Mitford (London, 1830), pp. 162-186.<br /><em>Tales and Sketches</em>. By Miss Sedgwick. (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1835), pp. 165-181.<br /><em>Provisions: A Reader from 19th-Century American Women</em>. Ed. Judith Fetterley. Bloomington, (Indiana UP, 1985) pp. 49-59. <br /><em>The Norton Anthology of American Literature</em>, Vol. I, Ed. Nina Baym. (New York: Norton, 1998) pp.1007-1017.
Language
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English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
annuals
art
authorship
blue stocking
Boston
Disraeli
domestic duties
genius
Ichabod Crane
James Crichton
marriage
music
New England
New Haven
New York
North American Review
piety
Shakespeare
Sheherazade
Tasso
The Tempest
Waverley
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/5cb7ee30556c0d0997d5f94d11646ef5.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=fQAK7nmTS2D94c0Y9Vo4KNbTp5TWs0fDKpZ8pTtjaBjmUdknNWUmFpje-omOLMYy3QTW6jrXstZPkHxe4cikDuRWusVgqohlYuoKTi4PZa-LuOke2ZhBUuho8rqCkTNv7QLZ4HmockrsN5pC5lY%7EDw6Ww3hQa6654ClTWzdDwLZXf%7Ebq3wdLbaiayIC0A2kHNj9GR5UhvauWrIpMa%7EYnJLJyE1MYgOeLoEEQe6gWRKG5DcDKuCkOEyF%7EgvTESgLt8h-kO9jkB0N06qiB4pys0B6p3UZUe2TNQyoVI6FPd4RR4HJS3jh5-Fc0s90v8Vz%7EusnpF-37yF-B%7EtopTHsNmA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
3bd02176d8e31744eaa0d53a63344f10
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
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
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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.
[p. 132]
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)
[p. 133]
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
[p. 134]
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
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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
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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
[p. 139]
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
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"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
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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
-
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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1834
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Text
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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
The topic of the resource
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
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/26296e72eac821b8bd9ce1c06a832d89.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=DmP8VDeM5a2fBrIvu6sYulBBg4a1oL1eIc478jA6v9q8bwr6AeSjo1yV1t9HpgG%7E6zfwA-3DvhxNp9l-LHDVnwuMNAzy3N3hjFA7MyrTNmXHMOydbjEq7LtWDyQKRc40GGE4E6DHbLc1QU3P3hlz-O5GeNQ-OVnk6JJU7JilppMsFOBV%7EJ-ZnCqKFVqaMokiFxrfJKkbFyGfPXFJvmHrSB6eqcPBJUfBUxQzUCMPGjjIuS-gh58nSkRi4khX9diTNW4J-Ub%7E5jcaR-umhYvVHGcR72RjsQXVjGuAgM3SG%7EEseQuWkF7S0en7ewmCZmqpgKKJpTxM7-872pw-NJ8bLg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
593f10e894ae8f75bcb5f17e68213174
Dublin Core
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1834
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Old Maids.
"To be the mistress of some honest man's house, and the means of making neighbours happy, the poor easy, and relieving strangers, is the most creditable lot a young woman can look to, and I heartily wish it to all here." — PIRATE.
"Mrs. Seton, Emily Dayton is engaged to William Moreland!"
"To William Moreland. Well, why should she not be engaged to William Moreland?"
"Why should she, rather?"
"I know not Emily Dayton's ' why, ' but ladies' reasons for marrying are as ' thick as blackberries.' A common motive with girls under twenty is the eclat of an engagement — the pleasure of being the heroine of bridal festivities — of receiving presents — of being called by that name so enchanting to the imagination of a miss in her teens — ' the bride.'"
"But Emily Dayton, you know, is past twenty."
"There is one circumstance that takes place of all reason — perhaps she is in love."
"In love with William Moreland! No, no, Mrs.
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Seton — there are no 'merry wanderers of the night' in these times to do Cupid's errands, and make us dote on that which we should hate."
"Perhaps then, as she is at a rational age, three or four and twenty, she may be satisfied to get a kind sensible protector."
"Kind and sensible, truly! He is the most testy, frumpish, stupid man you can imagine."
"Does she not marry for an establishment?"
"Oh no! She is perfectly independent, mistress of everything at her father's. No, I believe her only motive is that which actuates half the girls — the fear of being an old maid. This may be her last chance. Despair, they say, makes men mad — and I believe it does women too.
"It is a fearful fate."
"An old maid's? Yes, most horrible."
"Pardon me, Anne, I did not mean that ; but such a fate as you anticipate for Emily Moreland — to be yoked in the most intimate relation of life, and for life, to a person to whom you have clung to save you from shipwreck, but whom you would not select to pass an evening with. To such a misery there can be no ' end, measure, limit, bound.'"
"But, my dear Mrs. Seton, what are we to do? — all women cannot be so fortunate as you are."
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"Perhaps not. But so kind is the system of compensation in this life — such the thirst for happiness, and so great the power of adaptation in the human mind, that the conjugal state is far more tolerable than we should expect when we see the mismated parties cross its threshold. Still there can be no doubt that its possible happiness is often missed, and such is my respect for my sex, and so high my estimate of the capabilities of married life, that I cannot endure to see a woman, from the fear of being an old maid, driven into it, thereby forfeiting its highest blessings."
"You must nevertheless confess, Mrs. Seton, that there are terrors in the name."
"Yes, I know there are; and women are daily scared by them into unequal and wretched connexions. They have believed they could not retain their identity after five and twenty. That unless their individual existence was merged in that of the superior animal, every gift and grace with which God has endowed them would exhale and leave a 'spectral appearance' — a sort of slough of woman — an Aunt Grizzel, or Miss Lucretia McTab. I have lived, my dear Anne, to see many of the mists of old superstitions melting away in the light of a better day. Ghost is no longer a word to conjure with —
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witches have settled down into harmless and unharmed old women; and I do not despair of living to see the time when it shall be said of no woman breathing, as I have heard it said of such and such a lady, who escaped from the wreck at the eleventh hour, that she 'married to die a Mrs.'"
"I hate, too, to hear such things said, but tell me honestly, Mrs. Seton, now when no male ears are within hearing, whether you do not, in your secret soul, think there is something particularly unlovely, repelling, and frightful, in the name of an old maid."
"In the name, certainly; but it is because it does not designate a condition but a species. It calls up the idea of a faded, bony, wrinkled, skinny, jaundiced personage, whose mind has dwindled to a point — who has outlived her natural affections — survived every love but love of self, and self-guarded by that Cerberus suspicion — in whom the follies of youth are fresh when all its charms are gone — who has retained, in all their force, the silliest passions of the silliest women — love of dress, of pleasure, of admiration; who, in short, is in the condition of the spirits in the ancients' Tartarus, an impalpable essence tormented with the desires of humanity. Now turn, my dear Anne, from this hideous picture to
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some of our acquaintance who certainly have missed the happiest destiny of woman, but who dwell in light, the emanation of their own goodness. I shall refer you to actual living examples — no fictions."
"No fictions, indeed, for then you must return to the McTabs and Grizzles. Whatever your philanthropy may hope for that most neglected portion of our sex, no author has ventured so far from nature as to portray an attractive old maid. Even Mackenzie, with a spirit as gentle as my Uncle Toby's, and as tender as that of his own 'Man of Feeling,' has written an essay in ridicule of 'old maids.'"
"And you are not perhaps aware, Anne, that he has written a poem called the ' Recantation,' and dedicated it to his single daughter, a most lovely woman, who was the staff and blessing of his old age. In your wide range of reading cannot you think of a single exception to the McTabs and Grizzles?"
"Miss Farrer's 'Becca Duguid,' but she is scarcely above contempt, trampled on by the children, and the tool of their selfish and lazy mammas."
"There is one author, Anne, the most beloved, and the most lamented of all authors, who has not ventured to depart from nature, but has escaped prejudice, and prejudice in some of its most prevailing
[22]
forms. He has dared to exhibit the Paynim Saladin as superior to the Christian crusader. He has dispelled the thick clouds that enveloped the ' poor Israelite,' the most inveterate of all prejudices, transmitted from age to age, and authorised by the fancied sanctions of religion. I said the clouds were dispelled, but do they not rather hang around the glorious Rebecca, the unsullied image of her Maker, as the clouds that have broken away from the full moon encircled her, and are converted by her radiance to a bright halo?"
"Mrs. Seton! Mrs. Seton! you are, or I am getting lost in all this mist and fog. What have Paynims and Jews to do with old maids? I do not remember an old maid in all Sir Walter's novels, excepting, indeed, Alison — Martha Trapbois — Meg Dods — one of Monkbarns' womankind, and Miss Yellowley, a true all-saving, fidgeting, pestering old maid, and the rest of them are entertaining but certainly not very exalting members of any sisterhood."
"But these are not my examples, Anne. I confess that they are fair examples of follies and virtues that, if not originated, are exaggerated and made conspicuous by single life. I confess too that for such foibles matrimony is often a kind and safe shelter.
[23]
But to my examples. Sir Walter — and who is more poetically just than Sir Walter? — has abandoned to the desolate, tragic, and most abhorred fate of old maids, his three first female characters — first in all respects, in beauty, in mind, in goodness, first in our hearts. The accomplished Flora M'lvor — the peer less Rebecca, and the tender, beautiful Minna."
"Bless me! I never thought of this."
"No, nor has one in a thousand of the young ladies who have admired these heroines laid the moral of their story to heart. Perhaps not one of the fair young creatures who has dropped a tear over the beautiful sentence that closes the history of Minna,* has been conscious that she was offering involuntary homage to the angelic virtues of an old maid. The very term would have wrought a disenchanting spell."
"I confess, Mrs. Seton, I am in what is vulgarly called a ' blue maze.' My perceptions are as imperfect as the man's in scripture who was suddenly cured of blindness. Besides I was never particu--
* [Sedgwick's note] "Thus passed her life, enjoying, from all who approached her, an affection enhanced by reverence, insomuch that when her friends sorrowed for her death, which arrived at a late period of her existence, they were comforted by the fond reflection, that the humanity which she then laid down, was the only circumstance which had placed her, in the words of scripture, ' A little lower than the angels.'"
[23]
larly skilful at puzzling out a moral; will you have the goodness to extract it for me?"
"Certainly, Anne, as I am the lecturer, this is my duty. First, I would have young ladies believe that all beautiful and loveable young women do not of course get married — that charms and virtues may exist, and find employment in single life — that a single woman, an old maid, (I will not eschew the name,) may love and be loved if she has not a husband, and children of her own. I would have her learn that if, like Flora M'lvor, she has been surrounded by circumstances that have caused her thoughts and affections to flow in some other channel than love, she need not wed a chance Waverly to escape single life; that if, like Rebecca, she is separated by an impassable gulf from him she loves, she need not wed one whom she does not love, but like the high souled Jewess she may transmute ' young Cupid's fiery shafts,' to chains that shall link her to all her species; and if like poor Minna she has thrown away her affections on a worthless object, she may live on singly, and so well that she will be deemed but ' little lower than the angels.'
"After all it is not such high natures as these that need to be fortified by argument, or example. They are born equal to either fortune. But I would en--
[25]
treat all my sex — those even who have the fewest and smallest gifts — to reverence themselves, to remember that it is not so much the mode of their brief and precarious existence that is important, as the careful use of those faculties that make existence a blessing here, and above all hereafter, where there is certainly 'no marrying, nor giving in marriage;' but I am growing serious, and of course, I fear, tiresome to young ears."
"Oh, no, no, Mrs. Seton. These are subjects on which girls are never tired of talking nor listening; besides, you know you promised me some examples — such as Miss Hamilton and Miss Edgeworth, I suppose."
"No, Anne, these belong to the great exceptions I have mentioned, 'equal to either fortune,' who, in any condition, would have made their 'owne renowne, and happie days.'"
I could adduce a few in our own country, known to both of us, who are the ornament of the high circles in which they move, but for obvious reasons I select humble persons — those who, like some little rivulet unknown to fame, bless obscure and sequestered places. There is Violet Flint — I always wondered how she came by so appropriate a name. That little
[26]
flower is a fit emblem for her — smiling in earliest spring, and in latest fall — requiring no culture, and yet rewarding it — neglected and forgotten when the gay tribes of summer are caressed, and yet always looking from its humble station with the same cheerful face — bright and constant through the sudden reverses of autumn, and the adversity of the roughest winter. Such is the flower, and such is Violet Flint. But as I am now in realities, I must call her by the old maidenish appellation that, spoiling her pretty name, they have given to her, 'Miss Vily.' She lives, and has for the last twenty years lived, with her brother Sam. He married young, a poor invalid, who, according to Napoleon's scale of merit, is a great woman, having given to the commonwealth nine or ten — more or less — goodly sons and daughters. After the children were born, all care of them, and of their suffering mother, devolved on Violet. Without the instincts, the claims, the rights, or the honours of a mother, she has not only done all the duties of a mother, but done them on the sure and broad basis of love. She has toiled and saved, and made others comfortable and enjoying, while she performed the usually thankless task of ordering the economy of a very frugal household. She has made the happy happier, tended the sick,
[27]
and solaced the miserable. She sheltered the weak, and if one of the children strayed she was the apologist and intercessor. With all this energy of goodness the cause is lost in the blessed effects — she never appears to claim applause or notice. She is not only second best; but when indulgence or pleasure is to be distributed, her share is last and least — that is, according to the usual selfish reckoning. But according to a truer and nobler scale, her amount is greatest, for she has her share in whatever happiness she sees in any living thing."
How many married dames are there who repeat every fifteen minutes, my husband, my children, my house, and glorify themselves in all these little personalities, who might lay down their crowns at the feet of Violet Flint ! — Miss Vily, the old maid.
"The second example that occurs to me, is Sarah Lee. Sarah has not, like Violet, escaped all the peculiarities that are supposed to characterise the 'Single-sides.' With the chartered rights of a married lady to fret, to be particular, and to have a way of her own, her temper would pass without observation; but being an old maid, she is called, and I must confess is, rather touchy. But what are these sparks, when the same fire that throws
[28]
them off keeps warm an overflowing stream of benevolence? — look into her room."
"Oh, Mrs. Seton! I have seen it, and you must con fess it is a true 'Singleside' repository."
"Yes, I do confess it — nor will I shrink from the confession, for I wish to select for my examples, not any bright particular star, but persons of ordinary gifts, in the common walks of life. Had Sarah been married she would have been a thrifty wife, and pains taking mother, but she wore away her youth in devotion to the sick and old — and now her kindness, like the miraculous cruise, always imparting and never diminishing, is enjoyed by all within her little sphere. Experience has made her one of the best physicians I know. She keeps a variety of labelled medicines for the sick, plasters and salves of her own compounding, and materials with which she concocts food and beverages of every description, nutritious and diluent; in short, she has some remedy or solace for every ill that flesh is heir to. She has a marvelous knack of gathering up fragments, of most ingeniously turning to account what would be wasted in another's hands. She not only has comfortables for shivering old women, and well patched clothes for neglected children, but she has always some pretty favour for a bride — some kind
[29]
token for a new-born baby. And then what a refuge is her apartment for the slip-shod members of the family who are in distress for scissors, penknife, thimble, needle, hook and eye, buttons, a needle-full of silk or worsted of any particular colour. How many broken hearts she has restored with her inexhaustible glue-pot — mending tops, doll's broken legs, and all the luckless furniture of the baby-house — to say nothing of a similar ministry to the 'minds dis eased' of the mammas. Sarah Lee's labours are not always in so humble a sphere — 'He who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before,' says a political economist, 'is a benefactor to his race.' If so, Sarah Lee takes high rank.
"Two blades of grass! Her strawberry beds produce treble the quantity of any other in the village. Her potatoes are the ' greatest yield' — her corn the earliest — her peas the richest — her squashes the sweetest — her celery the tenderest — her raspberries and currants the greatest bearers in the country. There is not a thimble-full of unoccupied earth in her garden. There are flowers of all hues, seasons, and climes. None die — none languish in her hands.
"My dear Anne, I will not ask you if an existence so happy to herself, so profitable to others,
[30]
should be dreaded by herself, neglected or derided by others. Yet Sarah Lee is an old maid."
"You are, I confess, very happy in your instances, Mrs. Seton, but remember the old proverb, 'one swallow does not make a summer.'"
"I have not done yet — and you must remember that in our country, where the means of supporting a family are so easily attained, and when there are no entails to be kept up at the expense of half a dozen single sisters, the class of old maids is a very small one. Many enter the ranks, but they drop off in the natural way of matrimony. Few maintain the 'perseverance of saints.' Among those few is one, who, when she resigns the slight covering that invests her spirit, will lay down 'all she has of humanity' — our excellent friend, Lucy Ray.
"She is now gently drawing to the close of a long life, which I believe she will offer up without spot or blemish. She began life with the most fragile constitution. She has had to contend with' that nervous susceptibility of temperament that so naturally engenders selfishness and irascibility, and all the miseries and weaknesses of invalidism. Not gifted with any personal beauty, or grace, she was liable to envy her more fortunate cotemporaries. Without genius, talents, or accomplishments to at--
[31]
tract or delight, she has often been slighted — and what is far worse, must have been always liable to the suspicion of slights. But suspicion, that creator and purveyor of misery, never darkened her serene mind. She has lived in others and for others, with such an entire forgetfulness of self that even the wants and weakness of her mortal part seem scarcely to have intruded on her thoughts. She has resided about in the families of her friends — a mode of life which certainly has a tendency to nourish jealousy, servility, and gossipping. But for what could Lucy Ray be jealous or servile? She craved'' nothing — she asked nothing, but, like an unseen, unmarked Providence, to do good ; and as to gossipping, she had no turn for the ridiculous, no belief of evil against any human being — and as to speaking evil, 'on her lips was the law of kindness.' You would hardly think, Anne, that a feeble, shrinking creature, such as I have described, and truly, Lucy Ray, could have been desired, as an inmate with gay young people, and noisy, turbulent children. She was always welcome, for, like her Divine Master, she came to minister — not to be ministered unto.
"Lucy, like the Man of Ross, is deemed passing rich by the children, and an unfailing resource to the poor in their exigencies, though her income
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amounts to rather less than one hundred dollars!!
"We sometimes admire the art of the Creator more in the exquisite mechanism of an insect than in the formation of a planet, and I have been more struck with the power of religion in the effect and exaltation it gave to the humble endowments of this meek woman, than by its splendid results in such a life as Howard's. Lucy Ray, by a faithful imitation of her master, by always aiding and never obstructing the principle of growth in her soul, has, through every discouragement and disability, reached a height but 'little lower than the angels;' and when her now flickering light disappears, she will be lamented almost as tenderly (alas! for that almost) as if she were a mother; and yet, Anne, Lucy Ray is an old maid."
"You half persuade me to be one too, Mrs. Seton."
