1 10 2 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/0c6bb92bb6fed30b5df1db3798aa2cfd.pdf?Expires=1774483200&Signature=txf1XFWb9mA8MFYoA7SI2optu4lH4lvFBHe92K4JKF0QDR7M3LPOhDPLzb0TRoOM2kOtVyXkey5Giyu1Lk4l7Cb8lspSf2dye%7EpR1Q8TgdXZlPgqiyR180sSFZmQDsp-pVh25csZ0KMIFmvz7fAVCDj2QlrszCUqdVPxjfAu-uB7f822bWMG5oz-VFR5URMTPubMAmp-glv7E5jz205B3kM7p74cXQo2-LEJ7IcvIhxUgk2r9GtVPv6OZHmWmmRbOtBT5wgWCbhQxIMSxBNTqRhaX2nGT9PUY7IacYj7gfEf-aDzGAsEVYS0At2OMAM2jeyzLYYarWHlAV9tznGV4A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 4acd7d0e4681a080424927351f219d03 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 1847 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. “Truth Versus Fiction.” ________ By Miss C. M. Sedgwick. ________ [p. 1] “Are you writing for the December number of the Columbian Magazine?” asked a certain dear friend of mine, who came into my room just as I was sitting down to my desk yesterday. “Yes, I shall begin this morning, if you do not prevent me.” “Don’t flare up, my dear; I have no intention of preventing or hindering you. Have you a subject?” “Yes; I was thinking of founding a little story upon the remarkable exploit of our village amazons the other day, but if you have anything better to suggest, my alms-basket is at your feet; I shall be grateful to you for any aid to my invention.” “I do not expect your gratitude. I know there are no people more tenacious of the old proverb, “many hands spoil the broth,” than you writers. I was about—very modestly—to make a suggestion. You are going to write a story for the magazine; the country is drugged with stories.” “No more of that, ‘if you love me, Hal.’” My friend proceeded: “Suppose you abandon fiction for once.” “Why—my story is founded on fact.” “Rather a small foundation,” interposed one of those fair young amazons, whose brave deeds I would fain have illustrated. “Your foundations are like city lots; so narrow that you are compelled to run your structure far up into the air.” “I have, at least, one advantage,” I replied. “This sort of structure does not betray its want of solidity.” “Perhaps not,” resumed my friend, “but the unreality weakens the impression; so soon as an article is found to be ‘a leetle mixed,’ to borrow our Western friend’s expression, the adulterating matter violates the whole. But to come to the point, it seems to me that at this closing and solemn season of the year, it would be well to intersperse the stories of a magazine with something better adapted to the December of our lives.” “But will our public take broth and biscuit, when all sorts of piquant preparations are got up for them by the cunning artistes of such works?” “Try them. The late Mathew Carey, himself a doer of good, proposed that records of virtue in private life should be made. Such records might do something in this imitative world to stimulate the zeal of profitable emulation, or at least to awaken our confidence and hope in humanity. Pardon me if I repeat that however strong the assurance may be of a fact foundation, there is always uncertainty attached to a fictitious narrative. I speak for myself; on my mind there is all the difference in the effect of a real and an imaginary character that there is in the landscape of this morning—distinct, clear and defined in this brilliant sunshine—and that of yesterday, exaggerated and dimmed by the floating mist.” I sighed over my craft, but I could not but acknowledge that there was justice in my friend’s criticism. My thoughts turned to those tenants of our new made graves to whom he had alluded; persons of no eventful history nor very marked character, but whose example, for that very reason, might better harmonize with general experience. They were hidden in their lowly estate and, like the lakes deep set in the bosom of our hills, they were a serene mirror of Heaven. And now that with the leafy veil that shrouded these, their natural types, their veil of life has fallen, it is fitting [p. 2] that the beam of their pure lives should extend beyond the very narrow limit of their mortal career. The brilliant examples of those eminent men and women, whose biographies are trumpeted through the world, are not adapted to the every day’s wants of a medium condition. What have the wives of our American citizens, or those of our village artizans and country farmers, in common with Madame de Stael, Madame de Genlis, the mistresses of Louis Fourteenth, or even the “eminent women of England?” Our home productions are better suited for our home market, and we believe there are women in our towns and villages whose domestic, unconscious virtues, not elicited or set off by uncommon circumstances, would be far more edifying to the million than the blazonry of great real names, or the possible perfection of imaginary characters. But the true story must be told, and this remains to be done by some master hand. Our humbler task is to record a few traits in the characters of two of our village maidens who have fallen with the falling year. Harriet Gale was known