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1846
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Stories published in 1846.
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VARIETIES OF SOCIAL LIFE IN NEW YORK
-----
BY MISS CATHARINE M. SEDGWICK
-----
[p. 13]
One might imagine from the political equality of our people, from the diffusion of education, from the general condition (from which few are excepted) of business occupation, that we should find uniformity in social life; that there would be a sort of community of character and intercourse—that it would be in New York as it is in some other cities of our Union where in a similar condition of life every body knows every body. But it is not so. The social circles are as distinct as if the walls of caste were built around them. Each system has its sun, moon, stars of the first magnitude, and its own horizon. There are occasional transits made from one little world to another, but not enough to break up their distinctness.
A friend of mine, on a visit to New York, whose position gave him the entreé of various circles, communicated to me the following particular account of one of his evenings:
“My visit in your city being short,” he said, “I was compelled to make the most of it. I therefore accepted four or five invitations for an evening, which I could well do, as (the evenings being then at their longest) my social chart covered seven or eight hours. My first invitation was to take tea with a Mr. Ruscit, a mechanic, at five o’clock! Five o’clock, as you know, is the dinner-hour with the fashionable up-town family with whom I staid; so I dispensed with my dinner and took a substantial lunch of oysters and rolls at one o’clock, my dinner-hour at home. This hour, according with my habits and my notions of health, put me into high good humor and appetite too. I met my charming hostess going to her dining-room with her young people as I was passing out to my carriage, which, by the way, Ruscit had sent to me, saying, with delicate courtesy, (nature sometimes teaches better than Chesterfield,) that he wished to save as much of my time to himself as possible. ‘So you are going off to the barbarians!’ said my hostess. ‘How can Mr.----- go to much places?’ I heard one of my young friends ask as I shut the door.
“Ruscit himself received me at the door of a modest, comfortable dwelling in East Second street, and introduced me to his wife, who, having been born among the ‘Friends,” still retains their costume—so fitting the sobriety of middle age. Once seen it would be difficult to forget this good matron’s face. Not that there was anything very remarkable in the pure, fair, health-speaking skin, or any thing beautiful in feature or coloring, but there was the record of an ever-dominant kindness of heart, of a sweetness of disposition that had smoothed roughness and plucked out thorns from every body’s path, and that had made that great gain of life, ‘contentment with godliness.’
“There were some dozen persons assembled, including my host’s small family. The sparkling gem among them was his very lovely daughter who, as Ruscit whispered to me, was engaged to a young man present—a rising star in the literary world. This accounted probably for the rather rare books and new publications that were lying on the table. The furniture was plain, but there were three or four beautiful engravings hanging about the rooms. I was pleased to remark the absence of the too common mantle-furniture (even in our mechanics’ houses) of bronzed and gilded lamps and other similar decorations.
Instead of these there were casts, and very good ones, of Canova’s lions, plaster casts of two lovely Greek heads, and an erra cotta vase and pitcher of exquisite forms. My host saw me examining them. ‘I like,’ he said to me in a low voice, ‘to make such objects familiar to my children—they insensibly educate the eye and give them a taste for refined pleasures.’
“These people are not quite the ‘barbarians’ my hostess fancied them, I thought.
“The tea-table was spread in the adjoining parlor after the pattern of old-fashioned New England meals, whose substantial and abundant viands fitly closed a day of industry and temperance. There were tongue and smoked beef, bread and biscuits, and various cakes and sweetmeats—all of home manufacture. One might see by half a look at my good hostess that she was thoroughbred in all those little womanly domestic arts which mould into healthful and hospitable forms the raw materials of sugar and flour. Mrs. Ruscit was bred before the progress of civilization had brought down education to the humble levels of
[p. 14]
society. The worlds of science and art were terra incognita to her; but she was learned, for she was heaven-taught in the humanities that are after all the life of social life. She saw that every body was comfortably established at table. She was politely attentive to me as, for the moment, the guest to be honored, but it was plain that she gave far more thought to the comfort of a little humpbacked child of a friend who was seated at a side-table with the lovers. Her instincts told her that he might chance to be overlooked by them; and when the poor little child dropped one of her best China cups and broke it, she forgot the dignity of her station to go and comfort him. ‘Poor Johnny!’ I overheard her say, ‘don’t cry—it’s not the least matter; I have more of these cups than I want, Johnny.’
“Mrs. Ruscit had no high-bred indifference to the entertainment of her guests. She looked out for each and all—was afraid an elderly lady at table was crowded—bid her younger girls sit closer (the buxom lasses were too solid to pack well)—saw that her delicate preparations were offered to every one, and had a pleasure, in seeing them relished even by those who order their refection from Thompson and Weller.
“My host being interested in schools led me after tea to describing those I had seen abroad, and I perceived it was the habit of his family circle to listen to whatever was new and might be instructive to them. They were all flatteringly attentive except the young lovers, who would fall into a little by-talk. This seemed to disturb my serene friend Ruscit, and once I saw him touch the toe of his future son-in-law, and I caught a word or two of his reply, half said to the young beauty and half in excuse to the father. I think he quoted,
‘In the presence of lovely young Jessie,
Unseen is the lily, unheeded the rose.’
“I said my friend was interested in schools. He is by nature a friend of young people, and being a wise and reflecting man he feels the paramount importance of education in our country. He is a voluntary visitor of the public schools, is acquainted with their teachers, knows half the scholars by name, and all of them by heart. He gave me an account of his establishment. He has some twenty apprentices. ‘The years they are to pass with me,’ he said, ‘comprehend the sowing-season of their lives. They ought not to be devoted solely to the acquisition of their trades. It is not fitting that our young men should be bred like the mere automaton workmen of other countries; it is not fitting that any man should be so bred at this period of the world. I had small opportunity of school education myself. I cannot therefore be their instructor, but I pay them for extra work, and they thus acquire a little fund with which they pay their teachers. They have teachers of mathematics, chemistry, natural philosophy, drawing, music, and French and Spanish! I take upon myself the department of ethics. My boys have a court in which they are tried for offences against the lesser morals and manners. They appoint their own juries and make their own charges and defences, and quietly submit, with very rare exceptions, to the verdicts.*
“In the midst of my friend’s communication the carriage was announced, and I was obliged, most reluctantly, to break away and go off to my second party at half past seven. These are not quite ‘barbarians’ I thought, as the door of this hospitable and happy home closed upon me.