"No, Anne, I would by no means persuade you or any woman to prefer single life. It is not the 'prim rose path.' Nothing less than a spirit of meekness, of self-renunciation, and of benevolence, can make a woman, who has once been first, happy in a subordinate and second best position. And this under ordinary circumstances is the highest place
[33]
of a single woman. Depend upon it, my dear young friend, it is safer for most of us to secure all the helps to our virtues that attend a favourable position; besides, married life is the destiny Heaven has allotted to us, and therefore best fitted to awaken all our powers, to exercise all our virtues, and call forth all our sympathies. I would persuade you that you may give dignity and interest to single life, that you may be the cause of happiness to others, and of course happy yourself — for when was the fountain dry while the stream continued to flow? If single life, according to the worst view of it, is a moral desert, the faithful, in their passage through it, are refreshed with bread from Heaven and water from the rock.
"I shall conclude with a true story. The parties are not known to you. The incidents occurred long ago, and I shall take the liberty to assume names; for I would not, even at this late day, betray a secret once confided to me, though time may long since have outlawed it. My mother had a school-mate and friend whom I shall call Agnes Grey. Her father was a country clergyman with a small salary, and the blessing that usually attends it — a large family of children. Agnes was the eldest, and after her following a line of boys, as long as Ban--
[34]
quo's. At least, some ten years after Agnes, long waited and prayed for, appeared a girl, who cost her mother her life.
"The entire care of the helpless little creature devolved on Agnes. She had craved the happiness of possessing a sister, and now, to a sister's love, she added the tenderness of a mother. Agnes' character was formed by the discipline of circumstances — the surest of all discipline. A host of turbulent boys, thoughtless and impetuous, but kind-hearted, bright, and loving, had called forth her exertions and affections, and no one can doubt, either as lures or goads, had helped her on the road to heaven. Nature had, happily, endowed her with a robust constitution, and its usual accompaniment, a sweet temper; so that what were mountains to others, were mole hills to Agnes. 'The baby,' of course, was the pet lamb of the fold. She was named, for her mother, Elizabeth; but, instead of that queenly appellation, she was always addressed by the endearing diminutive of Lizzy. Lizzy Gray was not only the pet of father, brothers, and sister at home — but the plaything of the village.
"The old women knit their brightest yarn into tippets and stockings for the ' minister's motherless little one' (oh, what an eloquent appeal was in
[35]
those words!) the old men saved the ' red cheeked' apples for her — the boys drew her, hour after hour, in her little wagon, and the girls made her rag babies. Still she was not in any disagreeable sense an enfant gatee. She was like those flowers that thrive best in warm and continued sunshine. Her soft hazel eye, with its dark sentimental lashes, the clear brunette tint of her complexion, and her graceful flexible lips, truly ex pressed her tender, loving, and gentle spirit. She seemed formed to be sheltered and cherished — to love and be loved; and this destiny appeared to be secured to her by her devoted sister, who never counted any exertion or sacrifice that procured an advantage or pleasure for Lizzy. When Lizzy was about fourteen, a relative of the family, who kept a first rate boarding school in the city, offered to take her for two years, and give her all the advantages of her school, for the small consideration of fifty dollars per annum. Small as it was, it amounted to a tithe of the parson's income. It is well known, that, in certain parts of our country, everything (not always discreetly) is sacrificed to the hobby — education. Still the prudent father, who had already two sons at college, hesitated — did not consent till Agnes ascertained that by keeping a little school in the village she might obtain
[36]
half the required sum. Her father, brothers, and friends all remonstrated. The toils of a school, in addition to the care and labour of her father's family, was, they urged, too much for her — but she laughed at them. 'What was labour to her if she could benefit Lizzy — dear Lizzy!' All ended, as might be expected, in Lizzy going to the grand boarding school. The parting was a great and trying event in the family. It was soon followed by a sadder. The father suddenly sickened and died — and nothing was left for his family hut his house and well kept little garden. What now was to be done?— - College and schools to be given up? — No such thing. In our country, if a youth is rich he ought to be educated; if he is poor he must be. The education is the capital whereby they are to live hereafter. It is obtained in that mysterious but unfailing way — ' by hook and by crook.'"
The elder Grays remained in college — Agnes enlarged her school — learned lessons in mathematics and Latin one day, and taught them the next ; took a poor, accomplished young lady from some broken down family in town into partnership, and received a few young misses as boarders into her family. Thus, she not only was able to pay ' dear Lizzy's' bills regularly, but to aid her younger brothers. Her
[37]
energy and success set all her other attractions in a strong light, and she was admired and talked about, and became quite the queen of the village.
"I think it was about a year after her father's death, that a Mr. Henry Orne, a native of the village, who was engaged in a profitable business at the south, returned to pass some months at his early home. His frequent visits to the parsonage, and his attentions, on all occasions, to Agnes, soon became matter of very agreeable speculation to the gossips of the village. 'What a fine match he would be for Agnes! — such an engaging, well-informed young man, and so well off!' Agnes' heart was not steel; but though it had been exposed to many a flame she had kindled, in had never yet melted."
"Pardon me, Mrs. Seton, for interrupting you — was Agnes pretty?"
"Pretty? The word did not exactly suit her. At the time of which I am now speaking, she was at the mature age of five and twenty; which is called the perfection of womanhood. Prettiness is rather appropriate to the bud than the ripened fruit. Agnes, I have been told, had a fine person — symmetrical features, and so charming an expression that she was not far from beautiful, in the eyes of strangers, and quite a beauty to her friends and lovers.
[38]
Whether it were beauty, manners, mind, or heart, I know not — one and all probably — but Henry Orne soon became her assiduous and professed admirer. Till now Agnes had lived satisfied and happy with subordinate affections. She had never seen anyone that she thought it possible she could love as well as she loved those to whom nature had allied her. But now the sun arose, and other lights became dim — not 'that she loved Caesar less, but she loved Rome more.' Their mutual faith was plighted, and both believed, as all real lovers do, that the world never contained so happy, so blessed a pair, as they were.
"Lizzy's second year at school was nearly ended, and one month after her return the marriage was to be solemnised. In the meantime Agnes was full of the cares of this world. The usual preparations for the greatest occasion in a woman's life are quite enough for any single pair of hands, but Agnes had to complete her school term, and the possibility of swerving from an engagement never occurred to her.
"Lizzy arrived, as lovely a creature as she had appeared in the dreams of her fond sister. In the freshness and untouched beauty of her young existence, just freed from the trammels of school, her
[39]
round cheek glowing with health, and her heart overflowing with happiness. 'Here is my own dear Lizzy,' said Agnes, as she presented her to Henry Orne, 'and if you do not love me for anything else, you must for giving you such a sister.'
"Henry Orne looked at Lizzy and thought, and said, ' the duty would be a very easy one.' 'For the next month,' continued Agnes, 'I shall be incessantly occupied, and you must entertain one another. Henry has bought a nice little pony for me, Lizzy, and he shall teach you to ride, and you shall go over all his scrambling walks with him — to Sky-cliff, Rose- glen, and Beech-cove — the place he says nature made for lovers; but my poor lover has had to accommodate himself to my working day life and woo me in beaten paths.'
"The next month was the most joyous of Lizzy's life; every day was a festival. To the perfection of animal existence in the country, in the month of June, was added the keen sense of all that physical nature conveys to the susceptible mind.
"Wherever she was, her sweet voice was heard ringing in laughter, or swelling in music that seemed the voice of irrepressible joy — the spontaneous breathing of her soul. To the lover approaching his marriage day Time is apt to drag along with
[40]
leaden foot, but to Henry Orne he seemed rather to fly with Mercury's wings at his heels; and when Agnes found herself compelled by the accumulation of her affairs, to defer her wedding for another month, he submitted with a better grace than could have been expected. Not many days of this second term had elapsed, when Agnes, amidst all her cares, as watchful of Lizzy as a mother of an only child, observed a change stealing over her. Her stock of spirits seemed suddenly ex pended, her colour faded — her motions were languid, and each successive day she became more and more dejected. 'She wants rest,' said Agnes to Henry Orne; she has been unnaturally excited, and there is now a reaction. She must remain quietly at home for a time, on the sofa, in a darkened room, and you, Henry, I am sure, will, for my sake, give up your riding and walking for a few days, and stay within doors, and play on your flute, and read to her.' Agnes' suggestions were promptly obeyed, but without the happy effect she anticipated. Lizzy, who had never before had a cloud on her brow, seemed to have passed under a total eclipse. She became each day more sad and nervous. A tender word from Agnes — a look, even, would make her burst into tears.
"'I am miserable, Henry,' said Agnes, ' at this
[41]
unaccountable change in Lizzy — the doctor says she is perfectly free from disease — perhaps we have made too sudden a transition from excessive exercise to none at all. The evening is dry and fine, I wish you would induce her to take a walk with you. She is distressed at my anxiety, and I cannot propose any thing that does not move her to tears.'
"'It is very much the same with me,' replied Henry, sighing deeply, but if you wish it I will ask her.' He accordingly did so — she consented, and they went out together.
"Agnes retired to her own apartment, and there, throwing herself upon her knees, she entreated her Heavenly Father to withdraw this sudden infusion of bitterness from her brimming cup of happiness. 'Try me in any other way,' she cried, in the intensity of her feeling, and, for the first time in her life, forgetting that every petition should be in the spirit of ' Thy will be done,' 'try me in any other way, but show me the means of restoring my sister — my child to health and happiness!'
"She returned again to her little parlour. Lizzy had not come in, and she sat down on the sofa near an open window, and resigned herself to musings, the occupation, if occupation it may be called, of the idle, but rarely, and never of late, Agnes!
[42]
In a few moments Lizzy and Henry returned, and came into the porch, adjoining the parlour. They perceived the candles were not lighted, and concluding Agnes was not there, they sat down in the porch.'
"'Oh, I am too wretched!' said Lizzy. Her voice was low and broken, and she was evidently weeping. 'Is it possible,' thought Agnes, ' that she will express her feelings more freely to Henry than to me? I will listen. If she knows any cause for her dejection, I am sure I can remove it.'
"'Why, my beloved Lizzy,' replied Orne, in a scarcely audible voice, 'will you be so wretched — why will you make me so, and forever, when there is a remedy?'
"'Henry Orne!' she exclaimed, and there was resolution and indignation in her voice. 'If you name that to me again, I will never, so help me God, permit you to come into my presence without witnesses. No, there is no remedy, but in death. Would that it had come before you told me you loved me — before my lips confessed my sinful love for you — no, no — the secret shall be buried in my grave.;
"'Oh, Lizzy, you are mad — Agnes does not, cannot love as we do. Why sacrifice two to one? Let
[43]
me, before it is too late, tell her the whole, and cast myself on her generosity.'
'"Never, never — I now wish, when I am in her presence, that the earth at her feet would swallow me up; and how can you, for a moment, think I will ask to be made happy — that I could be made happy, at her expense ? No, I am willing to expiate with my life, my baseness to her — that I shall soon do so is my only comfort — and you will soon forget me — men can forget, they say —'
"'Never — on my knees, I swear never!' —
"'Stop, for mercy's sake, stop. You must not speak another such word to me — I will not hear it.' She rose to enter the house. Agnes slipped through a private passage to her own apartment.
"She heard Lizzy ascending the stairs. She heard Henry call after her, ' One word, Lizzy — for mercy's sake, one last word.' But Lizzy did not turn. Agnes heard her feebly drag herself into the little dressing- room adjoining their apartment, and after, there was no sound but the poor girl's suppressed, but still audible sobs.
"None but He who created the elements that compose the human heart, and who can penetrate its mysterious depths, can know which of the sisters was most wretched at that moment. To Agnes who
[44]
had loved deeply, confidingly without a shadow of fear or distrust, the reverse was total. To Lizzy who had enjoyed for a moment the bewildering fervours of a young love, only to feel its misery, that misery was embittered by a sense of wrong done to her sister. And yet it had not been a willing, but an involuntary and resisted, and most heartily repented wrong. She had recklessly rushed down a steep to a fearful precipice, and now felt that all access and passage to return was shut against her. Agnes without having had one dim fear — without any preparation, saw an abyss yawning at their feet — an abyss only to be closed by her self-immolation.
"She remained alone for many hours — she resolved — her spirit faltered — she re-resolved. She thought of all Lizzy had been to her, and of all she had been to Lizzy, and she wept as if her heart would break. She remembered the prayer that her impatient spirit had sent forth that evening. She prayed again, and a holy calm, never again to be disturbed, took possession of her soul.
"There is a power in goodness, pure self-renouncing goodness, that cannot be ' overcome, but overcometh all things.'
"Lizzy waited till all was quiet in her sister's room. She heard her get into bed, and then stole
[45]
softly to her. Agnes, as she had done from Lizzy's infancy, opened her arms to receive her, and Lizzy pillowed her aching head on Agnes' bosom, softly breathing, — 'My sister — mother !'
"'My own Lizzy — my child' answered Agnes. There was no tell-tale faltering of the voice. She felt a tear trickle from Lizzy's cold cheek on to her bosom, and not very long after both sisters were in a sleep that mortals might envy, and angels smile on.
"The rest you will anticipate, my dear Anne. The disclosure to the lovers of her discovery, was made by Agnes in the right way, and at the right time. Everything was done as it should be by this most admirable woman. She seemed, indeed, to feel as a guardian angel might, who, by some remission of his vigilance, had suffered the frail mortal in his care to be beguiled into evil. She never, by word, or even look, reproached Lizzy. She shielded her, as far as possible, from self-reproach, nor do I believe she ever felt more unmixed tenderness and love for her, than when, at the end of a few months, she saw her married to Henry Orne.
"My story has yet a sad supplement. Madame Cotin, I believe it is, advises a story teller to close the tale when he comes to a happy day; for, she says, it is not probable another will succeed it.
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Poor Lizzy had experience of this sad mutability of human life. Hers was checquered with many sorrows.
"Lapses from virtue at eight and twenty, and at sixteen, afford very different indications of the character; you cannot expect much from a man, who, at eight and twenty, acted the part of Henry Orne. He was unfaithful in engagements with persons less merciful than Agnes Gray. He became inconstant in his pursuits — self-indulgent, and idle, and finally intemperate, in his habits. His wife — as wives will — loved him to the end.
"Agnes retained her school, which had become in her hands a profitable establishment. There she laboured, year after year, with a courageous heart, and serene countenance, and devoted the fruit of all her toils to Lizzy, and to the education of her children.
"I am telling no fiction, and I see you believe me, for the tears are trembling in your eyes — do not re press them, but permit them to embalm the memory of an old maid.”
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
"Old Maids"
Subject
The topic of the resource
Sacrifice, stigma towards unmarried women, alternatives to marriage.
Description
An account of the resource
Two women are discussing the negative views of old maids, and one gives the sad account of an old maid who gave up her true love for the happiness of her sister, and the unintended consequences of that sacrifice for all of the parties involved.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss Sedgwick
Source
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“Old Maids,” <em>The Offering, </em> 17-46, Philadelphia, Thomas T. Ash, 1834.
Date
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1834
Contributor
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J. Robinson; D. Gussman
Relation
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Annual reissued as <em>The Wreath of Friendship</em>, 1837.<br />Reprinted in <em>The Casket</em>, March 1834, 137-139 and<br /><em>Tales and Sketches </em>by Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and Blanchard, 1835: 97-116.<br />Collected in <em>Old Maids: Short Stories by Nineteenth-Century U.S. Women Writers</em>, ed. Susan Koppelman, Boston: Pandora Press, 1984: 11-26.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
"Madame Cotin" [Sophie Ristaud Cottin]
"Man of Ross" [John Kyrle]
boarding school
heaven
Jew
John MacKenzie
marriage
Napoleon
old maid
prayer
sacrifice
singlehood
Sir Walter Scott
sisters
teaching
tears
The Offering
The Pirate
virtue
Waverley
-
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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1844
Document
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Text
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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,
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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-
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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
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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
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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-
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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.
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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,
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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
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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
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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
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1844
Contributor
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L. Damon-Bach
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
boarding house
children
factory
family
grandparents
New-England
orphan
railroad
Tales and Sketches
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/5c5798cec5431d7a21c50a83ccf5ab15.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=rXQv8fwCMOP08Ex-8swFSrQuWS76LRO%7EWO6Na-gSAMmhfWu-IhxchignxKH4wUsAYCFx7ZiVTCZcal9sr6Zw1lIRzcmW7Ikm3WhIGKyWzDZjbZLnyBeepu3CO4ZPHk8ip9Fch7iurh41hargM-32h4dxjgAzTecaqTKQy8u9FAjvH-jZ8R-YvHS8cn%7ErQC4a3ZB18aCw4S-dzCf8MVog72L%7ECx7DQtEnt6yQOhTWKrWXhoVxdJpqWVuGdJt-sg61FnIprdoDMO5ytwj7ezAUpeLk9IJi118ZcBH9tvOdesI7uEpMjZJQQM8qUS%7EuHmX743WB89ZwLcrMeyz9mbmKTQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
9e33898c5bb6e2ee33368a9c65a0f431
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
1846
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories published in 1846.
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.
In the year 1273, and on as bright a day as ever shone, even on that bright land of Italy, two females issued from the bronze gate of the palace Lanbertazzi at Bologna. The one by her stature, her elastic step, rich dress, and close veiling, inspired the ideas of youth, beauty and rank. The other stood revealed, a sturdy serving-woman, who vigilantly watched and cared for the lady she attended. As they threaded their way, through one of the narrow passes which characterized those old fortress-like cities, to the grand square, the elder woman stretched her arm behind the younger as a sort of rampart to defend her from even the accidental touch of a passer-by.
Suddenly they heard the tramping of horses behind them, and the elder exclaimed, “Quick, my lady! Turn the corner; these precious gallants of our city, will think no more of trampling us under their horses’ hoofs, than if we were the grass made to be trodden on! There, now we are safe, for they cannot reach us here,” she added, following the young lady who sprang on the elevated pedestal of a cross. “Here how they come, by whether our people or old Orlando’s, who can tell?” At this moment, out poured from the narrow street, some fifty horsemen— horses and men so disguised by paint, caparison, dress and masks, that it would have seemed impossible for those who knew them best to recognize them.
It was market day in Bologna, and the square, though it was early morning, was already filled with peasantry. The crowd receded to the right and the left, but as the horsemen did not halt nor scarcely check the speed of their horses, it seemed inevitable that life would be sacrificed.
“Holy Virgin! Save the poor wretches!” cried the young lady, in a voice whose sweet tone was to her attendants like that of a lute to a brazen instrument.
To exclude the frightful peril from her sight, she put her hands before her eyes, just in time to save herself the torture of seeing a poor woman, who was walking forward with her back to the cavaliers, knocked down by one of them and ridden over by three others, whose horses, though they instinctively recoiled from the body, seemed to tread the life out of it. Loud exclamations burst out on every side. A cry of “Shame! Shame!” “Every bone in her body is broken!” “See the blood from her head!” “She is dead! “She is dead!” One of the cavaliers made a motion as if turning his horse’s head, but an urgent order from the leader of the troop checked this single movement of humanity, and turning out of the square into another narrow and devious passage, they rode unheeding on through the gates of the city in pursuit of some lawless adventure.