among her own set as a quiet, kind-hearted, industrious girl, who performed her duties well and said nothing about them. They were to her the allotted work of life and she did them cheerfully, without any apparent thought of difficulty in the task or merit in its accomplishment. Two or three years since she was invited to live with a sister who was well established somewhere in the vast West. She found a happy and exciting home there and was delighted with her improved condition. It must be confessed that our emigrants from New England, in their earnest struggle for the good things of this life, sometimes forget the commandment, “Honor thy father and thy mother.” Their thoughts are on their fair fresh fields, standing thick with corn, and they do not, like Joseph, remember the old man whom they may have left straitened at home. Our friend Harriet did remember him. Her father is aged, and hearing that her presence and filial ministry were becoming important to him, she did not hesitate for a moment to sacrifice her agreeable position to his comfort and, “true to the kindred points of Heaven and home,” she returned to him. There is too little sympathy between youth and age; it is difficult to make activity and repose harmonize. The stream of love and care, sacrifice and benefaction, naturally runs down from parent to child, and to this order of nature the parent’s love is generally adequate. But when, as sometimes toward the close of life, the stream is to be turned and the child is to minister to the parent, the exigence requires an extraordinary virtue in both. The child’s mid-day must be somewhat dimmed, if not obscured—the parent’s chill twilight must be warmed and brightened—each must conform to the other. “I thought it a privilege,” said Harriet to me, when first I made her acquaintance a few weeks before her death, “to come home and do what I could for father.” “Father is always kind and always cheerful--he never lets anything worry him, come what will, and he has had enough to make other men disappointed and fractious--poor old man! I am afraid he will miss me! I said to him this morning, father, I don’t know who will keep your accounts and mend your pens when I am gone.” “He did not answer me. He could not; but he will give up. I know he will—he is used to it!” Here was no exaggeration of her importance—no selfish or egotistic fear that she should be forgotten. Harriet had a step-mother, a name that is for the most part a signal for the revolt of the affections—a relation that enlists all the mean jealousies, selfishnesses and asperities that beset domestic life, and in truth is so involved in difficulties that few seem to think it worth while to struggle against its tendencies. “It seems,” said Miss Gale to me, with a sweet smile, “when mother (her step-mother) enters into that door as if an angel entered my room. She has made this room seem to me like the gates of Paradise. I have many kind hands to smooth my pillow, but there is no hand like mother’s!” I would abstain from the published praise of living worth, but I cannot forbear saying that there must have been an equal fidelity in both parties to make this happiness. God’s servants are the only true alchymists—they alone turn the baser metals to gold. There are few of the relations of life that produce the happiness of which He who “set the solitary in families” has made them capable. How many barrels or half tilled fields are there in domestic life. We cease to wonder at the abuses of the conjugal relation—that relation most beset with difficulties and most liable to abuse—when we see parents and children, brothers and sisters, fail to reap the golden harvest of which their Heavenly Father has sown their fields at broad cast. I saw Harriet Gale when she was fast sinking away with consumption. She was so cheerful and manifested so hearty an interest in all the village concerns, that I took it for granted that, like many persons in that disease, she was deluded as to its progress, and I was taken by surprise when our kind village dress-maker having sent her word she was prevented coming to watch with her, by some fancy dresses which must be finished for a fancy ball to be given on the next evening (the 4th of July), she said, “Well, I don’t envy them; death [3] looks pleasanter to me than life ever did. I have enjoyed living too!” she added, with a sweet smile. How few there are who on such an occasion would not have indulged in some lamentation over the frivolity of the world, in which, alas! for poor human nature, a drop of pharisaical self-complacency would have mingled. Harriet Gale’s pure spirit was like those healthy atmospheres that disinfect whatever they embrace. It was on the same eve of our festival of independence that, raising her feeble head and looking through the window at the stars, she said, “It is a clear night and I think we shall have a pleasant day to-morrow. I hope so, for it is a pity to have so many people disappointed.” Such cheerful and gentle sympathies are rarely