“My next engagement was at Mr. Mallark’s. This gentleman is in high standing in the legal profession. He is but recently a resident in your city, and having had rather a stormy life up to middle age, he seems now to love and seek tranquility. I found a few guests, and tea and coffee and their usual accompaniments, just being served. The lady of the house is like, alas! most of our women past the robustness of youth—an invalid; but her invalidism, instead of degenerating into fretfulness or inanity, is solaced and embellished by refined tastes. A few of the choicest, rarest plants—not neglected and never-blooming—but radiant with flowers, filled one of her windows. Some among them were brilliant tropical plants which she had brought from their West Indian homes, and which seemed not to miss their birthplace in our hot rooms, tended as they are by instructed, skillful and loving hands. Mrs. Mallark’s frequent visits to sea-shores and Southern climes had made her love whatever was native to them. She had cabinets filled with those exquisite shells which seem to have caught and retained in their polished prisons the sunbeams of the bright sea-shores whence they came. The drawing-rooms were enriched with curiosities from the farthest Indies, and furniture of the most curious workmanship from China. This I thought strange, as I knew my host had never been engaged in commerce and had no relations with commercial people. The riddle was solved as soon as I was made acquainted with my fellow guests. Some of them were missionaries, who had expended the strength of their days in the good service of God
[p.15]
and man at our antipodes. They were familiar with the spiritual wants of India and the celestial empire; their kind sympathies were as wide as the circle of humanity, but they knew little of the utilitarian activity about us. I doubt if they had ever heard the names of transcendentalism and Fourierism. They had nothing to do with the passing navigation between the Scylla and Charybdis of popular theorists—they had a holy land of their own, and one might be happier and wiser, and should be better for a glimpse at it.
“From Mallark’s, I passed to the drawing-room of Miss Evertson. It was her reception evening. I was admitted to a rather dimly lighted hall by a little portress, some ten or twelve years old, who led me to a small apartment to deposit my hat and cloak. There was no lighted staircase, no train attendant, none of the common flourish at city parties. “Up stairs, if you please, sir—front room for the ladies—back for the gentlemen;” no indication of an overturn or commotion in the domestic world; no cross father, worried mother, or scolded servants behind the scenes—not even a faint resemblance to the eating, worrying and tossing of ‘the house that Jack built.’ The locomotive was evidently not off the track; the spheres moved harmoniously. To my surprise, when I entered, I found two fair-sized drawing-rooms filled with guests, in a high state of social enjoyment. There was music, dancing, recitation and conversation. I met an intimate friend there, and availing myself of the common privilege of a stranger in town I inquired out the company. There were artists in every department—painting, poetry, sculpture and music. There I saw for the first time that impersonation of genius, Ole Bull. Even the histrionic art asserted its right to social equality there in the person of one of its honorable professors. You may think that my hostess, for one so young and so very fair, opened her doors too wide. Perhaps so, for though I detest the duenna system and believe that the unguarded freedom permitted to our young ladies far safer as well as more agreeable, yet I would rather have seen the mother of Miss Evertson present. Certainly no one ever needed an aegis less than my lovely hostess. She has that quiet delicacy and dignity of manners that is as a ‘glittering angel’ to exorcise every evil spirit that should venture to approach her. How without fortune or fashion she has achieved her position in your city, where every thing goes under favor of these divinities, I am sure I cannot tell. To be sure she has that aristocracy which supercedes all others—that to which prince and peasant instinctively bow—and though unknown in the fashionable world, you would as soon confound the exquisite work of a Greek sculptor with the wax figures of an itinerant showman as degrade her to the level of a conventional belle.
“Yet she does not open her house as a temple to worshipers of whom she is the divinity, but apparently simply to afford her acquaintances the hospitality of a place of social meeting. She retires behind her guests, and seems to desire to be the least observed of all observers. Though I belong, as you know, to the dullest category, and am an ‘old married man’—am not an artist, author or lion of any sort, but only ‘an innocent beast with a good conscience,’ my hostess was particularly kind to me, and I was so charmed with her and with the animated social life about her that I found myself outstaying all her guests, and at half past ten reluctantly took my leave—noting for the first time that the hours had passed away without the usual appliances of an evening party. I had supposed that war might as well be carried on without its munitions, officers as well live without their salaries, children as well go to bed without their suppers, as a party to go off without its material entertainment. But here was the song without the supper, not even those poor shadows of refreshments cakes and lemonade. Here was a young woman without ‘position’—to use the cant phrase—without any relations to the fashionable world, filling her rooms weekly with choice spirits, who came without any extraordinary expense of dress, who enjoyed high rational pleasures for two or three hours, and retired so early as to make no drafts on the health or spirits of the next day. I communicated my perplexity to a foreign acquaintance whom I met at Mrs. Booth’s.
“’Why,’ said he, ‘your fair friend has hit upon a favorite form of society common in the highest civilization. Miss Evertson’s soirees are Parisian—only not in Paris. Not in the world, with the exception of the United States, could a beautiful young woman take the responsibility unmatronized of such a ‘reception.’’
“My evening’s dissipation concluded at Mrs. Booth’s. The pulse of the beau monde had beaten high for a week with the expectation of Mrs. Booth’s party. This was partly owing to the splendor of her new house and her new furniture, and partly to the fashion and accomplishments of the lady, to whose modes of being and doing long foreign travel has given authority. Unfortunately, though three thousand miles from the Old World, we cannot have our independent customs, and in certain things we certainly favor the distasteful theories of the author of ‘the Vestiges of Creation,’ who develops the monkey into the man. There would be something remaining of our imitative progenitors to account for, some of our senseless imitations; such, for example, as going to parties at eleven o’clock, when, in our working-
[16]
day world we must rise and be at our business at nine. But this, en passant, I had plenty of leisure to moralize on the spectacle while my carriage awaited others that preceded it. When at last my coach door was opened, I found a covered and carpeted way was made from the front door to the curb-stone so that the daintiest dame had no shock from the cold pavement or the rough visitation of the Winter’s wind. The chieftain of your city police, a Magnus Koil in figure, guarded the passage and used his brief authority so well that he seemed more like the herald of a feudal castle than the orderly of a citizen.