“Kneel not here, by dear lady Imelda,” said her attendant; “rise up and let us hasten to church and pray to Madonna for the soul so, without rush, sent out of this world.”
“Yes, yes, dear Nilla, but first,” she added, taking her purse from her pocket and giving it to her, “go in among these people, take this money and see what can be done for her body or soul. Oh, Nilla— Frederico was their leader. It is but half an hour ago that he came to me to tie that blood read band around his arm. I told him it was an evil omen.
“Was it Frederico? Then save thy money, for it will empty the coffers of the Lambertazzi to pay for the sins they brothers are heaping on their wild heads. Alas! That the young should think so long and judgment so far!”
“Nay, I tell thee go, Nilla, and offer aid!” said the young lady, with the air of one not to be disobeyed, even by a privileged nurse. “Money may buy bread and cataplasms, but it will not efface sin.” If it would, she thought as Nilla left her side, it were well that our nobles are rich; by precious. Oh, Frederico! My brother! God stay thy violent hand.
After a few moments, Nilla returned with the purse.
“There is no use,” she said, “in showing it there— she is not dead. She bids them carry her into Santa Maria, and lay her before the alter of Madonna. There where she has prayed all her life— there will she die.”
“We will follow her, Nilla.”
“Nay, my dear lady Imelda, we cannot. The alter is in the Giéréméi chapel, and I gathered from the words dropped, that this woman’s family are their followers.”
“Be it so. We have nought to do with their hates, Nilla; ours is a better part.”
“But if your father or your brothers hear you have been in that chapel, my lady?”
(Pg. 254)
“I care not— they pursue bloody work. We are vowed to our lady of mercy; follow me.”
The train bearing the body of the dying woman preceded them into the church of Santa Maria, and turning into the Giéréméi chapel they laid her on the floor before a richly decorated alter of the Virgin. A hundred wax lights were burning before it; a crucifix of silver and precious gems stood on it, surrounded by lamps, images and vases of the same precious metal. Over them hung a holy family fresh from the hands of Grotto, and below stood a sculptured sarcophagus containing a saint’s ashes; all bespoke the riches and devotion of the Giéréméi. Beside the alter was a sitting figure of the Madonna herself, with the infant Jesus in her arms, both sparking with jewels and surrounded with the votive offerings. To the pious Catholic the image of Madonna symbolizes all suffering, sympathy and love. From her sanctified heart radiates the whole circle of human affections. She is far enough above humanity for homage, and near enough for fellow-feeling and aid.
The priest officiating at the altar, continued his service without heeding the many feet that came clattering over the marble floor. Even the boy who waived the censer, gave not a swing the less for the spectacle of a violent death.
Imelda had thrown back her veil, and discovered a face resembling (if the traditionary portrait may be believed) the immortal Cenci of Guido. There was the same potency of purpose with the undimmed freshness of youth— the same ripeness for Heaven, with the intense susceptibility to human suffering. The crowd gave place to her, as if an angel were passing among them, and still closely attended by Nilla, she knelt beside the bleeding woman, and taking her veil off to staunch the wound, “Can nothing be done for you?” she asked.
The woman painfully strained open her failing eyelids, and a faint color returned to her ghastly cheek.
“No, no,” she answered, “I want nothing. Madonna has heard me— she smiles on me,” and she turned her eye lovingly to the compassionate face over the altar. “Day and night, lady, I have prayed that my weary life might end. This is joy to me, but wo to those by whom it cometh.”
Imelda shuddered.
“Perhaps,” she said, “You leave those behind you who can be served by such as are willing and able to serve them. Gold shall not be spared.”
“Gold! Oh! You cannot bring the dead to life if you filled their graves with gold— but stay, stay,” she added, and she clenched Imelda’s arm so that the blood trickled down her ermined glove; “I had two sons dearer to me than my life was even then when they made every minute of it glad; they were stabbed by the young Labertazzi on cold blood while they kept faithful ward and watch for old lord Boniface. Oh, they were good sons to me, but they were daring, hot blooded youths. Buy masses for their souls, lady— not for mine— not for mine. Madonna will take care of mine— it matters not for me.” Her voice sank away. “Pray for them, dear lady,” she added, in a whisper, “the prayers of saints are heard. Oh, bid the priest hasten to me!”
Imelda beckoned eagerly to the priest who had just finished the morning mass. He came, knelt on the other side, and performed the office for the dying. It was a rough sight for Imelda, that old woman struggling between life and death, her muscles stiffening and tremors and convulsions affecting her whole frame; but she did not shrink from it. She looked like an angel come to attend the parting spirit. Tresses of her bright hair disengaged by the removal of her veil had fallen over her cheek and neck on one side. Her cheek was deeply colored by her emotion, and her blue eyes glowed as she raised it with every amen ejaculated to the priest’s prayer.
“Is that angel or mortal!” said a young man, who had just risen from a brief prayer in a retired part of the chapel.
“Mortal, I trow, my lord,” replied the person addressed. “It is warm blood that colors that cheek, and that look of pity and sorrow is the common privilege of our humanity.”
“Whence comes she, Giovanni?” Surely we know all the beauties of Bologna, and I have seen those of Florence and Pisa, but never has my eye lighted on such as vision as this.”
“It is not, my lord, the pearl we have heard of, shit up in old Labertazzi’s oyster shell?”
“No, no, it cannot be.”
“Cannot! Your wish would say must not, my lord. But though kept like a nun in her cell, I have heard rumors of the young lady Imelda’s rare loveliness. Such a gem will sparkle through the cervices in the walls. They do say that her crafty father is plotting to match her with royalty.”
“But, Giovanni, this cannot be the lady Imelda. The Lambertazzi are dark me.”
“Nature has such freaks, my lord; the lily grows beside the night-shade.”
“My lord Boniface,” said an old man, advancing eagerly from the group, “Why stand ye here and poor Alexa dying? The mother of the boys who lost their lives for you at your palace gate.”
“Old Alexa!” God forgive me!” The thought that he had vowed to watch over and protect this most unfortunate woman, pierced his heart as he sprang toward her. She did not see him; her ears received no sound; a thick film was gathering over her eyes. She turned gasping toward Imelda and, nature rally for a last effort, she
(Pg. 255)
pressed her lips a small crucifix and giving it to Imelda, said, “Seek out my goof young lord Boniface; give him this sign of love and mercy— tell him to forgive the Lambertazzi. No revenge— no revenge for me!”
“I will— God so help me as I will.”
The agony passed from the dying woman’s face.
“She is dead,” exclaimed Nilla, “come away, my lady, quickly. I see the followers of the Giéréméi gathering. You are unveiled in their chapel!”
Imelda drew up her mantle close over her head and face and disappeared.
_______________
Bologna had long been harassed by the rival factions of the Labertazzi and the Giéréméi, its two most noble families. The Lambertazzi were at the head of the Ghibelines, their rivals commanded the Guelphs. Political, religious and domestic elements inflamed their feud. The spirit of democracy which then pervaded the Italian states governed Bologna. The nobles were still permitted to live within the same walls and sit in the same councils with the citizens, but they were subordinate to them and kept in check by them. The state was free, the factions still were governed by their respective chiefs. Gregory X had just dies, and the unhappy consequence of the removal of a pontiff, whose vigor and sanctity had bridled the hates and restrained the hostile tendencies of the times, was son obvious in new demonstrations of enmity between states and factions.
From this kindling of the fevered elements, came bright gold.
“In the height of the convulsions of its civil wars,” says the historian of the Italian republics, “Florence renewed architecture, sculpture and painting. It then produced the greatest poet Italy can yet boast; it restored philosophy to honor; it gave an impulse to science which spread through all the free states of Italy, and made the age of taste and the fine arts succeed to barbarism!”
“Whether these were the legitimate effects of contention may be questioned. Co-existence is sometimes mistaken for cause, and it is very difficult for human wisdom to solve the mysteries of human development. We know that after the thunderbolt the most delicate of flowers unfold, but is it not the simultaneous shower, and not the dissolving and destructive power, that brings them forth?
But these speculations are not for our narrow space. We know, from tradition, that the arts of the 14th century had touched the soul of Boniface Giéréméi to better issues than hatred and war; that though always ready and gallant defense, he was never forward to provoke a quarrel nor first to draw the sword. It is said he brought more painting with his father’s walls than battle trophies, and preferred the society of artists and learned men to the companionship of those whose exploits filled the mouths of the vulgar.
____________
“Dear Nilla,” said Imelda, “do not persuade me from my duty. I will do what I promised.”
“Yes, but can’t you see, my lady, that if you do it by my hand, it is the same as if your own dainty hand carried this crucifix to my lord Boniface? I will swear to you to do your bidding— to give this token it into the hand of the young lord; and to speak every word you shall tell me— not a syllable, not a letter more nor less.”
“But you are not me, Nilla.”
“No, my dear young lady, and the mischief is that the young lord knows the difference too well already. I shall never forget to my dying day how he looked at you were kneeling by old Alexa. He had better have been looking at her. Strange you did not see him, my lady.”
“Nilla!” Distrust not my word and obey me. Ask him to meet me in the upper cloister of San Georgio to-morrow morning when I come from confession after matins.”
Nilla well knew that her mistress’ gentleness was fortified by the characteristic energy of the Lambertazzi, and she obeyed; muttering to herself retrospective, the vainest of all, wishes. Oh if old Alexa had but dies in the street, or her young lady had but said her prayers at home! And where should she be if her lords, Frederico and Alberti, should know she had gone between their deadly enemy and their sister. They would think no more of poking cold steel into her than if she were a cat! Poor Nilla! It was a fatal embassy.
The next morning lord Boniface outwatched the stars, in the cloisters of San Georgio. Every minute seemed an hour and yet never were minutes so precious, for they were freighted with the most golden expectations of his life. He was to see again that face which seemed to him to vivify and make real the ideal beauty of art. He was to hear that voice which was the very concentration of music. He was to communicate, were it but for one brief moment, with a soul indicated by symbols. He was startled by every flutter of the breeze— his heart sank with every receding sound. The place of rendezvous was far retired within the intricate windings of San Georgio, and the day, which was pouring its full light on all Bologna, was still dim and shadowy in her cloisters.
At length a door, communicating with the interior of the church, opened and a form issued from it so wrapped in a full gray mantle that nothing but its stature and graceful movement could be perceived. But these were quite enough to assure Boniface that the lady Imelda was coming toward him. The agitation he could scarcely restrain contrasted with the assured step of the young lady who felt nothing but that she was performing a
(Pg. 256)
simple act of duty. She was conscious of a new interest in it when she was near enough to perceive for the first time the noble figure and soul lit countenance of the hereditary enemy of her house.
“Thanks, my lord,” she said “for granting a request that I was compelled to make by a promise to a dying woman.”
“Thanks from you, lady Imelda! Haven has my devoutest thanks that I am permitted this unhoped for meeting!”
“Nothing short of a sacred promise,” resumed Imelda, with a cold dignity that was meant to qualify the rapturous tone in which she was addressed, “would justify me in breaking through the observances of my sex and venturing to solicit a meeting with my hereditary enemy.”
“Enemy, lady Imelda! Love may come against our free will— enmity cannot.”
“That sacred promise,” continued Imelda, as if not hearing Boniface’s last words, “was given to Alexa, a client of your house. You, doubles, have heard the tragic circumstances of her death.”
“They could not long unknown to me, lady, where there are so many who live by feeding the feud between the Lambertazzi and my father’s house.”
“It is to avert the evil effect of these facts reaching you that I am here. Alexa’s last act,” she added, showing him the crucifix, “was to send you this symbol of our Lord and master’s submission to wrong and forgiveness of injuries, and by this token she prayed for you to forgive— not to revenge her death. We may not turn a deaf ear to the words of the dying; they stand on the threshold of the other world. Give good heed, I pray to you.”
“In aught else, lady, Alexa’s dying wish— your faintest word, should be law to me, but—”
“But you fear the reproach of your faction—or perhaps the scornful taunt of my brothers. These are vulgar fears, my lord. There is a nobler fear; fear above fear— a fear worthy of God’s creatures— a fear of violating his law. This takes the sting and reproach from every other fear.”
“Aye, lady, this is true; but truth fitter for these cloisters than the world we live in. He who should adopt it must exchange his good sword for the monk’s cowl.”
“Do you then reject this blessed sign?” said Imelda, once more extending to him Alexa’s crucifix.
“Nay, nay, sweet lady,” he relied, pressing his lips to it, and bringing them so nearly in contact with Imelda’s beautiful hand, that the spirituality of his devotion was somewhat questionable.
“I do not reject— I would fain accept it; but in doing so I should pledge myself to possible dishonor and disgrace. The death of Alexa pass as accidental till I am taunted with my forbearance, and then I must—”
“Must like other men— must come down to the level of their standard. Farewell, my lord. My errand is done.”
“One moment!” Listen to me, lady Imelda. Command me in aught I can do. I will go to the farthest verge of the world to serve you.”
“And yet for my prayer you will not do the duty that lies at your door.”
She turned to leave him; he followed her through the cloister. He entreated her to give him the crucifix on his promise to consecrate it to Madonna, and pray to her to enable him without loss of honor to obey Alexa’s last injunction.
What we have briefly summed up, Boniface contrived to dilate and involve, and Imelda found herself yielding, perhaps too willingly, to these little arts of delay, when she rejoined Nilla at the church door.
“Thanks to our lady!” she whispered; “You are come at last! Did you see him?”
“He was there before me.”
“So indeed he should be. Were you seen? Through all those long dark passages did no one see you? It were not well that you were seen alone there. Were you met? Are you struck deaf and dumb, my lady? Did you meet no one, I say?”
“No-yes-no-I think not.”
“The good Lord make me patient! You don’t hear a word I say. I have been a good hour on my knees praying to St. Ursula, and all the blessed saints that watch over young virgins, that no human eye, save that of lord Boniface, might fall on you; and, for aught you care, you may have met half Bologna. Call up your wits, dear my lady, and tell me what has happened in the last hour?”
“Hour, Nilla! It seems to me you may count on your fingers the minutes since we parted.”
“Humph!” ejaculated Nilla, as she thought that time had a different measure for an old woman waiting, and a young one talking with him of all Bologna’s youth most renowned for all manly graces. “Be it hours or minutes, my lady,” she added, “I care not which, but only if you were observed?”
“Only, I think, by father Jerome, whom I met as I returned from the cloister.”
“Father Jerome! Our lady forbid! All the gray mantles in Bologna would not hide you from father Jerome. He sees through stone walls. If he should have seen lord Boniface!”
Old Nilla was right. Father Jerome was, of all men, to be dreaded and shunned by Imelda. Born with strong passions and condemned by his priestly profession to a passionless life, he used the fuel which should have burned to ashes in the furnace of his holy order, to feed the fiery natures of
(Pg. 257)
the brothers Lambertazzi, and plied all his craftiness to stimulate their reckless pursuit of personal exaltation. It was their object to extinguish the only family that questioned their supremacy in Bologna. They were fitted for the stripes of barbaric times, natural “enemies of God, of pity and mercy.” Their rival was gifted with the qualities that belonged to the developments of civilized life. He was the friend of poets and philosophers, and the worshiper of art which had sprung forth in all her freshness and beauty from the conflicts of free Italy, like Venus from the tumultuous waves.
Imelda’s instinctive sympathy with him was most natural, perhaps inevitable. Her delicate nature had shrunk from the clang of her brothers’ armor and the clamor of their voices. She had devoted herself in the retirement of her own apartments to the study of science and poetry under the guidance of her father confessor, Silvio- a learned and holy man. Lord Boniface, already her ardent lover, had appeared to her as Ferdinand did to Miranda—
“A spirit—
A thing divine— for nothing natural
She ever saw so noble;”
and it was most certain that they had but met and parted when they felt that “both were in either’s power.” Love ripens fast in the land of the orange and the myrtle, and love in all lands is miraculously quick in device. The lovers contrived to meet going to confession or returning from mass. Few of these blissful meetings escaped the snaky eye of father Jerome. Did malice and envy stimulate his senses to preternatural acuteness? It seemed so when he overheard a whispering appointment they made to meet at a masked-ball. He communicated this appointment to the brothers.
“It is a safe opportunity,” he said.
“We can make out opportunity when we are ready to execute our vengeance,” replied the younger brother, Alberti.
“Yes, and expose yourself to expulsion from the city. Remember, my son, that the nobles no longer rule Bologna. That scum has risen to the top- the citizens above the noble.”
“Curse them! Yes,” muttered Frederico.
“Remember, too, that your sister’s lover is a favorite with our masters. He studies the courses of the stars with their sons and lavishes his gold on workers destined to their common use, and employment.”
“He earns their favor, then, methinks,” said Alberti.
“Yes, my son, their favor is no gratuity.”
“He shall pay another debt in another kind- at short reckoning,” growled Frederico.
“He who would steal your sister is a felon and deserves to pay this reckoning,” insinuated the priest, “but take heed, my son, if two to one you assault this gallant the blow will recoil on yourselves.”
“We need not two; my steel is sure, as you know, father,” said Alberti, glancing significantly at the priest. “I will follow him from the palace Ansiani. A felon merits a stab in the back.”
“But, Frederico, what does he merit who this stabs?” asked Alberti.
“My son,” interposed the priest, “the means are sanctified by the end. The executioner does God’s will when he takes the felon’s life.”
“Let Frederico then be the executioner- an open field and a fair fight for me. I’ll not meddle with this dark work,” and thus making his honest protest, Alberti left the priest and his less scrupulous brother to contrive their plan of assassination.
Father Jerome looked after Alberit with a drawing up of the brow and a drawing down of the mouth, expressive of contempt, and then said to Frederico, “I distinctly heard your sister’s”… he hesitated and added, “lover,” with an accent to indicate that a more offensive worked pressed on his lips, “say that he had a friend among the followers of the Ansiani, who would introduce him by a secret entrance which communicated with a passage from the court of the Eastern balcony; he could this enter the halls without a passport, and, once there, mingle unsuspected with the guests. You, forewarned that he is there, will easily identify him. His stature and grace are not common among out gallants of Bologna. While he is dallying with your sister you may glide into that passage and the slightest brush you can give him will be enough if- as I think you meant when you said your steel was ‘sure’ – you have it well anointed with the Saracen’s oil.”
“I have – all the posts of Heaven cannot save him from my extreme unction.”
“To night, then, as the bell of San Georgio tolls ten. But, my son, sport not, even in word, with the holy offices of the church.”
“No, father,” replied Frederico, with a loud laugh, that proved he had at least the merit of not flattering the priest by hypocrisy, “not while I have you to teach me reverence.”