felt in the midst of suffering (Miss Gale’s was extreme at this time), and they are therefore more impressive than strong and bold, expressions of religious triumph. She used no threadbare phrases to express her feelings, nor seemed for a moment to think there was anything unusual about them. Her face and tones were uniformly quiet and cheerful. She said to me with her habitual and never to be forgotten smile, “My happiest hours have been in this room!” “But you have suffered here extremely,” I replied. “Yes,” she answered, “but god is good, and if it were better that I should be removed with less suffering, I certainly should be.” Harriet Gale had been from her early youth a member of the Methodist church; and her familiar friends looked upon her death but as the fitting conclusion to the Christian fidelity of her life. Those strangers who were admitted to the privilege of seeing her in the last extremity, for the first time, saw how it was that the sting of death was taken away, and heard, mingling with her sweet tones, ‘It is I--be not afraid.’ ‘The Lord taketh pleasure in his people. He will beautify the meek with salvation.’ ________ It is but two Sundays since the body of another of these meek servants of their Lord was reverently borne into our beautiful little church and set down before the chancel, while her pastor interpreted the occasion to our hearts and held before us the instruction of her life and the consolation of her death. She had endured a life-time of invalidism by bending like a reed before the relentless blast. For many years she had supported herself and contributed to the support of her family with her needle, and by doing, that worst paid of all labor, plain sewing. To “stitch, stitch, stitch,” was the business of her life, and it was done with such fidelity and completeness that her employers became her friends. She never brought reproach or self-reproach upon herself by unpunctuality. Her work when done was well done; so well that I believe it would be difficult to estimate the amount of comfort she has produced by her humble ministry. No seam of hers ripped, no button came off, no string was wanting. Thus a world of petty vexation was saved—a world of that chafing and fretting that makes up so much of the friction of life. She was free from an infirmity very common among our people who, while they sell their services, soothe their pride, wounded by the implied inferiority, by telling you, with no thought of abating the money compensation but making a little more than the thing is worth, that they will do it to oblige you. Thus ‘to accommodate you’ you are permitted to board in a family at the highest price going, you have the ‘privilege’ of hiring a horse, or buying a turkey, or purely to oblige you, your sewing is done. Our friend was quite above this sort of cant. She wanted employment and she was grateful for it, and so the relation between her and her employer had its reciprocal blessing. She knew the value of her moderate gains. They secured to her independence and gave a comfortable aspect to her family. Some years ago the price of sewing in our village was considerably advanced and it was recommended to her to raise her prices. “No,” she said, “I am quite satisfied with the provision my good God has made for me.” Her pale face and attenuated form told the story of her life of bodily suffering, but that pale face was lighted up with contentment, patience, and cheerfulness, so that to her seemed already accomplished the promise to the faithful, ‘They shall be like Him for they shall see Him as He is.’ She saw her Father in her God. Not long before her death a subscription paper was offered to her for money to adorn our burial pace. She cheerfully rose on her bed and wrote her name for the last time, saying, “It is pleasant for me to think that I shall be laid to rest in that beautiful place.” Her life so gradually and gently faded away that neither she nor her friends were aware of the diminution of her light till it was nearly extinct. Then, when a loving and devoted sister told her she had not many hours to live, she asked to be left for a little while to herself. And when that sacred communion, which words could but imperfectly have interpreted, was over, she sang with a low but sustained voice a part of the hymn beginning Could I but read my title clear To mansions in the skies. “How beautiful it is to die,” she said, and while the words were passing from her lips her soul [p. 4] realized its holy vision and passed from the dead body to eternal life. So lived with sweet patience and so died with sublime faith our village seamstress--Harriet Greenleaf. “Around thy earthly tomb let roses rise, an everlasting Spring, in memory of that delightful fragrance which was once from thy mild manners quietly exhaled.” 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 Truth Versus Fiction Subject The topic of the resource Heroism and virtue in everyday life. Description An account of the resource The narrator is encouraged to abandon fiction and to write about real life, and tells the stories of two village women who passed in the previous year. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sedgwick, Catharine M. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Columbian Magazine, [edited by John Inman and Robert A. West] Vol. 7 (January 1847): 1-4. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1847 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Charlene Avallone, L. Damon-Bach, D. Gussman Type The nature or genre of the resource Document 1847 4th of July Consumption daughters Death domesticity fathers fiction filial duty God humility invalid labor Louis XIV Madame de Genlis Madame de Stael Mathew Carey Methodist New England non-fiction sewing step-mother submission suffering Ten Commandments The Columbian Magazine virtue West https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/f88422557e39790fd94c77739abc3740.pdf?Expires=1774483200&Signature=nF2kZrlIBmHSA5SFqPeAjv2GWOK2gx8KAjB2fKtYNeVulJ4nJzm%7EbYSr8uTQB5zICjUJcBHkCm-3qglr253f00DQnN-BEj8JZiHeUeI40BtwiiSPMTWmPKHsOrc5z5m-XErmxbDvCzC2Wr926I6pTkTeFwmBq3epDDIN243qqz9JQyFDHXOZrB3iQmfZ-pmKtASJSKTtclPJyQl6jeh%7E9mYKlEuByXh8JB5O2M9YeW%7EqcmZ1TeQ7oTyZJ8UaQMZNpGJZLfApN3nmtxrO7PZdJ7gRoCl2toM4hy%7E7uHmGYqJ9p1VQ32PvDx6hX%7ED80RD3CTKWFXOJnQwZh5SNo-oKMQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 99810612bd8d9d535ea784f91a18bdec 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 1848 Subject The topic of the resource Stories published in 1848. 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. STRAGGLING EXTRACTS, FROM A JOURNAL KEPT IN SWITZERLAND. _____ BY MISS CATHERINE M SEDGWICK _____ [p. 115] MONDAY morning, June 1st, 1840. We left Lausanne this morning, and ascending the high hill on the route to Berne by voiturier’s pace, we had time for many a loving, lingering look at Lake Leman, no longer the “clear, placid Leman” of our dreams, of poetry of Rousseau and Byron; but enriched with the best realities of life. The friendship of the wise and good has made its borders a home to us—has consecrated it, so that it is no longer strange and foreign, but a part of the “holy land” of the heart; where that Temple stands which binds what is most precious on earth to that which is most ardently hoped for in heaven. A farewell seemed sent back to us from the lovely water. Shall I ever forget these last looks of the Lake? the rocks of Meíllerie? the Pain de Sucre? the Dent du Midi? I went within the walls of the cemetery on the declivity of the hill, to visit John Kemble’s grave. A gentleman was standing beside it. In my haste (the carriage was awaiting me) I did not at first notice him. As I turned to pluck a leaf from the cedar which overhung the spot, my eye met his; and with unusual frankness (he was obviously an Englishman) he said, courteously touching his hat: “We owe this homage to our countryman, and I am glad to see it rendered.” “The name is a great one,” I replied, without thinking it necessary to vitiate my homage in his eyes, by saying that I was an American? or to [p. 116] tell him that the Kemble name had a more potent charm for me than that with which genius had prodigally endowed it.* *[author’s note]: Campbell says, in his valedictory address to John Kemble:-- His was the spell o’er hearts Which only acting lends; The youngest of the sister arts, Where all their beauty blends. When I returned to the carriage, my companions eagerly asked me if I had observed the gentleman, who, from the distance at which they had seen him, struck them as having an air of unusual elegance.—“Yes, I had observed and spoken with him.” ********, who never fails to express her thorough prejudice, then said:--“He is not an Englishman.” “Yes, he is English, and a military man.” “Ah! Then he has been over the world, and perhaps in America, and learned something of manners and humanities!” “With the latter,” I said, “I fancied Heaven had endowed him, for he has a very charming face.” Both ***** and **** wished they had gone with me; a charming human countenance would be a pleasant variety from the only face they had seen to admire for a long while—the face of the country. At a little village where we stopped to lunch, we went to the parish church to see Queen Bertha’s tomb, and her worm-eaten saddle. Her remains were found in a subterranean part of the same church, and re-interred with an inscription, setting forth this Burgundian lady as an endower of monasteries, a constructor of roads, and a protector of the poor. She was a princess comme il y en a peu at present, in more than the doing of these magnificent acts, as appears from her saddle, on which she rode astride, with her bust above an iron ring that encircles her; and she spun as she rode—“not like you romantic girls,” as I said to my companions, “warp and woof of poetry and romance, but veritable thread of flax!” FREYBURG. Glad were we again to hail the picturesque gate of this old town. We left the carriage and walked in. The bourgeoisie were sitting