“Gas and wax candles did their best to imitate ‘heaven’s own blessed light.’ The whole house was sweet with the perfume of flowers of all seasons and from the four quarters of the globe. The two splendid drawing-rooms, communicating after the stereotyped fashion by folding doors, were filled with the highest fashion of the city, with a sprinkling of strangers of distinction—and, that crowning grace to our republican parties—a prince and his attachés! Collinet’s band gave such eclat to the drawing-room and threw some of the guests, who had recently heard him in Paris, into such extacies that one might fancy he breathed the very air of that ‘divine capital’ from his little flageolet.
“You may not take my word for it, but it struck me the ladies were marked by that air of taste and elegance which is said to distinguish your New York women, and why should it not be so? for their dress is Parisian, and the Paris toilet gives law to the world. Still I must confess there seemed to me less beauty under all their exquisite coffures than I had seen among Miss Evertson’s unadorned guests. Perhaps the gas-light was too strong for dress to achieve its greatest miracle—making ‘age seem youth’—for there were world-worn faces where the couleur de rose had passed from every thing but the flowers and feathers.
“A buffet in an apartment in the rear of the drawing-room was embellished with costly silver, glass and china, and supplied throughout the evening with every species of ‘refreshment,’ substantial viands and delicacies, wrought up to such pitch of refinement that they seemed almost to be sublimated out of their materiality. In short nothing was wanting that expense, labor, and fashion could compass; but—the rooms were crowded, the air was loaded; few could hope to enjoy the primary hospitality of a seat; there was no conversation beyond the exchange of half a dozen conventional phrases; and while some twenty fortunate young ladies, who enjoyed the sweet security of parties, monopolized the dancing floor, others, novices in society, or from some other cause (certainly not because they were less pretty or less charming) remained pinioned to the wall silent observers. There were worn men of business dragged into this vortex by parental kindness, while their thoughts still lingered in the warehouse or in Wall street. A few husbands had come forth with reluctant conjugal courtesy; and mamas in plenty were there mere attachées to their daughters. There was no room for ease, no opportunity, were they ever so enriched for it, for conversation. These are the necessary conditions of a party in fashionable life, and its imitations. Mrs. Booth did all that could be done to relieve them. She manifested no ultra modish unconciousness of her guests, but, with the benevolence that has illustrated other places of durance, she ‘remembered the forgotten and attended to the neglected,’ applying, whenever she could, the balm of her sweet smile and opportune word. The desert has its diamond—she was something quite as precious in her drawing-room. Her husband too, with his frank and cordial manners, did all that could be done to preserve the geniality of his home in this ungenial crowd. No power can achieve impossibilities.
“I laid my head on my pillow between one and two o’clock and repassed in my mind the scenes of the evening. I wondered a little at the ‘social ambition’ I had often witnessed in your city—at the limitations of fashionable life, and more than all I marveled at the eager aspirations to attain its dazzling heights. I doubted even if the elevation were not rather apparent than real, and when I compared the social meetings at Miss Evertson’s, Mallark’s, and the ‘barbarian’ Ruscit’s, to the splendid fete at Mrs. Booth’s, it seemed to me that in present and after comfort, in actual enjoyment, and in what most marks the advancement of man and society, they had the superiority.
“You may smile at my rustic taste, but I confess that my thoughts finally settled down on my philanthropic friend Ruscit, his large-hearted wife, and their generous and modest hospitality.
“All conditions have their good and beauty. To my thinking, the flowers that grow in the shade are the sweetest.”
___________
* During the prevalence of the Asiatic cholera in New York, it became a question whether Mr. Ruscit and others seized with the panic should close their workshops. He decided to keep his open. The young men were busy in their working hours, and amusements were provided for their leisure. One among them wrote a drama—others painted and arranged scenery and costumes, and all had a part to perform. Not a case of cholera occurred—not a premonitory symptom—not even the usual Summer illness.
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
Varieties of Social Life in New York
Subject
The topic of the resource
Entertaining and social manners in New York City.
Description
An account of the resource
The narrator, a self-described "old married man," compares and contrasts the entertainment offered in a single evening by a range of New Yorkers of different classes and ages.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine Maria.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Columbian Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine, July 1846, pp. 13-16.
Publisher
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Edited by John Inman and Robert A. West
Date
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1846
Contributor
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L. Damon-Bach, Shawn Riggins, D. Gussman
Relation
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Collected in The Gem of the Season for 1849, 105-118. New York: Leavitt, Trow & Co., 1849 [pub. 1848]. The Gem of the Season was reprinted as The Gallery of Mezzotints . . . for 1850. New York, 1850.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
"Lovely Young Jessie"
1846
Antonio Canova
China
class
Columbian Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine
domestic arts
education
fashion
hospsitality
hostess
India
Joseph Fourier
Lord Chesterfield
manners
missionaries
New York City
Ole Bull
Paris
Quakers
Robert Burns
Robert Chambers
sculpture
Scylla and Charybdis
Society of Friends
soirees
The Gem of the Season
transcendentalism
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
Wall Street
West Indies
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/55c14d9c56852c55ed015bf5970460f8.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=j4BlLdzog2F56fFo0t4igby37pmYhUbjEuXMBRHwQc5zz2ppmSVV6ElcIMnqS6e22iBdvmdftb54kXJzpGUiUeKlnj1UfnewL8f3owuBQkRR1KwMgbZVWLwNm2ugCRPSqbMGH0HN68iVAUGgtkCQ%7EqTmt-O-VnEDwyQo6dVIWiQJc9WmCn59-j3HeHNZulQA2zCI2ZDvvhw2gxFGlggGyJ2FDagg08swLcJYR6Bl1KRvxogoHiIfK%7Eklrw809HfSqWugucSzuzmAQGTUe-asiv9-NjYR2a5CPrHDbEOCMK68Vg0RtWF9BDu54uWZPBfda2nI-BeRaeQAM5%7EmfIsRuw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
0c499526c42e32adb4c914a2d8a56596
Dublin Core
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Title
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1844
Document
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Text
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SUSY’S COW
BY MISS C. M. SEDGWICK.
The old and worldly may learn a great lesson by observing how much contentment a child gets out of a few possessions. A canary bird, a kitten, a little white mouse, will give a little girl as much real enjoyment as one of the grazing dukes of England gets from his uncounted flocks and herds.