Father Jerome had not yet quite reached the meridian of life. Under his priest’s cowl were hidden the worst passions of man. Before the vesper hour he had a private and long interview with Imelda. He told her plainly that her love was discovered, and that mortal danger threatened her lover; and then he darkly hinted at a means of escape. His hints she did not understand, for his foul thoughts passed over her pure mind like breath over the highest polished glass, leaving no stain, and when he came to state more plainly on what conditions he would save her lover’s life – she recoiled as if a venomous snake
(Pg. 258)
lay across her path. Her face, which had paled a moment before at thought of her lover’s peril, grew red with angry blood. Father Jerome quailed under her glance. She was silent till she could speak calmly.
“Go, priest,” she then said, “all life is in God’s hands— the most precious as the most worthless. My honor is in mine own trust. Leave my presence.”
Nilla found her mistress an hour after in an ague of terror. “Oh, why have you staid, Nilla?” she said. “Did you find him? What said he?”
“Why, firstly, I did not find him; a pretty chase my old legs have had of it over half Bologna.”
“Oh, Nilla, do not spend your breath talking of yourself.”
“Lord’s love! I have little breath to do any thing for myself.”
“What said he, Nilla!”
“Why, first, he said nothing.”
‘Nothing!”
“No, in truth. What should he say, till he had read your letter? But deal, my lady, why so red, and so white, and shaking as if you had a tertian ague on you?”
“Think not of me, Nilla? Say in a word is my lord coming?”
“Yes – is one word, he is coming?”
“Oh, then, Nilla, you must back to him; his life is threatened; he must not come ton-night.”
“Then, my sweet lady, he must escape the danger through some other mode then my croaking. He mounted his horse as I left him and bade me tell you he should ride till the time of meeting.”
“We are lost,,” cried Imelda, wringing her hands. “There is no help for us. They know he meets me ton-night. The Ansiani are his enemies – he will have no friends near him, and my brothers – my cruel brothers! That bad priest, Jerome, Nilla!”
“Set against him the good priest Silvio, my lady. The children of light should be a match for the children of darkness.”
“You are right, Nilla. Call father Silvio to me. If he be possible, truly he will find it.”
Silvio came, and listened pitifully to Imelda’s relation of her interview with Jerome. “God alone can help us, my child,” he said; “we know not how nor where the snare is spread, but He who delivereth the bird from the fowler can surely help if he seeth fit.”
“And is this all, father, that your wisdom can suggest to me?”
“For the present exigency, all, my poor child; but should you escape to-night, I will no longer oppose your lover’s prayer. Come to my cell at dawn to-morrow. I will perform the holy sacrament of marriage for you, and at the first suspicious moment you may escape and take refuge in Florence or Pisa. It is not fitting you should longer swell where the demons of hate – and worse than hate, beset you.”
“Is this your counsel, dear father Silvio?” exclaimed Imelda, while for a moment the sun seemed to break through the clouds and shine on her head, so radiant was she with hope. The light passed off as she flatteringly exclaimed, “But there is an abyss of danger, of despair to be overleaped before we reach this happiness. Go, dear, holy father, spend these fearful hours in prayer and vigil and penance for us. Here, take my purse; give all to the wretched, and here,” she added, stripping the brilliants from her fingers, “do what good you can with these; all I ask in place of them is my wedding ring.”
“God’s love is not bought with a price, dear daughter.”
“Oh, I know, I know – these jewels are but the earnest of what I will be and do if His protection be over us this night. Your blessing, dear father, and depart. I must dress and be first at the palace. They will not dare touch him in my presence.”
Alas! Poor Imelda knew not what bad men dare do!
While Imelda was kneeling before Madonna to fortify herself by prayer for the trials of the evening, Nilla was preparing for her toilet. “There, my lady,” she said, as Imelda came from her oratory, “there is your green robe embroidered with gold flowers, and buttoned from top to bottom with such diamonds as no family can boast in Bologna, save the Lambertazzi. You shake your head? Well, here is the azure silk knotted with the purest orient pearls. No, again? The silks are fresh from the riches looms of Florence. No married dame or maiden in Bologna has the like of them.”
“It matters not, Nilla. Give me a dress all of white – fitting for a bride or for the dead.”
“My dear lady!”
“Obey me, Nilla. Give me, too, my pearl collar, bracelets and head-gear.”
Nilla obeyed in silence and trembling, for she had had bad dreams the night before and her lady’s words seemed their interpretation. When Imelda was arrayed and surveyed herself in her Venetian glass, a blush of conscious beauty overspread her pale cheek. The luster of her white satin harmonized with the soft tints of her Italian complexion, and the dead white of pearls wreathed on her dark hair gave a look of life to the almost colorless hue of her white brow.
“Your eyes are dull to-night, my dear lady,” said Nilla, “but for that you would look a king’s bride.”
(Pg. 259)
“He who only shall make me a bride is a king by divine right, Nilla. Bring me my Persian veil; that will serve me at the altar or – for a winding sheet.”
___________
The festivities at the Ansiana palace had but begun when Imelda appeared there. As she entered leaning on the arm of her proud old father, every eye was curiously fixed on her. Her prolonged seclusion in her father’s palace and the rumor of her beauty had sharpened curiosity; but as she tenaciously kept the mask on her face attention was turned to other known beauties, and after a little while she escaped observation.
She soon found herself near a balcony toward which the dancers pressed for air and refreshment. She dropped her fan and a blue domino, who she had just noticed and eyed with intense interest, picked it up and restored it to her, saying, in a voice audible only to her, “The balcony will be empty when the dance begins – linger here till then.” She did so and in a few brief moments her plan was concerted with Lord Boniface, and their fate sealed.
The night wore on, the gayety increased, and the lovers again met, near the gallery by which Boniface had gained access to the palace, and by which he purposed to depart. Frederico was lurking there. There was a narrow passage from one saloon to another; out of this passage a door opened into the gallery. Imelda standing mid some ladies at the door of the saloon saw her lover approach his place of exit and saw that at the very bottom he raised his hand to open the door he was encountered by Alberti, in a black domino. “He who seeks a secret passage,” he said rudely in an undisguised voice, “is no friend to the house.”
“Who interferes with the liberty of the Ansiani guests is surely not their friend,” replied lord Boniface, in a voice that even Imelda would scarcely have recognized as his.”
“Then drop your mask, and verify your right to this liberty,” said Alberti, haughtily.
“Not at your bidding, most courteous gentleman, but since you guard this egress I will take any other that may be opened to the guests of our good old host,” and turning away, as if quite indifferent, he re-entered the saloon, encountered face to face, the old count Ansiani, and stopped, as if quite at east, to exchange courtesies with his host. His seeming coolness disconcerted and perplexed Alberti, who stood at a short distance behind him. Imelda with a fluttering heart watched every movement and heard every word. “Alberti, Alberti,” she said, eagerly, in a low voice, and pointing through the door to a lady in an adjourning apartment, “Pray, tell me, is not that the lady Julia!”
“By my faith, it is,” he replied, his attention completely diverted; “I have in vain sought her all the evening.”
“She has but just entered,” said Imelda, “or you would earlier have recognized her, for though her simple dress denies her princely rant her queenly bearing betrays it. I knew her only from your description, Alberti, or, perhaps, from the instinct of out coming relationship.”
“Bravo, Imelda!”
“Present me to her, Alberti. You promised it, and surely I deserve it.”
“You do – come with me.”
If Imelda had dared to look back, she would have seen that Boniface, profiting by the opportunity she had just procured for him, complied at the instant with the rule made by a jealous nobles of Bologna, that every guest, on taking leave of his host, should withdraw his mask. There being no eye on him but the old count’s, dulled with some seventy years wear, Boniface did this fearlessly, and walked slowly past Alberti and out to the grand stair-case. He had scarcely disappeared from the count’s sight when father Jerome whispered in his ear, “Does my lord suspect that the bold youth who but now took leave of him is the boasted Giéréméi?”
“Impossible!”
“My word – my oath for it.”
“Follow him. Give orders to my men to seize him; he shall pay dearly for this audacity.” He was followed, but perceiving this he had, after deliberately walking the stair-case, glided down to the light, passed the retainers of the Ansiani at the gate of their court, and, at the corner of the street, mounted a horse, which, with a trust servant, was awaiting him.”
At the dawn of the morning Imelda, closely muffled and attended only by Nilla, entered father Silvio’s cell. Her lover was awaiting her, and the good father performed the marriage rite. “My children,” he said, retaining in his their clasped hands, “these are such bonds as God’s priest may ratify – not accidental, imaginary or selfish, but wrought in the furnace of trial out of your hearts’ best affections; their temper is proof against all the shifting chances of life; death cannot dissolve them, and there, where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage, eternal shall be written on them.”
“Amen! Amen!” cried old Nilla. Father Silvio stood back, and Boniface clasping Imelda in his arms, whispered, “Courage, my love – my wife! One brief separation more, and then o earthly power shall divide us. Remain here one half hour, then father Silvio will meet me with you at the city gate. In Florence we shall find friends and safety, till the old wound that separates our families is healed.”
(Pg. 260)
“Go grant it!” she whispered, “but my heart bids me cling to you, with fearful prophecy.”
“Take courage, love,” he said, “it is but the shadow of past sorrow – we will soon get beyond it.” He left her, and in one half hour she followed with the good father and Nilla.
“Stop – stop, my lady,” said Nilla, who stumbled after her mistress’s fleet steps. “I saw the shadow of armed men behind the gate-way we just passed, and I am sure I saw father Jerome just slink behind that wall.”
Imelda, trembling, clung to Silvio’s arm.
“If it be they,” whispered father Silvio, “it is impossible to gain the gate – but we may evade them by artifice. Return, Nilla, as if you were seeking something dropped on the ground. Eye them closer, and if they be the brothers, still retrace your steps, and we will turn the next corner, gain the palace, and dispel their suspicions and be sage for the present.”
He then walked slowly on with Imelda, and before they reached the turn, the old woman had paused at the gate-way, and was receding beyond it.
“Patience, dear daughter,” said the priest, “you are baffled this time, but your husband’s vigilance will soon make another opportunity. If they follow lord Boniface to the gate he betrays nothing for he ill infer that you are intercepted, and he will only appear to them armed and equipped for a ride to the hills. We owe this to the diabolical malice and art of Jerome,” he thought as Imelda yielded to his counsel. “So, through life he has crossed and baffled me,” and his thoughts, like an electric flash, retraced the wrongs done him by the envious rival of his childhood – how he had closed against him the avenues of friendship, love and honorable fame, and driven him to seek refuge in the priest’s cell – the precinct of the tomb.
__________
One week passed away. The day was near its dawn, and Imelda was receiving the last embraces of her faithful nurse. “Dear Nilla,” she said, “take it not so hard; it is for present safety that we are separated – my lord says father Silvio urges too that we should be free, unembarrassed, in case of pursuit – you see,” she added with a faint smile, “that now I fear nothing. I have no foolish presentiment as before. When I put on my veil I thought it would prove my winding-sheet. If danger beset us, and Heaven please, a way of escape will be opened, and if not death since father Silvio assures me that there we cannot be separated. God’s love casts out all fear, dear Nilla.”
“It should – but –”
“Nay, nay, Nilla, not another word – time presses – the day is already dawning – you must not follow me one step. All depends on my passing unobserved and unheard through the long, dark galleries to the outer court; to that my lord has secured an entrance. Farewell, dear Nilla – to your prayers found us;” – and then hastily embracing her old friend, she left her in an agony of love and tears, (from which prayer exhales,) passed now swiftly, now slowly, along her perilous descent and gained the landing of the last stair-case – there she heard the ringing of a loud and hasty footstep mounting the winding stairs, and, in time, she darted into a broad niche in the wall, behind the pedestal of a statue. She caught a glimpse of the passing figure, and knew it to be Frederico. His appearance filled her with alarm and apprehension. She had believed her brothers were at Padua, and her flight had, in this belief, been fixed and hastily arranged. Could father Jerome, who seemed to have inscrutable power, have penetrated their secret plans? And was some fatal blow now preparing for them? Should she turn back and avoid the danger? No – for still her husband was in peril, and what was safety to her that did not include him! Her decision was made, and as the sound of the footsteps dies away, she sprang from her retreat, and hardly touching the stairs, passed down and turned to enter a narrow gallery that communicated with the private court. Frederico’s favorite dog, a fierce wolf-hound, was lying across the passage as if stealthily keeping it. He growled without moving. Poor Imelda had an unconquerable fear of dogs, and a particular terror of this brute of her brother’s, which had always seemed to her an impersonation of evil. She instinctively started back and remounted half the stairs before the instinct of fear yielded. Love – oh, how much stronger than fear – overcame. She retracted her steps, boldly stooped to the dog, spoke low and gently to him, looked him directly in the eye, stroked and patted him. There are strange and mysterious modes of communication between all intelligent beings. Our modern Mesmerite would probably sat the dog was magnetized. We cannot explain or name the cause – perhaps it is true that there is “un mystere de sympathie et d’affection entre touit ce qui respire sous le ciel.” Certain it it is, the animal became tractable, rose, stretched himself, “like an innocent beast and of a good conscience,” permitted Imelda to pass without molestation. She scarcely breathed again before she was in the court and in her husband’s arms where, for one instant, danger and fear, the past and future, were forgotten – the rapturous present filled brimmingly the whole of her life.
Such moments give us some notion of what may constitute the measurement of time in a more advanced condition of existence. Keenness of sensation, intensity of feeling takes place of duration – the point of time stretches backward and forward, with the velocity of light; and in the
(pg. 261)
retrospect, the rest of life is compacted into small space – a dark line of shadow along fields of light. We must be forgiven for pausing at this point – it was Imelda’s first and last of perfect human happiness.
A sound reached her ear that struck upon it like a death-knell. She uttered a piercing shriek and cried, “Fly – fly!” and at the same instant her brothers with their swords drawn rushed into the court.
“Stand back, Imelda!” shouted Frederico to his sister, who had planted herself steadfastly before her lord; “Stand back, I say, or through your body my sword shall pierce that villain – robber!”
“Imelda,” said her lover, gently putting her aside, “I can defend myself.”
Imelda sprang toward Alberti – “Oh, my brother,” she cried, putting both her hands upon his breast, “there is a drop of mercy in your hear – stand back. It is not manly two to one – get between them – he is no robber. He is my husband! My chosen lord!”
“Your husband, Imelda? Then let them have a fair fight. I’ll not make nor mar between them.”
The encounter was fierce and obstinate. Both parties were accomplished swordsmen, but Boniface, having but the single purpose of defending himself, armed with the righteous cause, was more adroit; an overmatch for his opponent maddened with conflicting passions. He defended himself at all points, till at the sight of his wife kneeling, her eyes raised and her arms outreached in an agony of supplication, his arm wavered and he failed to quite to parry a blow which aimed at his hear, grazed his shoulder, so that the blood followed.
“Enough! Enough!” cried Frederico, with a demonic howl, “you have poison in you for every drop of blood in your veins. You are welcome now to your husband!” he added to Imelda, driving his sword into its sheath. Her husband had already fallen fainting on the ground. “The work is done Alberti,” he concluded – “the day is breaking; we must be gone, or the city-guard on their last round will find us here.” He hastily disappeared.
“Cowardice and cruelty, are fit companions,” muttered Alberti, slowly following.
___________
The accomplished historian of Italian Republics this finishes his notice (which we have somewhat amplified) of this tragedy.
“The only mode of treatment which left any hope of curing the empoisoned wound, was sucking it while still bleeding. This, it is said, three years before Edward of England had been saved by the devoted Eleanor. Imelda undertook her sad ministry, and from the wound of her husband, she drew the poisoned blood which diffused through her own system the cause of sudden death. When her woman came to her they found her extended lifeless beside the dead body of the husband she had loved too well.”
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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Imelda of Bologna
Subject
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Romance, Tragedy, Italy
Description
An account of the resource
In the Italian city of Bologna, a tragedy unites Imelda with her family’s enemy, the lord Boniface. The two fall in love, but are plotted against by Imelda’s brothers. While Imelda and Boniface plan their escape from danger, Imelda’s brothers plan his death.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss Catharine M. Sedgwick
Source
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Columbian Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine [edited by John Inman and Robert A. West] (May 1846): 253-61.
Date
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1846
Contributor
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Shawn Riggins
Language
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English
Type
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Document
Publisher
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Columbian Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine
Catholicism
Columbian Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine
Death
Faith
Italy
marriage
religion
Romance
Tragedy
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1847
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“Crescent Beach” By Miss Catharine M. Sedgwick [1847]
“Not upon us or ours the solemn angel
Hath evil wrought,
The funeral anthem is a glad evangel—
The good die not.” Whittier
In the summer of 183-, I passed a month at Crescent Beach. I find, on recurring to my note-book of that period, some passages that may now be published without offensive personality.
It was an unusually hot season, and the proximity of a delicious sea-shore to our great cities were never more enjoyed. Every day our citizens poured down from their streaming streets to bathe their wilted bodies and furrowed faces in the cool waves. There was a charming society that summer gathered at Crescent Beach—many an “immortal flower” among “human weeds.” There were beauties still pre-eminent, beauties returned unspoiled from the flatteries of foreign courts to fill the honored place of American matrons—their past a pleasant dream, their present a golden reality. There were the mothers and wives of statesmen holding the highest positions in the country, women whose intelligence, simplicity and kindly affability set in a bright aspect our democratic institutions. There were very pretty young women, content with the role of good mothers, surrounded by lovely children, bright wreaths of living flowers, chatting away the day good-humoredly over their worsted work and crochet needles. There were – and – who charmed away ennui with amateur music and heart-piercing ballads. There were, too, pretty young girls free from affection and coquetry, and intelligent young men, (Heaven be praised) exempt from conceit or coxcombry. There was the lawyer in his vacation—who can ever forget him! as he passed up and down the room, giving courteous, gentle word to old and young, and gladdening the evening social circle with wit and grace, in those silvery tones that have often made the “wonder mute” in our courts and halls of legislation. And there too was ----as bright and enjoying as he had been thirty years before, his merry laugh ringing on our ears and through our hearts like festal bells. God grant him more lustres, for to that soul of honor, that happy spirit which they will come crowned with “the respect that waits on age.”
There too was — bearing life’s burdens firmly and gracefully, while the freshness, sincerity and charm of youth were still upon her. Already she had bound up her golden sheaves of filial virtue, and, amidst the délassemens of a watering-place, was sowing seeds in young and loving hearts for future reapings.
There, too, were young mothers in retired rooms, keeping patient vigils over sick children, and sisters passing the live-long day in woodland paths and quiet walks along the sea-shore with their invalid brothers, having early waked from the “dream that life was beauty,” and found (without its casting a shadow over them) that “life is duty.”
There was chaff with the wheat. But, to all, the uses of this place seemed to be good. Dissipation and display were, by common consent, avoided. The beach walks in the glorious twilights, and the ocean, solemn as the presence of a divinity, had an elevating power over the lowest, the least susceptible.
I must proceed to relate a few circumstances that may not tend to prove this position, but rather to indicate that the inner rules the outer world.