around the old linden tree; a still strong and fresh memorial of enthusiastic patriotism. After the celebrated battle of Morat, “Morat and Marathon, twin names shall stand,” where a few Swiss gained a brilliant victory over a large Burgundian force, a young soldier of Freyburg, one of the “unbought champions,” left the patriot victors, and with a branch of a linden-tree in his hand, he ran all the way to his native city, which he entered crying “Victory!” and sank down dead from exhaustion. The linden-branch was planted on the spot. The tree flourished; and now there are tongues in its massive trunk and luxuriant branches, which are tenderly supported on a species of scaffolding. We rose early, and went on to the terrace of the Zeringer Hoff, which hangs over the deep abyss, worn by the Sarine; from here you see the beautiful suspension-bridge, which spans the gulf some hundreds of feet above the Sarine’s bed, and the little thread of a foot-bridge higher up in the gorge. It looked so very wiry and sharp in the misty distance, so faintly traced on the sky, that a faithful follower of the Prophet might have taken it for a vision of that bridge which carries few safe over. The great tower of the cathedral, and the towers on the declivities of the hills, look as they did in the dreary days of last autumn; but now it is summer, and there is beauty and gladness every where; in the little gardens niched on the hillside; in the laburnums and roses almost dipping in the water: they are smiles of immortal youth about images of age and decay. As we re-entered the hotel, I met the stranger of the cemetery. My companions passed on; but I took the privilege of my age, and in reply to a courteous recognition, spoke to him of our mutual experience during the past day’s travel. He, too, had stopped to see Queen Bertha’s riding equipment; that being one of the regular way-side lions. He spoke of the spindle; he liked that symbol of her sex’s destiny. It might be well for princesses to enlarge their horizon; it might even be necessary; but for women in private life, he liked a literal adherence to the domestic life for which they were made. “If they were made for that alone,” I ventured to say. “Perhaps,” he said, “you would admit apostolic authority; and St. Paul, I believe, is of my opinion.” “There is a wide scope in St. Paul’s writings,” I replied, “and I thought he was of too generous a spirit to hold all women within one narrow pen of household duties.” A second summons to breakfast, broke of the speculation upon which we had rather awkwardly fallen. When I reported it to my companions, ***** said, it was just like an Englishman—if he spoke at all, to say something disagreeable—no wonder that Madame de Stäel said an Englishman had two left hands; --who but an Anglo-Saxon would have pounced upon such a topic to a party of ladies? The road from Freyburg to Berne lies through a country much like the richest and most beautiful [p. 117] parts of our own Berkshire—Berkshire without the Alps—Hamlet, the character of Hamlet omitted. The hills, even, have a loftier station than ours; and instead of our shabby fences, wherever there are divisions there are hedges. Their cottages are the prettiest of all rural architecture, with their projecting roofs and galleries. Their farming utensils, ladders, rakes, etc., hanging under their shadow; the neat piles of wood husbanded under the same shelter; and the bee-hives close under the windows--a fitting emblem of this intelligent and producing people. The rosy, stout Bernese dames, and their chubby children, both in their prettiest of all costumes, give to the landscape a living beauty. The cheerful rural life here is a contrast to Italy, where there seems to be no rural habitancy. There, for the most part, the dwellings of the working people are crowded into narrow, stifling lanes; the few straggling habitations in the open country look like jails with their iron croisées. In the canton of Berne, I am often reminded of my own country;--if not an equality of condition, there are no contrasts—no frightful distances between man and man. There is a general diffusion of comfort—no grand seigneurs—no beggars. The cultivation and products, too, remind me of home. The grasses, the beautiful turf, the apples, cherries, willows, limes (the finest I have ever seen), and the elms. The gardens resemble our gardens at this season—the same dominance of utility and small tribute to beauty—a narrow hem of peonies, seringas, moss-pinks and yellow-lilies, round ample beds of lettuce, beets, etc. We entered Berne at noon on market day, which occurs every Tuesday, and the concourse is greatest on the first Tuesday of the month; so we are fortunate in our day. The streets are crowded; the people are selling and bartering every species of movable property, from fat cattle, horses, etc., to light domestic manufactures, which the women carry about; some on wooden frames, while others have tapes, cords, and chains tucked into their apron-strings. There