One of my favorite twilight walks is over a grass-grown road, that, leading by a few scattered habitations through a mountain pass, is little frequented. Just on the verge of the mountain, in one end of a rickety old house, lives the widow Ely and her daughter Susan. There is a little garden-patch near the house—some peonies and rose-bushes, and round the door a few decayed apple-trees. The place looks comfortable, protected as it is by the well-wooded mountain side from the cold winds, and with the sun playing on the hop-vine that twines about the criss-cross threads passed and re-passed before the window. The widow Ely is as poor as a sensible, industrious woman can well be in New England. She is very feeble, and can earn little; but that little is so well managed, that she and Susan live independently of charity. The ladies who are mistresses of the Beacon street palaces, would as soon think of begging as Mrs. Ely.
In my evening walks towards Mrs. Ely’s, I have often met Susan, driving home her cow; sometimes, unconscious that I observed her, holding the animal’s tail, whisking it on one side and the other, beating time to an artless tune she was singing. Sometimes she ran alongside her favorite, patting her and discoursing with her. “Hold up your head, old lady!” she would say; “there’s a nicer mess for you than common at home. Mother and I had corn for dinner, and we saved all the odds and ends for you. Come, trot on, dearie—mother is waiting. Poor old soul! how low-spirited you are! I don’t think Deacon Bonton is half fair to put you in that old eaten-up pasture. It sets your teeth on edge to look at it.”
“Susy,” said I one day, overtaking her, “do you think the old cow understands you?” Susan blushed a little at finding herself overheard; but we were old friends, and she answered me frankly, “I don’t know that she understands every word, but she has a feeling when I talk to her,—I’m sure she has. Now just look, ma’am, when I stop and pat her, how she stops and looks round at me, and puts her head up to my face,—poor Mooly!—there, you see! She loves me better than anybody in the world does, except mother. Oh, we have proper good times, coming home from pasture,—Mooly and I do.”
“Does she give much milk, Susy?”
Susan’s voice fell a little, as she replied, “No, ma’am,—not so much as some cows do. But that is all the fault of the pasture,—I know it is!”
“Why don’t you get better pasture for her?”
“Mother can’t afford to, ma’am. Sometimes she has talked of selling her; but I felt so dreadfully, she would not.”
This summer, times are harder with Mrs. Ely. She had a long illness last winter, and a long bill to pay to the doctor. She is a woman that, as she herself truly says, can’t sleep quietly upon a debt. A few days since, I called at her door, and was just turning round the lilac bush that on one side encloses her door-step, when I was stopped by hearing Susan say, in a mingled tone of sorrow and surprise,
“Why, mother,—you have n’t sold her, in earnest, mother?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Is she gone?”
“Yes.”
“It is not fair.” There was a sense of injustice evidently mingling with Susan’s grief. “Have not I,” she continued, “picked and sold berries enough to pay for her pasturing all summer? I think you might have spoken to me about it, mother. Why did n’t you?”
“Because I could not bear to, Susy. I knew you would feel so bad.”
Susan was much mollified by finding that her mother had tried to save her feelings, instead of disregarding them; and when her mother said, “Now do hush, child, and wipe away your tears, and listen to me, and I will tell you all about it,” she was tranquillized. I, too, wanted to hear all about it; but I felt as if I had no longer a right to listen unseen; so I presented myself, and, after exchanging greetings with Susan and her mother, I begged her to proceed, and comfort Susan if she could.
“Susan,” she said, “can’t feel worse than I do about parting with the cow. My father gave her to me when I was married,—she was a heifer then. My husband died two years after, and, for the first eight years of Susan’s life, that cow more than half supported us. There was not a better cow for milk in the town.”
“Nor half so good a one for company,” interrupted poor Susy. “Oh, how lonesome we shall be!”
“Yes, we shall feel kind of lonesome,” said the mother; and I observed she turned away, to wipe a tear from her cheek. “But we must be rational, Susy. The old cow has fallen off in her milk the last two years, and I could not make her profitable as I used to do.”
“Profitable!” echoed Susan, “you would not think of selling me, mother, because I was not profitable.”
“O hush, Susy! Poor folks can’t humor their feelings like rich ones. To come to the real truth of the matter, I had no way of paying the doctor, but by selling the cow. And now I have the money to pay him, and I feel as if I had done my duty; and if you will only stop crying, Susan, and own you think I have done right, I shall feel better and happier than I have done all summer.”
Susan tried her best for resignation. She began to see that her mother was right, and before I left the house she had dried her eyes, and said “she supposed mother knew best, but it was cruel hard.”
The story of Susy’s cow is not quite ended. It was purchased by a gentleman in the next town to ours, seven miles from the widow Ely’s. A boy was sent to drive the cow to its new owner. She was known to be near calving, and he was desirous to have her at home before the calf was born.
The cow seemed very unwilling to leave her old haunts. She was continually turning back, and, when about half way to her journey’s end, she got away from her driver, and he could not manage to change her course; so he returned to his employer, and the next morning a man was sent with him.
The cow was found on the edge of a swamp, near Mrs. Ely’s, and from there driven to her new quarters. The stupid man who drove her did not find out that she had calved during the night. This was soon afterwards ascertained, and search was made in the swamp for the poor little lost calf, but no calf could be found.
All the day of her arrival—the next night, the following day, and the second night, the cow continued the most piteous moaning, such as cows make when their young are taken from them. The neighborhood was disturbed. People were kept awake in their beds; some of them pitied her, thinking there was a wailing in her cries that sounded like human love; and some wished her to the deuce.
Towards the second morning, the cries ceased; and when the time came for the cow to be fed, she was missing. Again a messenger was despached for her. She had been seen, by the earliest stirrers on the road, going towards her old home, and bellowing as she went. Nothing more could be heard of her till the messenger reached the widow’s, and there, in her little yard, was the cow and her calf—the widow rubbing, with some medicinal ointment, the poor animal’s bag, and Susy alternately patting the mother and calf, and repeating again and again, “I always said she knew as much as folks!” while the old cow, if she did not talk, expressed, as plainly as words could, her perfect satisfaction. It was a picture that Fisher should have painted. And it seems to me an instance of the force of the maternal instinct in a dumb animal, that deserves recording. The cow, after a separation of forty-eight hours from her calf, returned to the swamp, and there, in its intricacies, found her still living, and went with her to her best friends.