The first day after my arrival, on going, in the evening, into the drawing-room,
“Who is that excessively pretty woman?” I inquired of an elderly gentleman.
“Which? all these young women are excessively pretty in my eyes!”
“She with a golden hue over her skin as if a sunbeam had lingered there.”
“Oh, that dark complexioned lively little French woman—Madame Joubert.”
“No, no, the one with the cap which the Graces seemed to have dropped on her head.”
“That little jewel? have you been here twelve hours without finding her out? That is Mrs. Louise Ryson, the subject of the curiosity, observation (inalveillance) and gossip of all the very good-natured ladies at Crescent Beach.”
“Mrs. Ryson,” I responded in a tone of some astonishment.
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“Yes, Mrs. Ryson, married a second time, and the mother of that peerless child I saw you talking with as I came from the breakfast-room.”
“Is it possible? The child must be seven years old.”
“She is at least that, and wiser than her years. She has convinced me that Dickens’ little Nell is not an ideal, and that angel-spirits are sometimes invested with mortal mould, and sent to wander here for a little while on some heavenly mission. I expect on some bright morning to see Juliet unfold her wings and mount upward."
I looked at my friend, who was not addicted to romantic moods or sentimental notions. I saw he was earnest. “It was written on her forehead,” he continued, “as the Turkish fatalist would say. It is not only royal physiognomies, like Napoleon’s and Charles I.’s, that have a doom inscribed on them by nature; I have marked it on persons of obscure condition, and seen it realized. Sit down here by me and look attentively at that child. Is there not something over that most lovely face like a shadow on an opening flower?”
He drew me to the window, and we sat down by it. The lady had just entered the drawing-room and sunk on the sofa. She seemed looking for some expected person; when the child, who evidently was not that person, appeared at a farther door, looked round, and bounded towards her. “Dear mamma,” she said, “may I stay by you?” “Yes, Juliet, til I go out—I am going to drive.” “Can’t I go with you, mamma?” “No, Juliet, there’s no room.”
“There used always to be room, mamma.” A gentleman at this moment looked in at the door. My friend touched my arm. Mrs. Ryson’s face lighted. She half rose and sat down again as if afraid of attracting observation; the gentleman advanced towards her, they exchanged a few words in a low voice, he went up to the piazza, and she rose to go to her room. “Then I can’t go with you, mamma,” said the child in a saddened voice. “No, why do you tease me, Juliet! why can’t you go and amuse yourself as the other children do; you are so odd.”
“So I am,” said the child, dejectedly following her mother; “for there is nobody to mate with me.” The mother soon after came to the piazza in a very handsome hat and mantilla; was handed into the carriage by the gentleman who addressed her in the drawing-room, and drove off. In the meanwhile I had learned from my friend, who was an established lounger at Crescent Beach, all that he knew of Mrs. Ryson’s history.
She had been bred at one of our fashionable boarding schools, and had learned there just as much as might be expected, to prepare her for the serious duties and stern requisitions of life. She married at seventeen a man she loved, at eighteen she was a mother and a widow, and at twenty-two she was again married to a respectable prosperous merchant, a man of sound head and sound heart. Louis Ryson was attracted by her beauty and grace; but when he assumed the responsibility of her happiness and the support and protection of her unportioned child and herself through life, he believed she had sense enough to perform well a woman’s pat, that is to say, that she would be a credible, affectionate and domestic wife. As Mrs. Ryson and her companion drove off, Robert Liston, the friend whom I have quoted above, a man of shrewdness and experience, said to me, “there is an intrinsic difficulty in the case of our young married women. I mean those who have been fashionably educated and associated, and who have not (a few have) mind enough to lay their own course. They have accomplishments and tastes that belong to the class born to the dolce far niente life, or if you will allow me an illustration familiar to the ruder days of my youth, they have the ruffle without the shirt. Your sex has by nature more sensitiveness and more refinement than ours. This is developed by your education. You get glimpses into the world of art, you learn the caning about painting and sculpture, and the names of at least of the operas, composers and singers. Now, too, as your gods are unknown gods to us,—for the most part cotton and corn dealers, or importers of dry good, or if we chance to belong to the learned professions, still operatives,—delving all day, with no time to give to the mere embellishments of life,—so our young women are left to be amused by foreign men, who have, as I said, the ruffle without the shirt, or by those few idle men of fortune among us, who like Mrs. Ryson’s admirer, Rupert Reed, have time to acquire certain foreign graces, and time and leisure to practice foreign follies and vices, one of the worst of them being to profit by the coquetries of pretty, weak and very assailable young women, like poor Mrs. Louis Ryson.” Our conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the daily coaches. “There is the owner of the property we were speaking of,” continued my friend Liston, pointing to one of the gentlemen alighting from the coach, a man of some eight and twenty, with a fair open countenance, but remarkably destitute of that nicety and delicatȇsse to which ladies give the indefinable name of an ‘air.’
“Is that Mrs. Ryson’s husband?” I asked.
Liston smiled at my tone and replied, “That is, and a good honest fellow too; a man respected in his counting-house, and in Wall-street, and kind and affectionate in his own household; but he has no gift at making tableaux of life. You see the sort of person he is.” Little Juliet, who ever since her mother drove off had been standing listlessly by the railing, gazing in the direction her mother had gone, came forward at the arrival of the
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coaches, to receive her step-father. He kissed her and asked ‘where was her mother?’ “She has gone to take a drive,” replied the child, in the manner that indicated she would rather not have had that answer to give.
“I am glad of it, it is a charming afternoon, but why did she not take you with her, Juliet?”
“There was not room.” It was evident to me that Juliet gave this answer because she had no art to give another. A painful blush overspread her face as she spoke. Ryson misinterpreted it. “Never mind, my dear,” he said, “you shall have a drive to-morrow, and here is something for you in the mean time,” and from a multitude of parcels, fresh fruit, fresh books, etc. with which he had loaded himself for his wife and her daughter, he took a huge one of candies. “Oh, papa, how kind you always are! Let me take some of your things to your room. Oh, here are mamma’s worsteds!”
“Yes, I went back for them, I had forgotten them in my hurry. No, dear, I’ll take them all in.” He turned as he was entering the door, and said, “Tell your mother, Juliet, when she comes, that I shall be in directly. I have promised a gentleman to play a game of billiards with him before tea.” Again he turned back and said, “There is a parcel of burnt almonds inside yours, for your mother. Don’t open that, Juliet, you know she particularly likes burnt almonds.”
“There is something very kindly in his voice,” said I to my friend, as Ryson passed in, “and an air of simplicity, frankness, and unconventionalism that particularly pleases me.”
“And are you not rather struck with his being remarkably unexacting, unjealous—the poor man never even asked with whom his wife had gone; he thinks no evil, and therefore fears none.”
“And perhaps has none to fear,” I replied, “the rust in our society is a good element.”
“And therefore,” said my friend, “should never be abused. Of all the birds of prey who hover over society and live by devouring the weak, the libertine is the most atrocious and most detestable. I have known Rupert Reed from his childhood. The rich inheritance that awaited him, instead of stimulating his parents to fit him for the great responsibility of using and dispensing, procured for him exemption from restraint. He had from nature a quick perception and strong will, but he grew up as ignorant as a clown, with the exception of some accomplishment in music. He had some taste for it, and it was the grace in request among the people he consorted with. At seventeen he came into possession of his immense fortune, and for three or four years he abandoned himself to a life of pleasure, so called. His constitution was then exhausted, and he ‘brought up,’ as they term it. He changed his field of action, he married a beautiful woman, and neglected her after six months; he became haut-ton, was exclusive in his habits; in the world, but not of it, he bestows his favors on those only who are distinguished for fashion, or beauty, or talent, r a certain caste. Now it is a brilliant actress, opera singer, or ballet-dancer; now a debutante in high life, and now the pretty wife of some confiding, working city merchant, whom accident has made the belle of a season at a watering-place. like poor Mrs. Ryson. He like eclat, and therefore he always marks as his prey such as are sparkling in sunshine.”
“But I am astonished that decent women should permit the advances of a man whose libertinism is so notorious as Rupert Reed’s!”
“My dear, innocent friend! I beg your pardon, and your sex’s, but when was reputed libertinism a bar to a man’s acceptance in society, provided he has a very large fortune, has an ultra and rather refined coxcombry, studies foreign conventional refinements, and bears a name (that potent supreme charm in our democratic society!) that has belonged to a fashionable dynasty for two or three generations. Besides, there is, it must be acknowledged, some charm peculiar to the individual. I am inclined to think it has something to do with animal magnetism. There are certain men and certain women too, whose attractions are inexplicable. This very Rupert Reed broke the heart and overclouded the destiny of a gifted young creature as far above him as the stars are above us. The facts came to me mysteriously, and I cannot communicate them. God help her! I never see his bloodless cheek without thinking that the curse I heard her father utter is eating ‘his life away!’”
I hope my readers will not conclude that my friend and I are merely cold and curious observers, analyzing and depicting our fellow-creatures as coolly as a naturalist does a fish. It does not become me to speak of myself; but of him I must say he has far more humanity than curiosity, far more of sorrow and pity than anger for human folly, and that excepting in his confidential communications with me, he maintained an apparent ignorance of the gossip in active circulation at Crescent Beach, in relation to poor little Mrs. Ryson and the reptile into whose web she was falling. I would forewarn my readers, too, against the trouble of looking on the map for Crescent Beach. It is only a name we have given to one of the sea-shores to which our citizens go down in herds during the hot summer months to refresh soul and body. Why not call things by their right names! Simply because we wish to invest with a slight veil of fiction circumstances which, having transpired some few years since, are already forgotten.
As I parted from my friend, Mrs. Clinly joined me. Mrs. Clinly is a star of magnitude, though declining from the ascendant, she has been a beauty;
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was younger once—is now a grandmother—and very young and very handsome for a grandmother. She still hovers round the precincts of the world she once shone upon, and by no very violent imagination might be supposed to be a spirit condemned to note and publish the follies in which she indulged, till they forsook her. She is called a very good-natured person, and so she is as far as an easy, careless deportment goes—a readiness to introduce a fashionable stranger, to do an acceptable office for a prominent actor on this scene—to impart a new fashion, or teach a new stitch. She has a quick recognition, and what seems a spontaneous smile for every passer-by, but when they have passed, listen, if you will, to her annotations—her treasured budget of private anecdotes—“They are pretty girls! but what a pity the men are shy of them!”
“Shy of them! I have observed no such thing!”
“Oh, they are, I assure you, on account of that old story about their mother; it is very wrong they should suffer for it, poor girls!”
“Lovely dress of Mrs. —’s. My husband says, he had rather look at her dresses than pay for them. I suppose he could afford it as well as poor Mr. ----.”
“Just observe” (behind her fan) “Mrs. Rollins and Mrs. Smith when they meet,”—the parties pass us, —“they did not even bow. Mrs. Smith has mentioned some little thing Mrs. Rollins said about Mrs. John Buller. How are you to-day, Mrs. Rollins?” she continued to that lady, who now approached us, and who I thought had, en passant, looked very much askance at Mrs. Smith.
“It’s a lovely day; did you bathe, Mrs. Rollins?”
“No; I haven’t been in my room all day. I detest living in public and going in herds that your people are so fond of!”
“Not in feeling. No, I assure you, I have lived too long abroad to identify myself with them. One gets one’s tastes so changed, that one can never be at ease here, I think. They talk of spies abroad—Lord bless me!—it seems you are all spies here! there is no freedom. You must do as everybody else does, and say what everybody else says. If you express an opinion that differs from others, on character, religion, or what not, it is repeated and garbled! If this were done in society comme il faut in Europe, the repeater would be sacrificed. Depend on it, mesdames,” she concluded, shrugging her shoulders, and darting a glance along the piazza, at the offending Mrs. Smith; “this tittle-tattle belongs to demi-civilization. I made some chance remark about that poor little Mrs. Ryson’s flirtation with Rupert Reed. I am sure I think none the worse of her—il faut l’amuser; but repeated, I am made to appear—what, you may imagine;” and she writhed a mouth that had once been pretty, into an expression of bitter resentment. At this moment, little Juliet came on the piazza, her face lightened, holding in one hand a bunch of fresh pond lilies (the exquisite lotus). “O! Your Mamma has returned from her drive; has she, my dear?” said Mrs. Clinly, who, if she had been Mrs. Ryson’s recording angel, or accusing sprit, could not have kept a more exact watch over her movements. “No,” replied Juliet, the passing ray of sunshine vanishing from her face; “do you think anything can have happened to mama, Mrs. Clinly?”
“Oh, no, my dear,” replied Mrs. Clinly, with a sly smile that expressed more than one should have thought in the presence of that innocent child. “Mr. Rupert Reed is a very safe driver for your mother—in one sense,” she added in a lowered voice, to Mrs. Rollins, who merely shrugged her shoulders, as if the insinuation were a very light matter. At his moment, Mrs. Duncan passed along, dispersing at the right hand and the left all the lilies she had not given to little Juliet. I have nothing special to tell of Mrs. Duncan, and yet I pause, as my memory goes back to that period as if a good angel were passing by me. I wish I had the power to describe her, and to make others feel, as I did then, the influence of her character. Mrs. Duncan was somewhere on that stage of pilgrimage of life between thirty and forty, when most women, if not worse by the experience of life have lost the freshness of their interest in it. Not so with dear Mrs. Duncan; she was as frank, fresh, confiding, and affectionate as a girl of sixteen, just—not from boarding school; no, there for the most part, there is a forcing process of world-experience, but—from a happy home. Mrs. Duncan reversed that ingenious chemical analysis that extracts poison from every earthly substance, and contrived to distil good from everybody and everything. It seemed to me that her sunny face, by a mysterious and improved daguerreotype, marked on her heart every line of beauty and form of loveliness, and left the rest—refuse to her. On her heart—Mrs. Clinly was stamped the kind, all-admiring person she would fain be; Mrs. Duncan was too unconventional to stand high with the aspirants to high fashion, of Crescent Beach. They spoke of her as a person laboring under some disqualification, as ‘poor Mrs. Duncan.’ Poor! She was one of those rich ones whose treasures are every hour accumulating where the moth of worldliness and the rust of selfishness do not corrupt. But as I
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was saying, Mrs. Duncan came floating towards us. She was a woman whose specific gravity would not have promised a floating motion, but no sylph moved lighter; it was buoyancy of a cheerful, unburdened spirit. She had a curly-headed boy in her arms, and two children running after her. She looked the type of loving charity. “You are such a favorite with the children, Mrs. Duncan,” said Mrs. Clinly. “I believe you keep them all in sugar-plums.”
“Any how, she has not given us sugar-plums to-day,” said one of the children, bristling. “We should not love some people, if they gave us all the sugar-plums in the world; should we, Jem?” added the boy. The children at Crescent Beach were franker than their parents.
“There’s your tea-bell; away with you, boys,” said Mrs. Duncan, who perceived their words were not sugar-plums to Mrs. Clinly. “It’s natural to me to love children,” she added, kissing them and pushing them off; “their noise never troubles me; there is a great difference in people about that; some mind it.”
“Oh, it is an intolerable nuisance!” exclaimed Mrs. Rollins. “There is no country, I believe, in the world, but this, where children are permitted en scene. But here, it is not men and women, but children, that are the actors on the world’s theatre. The drawing-room is a menagerie, and these young animals (whelps I won’t call them) are careering up and down, while the men and women are thrust to the wall.”
This was an evil we all had suffered under at Crescent Beach, and I believe all of us, excepting dear Mrs. Duncan, were ready to take up arms against this sea of children. “I don’t know how it is,” she said, “in other countries. I have never been there. My husband means to go as soon as he can arrange, but he has so many orphans under his care. It is not everybody you know, that is willing to be a guardian; it is always to fall on Mr. Duncan. Not but that it’s very pleasant; there are three girls who dine with us every Sunday, not at all connected either, who seem like our own children. But I hope the time will come when we can go. I may feel differently when I have seen as much of the world as Mrs. Rollins has. Now children don’t disturb me, they are so happy here. It’s their vacation you know, and they must have a little range.”
“But, dear Mrs. Duncan, their mothers are so shockingly negligent of them,” urged Mrs. Rollins.
“Are they?” replied Mrs. Duncan, with the accent of one does not accede, and will not contradict. “I have not observed that. There are no dangers for them here to run into, and they come here for their health and diversion, and they are so happy. It’s healthy to be happy; don’t you think so, Mrs. Rollins?”
“That may be,” replied Mrs. Rollins, “but I have no notion that we are to be sacrificed to make these little brats happy, or that they are any the happier for it. I tell you, Mrs. Duncan, if you and your husband ever achieve that voyage to Europe, you will see the benefit of discipline and subordination.”
She walked off with the air of one who as uttered an undeniable truth.
“She is a very peculiar woman,” said Mrs. Duncan, “but very agreeable—how much she has seen of the world!”
“Rather too much,” said I.
“Yes, she is very ill-natured,” said Mrs. Clinly.
“Of course she has her own views,” said Mrs. Duncan, “but I must think she is a good woman. She sits alone in her own room a great deal, and I don’t believe that any one who is not good likes to be alone.”
Mrs. Clinly made no reply but walked to the end of the piazza, to explore (as I, perhaps unjustly, believed) the road by which Mrs. Ryson was to return. “Mrs. Clinly and Mrs. Rollins do not seem like one another,” said Mrs. Duncan; “but I dare say they will in a few days, when they come to know one another better. I am not much accustomed to these public resorts, but it appears to me that one of the uses of coming to them is to do away prejudices. Now there are people here of such different religions; and poor Mrs. Rollins,--some of the ladies think she has no religion at all, because somebody overheard her say, one day, that she ‘believed Mr. Horatio Smith had gone to ---- (you know where), if there were such a place.’ Now, she reads her Bible every day, and of course she must believe there is the place she alluded to—“
“They are coming!” exclaimed Mrs. Clinly, returning to us and interrupting Mrs. Duncan’s charitable speculations.
“Who is coming?” asked Mrs. Duncan.
“Mrs. Ryson and her—”
Mrs. Duncan filled the hiatus according to her own honest impressions, and called out to Juliet, “Run, Juliet, love! there’s your mamma and papa!”
Juliet did not run, but remained drooping, like the beautiful lily she was picking to pieces.
“Dear child, don’t spoil that lily,” said Mrs. Duncan, “you know I gave them to you for your mamma’s hair.”
“I put mamma’s in water,” replied Juliet, “and this I kept for myself,” and raising her eyes, which I thought were filled with tears, though a dim smile flitted over her lips, “I think,” she added, “it feels pretty much as I do.”
“Why you dear little thing!” exclaimed Mrs. Duncan, “are you not well? have you a head-
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ache? Perhaps you have eaten something that does not agree with you.”