is a sprinkling of fresh, pretty little peasant girls, with natural flowers, curiously woven together, for sale. We jostled our way through the crowded streets; heeding every thing, but quite unheeded ourselves: not quite; for again we met the English traveller, and exchanged salutations. The peasants are better dressed than I have ever seen any rural population. Their clothes are of strong materials and enduring colors; and the white chemise-sleeves and waist, purely white, give to the whole appearance the paramount of charm and cleanliness. We are at the Faucon, excelling among the excellent Swiss inns. My English friend (friend! but acquaintance ripens apace in these foreign lands), sat next to me ; on ***** saying, that of all working women in the world, she would rather be a Bernese peasant, he said to me in a low voice, that the fly-cap would not be unbecoming to the young lady, with her light form and spiritual eye; but he thought it grotesque appendage to fat old women, or solid young matrons; they certainly are a most unaerial people. THUN. Here we are at the Bellevue—an inn in the midst of a garden tastefully laid out, and embellished with flowering shrubs. The river Aar is running away below us as if the Lake of Thun, of which it is the outlet, had been its prison. The little town of Thun is on our right, with chateau, church, and towers crowning the hill it covers; behind us is a precipitous green hill with a walk half way up to heaven, where a summer house is pitched to look out over this beautiful scenery, which seems like some exquisite picture become, by miracle, a reality. There is the lake, stretching for fifteen miles at the feet of these giant hills; and for mountains, the Stockhorn, the Neisen, and the Blumlis, whose eternal snows, cut into sharp angles, give the most startling effects of light and shadow—their existence here is blessing enough. It is strange to see summer and winter side by side—inflexible winter, with the richest blossoming of summer. Man seems to live contentedly here on the patrimony God has given him—there is no commerce, no manufactures. The parent divides his agricultural property equally among his children; and from the very comfortable aspect of their homes, there would seem to be enough for their moderate wants. The valleys are thick set with corn, and the uplands devoted to pasturage. The woodlands belong to the commune, and the division is made by proper officers. The warmest slopes are covered with vines; and wine is so cheap, that each person has a bottle at dinner without an extra charge. LAUTERBRUNNEN. As we came into the little green steamer that was to carry us over the lake this morning, I again met our English traveller; and we shook hands as if we were old friends. He did not see fit to communicate his name, but he had ascertained ours on the register of the Faucon, and he soon began talking of New-York, where he had once been, and of Dr. H------’s and Mr. H------’s families, whose hospitable doors are always open to foreigners of any pretension. Even *****, with her cherished aversion of all Englishmen, admits that he is very pleasing—or, as she words it, very un-English. He has a shade of sadness over his fine face, that only passes for a moment [p. 118] when he is in very animated conversation. It is thrown there, I feel sure, from some settled sorrow. I told him he had lost a great deal by not arriving earlier at Thun. He said, civilly, that he was aware he was a loser, inasmuch as he had lost our society; but as to Thun, he was familiar with it—he had passed the happiest days of his life there, and he did not care to go there again. “And there,” he added, as we were passing a lovely villa which had once been a convent of the Chartreux, “there I lived one beautiful summer.” Some painful recollection smote him—he turned suddenly from me, and paced up and down the deck; and then, as if determined to master his sensations, he returned to my side, and directed my eye to the cascades leaping down the precipices, and then the beetling rock over the cave of St. Beatus, which he said he had once visited. “We penetrated several hundred feet,” he said, “and found some relics of human habitancy, but no traces of the dragon whom the saint is said to have ejected from his holy habitation. I wonder if it is only by living the life of a hermit that one can master a dragon?” He spoke in a tone so deep and expressive, that I involuntarily looked at him as if he were betraying a monomania. I think he perceived the impression he had made; for, resuming his usual manner, he directed my attention to a straggling village far above St. Beatus’s cave, whose only access is a winding footpath. “A rugged, difficult ascent,” I said. “No, not very difficult,” he replied, “to youth and enterprise. I once made it with a young woman about the age, I imagine, of your young friends.” “An Englishwoman?” I spoke involuntarily, for I have seen too many English to put a premeditated question. “I beg your pardon,” he answered, “Swiss. We