The cow was the same day taken to her new owner, and the calf tenderly conveyed in a wagon beside her. There is a rumor about the village, that the purchaser of the cow has been told the story of Susy’s fondness for her, and that his kind heart is so much touched by the animal’s faithful love for her young, which seems to justify Susan’s opinion of her remarkable character, that he has intimated an intention of presenting the calf, at some future day, to the good little girl.
We hope that our young friends will be touched by this true story (we vouch for its truth without color or exaggeration) of a brute animal’s devotion to its young. We have often wondered to see boys, and even men, abuse cows—kick them, and throw stones at them. A cow is one of Heaven’s rich gifts to man. She not only gives us milk,—pure and agreeable food to sustain life,—but from her we derive the luxuries of cream, butter and cheese,—luxuries so abundant, that we have almost come to consider them as necessaries. Not a pie, pudding or cake comes upon the table, but the cow has contributed one component part to it. These generous supplies she gives us. Be grateful to her, then, as a benefactress, and consider well her gentleness, patience, intelligence and affection, and you will not laugh at our little friend Susy for calling her company, nor be surprised when you are told that she is held sacred by some nations in India.
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
Susy's Cow
Subject
The topic of the resource
Mothers and daughters, cows, humane treatment of animals, poverty.
Description
An account of the resource
A widowed mother must sell her daughter's beloved cow in order to pay for medical care. The cow demonstrates devotion to its calf and the daughter.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The Boys and Girls' Library [edited by Mrs. Colman]
Publisher
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Boston: T. H. Carter & Co.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1844
Contributor
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Robin Cadwallader, D. Gussman
Relation
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Collected in The Boys' and Girls' Annual, Boston: T. H. Carter and Company, n.d., and in Stories for Children [edited by Robin Cadwallader], 1-12, RMTK Books, 2016.
Language
A language of the resource
English
1844
Animal Cruelty
animals
Boys and Girls' Library
Cows
daughters
doctors
humane treatment of animals
India
Juvenile fiction
Mothers
Mrs. Colman
New England
poverty
sacred cow
widows
-
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93d806ca3d019b9869b7eb19181cf95a
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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1845
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.
AN INCIDENT AT ROME
____________________________
BY MISS C. M. SEDGWICK
[104]
During a sojourn of some months at Rome, Lady C---- kindly offered to take me in her droski to Tusculum, a drive, as nearly as I can recall the distance, of some dozen miles. Accordingly, on one of those days, (of which we have often a counterpart in our autumnal months,) when the sky is of its deepest blue, and so serene that the eye seems to penetrate depths never before revealed, we passed the gate of St. John Lateran and entered on the Appian Way. Most
“Things by season seasoned are,
To their right praise and true perfection.”
But to the Roman campagna change of season brings no change. In the spring when, elsewhere, there is a general resurrection of vegetable life – a joyous beginning of the procession of the year – this unchanging aspect of the campagna is most solemn. When all the rest of Italy, as far as nature is concerned, has the beauty, gladness and promise of youth, is in truth a paradise regained, there are here no springing corn, no budding vine-stalks, no opening blossoms, scarcely a bird’s note. Nature, elsewhere so active, so plastic, so full of hope, is here monumental – a record of the inexorable past.
But though there be no look of cheerful habitancy, there is a solemn beauty. You can scarcely turn your eye without a strong emotion, without involuntarily uttering a name that is a charmed word. “There is Soracte!” “There is Tivoli!” “There is the country of the Sabines!” “There are the beautiful Alban Hills!” Behind you is Rome with its natural elevations, its splendid domes, towers and obelisks, its brooding pines, and sad cypresses – surely the most picturesque, the most suggestive of cities. The vast solitudes around you are filled with records of Rome and its magnificent life-time; broken aqueducts sometimes extending for a quarter of a mile, and then standing in fragments of three or four, or perhaps a single arch. On every side are monuments and tombs, by which the poor tenants hoped to perpetuate their names. The high sepulchral grass waves around them, the stones are a blank, or if the name be preserved – as in the still nearly perfect tomb of Cecilia Metella – it is but a name, all the rest is left to conjecture.
Lady C---- had resided several winters at Rome, and was perfectly familiar with its antiquities, and generous in her communications, and so delightfully did the time pass away that we hardly seemed to have emerged from the Porta San Giovanni when we drove into the little town of Frascati. The landlord appeared at the carriage door, with the usual smiles and potency of an Italian host, and answering the ready “Yes – yes – my lady!” to all Lady C’s demands, (the chief one being a parlor with a pleasant prospect,) he ushered us into the house and up a dirty stairway, and opened the door and windows of a little parlor, exclaiming, “Ecco, ecco, mi ladi, ecco una bella veduta!” We rushed to the window, expecting a beautiful view of the campagna, but instead of that we could see nothing but the villainous little piazza we had just left, with the usual accompaniments of an Italian place, beggars and an idle rabble. Lady C. smiled, and turning to me said, “The house affords nothing better, or he would have given it to us,” and bowing to our host as if she were quite satisfied, he took her orders and left us to ourselves.
“At what are you smiling?” she said to me.
“At your un-English way of proceeding, my dear Lady C.
Pardon my impertinence, but it would have seemed to me more nationally characteristic if you had broken out upon our host for attempting to impose this piazza on you for a beautiful prospect.”
“But it is to his eye. You are right, my friend. I have lived long enough abroad to get rid of a few prejudices, and some inconvenient and very unwise English habits. I do not now conclude that a thing is of course wrong because it is not in our Island fashion; and I am just learning to endure with good temper what I cannot cure, and to find out that every country, I might almost say every creature, has a bright side, at which we may look and thank God. Truly I am often ashamed of my snarling, barking, arrogant countrymen.”
I was charmed with the candor of Lady C’s concession, but being well aware that such a concession is much of the nature of a personal humiliation, I turned the subject by asking Lady C. if she had been frequently at Frascati?