Juliet slid away from the kind lady, without replying, and joining her mother, who had alighted at the end of the piazza, and, her arm in Rupert Reed’s, was walking across it to the entrance door. Juliet said something in a low voice to her as they passed me. I did not hear her, but I was struck by Mrs. Ryson’s mounting color. I fancied Juliet had announced her father. Mrs. Ryson hastily withdrew her arm, and went to her own apartment.
At tea she appeared with her husband. They sat opposite to me. Mrs. Clinly on my right hand. “Our vis-à-vis does not look quite as animated and excited as we sometimes see her,” she whispered; and added, aloud, to her husband, “do you find Mrs. Ryson improving?”
“Not as I expected,” replied Mr. Ryson, “I have been laughing at her for getting the blues at Crescent Beach. To me, this is such a delightful change from the city, that I am half intoxicated with spirits.” And so it appeared, for he went on talking in a loud voice with the gentlemen around him, about the city-news, the arrival of the steamer, the rise of corn, etc., etc., while his pretty wife sat by him, languid and listless.
But a change had come over her, when two hours after I saw her in the drawing-room. She had added some pretty decorations to her dress, her color was heightened, and I saw that her husband felt a pleasurable and natural vanity, as, when leading her into the room, he heard her pointed out to some new comers as the prettiest woman in Crescent Beach. He walked up and down the room, his wife on one side, and Juliet on the other, a proud and happy man. “How do you like it here, my child,” he said.
“Not half so well as at home, papa.”
“You don’t? You are the girl for my money! But why, in the name of reason, do you not like it, Juliet? it seems to me you children have it all your own way.”
“I do not have it at all my own way,” said Juliet. “Before we came to Crescent Beach I was always with mamma, and mamma loved me better than any one, and now—”
“Hush, Juliet,” said her mother; “what nonsense are you talking. It was high time we should leave home, you were getting so selfish as to think I must be wholly devoted to you—body and soul.”
“Oh, my dear Juliet, you must not be selfish; there is nothing so disagreeable as selfishness!” said the loving step-father. Soon after, in the shuffling up of the company, I found myself on the sofa with the Rysons. Robert Liston, who had been one of a circle of waltzers, took a chair beside me. “Young America!” he exclaimed, with a deep, inward laugh, peculiar to himself. “There is,” he added, “something either very naïve, or frank, or daring, in some of our young ladies. I just heard Miss Lupton say to Ned Bristol, after whirling around with him in what we old-fashioned people should call a very close embrace, ‘Now, Mr. Bristol, why can’t you waltz like Rupert Reed. You come too near me! and you put your arm too far round!’ Waltzing may sanctify such remonstrances, but I fancy if Miss Lupton were to make these elegant remarks to a gentleman sitting by her, her father might feel bound to call him out. Oh, Lord! ‘what we are we know, but not what we shall be.’ I once thought the freedom of our young women guaranteed their purity.”
“You think differently now?”
“I would not trust to freedom alone. Those must be well broken animals that require neither reins nor blinders. And reins, surely, are of no use where such a mother as Mrs. Lupton holds them.”
“Anne, my love,” she said, as Bristol left her daughter to seek another partner “you are quite right, Bristol does not waltz comme il faut. Mr. Reed,” she said, “I am half mind to ask you to waltz with Anne; entre nous, I infinitely prefer she should waltz only with married men; and you waltz so—so differently from people in general.” Reed bowed to the compliment, and took out Miss Anne; and the chary mother has the pleasure of seeing her waltz with the most fashionable man in the room. I think little Juliet, who had nestled close to me, had, without understanding the purport of my friend’s remarks, a sort of feeling of his meaning, or perhaps it was the instinct give to the weakest creatures, by which they detect the presence of an enemy; for, soon after, when Rupert Reed asked her mother to waltz, the child said, impulsively, “Oh, don’t, mamma—don’t!”
“Juliet!” said her mother, in a tone of deep displeasure, and then turning to her husband, she added, “Mr. Ryson does not dance, and he is so seldom here, that much as I love waltzing I shall not waltz to-night.” There was a false tone in the voice—poor lady! her path had become a devious one.
“Oh, Mary!” said the good-natured husband, “waltz with Mr. Reed, by all means, if you like it. Live and let live, Mr. Reed, that’s my rule. I will go on the piazza, in the meantime, and smoke a cigar.” He went, and escaped many a whisper that might have enlightened him, as his wife went the giddy round with a glowing cheek and downcast eye.
The next evening just before sunset, I saw little Juliet sitting pensive and alone on the piazza, as I was crossing it to go down to the beach for my usual evening walk. I asked her to come with
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me, and she expressed her acquiescence by taking my hand and kissing it with a grace and gentleness that marked all she did. “This is a beautiful vesper-service, Juliet,” I said as we paced along over the compacted sands, from which the waves had just retreated. “Vesper-service! what does that mean?” She asked. I explained. She was silent for a few moments, while her fine hazel eye turned to the horizon, along with the black clouds lay like gigantic structures, castle and tower. The sky kindled around the sun, and he seemed to sink down into a field of fire that lit up these black masses, so that they shone like the temples of Peru, with their golden friezes, and incrustations of amethysts, rubies and sapphires. The heavens were tinged to the very zenith with gold, and red shading off to the faintest rose color; and the ocean, as far as we could see it, reflected the ruddy light.
I felt the child’s delicate little fingers pressing my hand more closely, she instinctively paused and gazed on the lines of surf, as the green arches rose, careering on, one after another, and threw off their bright crests. Juliet stood, as if entranced, and then turned her eyes to me, and would have spoken, but her habitual timidity overcame her impulse.
“What is it, Juliet,” I asked, “you were going to say something to me?”
“Yes,” she said, re-assured by my manner. “After you spoke of the vesper-service, I remembered my mother took me once to a vesper-service, and I was thinking how much better was the ocean than the organ; and it seems to me,” she added, turning her eager gaze to the feathery clouds, “as if there were millions of angels standing there, where the sun went down, and I can bear—almost, I mean—soft, low music coming from them, like a response to those deep ocean sounds. I have had some such thoughts before, when I walked here alone, but your speaking of the vesper-service made me understand them better!”
I said nothing. I would not encourage the imaginations of this child of seven years—I dared not repress them. I felt then—I feel now—that she may have held communion with the angel that stood before her Father’s face. I never saw anything human so angelic! We had already walked beyond the usual limit of the strollers on the beach, we paused again and looked oceanward, as those are wont to do who feel its mysterious charm. Troops of the little beach-bird, were chasing their prey, as the last refluent wave left it on the sand, where there was scarcely water enough to wet their claws, and yet enough to reflect the brilliant dyes of the sky, so that it looked as if they were running over a pearly pavement, and as the crested wave met them they spread their wings and mounted over them—‘skill triumphing over might!’ I thought. My little companion had another thought. “My cousin died last spring,” she said. “My cousin Sally Vore. I loved Sally dearly—these birds make me think of her—so she rose over all the waves that came against her.” The child’s voice trembled as she added, “I have nobody now, Sally is gone!”
“Nobody, my dear Juliet! your Mamma?”
“Oh yes, indeed, Mamma; but since we came here, Mamma—” her voice faltered, and she paused.
“Your Mamma is very much occupied here,” I said, “and so is every one. You will soon go home and then you will have your mamma all to yourself again; but it is time for us to turn, there is the evening star shining through that rosy haze—we are alone on the beach.” We turned around, and found we were not alone. Retracing our steps for a few moments we met Mrs. Ryson and Rupert Reed. They were neither of them habitual pedestrians, and were both evidently in that sort of absorption which makes one unmindful of time or space. Juliet sprang towards her mother. “Come home, mamma,” she said, “do come home, it’s late—come home with me.”
It was evident, that Mrs. Ryson felt a sudden revulsion in the tide of her feelings at the unexpected meeting with her child. She stood still for a half moment and looked around her like one that grasped the brink of a precipice, and then recovering herself she repulsed the little girl not ungently, and said, “Finish your walk with that lady, my dear; I shall finish up directly.” Juliet returned to my side, but she walked on silently and languidly, and often looking back. After a short time, she drew a long breath as if relieved from a pressure, and said, “Mamma has turned about—I do not like that Mr. Rupert Reed; do you?”
I answered heartily, “No, I do not.”
“And yet,” she resumed, “I should like him if it were not he—you are laughing at me—I mean if any one else did what he does I should like him. He has given mamma the loveliest case of perfumes, and a beautiful cross. I am sure it is he, for you know he is the only person mamma seems to know very well here; but perhaps I should not tell it—I have no one to talk to here, and I told you before I thought; and I am afraid mamma would not like it, for she has packed the things quite away at the bottom of her trunk!”
“O!” thought I, “are these things thrown into the scale with protestations and flatteries to buy a woman!—a wife!—a mother! My country-women! you have been marked for your purity, your conjugal virtue, your maternal devotion; you have been held worthy guardians of a holier temple than that kept by the ancient bestals—the temple of married love and purity. Be careful that you enter it with a full sense of its high
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duties, its inappreciable happiness, and infinite rewards. Keep your faith unsullied by a disloyal wish or thought, it will be the brightest jewel of your immortal crown. Let your virtues be as a circle of fire around you, that the serpent, in the form of a libertine, dare not approach. If he come adorned with foreign graces, accomplishments and refinements, he is still the reptile whose touch defiles. Do not admit him to your houses, nor tolerate him in your society! Resist the flood of foreign princesses and duchesses, who, when the glare of their position vanishes, are lower than the weak, tempted, and betrayed wretches of our streets, whom you would spurn from your thresholds.”
* * * * * *
A few days passed on; Mr. Ryson had gone to the South on business, and consequently his frequent runs to Crescent Beach were suspended. Mrs. Ryson seemed to lose all sense of observation of her absorption with her lover—as I am sorry to say Rupert Reed was called, by some of the ladies at Crescent Beach—who, if Mrs. Ryson had been on the brink of the grave with a fever, would not have spoken lightly of it; and yet the abyss yawning before her—and oh, how to be closed!—was infinitely worse, more hopeless than the grave. It was impossible to see her without feeling an interest in her fate. She was not yet five and twenty. Her face did not indicate strength of character, but had the positive beauty of perfect symmetry and coloring, and added to this a certain sweetness, affectionateness of innocence still hung about her, giving charm to the whole, like the fading light of the sinking sun. Besides, she was the mother of Juliet—this should have exorcised an evil spirit!
It was about ten o’clock Sunday morning, when I was walking with Mrs. Duncan on the piazza. Mrs. Duncan is the person in the world of whom if I had a favor to ask (without any claim but my want) I should have asked for it. So, I presume, thought Mrs. Ryson, for she came from her room and said, “I am obliged, Mrs. Duncan, to go suddenly to town to see a relative who is ill. I may be detained a day or two. Will you be kind enough to take charge of Juliet?”
“Oh, certainly, I shall be delighted, my husband and I both think she is the sweetest child we ever saw. I think it quite an honor to be entrusted with her. If I had had such a daughter, I should have been but a worshipper of idols; I could think of nothing else.”
Mrs. Ryson’s eyes were suddenly raised for the first time. They fell again, and a deadly paleness overspread her face. Mrs. Duncan did not seem to observe it. She was most unsuspicious of mortals. “How do you go to town,” she asked; “there is no coach on Sunday.”
“No, I am going in a private conveyance.”
“Alone! that’s not pleasant. Would you not like to have my husband go with you? He goes at any rate, to-morrow. I’ll run and speak to him.”
“No, no, don’t, I am not going alone. Mr. Reed—is—has offered to drive me—he is going to town on his way home.”
Mrs. Ryson turned away with a hasty farewell, and Mrs. Duncan called after her. “Where is Juliet, I want to tell the dear child how glad I am to have her for a little while.”
“She is bathing,” replied Mrs. Ryson, “She is not quite well; I thought she wanted it, and I persuaded her, much against her will.”
After she left us, “It’s a pity, it’s a pity she goes up with that man!” exclaimed Mrs. Duncan, in the voice of a sorrowing angel; “not that there is any real harm in it, but I fear some observations will be made. Everybody here is not charitable!” She touched my arm and pointed to the end of the piazza. There stood Rupert Reed’s equipage, his liveried servant, and Reed himself biting his nails with impatience.
I know not what I should have replied to Mrs. Duncan. Just at that moment our attention was attracted by an unusual noise at the beach. It was the bathing hour, and there were some commotion there—shrill screams mingled with the booming of the waves. In a moment the Beach-wagon, (the vehicle was so called that conveyed the bathers to and fro,) came driving up at most unusual speed, followed by people half dressed, or in bathing dresses. Something had happened, some cause of general consternation. The alarm spread, the people who were gathering in the drawing-room prepared for church, poured on to the piazza. At this moment, veiled, and shrinking from observation, Mrs. Ryson came through the front entrance. The wagon had reached the steps, and amidst exclamations of horror, the dead, drowned body of little Juliet was lifted out of it. The crowd parted, the mother saw her child, uttered a piercing shriek, and fainted on the floor!
Every measure was taken to restore life, but in vain. No one could tell how the accident had happened. Several ladies had seen Juliet go in; some had held her by the hand. The surf was not particularly strong, and no one had apprehended danger. No one had missed her til the man-bather saw her rising quite unconscious to the surface.
She had fulfilled her mission—she had saved her mother’s honor, and passed to immortality.
“O not when the death-prayer is said,
The life of life departs;
The body in the grave is laid,
Its beauty in our hearts.”
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
Crescent Beach
Subject
The topic of the resource
Adultery, Summer, Vacation, Beach
Description
An account of the resource
The narrator tells a story about her vacation on a beach, focusing on a little girl’s relationship with her young mother and the mother’s adultery.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss Catharine M. Sedgwick
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Sartain's Union Magazine [edited
by Caroline M. Kirkland] (November 1847): 212-19.
Publisher
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Sartain's Union Magazine
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1847
Contributor
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Lucinda Damon-Bach; D. Gussman
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
Adultery
Beach
Charles Dickens
Charles I
children
Conjugal virtue
Death
drowning
Female education
Libertines
Libertinism
Little Nell
marriage
Napoleon
Peru
Ryson
Sartain's Union Magazine
Summer
swimming
Vacation
Vespers
Wall Street
waltzing
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/6b38a048ef92f2ef5aa45b8993f283d9.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=YNJU8tpqjAwRQ%7EpXeVC2cbhRBT%7EOCEW8UNgFgVEKhmrw1G7CjvVUlJ7Uzr-H4uggbTAUoVTyzn0c6HcAi1jhI9bEyy6-6PJFJC1HSgTC-MpAp2vkCEDpaQQMK4VZ%7EijGaR3E1A082JFPWxsuWdt0aL1AmJS3zBvBGWWypdbMAg-zFljcEWg2l3oUKYTA9yBmU8GyFw4s-npddsXB24swyzyknlfUYZDfBHGQV6Qnc4mZ8rK-2uxac0PKBGjEgf8-kCjeUFSt5%7EEBIQh9jfQ0xJO4UsNYl2jhocdFzGVVQD-xNnhhrFbSuOkYLGwBGq4kD6qaYGlX6TiumIk2apE1kg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
dbbdf53f8de5cce5b2f4dfba34d2220d
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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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
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“The Bridal Ring” by Miss Sedgwick [1833].
The following account, received from a friend, we have ventured to transcribe, and prepare for publication.
It is now nearly three years since I was told that two travellers, an elderly gentleman and his daughter, had stopped at the principal inn of the village, and were like to be detained there a long time, by the illness of the young lady, whom our physician had pronounced to be threatened with a ‘course of fever.’ This I knew to be an opinion which our professor, of what Napoleon has so happily called ‘the conjectural art,’ was apt oracularly to intimate of every case which he did not comprehend, and moreover that his nostrums and confinement in a close room in most cases verified his prediction.
My humanity was awakened by the forlorn condition of the strangers, and, I may as well confess the infirmity, my curiosity was excited by all that I heard of them. I was reminded of the story of La Roche. Who that has ever read that most beautiful, and in this age of story writing, still unequalled tale, could hear of a father and daughter, detained at an inn, without enquiring into their condition? I could not, and I repaired to the tavern, secretly hoping to find that some resemblance to ‘Mademoiselle,’ or to the saintly La Roche, in my travellers, who seemed to me to have lightened upon our uneventful village, to sustain my almost famished appetite for romance. I was announced to the father, and admitted to the little parlor he occupied. My first glimpse of captain St. Clair put my imagination to flight. A more striking contrast to the meek, devout La Roche, could scarcely have been found. The captain had the erect and elaborate deportment that is the usual result of military breeding; the consequential etiquettical politeness that is rather a tribute to self-respect, than a deference to the subject of it. He was on the verge of old age, but without any thing of the gentleness, humility, and spirituality that so well becomes the old, and is the crown of those who have ‘fought a good fight.’
He received me politely, being, as he has since told me, struck with what Johnson calls the air of a ‘born gentleman;’ the only quotation from a book I ever heard from the captain. I apologized for my intrusion, by boasting of my talents as a nurse, and expressing an earnest wish to be of service to his daughter. The worn, broken and neglected, as it now was, there was one chord that vibrated to the touch, and that chord I had fortunately struck.
His courtesy, as formal, external, and military as his epaulettes, gave place to an expression of real feeling, as he conducted me to his daughter’s apartment.
Dear Arabella! after the lapse of three years of daily and confidential intercourse, can I recall my first impressions of the youthful stranger, who, even amidst the unbecoming shrouding of a sick bed, seemed to me one of the most lovely and graceful creatures I had ever seen. A small bible was lying open on her pillow, and beside it a freshly plucked white rose, whose leaves were not more soft nor fair than her cheek. Her night cap was untied and pushed back, and discovered such a wealth of hair as I have never seen equalled in hue or quality, unless it be in Miss Hall’s exquisite picture of the Greek girl, Garaphelia. Every one acknowledged the tenderness and sweetness that characterized Arabella’s beauty; cavillers sometimes said she wanted spirit and variety, but to me, there was an immeasurable power in the purity and elevation of her countenance, and her eye had the calm, mysterious, wonderful expression which reveals the deathless spirit that informs this soul speaking organ. Captain St. Clair communicated my errand to his daughter. She gave me her hand, and expressed her gratitude with an earnestness and simplicity that evinced her susceptibility to kindness. Her accent was slightly foreign. ‘My daughter,’ said captain St. Clair, ‘unhappily, cannot quite rid herself of her French accent. She has lived for the most part in the south of France, in the family of a protestant clergyman, a relative of her mother. Poor Belle! she has always been delicate, and I was flattered into the hope that a favorable climate would strengthen her, but it has been of no use, she still bends like a reed to every blast.’
‘My dear father is too anxious,’ said Miss St. Clair, looking at me with a smile—‘And can I help being anxious, madam,’ replied the captain, ‘when all the treasure I have on God’s earth—yes all—is in that frail casket.’
‘But you are too apprehensive papa—I had but a slight chill and fever, and papa must send for a physician, and then I must take medicine.’