“Often.” she said, and the last time she was there was rather memorable, and she proceeded to relate the following story, some part of which I had heard from our consul at Naples. Three years before, letters had been received at Rome, and in those Italian cities most frequented by the English, requesting inquiries to be set foot for a certain Murray Bathurst, a young Englishman, who had come to the Continent early in the preceding spring, intending to make the tour of Italy chiefly on foot. His mother, a widow, had received letters from him as late as October. He was then on his return from Naples to Rome, purposing to embark at Civita Vecchia for Marseilles. The mother’s letters expressed the misery of her suspense and anxiety so touchingly that many persons became interested in her behalf. Her letters were enforced by others from persons of note. I remember Lady C. mentioned Wordsworth or Southey’s name. This adventitious aid could scarcely have been necessary to stimulate benevo-
[105]
lence. No adventitious aid would ever be in requisition if there were more of the human race like a certain little woman in Boston, who hearing an alarm given of a child being run over, rushed forward to rescue it with such signs of distress that a passer by asked, “Is it your child?” “No,” she replied, “but it is somebody’s child.” Diligent inquiries were made of the police, and the books of our consuls at the different cities examined. The result was that Murray Bathurst was traced from Milan to Naples, back to Rome, and thence to Civita Vecchia. His entrance from Rome into that most forlorn of all travelers’ depots was duly registered, and there all clew was lost. In vain were the registers of all the steamers and of every craft that left the port examined – there was no trace of him. It must have been the same Murray Bathurst that was noted elsewhere; for his tall, slender, un-English person, his large dark melancholy eyes, his pale complexion, and tangled long dark hair, were all so notable as to be recorded in the reports of the police. Many letters were written to the mother giving this unsatisfactory information, and expressive of condolence and regret that no more could be learned of the lost young man. In a little time the topic became trite, then was forgotten, and mother and son sunk into the oblivion of past things.
A year ran away, when one morning, just as Lady C. was sitting down to her solitary breakfast in the ---- palace, Mrs. Bathurst was announced. The name and its association had passed from Lady C’s memory. Mrs. Bathurst presented a letter of introduction, and said – “My apology for troubling you is that you are the only person in Rome whom I have ever seen before, and of whose interest and sympathy I feel assured.”
Lady C. was perplexed, but on glancing at the letter she expressed, I have no doubt with the graceful courtesy that characterized her, her readiness to serve Mrs. Bathurst in any mode she would suggest –“But where and when,” she asked, “have I had the pleasure of meeting you?”
“It is quite as natural that you should forget as that I should remember it – the meeting was accidental, but the place may serve to recall it to you. Do you remember, seventeen years ago, meeting a young woman in the widow’s weeds with a little boy, whose beauty I believe first attracted you, wandering about the Druidical remains at Stonehenge?”
“Perfectly – perfectly – and now, though certainly somewhat changed by time – more probably by recent sorrow – I recall your countenance. And that lovely boy, I am quite sure I should know him again. I never have forgotten his extraordinary look of curiosity and investigation as he wandered about amidst those stupendous ruins, nor the intelligent wonder with which he listened to our speculations.”
“And do you remember the subsequent evening we passed together at the inn, when our conversation turned on the antiquities of Italy, and you gave us some account of your then recent visit to Rome, and showed us many drawings in your port-folio, and gave my poor boy a beautiful sketch of one to the temples of Pæstum?”
“Yes, oh yes! and I remember being exceedingly surprised, and pleased, with the child’s extraordinary acquaintance with subjects of which few children of his age had ever heard.”
“Ah, it was then my pride, my fatal pride to instruct him on these subjects, which had always interested myself, and which had occupied much of my poor husband’s life. I developed prematurely, and most unwisely, his taste, and so concentrated his mind on the study of antiquities, that it became a passion. I was gratified by the development of what appeared to me extraordinary genius. Thus I fed the flame that was to consume my poor boy. I found too late that it was impossible to restore his mind to the interests natural, and of course healthy, to youth. My fortune was narrow. I lived with the most rigid economy to supply him with the means of education. He went to Oxford, where he acquitted himself honorably in all the prescribed studies. These were mere task work, except so far as the classics related to his favorite pursuits. His task done, he wasted his health in midnight antiquarian research. At the close of his college career we went into Devonshire at the invitation of my brother-in-law, Sidney Bathurst, to pass the winter.” At this point of her story Mrs. Bathurst paused, reluctant to indulge in the egotism of going into particulars not immediately connected with her loss, though greatly aggravating the calamity; but Lady C., full of sympathy, and not without curiosity, begging her not to omit any particular, she proceeded. “Sydney Bathurst had repaired the fallen fortunes of his family by a long residence in India. His mind was thoroughly mercantilized. He had rather a contempt for all young men, and such a thorough conviction of the unproductiveness of all learning, that my son’s pursuits did not shock him so much as I had feared. His only child, Clara Bathurst, was after his own heart, practical, cheerful even to gayety, careless of the past and future, and reflecting the present brightly as a mirror does sunshine. I soon perceived that her father’s design in inviting us was to give the young people an opportunity of falling in love. He naturally wished to transmit his fortune to one of his own name and family, and I – I trust without a covetous spirit – conscious that my son had no talent for acquitting fortune, was delighted with the prospect of his obtaining, with an amiable wife, the means of indulging his taste. Nothing – I am convinced of it – nothing goes right where fortune is the basis of a matrimonial project. Marriage is the Lord’s temple – the money-changers may not enter it with impunity. I must do myself the justice to say that fortune was not my primary object. I watched the indications of the young people’s affections with intense interest. There were few points of sympathy between them. My son seemed hardly to notice his cousin; at times, indeed, gleams from her sunny spirit entered his heart, but as if through a crack – no light was diffused there. With Clara the case was quite different. Affection is a woman’s atmosphere. We are flexible and clinging in our natures, and we attach ourselves to the nearest object. We lived in retirement. My
[106]
son had no competitor. He was gentle in his manners, refined, graceful – handsome. He had the reputation of learning and talent.
“Clara became quiet and thoughtful. She took to reading, and, poor girl! at last came to poring over the huge old books in which my son buried himself. She seemed winding herself into a sort of chrysalis condition, in the hope of a transition to come.
“The winter passed away without change to Murray. One idea absorbed him. Early in the spring he asked a private audience of his uncle, and when Mr. Sydney Bathurst was prepared to hear a disclosure harmonizing with his favorite project, my son modestly imparted his desire to come to Italy, his longing to explore the Etruscan remains whose riches were just then developing. He perceived his uncle’s astonishment, disappointment and displeasure, and he intimated that though poor he was independent. His purpose was to travel on foot, and he had ascertained by inquiries and calculation that the half of his annual allowance would pay for his meat, drink, and lodging, which should be all of the simplest.