‘And of course be sick, Miss St. Clair—I well understand all those sequences, if indeed they be not consequences. But as the doctor has humanely suspended his drugs to day, we will try what nursing and the sensitive powers of nature will do.’
Arabella gratefully accepted my proposition—the circumstances of sickness banish ceremony—my superior age inspired Arabella with a childlike confidence; her father was delighted with my success, and before the day was over, we were on the footing of intimate friends—and before a week had passed, she and her father were inmates of my house. I had learned their history, and become thoroughly acquainted with their characters.
Captain St. Clair, when considerably past forty, had married a lovely young woman, the daughter of a Swiss officer in the English service—she had died a few months after the birth of Arabella. The regiment to which captain St. Clair was attached, was ordered to the East Indies, and Arabella was left with her mother’s connections in the south of France. The captain, from a series of ill fortune, for such he esteemed his regiment being exempted from the desperate chances of war, wore away year after year, without promotion, and finally, when he had a reasonable expectation of a majority, he was superseded by a young officer. In his first disgust, he resigned his commission and returned to Europe; and being joined by his daughter in England, where his asperity had been increased by finding himself forgotten or slighted by the friends of his youth, he embarked for America, and withdrew from a country whose ingratitude, he thought, had severed the bonds of his allegiance. But, in spite of his resentment, the captain’s long cherished national partialities often broke forth. An Ethiopian will change his color before an Englishman ceases to be English—before he changes the first article of faith in his national creed—that England is the wisest, happiest, best portion of the habitable globe. Captain St. Clair’s strict adherence to this creed, atoned for his voluntary expatriation, though it manifested a discrepancy, (not very uncommon) between faith and practice. If he ever found a shadow of a fault in Arabella, he traced it to her French education, and whatever was wrong in America, was so because it was not English. I remember asking my new friends, before I knew them quite well enough to understand their biases, ‘if they had ever seen any thing so beautiful as our autumnal foliage? No pen,’ I added, in the fervor of my home bred admiration, ‘no pen can describe it; no painter dare copy it.’
‘No, madam, no, certainly not,’ replied the captain, ‘it is gaudy and unnatural—quite unlike any thing in England.’
I appealed to Arabella, if she did not think it magnificent. ‘I am not fond of brilliant colors’, she answered, ‘I am so used to the russet hue of our old trees at Clermont.’ How different are the same sentiments from different persons. Arabella turned away to hide the tear that had risen at the remembrance of her French home, while captain St. Clair graciously proceeded to inform me of the particulars in which English scenery far excelled ours.
Captain St. Clair was in quest of a place to fix his residence, when accident detained him in our village. The American world was all before him, and the advantage of being near me, as he kindly said, induced him to purchase a place in my neighborhood, that just suited his taste and finances. Clermont cottage, as Arabella named her new residence in memory of her former home, was about a mile from the village, on the borders of a pretty sheet of water, that she called a lake, and I am not therefore bound to give it its vulgar appellation. There is some virtue in names, and the new nomenclature which Arabella adopted at Clermont, graced the other refinements introduced there. The farm house became a cottage—a name to conjure with, and call up a thousand images of rural beauty. The front yard that sloped to the lake, after having the ambitious fence that enclosed it removed, became a lawn. The stoop, with no other alteration than a latticing of sweet briars and honey suckles, was converted into a piazza—and the pond, an appellation that recalls to mind pickerel and geese, became a lake—a name consecrated by poetry—one of the water privileges of the muses.
My friend seemed to have a mysterious tie to the innocent and beautiful in nature. Never have I seen the birds so tame as they were on the lawn at Clermont cottage, and the flowers that grew under Arabella’s culture were more graceful, had a sweeter odour, and a brighter tint—at least I thought so—than any other.
I have often wondered that Arabella’s reserved manners and secluded life did not give offence to the good people of the village. She never left her home, except to see me, or a visit of charity. Her superior elegance was tempered by a soft diffidence, that seemed to fall over it like a veil, increasing its charm, while it dimmed its lustre. She was religious, and yet, if I may be allowed the word, her religion was the most uncreeded I ever knew. The bible she never criticized, but believed with implicit faith. In our age and land of theological discussion, she could not always be so fortunate as to escape hearing controversy, but she listened to it as a child listens, silent and deferential it may be—but uninterested and uncomprehending. If ever appealed to, she modestly replied that having bred protestant in the midst of catholics, she had been instructed to avoid theological discussion, and to be content with feeling and practicing religion; and in these departments of our faith all acknowledged her superiority, although some might have regretted that she had not been indoctrinated in the mysteries of theology. To confess the truth, Arabella was rather ignorant in all departments of science. The little pedants of our infant schools, who rattle off their definitions of spheroids, rhomboids, and equilateral triangles, far surpassed her in science. She had a respectable acquaintance with history, but of politics she knew no more than a fair Circassian, though she read the newspapers aloud to her father from beginning to end. She was familiar with the best poets of England, Italy, and France—this was the extent of her erudition. She had an exquisite taste in poetry, and her sweet voice seemed to give it its natural vehicle of music. It was perhaps this sublimated aliment that gave a romantic cast to her mind. She had no taste for romance reading. Few works of this description had enough of nature and elevation for so pure and unperverted a mind as hers.
I used often to speculate with womanly solicitude, on Arabella’s future destiny. Her father, according to the common course of nature, could not long survive; Arabella was so tender, so relying in her character, that the protection, and dependence of conjugal life seemed essential to her, but where in our ‘working day world,’ and in the obscurity in which she lived, was she to find a person suited to her. How vain in our forecast!
A popular law school, which soon became celebrated from the reputation of the eminent professor who presided over it, was established in the village, about a year after captain St. Clair’s settlement among us. Pupils resorted hither from all parts of the United States. Among the rest came Wingfield Clayborne, a son of a former acquaintance of mine. Of course he was welcomed to all the hospitalities I could offer him. At my house he obtained the rare privilege of frequent intercourse with Arabella. I say, rare, for owing to captain St. Clair’s aristocratic demeanor, and Arabella’s reserve, and her unaffected and utter indifference to young men in their official character of beaux, the law students had no access to Clermont cottage. In vain were formal introductions, in vain poetic effusions to the lily, the snow drop and the snow berry, for by the name of these pure and cold emblems was she addressed. In vain, too, moonlight serenades—she remained as impassive as polar ice to the sunbeam. Tender and affectionate as my young friend was to me, as devoted as she was to her father, I sometimes doubted whether she possessed a due portion of that sensibility essential to the perfection of women. Alas! I was not long left to doubt.
Clayborne was at first sight struck with Arabella’s beauty and grace. He admired the refinement, and even the reserve of her manners. He had himself been partly educated abroad. He admired the refinement, and even the reserve of her manners. He had himself been partly educated abroad. He disliked excessively what he called the brusquerie of our northern ladies: laughed at their all-knowingness, and detested their independence and rationality. I defended my countrywomen, and asked Arabella if she did not think there was more of false refinement, than true sentiment in Clayborne’s fastidiousness. She replied that she had no skill at analyzing, but I saw by the deep suffusion on her cheek, that she understood Clayborne’s opinions, as they were meant as tribute to her. It was plain whatever Clayborne did not admire, he did devotedly admire my friend, and that her heart was filled with new emotions which she indulged without question or fear.
Clayborne’s tastes corresponded with hers, but I sometimes thought his were merely the offspring of a cultivated imagination. I feared, too, (but I was aware that I was somewhat jealous for my friend,) that Clayborne’s love was tinged and adulterated by gratified vanity. That he had the pride of a virtuoso, in attaining a gem that was unattainable to others. But I did not often criticise severely; I could not, Clayborne knew too well how to propitiate the few he cared to lease. I can now look back upon a thousand little flatteries that I then called attentions.
The captain’s heart too was soon completely won. He pronounced Clayborne the only accomplished man he had seen in America, which, ‘no doubt,’ he would add in one of his patriotic parentheses, ‘is owing to his having seen society in England.’ I believed him to be well principled, and I felt him to be excessively interesting, and regarding anxiously Arabella’s solitary condition; and casting a prudent eye on the future prospects of this well born and talented young man, I was gratified by his intense devotion to my friend; and I observed with satisfaction, the sudden flushing of her cheek and faltering of her voice at his approaching footstep. She dwelt on the passages of poetry he selected, cherished every flower he gave her, sung over his favorite songs, and betrayed by many other signs, infallible to a veteran eye, the existence of a sentiment of whose power over her she was not herself fully aware.
After a thousand indirect, but intelligible declarations, Clayborne made a formal avowal of his hopes; they were sanctioned by Arabella, and ratified by captain St. Clair.
Clayborne’s father was dead. He had no one to consult but a doting mother who had never denied him any thing. He showed me her letter in reply to one communicating his engagement. She assented to his wishes, and sent a polite assurance of future kindness to Miss St. Clair, but the letter concluded with an expression of disappointment that seemed to have been too pungent to be repassed, that her son had neglected the article of fortune, so important to him, in his matrimonial arrangement. The letter displeased me, I was displeased too, with his showing it to me, and for the first time, seeing Arabella’s lover in an unfavorable light, I fancied his ardor had abated since his certainty of possessing her affections. I began to analyse his character, to suspect that the element of his fastidiousness was pride, and that his demand of an intense devotion, an exclusive and all absorbing sentiment, proceeded, not as he fancied from sensibility, but from a purely human feeling, compounded of selfishness and vanity.
Not long after the engagement, a circumstance occurred that increased my concern, lest my pure and trustful friend, had lavished her heart on one unworthy of the treasure.
Captain St. Clair’s banker in London failed, and his narrow income was reduced to less than a hundred pounds sterling per annum. This, with the place he occupied, would have been an ample fortune to a New England father and daughter, who should have understood thoroughly what wonderful science, the worth of a shilling, and should have had the maxims of poor Richard, inwrought in the fabric of their characters. But though my friend was capable of any mode or degree of self denial, the art of turning a penny was an inscrutable to her as the art of the alchymist; and how, without some such legerdemain, was a luxurious table, and wine, his staff of life, to be provided for her father?
Captain St. Clair was prostrated by his misfortune. Arabella communicated to me his despondency. ‘If I could do any thing?’ said she, half enquiringly.
‘You can,’ I replied, ‘but how, my dear Arabella, with your feelings and your reserved manners, how can you meet the trials and mortifications of a sub-teacher in a boarding school, for instance?’
‘Oh, do not think so meanly of me,’ she said, ‘if my feelings disqualify me for my duties, the sooner I get rid of them the better.’
‘Then, my dear child, your troubles are at an end. Mrs. Butler, (Mrs. B. was the mistress of a successful school in the village,) has just parted with her teacher of music, your accomplishment in music will command the highest salary she can give.’
Arabella begged me to secure the place for her immediately, and said she would return home and make the plan acceptable to her father.
‘But Clayborne,’ said I, ‘he must first be consulted.’
Arabella hesitated for a moment, and then replied. ‘No; to consult him, would be to appeal to him. We will make our arrangements, and communicate them to him afterwards.’
The arrangement was quickly made. Mrs. Butler was liberal in her terms. The girls were enchanted with the expectation of having the lovely Miss St. Clair for their teacher, and the captain’s pride, after a slight hesitation, deferred to his necessities.
But Clayborne’s pride was invincible. He was at first indignant. He felt injured. He remonstrated with me, and entreated Arabella; the fatigues, vexations, and anxieties of a teacher seemed never to cross his mind but the degradation! ‘Arabella St. Clair, a teacher in a yankee school!’ he exclaimed, ‘at the call and beck of half bred girls; daughters of tailors and shoemakers!’ At first I laughed at his folly, and then treated it with the serious contempt it deserved. I even tried to solace his pride by reminding him of the illustrious persons that had been compelled by vicissitudes, to make their talents available in this way; I told him that throughout New England, even in our polished Metropolis, teachers were on the highest level; but he was unyielding, and so was my gentle friend. Her decision might be called pride too, but it was that ratified and rectifying principle that is sustained by conscience.
Her first and present duty was to her father. If, as Clayborne urged, she had consented to an immediate marriage, she must have left her father was a narrowed income to pine in solitude, and have encumbered Clayborne with a burden of expences, before he had finished the study of his profession. She did not waver for an instant, but entered on her new occupation with a vigor and grace that surprised even me, her fond friend.
One thing I noted; after this, Clayborne, though he had been a most passionate admirer of Arabella’s music, never asked her to play or sing. I once inconsiderately remarked this to her, she made no reply, but I perceived that her eyes filled with tears.
Months passed on. Arabella’s employment inevitably brought her into observation, and her beauty, grace and accomplishments were a constant theme. Clayborne’s passion, or at least its manifestations, became more ardent, and as the time for his return to his native state, drew night, he was possessed with a lover’s apprehensions and jealousies. He expressed a fear; it might have arisen from the conscious fallibility of his own affections, that he might be superseded. He entreated Arabella to permit their marriage to take place before his departure. He obtained her father’s consent, this gave authority to his entreaties, but Arabella resisted them, and resisted the pleadings of her own heart. Her resolution was fixed, never to leave her father while his well being depended on her exertions. In his selfish importunity he betrayed a doubt of her constancy. She meekly replied, that her fidelity to her father, should be her warrant that she could not prove faithless to him.
This was the only approach to a boast I ever heard from her lips. How well did her subsequent conduct justify it!
The evening preceeding Clayborne’s departure, the lovers passed on my piazza; I took care that they should not be molested by intruders. It was late when I heard his parting footsteps; I waited for Arabella, but she did not appear, and afraid that she would be exhausted by the indulgence of her feelings, I went to her. She stood where Clayborne had left her, leaning her head against one of the pillars of the piazza. Her hands were clasped and raised, and I perceived on her finger a diamond ring, which Clayborne had always worn, and which he had told me was given to him by his mother at the time of her second marriage. It had been his father’s bridal gift, and he had received it on condition that it should never be transferred, till he placed it on the finger of his bride. After a few days, and when I thought Arabella could bear a little bantering, I reminded her of this. She said nothing, but I never shall forget the sudden contraction of her brow, nor the deep painful blush that suffused her pale cheek and alabaster neck.
Clayborne wrote by every post. His letters, which I have since seen, were as impassioned, and almost as eloquent as Rousseau’s; they all began, ‘My beloved wife,’ and finished with ‘your devoted husband.’
After a while, they became more temperate, and contained such notices of his occupations and pleasures, as she could read to me. In less than six months the ‘beloved wife’ gave place to ‘dear Arabella,’ and the fever heat of the lover seemed to have subsided to the calm temperament of the friend. Arabella, till now, mindful of every present duty, devoted to the happiness of every one around her, became abstracted and almost melancholy; the faint but distinct rose like tinge on her cheek, faded to absolute and sickly paleness. She still gave lessons at the school, but with languor and effort.
One little month more passed away. She was sitting with me one day, when my servant brought her a letter. She read it, sat for a few moments as if she were petrified, then threw on her hat and shawl, and left me without a word of explanation. I did not for a long time know the contents of the letter. I have since seen it: what follows is an extract from it.
‘After long and painful reflection on the subject, my dear Arabella, I have come to the decision that it would be ungenerous in me, not to offer to release you from an engagement, in the shackles of which you are wasting your beautiful youth. Gifted creature! you may create your own destiny! while I, a poor devil of a lawyer, must go my daily round for ‘nought but provender.’ There was much more in the letter, but all ‘words, words’ without any distinct, or certainly apparent, meaning.
I transcribe the following passage from his next letter. ‘You are in the Melpomene vein, my dear Arabella, and since you have taken me so seriously, why seriously will be. I cannot see, I confess, why you should estimate promises made in a moment of excited, and extravagant feeling as indissolubly binding. I do not claim to be as deeply read in the code of sentiment as you are, but it seems to me to be a very plain dictate of common sense, the promises cannot be binding if the parties will mutually relinquish them. Why be tremulous over a fancied duty? I disdain to hold you bound by a by-gone promise, and henceforth release you from any obligation in any way contracted with me, and wish ‘as if we had never met.’
After this Arabella received at distant intervals, and answered letters from Clayborne, but his were burned as soon as read, and I could only guess at their contents. Her father was ignorant and unsuspicious of any change in her affairs. He imputed the change in Arabella’s appearance to Clayborne’s protracted absence, and sometimes wondered that the young man no longer forwarded him the southern newspapers, which he had at first done punctually. When I remarked to him that Arabella’s health seemed to be failing, he took the alarm, insisted that she should relinquish teaching, and acquiesced in my proposal that they should abandon the cottage and pass the winter with me. Arabella was still alive to every look and word of kindness, and she gratefully acceded to my wishes.
Not long after their removal to my house, I received a letter from Clayborne. He said he presumed I was aware that his engagement with Miss St. Clare was at an end, and he begged my influence to persuade her to relinquish and forward to him a diamond ring. ‘Miss St. Clair, he says, ‘will my dear madam pay deference to your opinion, and your good sense will at once perceive her weakness in retaining, from girlish sentiment, a ring which has no longer any significance to her, and is of incalculable moment to me, as the lady to whom I hope shortly to be united, for reasons which it is not necessary to communicate, insists on deferring our nuptials till he receives it. I would be the last to impute any baseness of mind to Miss St. Clair; but how am I to explain her obstinate retention of the pledge of a retracted vow.’
All the passions of my woman’s nature were roused. I could not comprehend why Arabella should permit such a request to be repeated, and I resolved if I had any influence with her, that no indulgence of memory or hope should delay the transmission of the ring to its most unworthy giver. It was a difficult task to approach the subject. Affectionate as Arabella was, and as trustful as a child on all other subjects, she had never even alluded to Clayborne since she first doubted his fidelity. I first spoke in hints. Arabella would not understand me. I then went directly and explicitly to the point. Bitterly have I since repented it! I read Clayborne’s letter to her. I reproached her with throwing away her life, in cherishing a hopeless passion for a most unworthy object. I besought her by every motive of pride and delicacy—I adjured her, as she would preserve my esteem and her own self respect, to relinquish the worthless pledge of false and broken vows.
She heard me out with an expression of dignity and gentleness. When I afterwards recalled it, I knew she had pitied me while I reproached her. When I finished, she collected all the energies of her soul to reply, and she did so in a low but sustained voice.
‘You too doubt me,’ she said, ‘but I will not blame you. Cannot you believe that I have sufficient reasons for retaining this ring. I cannot now communicate them. Your judgment might differ from mine, and I have no strength to oppose your arguments. Death alone can divorce me from this ring—it has long been in my eyes the signet of my death warrant. Clayborne will not have to wait long for it,’ she added, holding up her emaciated hand, and showing me the small guard she was obliged to wear to retain the ring on her slender finger. ‘When you send it to him, send it simply with a notice of my death.’
‘You have reproached me with cherishing a hopeless passion for a worthless object. Indeed you have mistaken me. My love for Clayborne was extinguished, when I discovered that he whom I love was a creature of my imagination—a creature of noble qualities and high aims; of pure, tender and disinterested affections, one whom neither events nor place, life nor death could change—but to improve.’
‘My dear friend, it was not continuing, but ceasing to love, that gave such a shock to my life. It was the sudden loss of that which was the sweet employment of my thoughts, the object of my efforts, the stimulant of my mind. In the first amazement of my grief I forgot that life was God’s gift, to be preserved and cherished, not for the object I should select, but for those it should please him to assign me. For this, I deserve your reproach. I selfishly shrunk from my duties; I permitted the feelings that were given me for benevolent uses to consume my life. I meditate much and bitterly on all this. And I trust that He who looks with a pitiful eye on the sins of his children, has forgiven me. I feel my death to be rapidly approaching; I dread it only for my poor father.’
For the first time, Arabella shed tears, she paused for a few moments, and wept in my arms, silently and freely.
‘I cannot,’ she resumed, ‘think of his loneliness and disappointment without anguish.’
I assured her that her father should want no kindness I could render. She replied, that she doubted not my kind disposition, ‘but who,’ she added, with characteristic truth and simplicity, ‘who, but his child can bear with all the infirmities of my poor old father?’
She requested me never again to speak to her of Clayborne. ‘I am not willing,’ she said, ‘to break the holy calm it has pleased God to grant me. Are you now satisfied with me, my dearest friend?’
I told her, ‘that I was certain she acted from the purest and most exalted motives.’ ‘Simply, from a sense of duty,’ she replied, and the conversation dropped there.
Afterwards, for many weeks, she constantly, though almost imperceptibly, declined. She made unceasing efforts to conceal the progress of her malady from her father. ‘I long to be at rest,’ she would say to me, ‘but for his sake, I will do and suffer whatever may prolong my life.’ And most patiently did she listen to medical advice, most cheerfully take every remedy prescribed. It had been her custom to play her father to sleep in the afternoon, and this she continued to do, even after she became so weak, that she secretly begged me to sit by her, and support her with my arm. Every day, till the very last week of her life, she sat or reclined on the sofa, till her father retired to bed, and then she was carried exhausted to her own apartment.
It was heart breaking to see one so generous in her affection, so true to her duties, the victim of a selfish and capricious passion. It is true, in spite of the poet of nature, and the millions that quote him, that many have died for love. Not of love, perhaps, for it is in its nature a sustaining and vivifying passion; but from the extinction of hope, of expectation, of purpose, of all that breathes a soul into life.
Clayborne, finding his letter to me ineffectual, addressed a similar one to captain St. Clair. The old man had, I believe, before this, gradually come to a right conclusion respecting the recreant love; but his pride and his feeling were too deeply wounded to allow him to speak on the subject. Never did I witness anything so fierce and frightful as his rage at Clayborne’s letter. He swore that he would rather have cut off his daughter’s hand and sent it, than to have waited for a second request for the ring. When the energy of his rage was spent, he wept like a child, and in this moment of weakness, I obtained a reluctant promise from him that he would not disturb Arabella with this grievous subject. He kept his promise, and when with her was apparently calm, but
‘The deepest ice that ever froze,
Can only o’er the surface close;
The living stream lies quick below,
And flows—and cannot cease to flow.’
A few more weeks passed on, and I received a southern newspaper. One passage was encircled by a pen line. It was the advertisement of Clayborne’s marriage with a Miss Wythe, a lady of whom I had heard as a beauty and a fortune. Of course, I burnt the paper without communicating its tidings. Arabella’s life was gently wearing away; each day left her with abated strength, but her spirit seemed to receive peace and courage, from the fountain of strength and joy to which it was so rapidly approaching. Even her father caught a ray from the light of that world that was opening upon his child. He was calm and gentle, and would listen, with a look almost devotional, to her intreaties that would be resigned to the will of God. He would walk in her room and sit by her bed hour after hour, and forget and forego his walk, his cigars, and his wine, and all those daily recurring indulgencies that had seemed to constitute his sum of life. I was sitting one evening beside Arabella. She had passed a day of extreme weakness, hardly discovering any consciousness, excepting once or twice when I read a few passages from the bible, and she looked up with a sweet smile of assent—the response of her spirit to the words of inspiration.
My servant, by mistake, admitted two of our neighbors, who, with some drops of benevolence, have a flood of curiosity that impels them to witness, wherever they can, the last conflict of humanity. Use has given them a sort of official right to intrude on deathbed scenes, and they go to them, con amore, like the wretched cummers in the ‘Bride of Lammermoor.’ When they entered, I was sitting beside Arabella, holding her hand in mine. Her beautiful hair lay in rich masses on the pillow. There was a slight contraction on her brow, and a quick and labored respiration; excepting these manifestations of the presence of the spirit, she was as serene as death itself. Mrs. Smith came to the bedside, and after standing there for a few moments, ‘she changes fast, I think ma’am,’ she said,— I answered by pointing to a seat at the farther end of the room. She turned to her companion and said ‘she still breathes, Patty, and that is all.’ They seated themselves on each side captain St. Clair; protracted anxiety seemed to have exhausted his sensibility. His eyes were half closed, and he was nearly unconscious of any external impressions. Yet it was curious to see the power of habit in his customary politeness. ‘It is a dying world, captain,’ said Mrs. Smith.
‘Yes, madam.’
‘And an uncommon dying season it has been,’ interposed Miss Patty—‘eleven deaths since Fast—no, I am wrong, widow Brown’s was the tenth, Miss Arabella’s will be the eleventh. It is a solemn time, captain.’
‘Yes, madam.’
‘It is a dark world, captain,’ resumed Mrs. Smith, ‘and we are blind creatures. If Miss Arabella is prepared, we ought not to mourn for her.’
‘Madam?’
Here I interposed; I observed a slight tremulousness about Arabella’s mouth, that indicated she was not unnoticing, as I had supposed, and I hesitated no longer to request the woman to leave the room.
But their dull sense did not feel the instruments of torture they were handling. ‘If you should need us during the night, captain,’ said Miss Patty, ‘don’t hesitate to send for us.’
‘Need you!—for what, in Heaven’s name?’ asked the captain, for the first time speaking naturally.
‘To lay out your daughter, sir.’
‘Good God!’ exclaimed the wretched father; the woman left the apartment
Arabella gently pressed my hand, opened her eyes, and fixed them intently on me. ‘Am I dying,’ she asked, ‘tell me truly, I did not think it was so near, but I am not frightened.’
‘I believe, my dear child,’ I replied, ‘that you have little more to endure.’
‘God’s will be done,’ she said, ‘I am ready; one thing yet remains to do, and then I am perfectly ready.’ Her father approached the bedside at the sound of her voice. ‘This ring,’ she continued, feebly raising her hand, ‘was put on my finger on your piazza, the night before Clayborne’s departure. He feared my constancy, and he prayed me to kneel with him, and with God for our witness to exchange the marriage vow. I promised in the awful presence we had invoked, to wear this ring till death should divorce us.’
Her father heard her thus far, and then a flood that had been so long accumulating and fretting against its barriers, burst forth in imprecations and curses. Never shall I forget the deep heart rending groan, that Arabella, who had scarcely given an audible sight to her own injuries and sufferings, now uttered; never can I describe the energy with which she raised her head from the pillow, and clasping her arms around her father’s neck, drew his head down to her bosom, saying, ‘Oh father, as you hope to be forgiven; as you are thankful to God for giving peace to your dying child, take back those horrid words and forgive him—father, forgive him.’
‘I do—I do, my child.’
‘Dear father!’ she murmured, and pressed her lips to his burning cheek. A few moments after, I disengaged her clasped hands from her father’s neck, while yet the sweet smile, which the parted spirit had left there, hovered on her lips.
------------------------------‘Death should come,
Gently to one of the gentle mould like thee.
Close thy sweet eyes calmly and without pain;
And we will trust in God, to see thee yet again.’
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 Bridal Ring
Subject
The topic of the resource
Women, Love, Death, Vow
Description
An account of the resource
Arabella, a young woman of particular musical talent and beauty, becomes engaged to Wingfield Clayborne. Clayborne falls out of love with her and requests the ring back. Arabella takes literally the vow she gave Clayborne and returns the ring only after ‘death do us part.’
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss Sedgwick
Source
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In The Token and Atlantic Souvenir, edited by S[amuel] G. Goodrich, 223-46 Boston: Gray and Bowen, 1833 [pub. 1832].
Publisher
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Gray and Bowen
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1833
Contributor
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Lucinda Damon-Bach
Meghan Smith
Shawn Riggins
Language
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English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
Arabella
Autumn
Clayborne
Clermont Cottage
Death
engagement
Love
religion
St. Clair
The Token and Atlantic Souvenir
Vow
-
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a03f936ae1436347f27ef51c6d99fcf9
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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1831
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories published in 1831.
Document
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Text
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Youth’s
Keepsake;
A Christmas And New Year’s Gift
For Young People
“Take it- ‘tis a gift of love,-
That seeks thy good alone;
Keep it for the giver’s sake,
And read it for thine own.”
Boston:
Published By Carter and Hendee,
1831.
The Canary Family
I paid a visit to my friend Sophia, yesterday. I could describe her; but if the portrait did justice to her peculiar loveliness, every one who knows the original would know it, and that she would not like; for she is not a subject for an exhibition picture, but for an image to be worn next the heart. I may say of her, for in this feature of her character I trust that many of my young friends resemble her, that she has certain delicate chords in her composition that vibrate to whatever is beautiful and loveable. Her first glance and smile win a child’s love; the most delicate flowers thrive under her culture as if they were in their native atmosphere, and the most timid birds are soon tamed by her gentle usage, and seem to make her their intimate and confidential friend.
Her favorites, at present, are a little family of canaries. She gave me their history, and it is evi-
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-dent that she has observed their conduct, and studied their characters, with an interest similar to that which a tender mother feels in her offspring. She, who watches over her little dependents with such love, must be a more accurate observer than the bird-fancier, who rears the bird, as the slave merchant trains his captive, for the market. We, therefore, request our readers will believe our story, and we pledge them the word of a faithful biographer that we will not add a single fictitious circumstance to embellish it.
Sophia being much alone procured a canary, as an innocent and pleasant companion. She preferred a male, because the male birds are gifted with the sweetest song. The little creature soon seemed to feel quite at home in Sophia’s boudoir, and attached to his gentle mistress. As far as he could, he made his society agreeable. He seemed never tired of singing to her; would flourish quite a pretty little accompaniment when she played on the piano; would perch on her shoulder, for she allowed him the liberty of the room; and sometimes daintily pick from her plate when she was eating. In short, he did his best to be happy in his solitude, but after a while he got the blues, became silent, and drooped, and Sophia said it was not good for birds any more than man to be alone, so she went to Lawrie Todd’s, the immortalized florist and bird-fancier, and selected the prettiest little damsel in
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the aviary to be a companion for our sighing bachelor. Some persons have thought that if the President of the United States appointed all the matches in the country, they would prove full as happy as they now do. Certain it is, that if our little friend had had the pick of his own bright isles, he could not have been better satisfied, than he was with the selection his mistress had made for him. He and his helpmeet were the picture of conjugal harmony, and she, a thrifty little wife, soon began to build her nest, and thus prepare for the expected wants of a young family.
Sophia took care that she should not lack materials. She hung within the cage a net-bag, containing hay and hair. The husband seemed anxious to aid her, and certainly did his best, but he was clumsy at house-work, and Sophia observing that the little lady hardly gave herself breathing time, and afraid that she would overwork herself, contrived, dexterously to intertwine some of the hairs in the nest. But even Sophia’s delicate fingers were not equal to the art of the bird. At first glance at her nest, she lost her sweet temper, flew into a violent passion, went to work like a little fury, and in half a minute she had extricated every one of the hairs inserted with such pains, and then arranging them with the nicest skill, she seemed to say, ‘Shall a mortal presume to mingle her coarse labour with
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that of a heaven-instructed bird?’ Her mate stood by, the while, and it may be, laughed in his feathered sleeve, to find his little wife a lady of such spirit, and, like a prudent husband, resolved to never provoke it.
Sophia placed feathers within reach, aware how very carefully the bird prepares the inside of the nest, the part that is to come in contact with the unprotected skin of the young bird. It was affecting to see with what pains the little creature cut off, with her bill, the quill of the feather, as we have often seen a careful mother remove every pin and needle that could possibly scratch her child.
Sophia once more interposed, and with better success. She scraped some very soft lint and put into the cage. This service, Mrs. Canary very thankfully accepted, for thanks are certainly best expressed by using well the gift. She instantly caught up the lint, and in a very short time completed the nest. Sophia says, and she has a right to know, that there is as much difference in individual character among birds as human beings; and that lady-birds sometimes, as well as ladies, make very indifferent house-wives. But our heroine was not one of these. She was a pattern. Her nest was as exactly formed as if it were done by a mathematical rule, and the entire labour of constructing this beautiful little edifice was performed in one day.
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In the course of a week four eggs were deposited in it; and in eleven days, or one fortnight after, I have forgotten which, four birds, three males and one female, made their appearance. And now the young husband, became a father, was more devoted than ever. He was an epicure for his wife; selected all the delicate morsels for her, and aided her in feeding the young ones. She, like all good wives, was keeper at home. He, was a pattern of conjugal kindness. Except when employed in procuring food, he laid his head beside his mate’s, and if any stranger came into the apartment, he would start up, sit on the side of the nest, half extend his wings, and fix his eye on the intruder, as much as to say, ‘If any discourteous knight disturb my lady-love, I will do battle in her behalf.’ But his chivalric spirit was not called into action. Sophia took care that no one should rudely approach the cage, and the happy little family was unmolested.
It was a scene of perfect domestic happiness, which, a poet says, (I do not believe him,) is the ‘Only bliss that has survived the fall.’
Who would have thought that at this moment a cloud was gathering over this harmonious contented family!
Adjoining the house in which Sophia lives, is a public garden, one of the favourite resorts and prettiest embellishment of our city. I wish I could
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transport all my young friends there, that they might realize some of the beautiful visions that have floated around their brains when they have been reading the Arabian Tales. The garden is laid out with taste, enriched with plants of every clime, and filled with the delicious odours of Cape jasmines and orange flowers. Every thing is managed with taste. Before a saloon in the centre of the garden, is a pyramid of fragrant leaves and bright blossoms, formed by placing pots on circular benches around a pump, which but for this floral drapery, would have been a deformity. Every evening the garden is lighted by colored lamps hung in arches over the walks, illuminated columns, and fantastic transparencies. One broad avenue terminates at one extremity by noble mirrors, that multiply to apparent myriads the crowds that resort to this fairy land. At the other end of this avenue a painting is hung, in which the walk is so well represented by the art of perspective, that it seems to stretch as far as the eye can extend ; a winding path leads to a grotto, embellished with shells and corals, and sparkling with crystals, a fit bower for the pretty naiads. In another secluded nook is a hermitage, which seems to be in a deep and rocky recess, where sits a hermit, ‘reverend and gay.’ I would not advise my young friends to examine all these things by daylight, lest they should find they
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had been deceived by false appearances. There is no harm in an agreeable and innocent illusion.
But to return to our canaries, whom we left at the moment of impending evil.
Sophia as we said, had always allowed her first canary the liberty of the room. The weather had now become so warm that she sat with her window raised, and the bird, either tempted by the sweet odours that rose from the garden, or the love of liberty, and probably not aware of the danger of separation from his family, flew out of the window. Sophia was alarmed and distressed, and she immediately hit on the most probably expedient for recovering the wanderer. She had her cage conveyed to the garden. The little rover was skimming the air and perching on the green branches, but the moment he espied his mate and her little ones, he flew to his home again, preferring captivity with them to freedom without them.
The cage was again taken in hand to be reconveyed to the boudoir. Mrs. Canary seemed agitated and flurried with the sudden changes in her condition; her little head was turned with joy at the recovery of her mate. She flapped her wings against the wires of the cage, lighted on her perch, and on her nest, and finally, for the door of the cage had been carelessly left open, out she went. It was evident she was bewildered. The cage was set down in the hope that the instincts of the mother
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would bring her back, but I would have no doubt the poor little creature was like a person suddenly deprived of reason. She flew round and round, as birds are said to do, when fascinated by a snake. There was some wild sparrows flying over the garden, they hovered around her. This seemed still farther to alarm and distract her; the little vagrants encompassed her; enclosed her within their circle, and drove her off, and she was forever lost to her bereaved family.
I do not doubt her widowed mate felt all that bird could feel. He expressed his affection for his lost companion as good husbands should do, by the most devoted care of the little ones. She was a foster mother to them, and he was father, mother, every thing. It was really affecting to see his care of them. It was much as he could do, with all the aid Sophia gave him in cracking the seeds, to supply food to the hungry little fry; the poor fellow really became thin, while they grew apace.
Perhaps some of our young readers may not know how the parent prepares the food for the young bird. An egg, boiled hard, a lettuce leaf, seeds and water, were all placed by Sophia within the bird’s reach. He would take a little of each, and appear to roll the whole in his mouth till it was formed into a paste. Then he seemed to swallow it; for when he was a distribute it to the birds, he made a motion with his throat, like that which
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is necessary to recover what is partly swallowed. While the birds were very young, one preparation would suffice for the whole; but in a few days, three of them would eat all their father could prepare at once. He was not discouraged at this, but went patiently to work again. Sophia was alarmed lest he should forget which was the unfed bird; he never mistook, but always, like a just and good parent, made an equal distribution to all his children.
Never did a nursery, under the care of the most experienced nurse, thrive better. At the end of the week, the female bird, the only female of the brood, was hopping off her nest. She was the most forward, knowing bird, of her age, ever seen. In a fortnight, she flew about the room, and lured her timid brothers to adventure forth. She continues to manifest the same bold enterprising, independent character.
A friend of Sophia’s who had admired, from day to day, the devotion of the father to his young, very kindly sent him the best reward of his fidelity, another mate. When I saw the family last, his second wife had built her nest, though not half so well as her predecessor. She was sitting on her eggs, and was most affectionately tended by her husband. Sophia complains that he has become somewhat of a hen-hussy, and had rather be cowering over the nest than abroad on the wing, with his
[127]
gay flock. They all live harmoniously with the step-mother, save the little vixen of a girl; and she pecks and scolds the lady-mama, who bears her pettishness with calmness and dignity, and will, I doubt not, in time, subdue the little shrew.
New York, 20 June 1830
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 Canary Family
Subject
The topic of the resource
Pets, Family, Friendship
Description
An account of the resource
The narrator visits her friend Sophia and describes her pet birds. The story recounts the history of this small family of birds, likening it to a human family.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine M.
The author of "Hope Leslie."
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
In The Youth's Keepsake, 118-27.
Boston: Carter and Hendee, 1831 [pub. 1830].
Collected in Tales and Sketches, 279-85. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, and Blanchard,
1835·
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Carter and Hendee
Carey, Lea, and Blanchard
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1830
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sam Clark
Shawn Riggins
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
Birds
Carter and Hendee
family
Friendship
Motherhood
Pets
The Youth's Keepsake