“‘And how’, his uncle asked contemptuously, ‘was his rummaging and groping about the dusty old underground ruins of Italy fit him for any manly career? When was he to set about getting his living?’
“My son replied that what others called a living was superfluity to him, that he would not exchange his favorite pursuits for all England’s wealth – for himself he had no favor to ask but to be let alone; but that it would be an inexpressible comfort if, during the six months of his absence, he might leave me in my present happy situation – in the society of his cousin, whom he was sure I loved next to himself.
“‘The only sensible thing he said,’ exclaimed my brother-in-law, when he repeated to me the conversation, ‘Such folly is incomprehensible. But there is no use in interfering. Let him go his own way and take the consequence. Bread and water regimen in perspective is well enough, but, my word for it, he will be tired of it and Italy and its rubbish before six months are past.’
‘I will not go into more particulars of our conversation. I naturally defended my poor son, but I felt that Mr. Bathurst’s objections were sound. It ended in my acquiescing in Murray’s carrying out the plan he had made, and encountering the hardships he contemned, in the hope they would prove the best medicine for his diseased mind. But I was to learn that a mental, like a physical, condition which has been cherished and fortified by education cannot be changed by medicine. My son left us. Poor Clara, like Undine, had found a soul in the development of her affections. Her gayety was gone. So long as my son continued to write to us she read every thing she could lay her hands upon connected with the scene of his travels and the researches that particularly interested him. Since then she had read nothing. For a time she fell into a deep melancholy. From this she was roused, in part by my earnest entreaties, but more by the force of her own conscience. She is now a sort of lay sister of charity to the neighborhood, and she finds, as the wretched have always done, the surest solace for her own misfortunes in softening the miseries of others.”
So far Lady C. had told me Mrs. Bathurst’s story as she recalled it in her own words. Six months had elapsed since young Bathurst had been seen at Civita Vecchia. Mrs. Bathurst had come to Italy in the hope that she might obtain some clew that had escaped the less interested search of strangers. Her brother-in-law had supplied her amply with the means of traveling, and she had resolved never to abandon the pursuit while the least ray of hope remained. The circumstances on which she mainly rested her belief that nothing fatal had happened to her son were, that as he was of the Roman Catholic faith – that as he spoke Italian like a native, and as his complexion and features were much more like the Italian than his own northern race, he might for years wander about the less frequented parts of Italy without incurring the suspicion that he was a foreigner. She conjectured that on arriving at Civita Vecchia he had yielded to an unconquerable reluctance to leaving Italy. She had no very definite idea of what had since been his fate. She alternated between hope and despair without any reason but the condition of feeling she happened to be in. The source whence young Bathurst had derived his antiquarian enthusiasm was soon quite obvious to Lady C. The only mode of drawing Mrs. Bathurst from her sorrowful maternal anxieties was to plunge her into some obscure, unintelligible ruin in Rome. She preferred the dim Thermæ of Titus, Caracalla’s baths, or Sallust’s garden, to St. Peter’s, and the fragments of the palaces of the Cæsars to all the glories of the Vatican. But there were times when she was so steeped in grief, so near despair, that she seemed on the verge of insanity: and it was one evening after trying in vain to rouse and soothe her that Lady C. proposed a drive to Tusculum the next day. They accordingly set forth the next morning, and the mother seemed to be drawn away from her personal sorrows on this monumental road, for who, it is natural to ask here, can escape the common destiny of man “made to mourn?”
They drove into the little town of Frascati, and stopped at this same inn where Lady C. and myself were now discussing our cold chicken. The piazza was as thronged and noisy then as now, as these places always are in Italy, and most noisy in the meanest, poorest, lowest-fallen towns. As the ladies alighted screaming guides and clamorous beggars thronged about them. Mrs. Bathurst hurried into the inn. Lady C., more accustomed to the disagreeable juxtaposition of fleas, dirt and importunity, quietly stopped to make her bargain with a guide, and give, as is her custom, a small sum to the landlord to be dispensed to the poorest poor. Her eye was attracted by a lean and miserable man who stood behind the crowd, and apart from it, and who, pale, emaciated and haggard, with a threadbare cloak closely drawn around him, and seeming most of all to need charity, was apparently unobservant and unconcerned.
“My friend,” said Lady C. to the landlord, and
[107]
pointing to the man who had attracted her eye, “see to that poor wretch getting the largest share of my charity, and here,” she added, again opening her ever willing purse, “here is something more – get him a warm under-garment – he is shivering at this moment.”
“Ah, madame,” replied mine host, “he is well cared for; his senses are a little astray, and of such, you know, the Holy Virgin has special care. He wanders about from morning till night, and when, at evening, he comes into Frascati, there is not a churl in the town that would not give him a bed and lodging, though he never asks for either. He is innocent and quiet enough, poor fellow!”
“Has he no family – no relatives among you?” asked Lady C – but she received no reply – another carriage had drawn up, and the landlord with the ready civility of his craft was opening its door.
“Come with me to the other side of the house,” said Lady C. to Mrs. Bathurst, whom she found in a little back parlor overlooking the court. “Come with me and see a pensioner of the Holy Virgin – as our host assures me he is – a creature steeped in poverty, but without suffering, and with an aspect that having once looked upon you never can forget.” Before she had finished her sentence Lady C. was at the window of “la belle veduta,” overlooking the piazza. The throng of beggars was at the heels of the newly arrived gentry, and Lady C. looked about, for some time in vain, for the subject of her compassion. “Ah, there he goes!” she said, espying him. “Is there not a careless, objectless desolation in his very movement?”
“I do not see that he differs from the other beggars, except that he stoops, and has a less noble air than many of them.”
“My dear Mrs. Bathurst! But you do not see his face, and therefore cannot judge – poor fellow, he is taking to the sunny steps of the church like the rest of them, and there is languidly laying himself down to his best repose.”
After cold chicken and a bottle of wine at Frascati, the ladies proceeded on foot to Tusculum, preferring to be discommoded by a walk, somewhat too long, to the perpetual annoyance of clamorous yelling donkey drivers. After having gone up the long hill to Tusculum, they turned into the Ruffuiella, Lucien Bonaparte’s villa, and finding little to attract them in its formal adornments, they soon left it. As they turned toward the gate Lady C. exclaimed, “There is my poor friend again! he has taken the road to Tusculum; I hope we may cross his path there, I want you to see his face, if I do not mistake, it has a story, and a sad one.”
“I am ashamed to confess to you,” replied Mrs. Bathurst, “how little curiosity I feel about him; how little I am touched by all the misery I see here. My whole sentient being is resolved into one distressful feeling. At times, indeed, I am roused from it, and the thought that I am in Italy, sends a thrill of pleasure though my frame. Even here, in Tusculum, at this highest point of excitement, where, under ordinary circumstances, the very stones would burn my feet, my sorrow comes back upon me like a thunder-bolt.”
“Drive it away now, if possible,” said Lady C. “It is worth your while, I assure you, to possess your mind in this place – here is a cicerone who will give a name, right or wrong, whenever we ask for it. He told me the other day, in good faith, that the ciceroni all take their name from Cicero, who, in his day, showed the marvelous fine things here to strangers! I asked the fellow who this Cicero was, and he answered, un gran maestro, who taught little boys all the languages in the world, besides reading, writing, and arithmetic! * [*See Rome in the 19th century] A fair specimen of the veritable information of these gentry.”
The ladies proceeded under the conduct of their guide, to survey the broken walls called “la Scuola di ciceroni,” as some learned expounders conjecture from the philosophical academy, the institution of which at his own house, in Tusculum, is mentioned in one of Cicero’s letters.
Mrs, Bathurst’s antiquarian enthusiasm began to kindle, her eye dilated, and her pale cheek glowed. In a happy oblivion, for the moment, of her personal anxieties, she left Lady C. seated on the broken fragment of a column almost overgrown by weeds and grass, and followed her talking guide, to look at the reticulated walls of a row of houses, at a disinterred Roman pavement, and among a mass of ruins at the gradus of an amphitheater. While she was thus occupied, the poor pensioner of the Virgin emerged from a tangled thicket near Lady C., bearing and bending over a large flat stone, which he had hardly strength to carry, and with his eye riveted to it as if he were perusing it, he sat down on the ground apparently without observing her, near Lady C’s feet. The hair, as he studiously bent over the stone, hung in tangled masses over his face, so as to hide all but its outline. At this moment Lady C. heard Mrs. Bathurst approaching from behind. She pointed to the man, and signified to her not to disturb him. The guide misinterpreting her action, said “Fear nothing, my lady, he’s an innocent madman, who passes his time wandering about these ruins, digging and groping – half the world are somewhat in his way – the Virgin muddles their brains and sends them here to spend their money in poor old Italy. By St. Peter!” he continued, going close to the antiquary and bending over him, “he has found something worth while this time. What is it, my good fellow?”
The crazed man, after scraping away the plaster and rubbish that adhered to the stone, had found what he sought, an inscription, defaced, and so far obliterated that no mortal could make it out, but this in no sort abated his joy – it was an inscription made by hands that had mouldered for centuries. Whether it now or ever signified any thing he cared not. He clapped his hands, and as if for the first time conscious of the presence of others, he shook back his hair, and turned his eyes toward the ladies for sympathy – sympathy, the first and last want of human nature. His eyes met theirs – met Mrs. Bathurst’s – his mother’s. He did not move, but from the gush of blood over the
[108]
deathlike paleness of his cheek, and a slight tremor that suddenly pervaded his whole frame, it was evident he recognized her, and that he felt at the same moment his changed and strange condition. The mother knew her son at a glance, and exclaiming, “Murray!” sprung to him and enclosed him in her arms. A shout burst from him so loud and so protracted, that it seemed as if it must shiver his frame – his mother recoiled and sunk fainting in Lady C’s arms.
The story of the unfortunate antiquarian has been already too long and too particular, and I shall only briefly add what remains to be told. A perfect stupor succeeded to Murray Bathurst’s recognition of his mother, and his first consciousness of his wretched condition. A fever ensued – medical attendants – tender nursing most remedial, the comforts from which he had long been estranged, nature and youth all combined to do the work of restoration. With the return of reason, came a horror of the passion that had led him astray, and he became as impatient as he had been reluctant to leave Italy. He remembered that after reaching Civita Vecchia, he felt like a lover tearing himself from the object of his passion. His feet seemed to grow to the rich dust of Italy. Day after day he delayed taking the passage. After wandering about late one night, he remembered awaking in the morning with a high fever, and from that time his memory became more and more obscure. He had dim recollections of being transported from one place to another, of missing, one after another, his articles of dress – of dreams of hunger and thirst – and of finding jugs of water and bread by his bedside – finally, all became a blank, till he awoke in his mother’s arms. Mrs. Bathurst, fearful of a relapse into his old habits of mind, lost no time in leaving Italy. She had since kept Lady C. informed of the progress of her son’s cure, which she now believed to be radical. He had the good sense to avoid all books related to his disastrous passion, and every thing associated with it. His uncle had received him with open arms, comforting himself with the verification of his prognostics for the past trials of his nephew, and saying somewhat coarsely, that to be sure the hair of the same dog would cure the bite, if you ate hide and all.
A more fitting mistress than Italy had taken possession of the young man’s imagination, and health and cheerfulness were in her train. The last letter communicated the marriage of the cousins – and now Mrs. Bathurst said they could look back with tranquil minds, to that “beautiful region” where
“A spirit hangs o’er towns and farms,
Statues and temples, and memorial tombs.”
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
An Incident at Rome
Subject
The topic of the resource
English travelers in Italy, antiquarianism.
Description
An account of the resource
The narrator, traveling in Italy, meets an English lady, who recounts the story of Mrs. Bathurst and her son Murray, a young antiquarian who goes mad while conducting research in Rome. He is eventually reunited with his mother and restored to sanity.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
C[atharine]. M[aria]. Sedgwick
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Graham's Magazine [edited by George R. Graham], March 1845: 104-8.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1845
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Gabriela Siwiec
D. Gussman
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
1845
antiquarian
antiquities
beggars
Cicero
Frascati
Graham's Magazine
India
Italy
madness
marriage
merchants
Mothers
pride
Roman Catholic
Rome
sons
Southey
sympathy
Tusculum
Wordsworth