passed a week at the house of the pastor--an Oberlin—who so kindly led his flock in this stern and scanty pasture, that I learned from him to look with contempt upon the egotism of the old anchorite of the cave.” With the enchantment of the scenery, and the interest of my new friend, the moments flew, and I left the steamer with regret for the carriage that our courier procured us at New-Haus. There was one vacant seat in the carriage; and, knowing that my acquaintance was bound for this place, I asked him to occupy it, feeling it to be but a common way-side humanity. At first he accepted it cordially; but then some difficulty about arranging his baggage occurring (for an Englishman can do nothing extempore), he declined, and we drove off ; my young women exclaiming, “How could you?” “What on earth will he think of us--he is an Englishman?” &c., &c. To all which I replied by asserting a calm confidence in our own dignity, and my assurance of that degree of education and refinement in my acquaintance, that it could not be compromised by a two hours’ drive with him. I then excited their curiosity by items of his conversation which they had not heard, and by interpolating a few sighs, and even a tear which I was secretly sure he had repressed, I gave sufficient ground for their imagination to expatiate on. ***** was sure ‘he had a story, God bless him!”--and that was some comfort; and after a while we talked ourselves into an egotistic half-belief that he had followed us up into these high temples. **** and ***** of course reverently imputed to me the attraction; but I very well knew an elderly lady was a trifling make-weight when there were two charming young ones in the scale. However, as it fell out, we might have saved ourselves the trouble of our reciprocal concessions. As we wound up the green valley towards Lauterbrunnen, we passed the castle of Unsprunnen. It is an old ruined tower, with a flanking turret, which has a pretty tradition attached to it of feud and love, the scaling of castle-walls, and carrying off of an only daughter, and, after years of bloody strife, a reconciliation by means of the child-robber appearing within the castle-wall, and presenting his young boy to the old father. The ruin, however, derives its chief interest from it being the locale of Byron’s Manfred--a fitting genius loci in the face of the magnificent Jungfrau. The valley narrowed as we advanced along the margin of the wild Lutschine, rather a torrent than a stream. The grandeur of this valley surpasses any thing we have seen yet. The valley itself is 2450 feet above the level of the sea. The height of the walls of rock that enclose it I do not know ; but, towering above all the rest, is the Junfrau, 14,000 feet high. Valley this can scarcely be called—there is a little life-giving earth at the base of these everlasting rocks. Its name, Lauterbrunnen, signifies “nothing but fountains”--and more than a hundred streams, leaping over the rocks, or trickling down them, may be counted from our inn-window—the Staubbach, (literally dust-fall,) the most beautiful among them. Byron has so accurately described it, that, in spite of it having become a hack quotation of the guide-books, I again transcribe it: “It is not noon. The sunbow’s rays still arch The torrent with the sunny hues of heaven, And roll the sheeted silver’s waving column O’er the crag’s headlong perpendicular, And fling its lines of foaming light along, And to and fro, like the pale courser’s tail, The giant steed to be bestrode by Death, As told in the Apocalypse.” [p. 119] After all, as Byron concludes in his still better prose description, it is “something wonderful and indescribable.” The weather is misty this afternoon; and Héry, a charming Swiss guide, (for whom, for our journey through the Oberland, we have exchanged our Italian Gil Blas courier,) advises deferring the passage of the Wengern Alp till to-morrow; so we have been walking up this wondrous valley. ‘Dust-fall’ is a wretched name for the Staubbach, unless there be diamond dust. The height is so immense whence it falls, that it is broken into the smallest drops before it reaches the ground. Each little fall has an individual life and charm: *****’s quick fancy saw in them the types of the most lovely classic impersonations: “Cupid and the Dolphin,” the “flying Mercury,” &c., and it was just as she was expressing, with a rather Delphic obscurity, her idea, that we were joined by our English friend. He seemed much amused with what he called the extravagance of her imagination. But the light of his reason was in vain offered to its shadowy region. She ‘saw forms he could not see, and there was the end on’t.’ As we were crossing a bright meadow to look at the Lutschine where it issues from the great glacier of the Jungfrau, our curiosity led us to ask admittance into a wretched little Swiss cottage, that we might see its interior. On the table were lying a large Bible and hymn-book. I opened their clasps and found a paper and type worthy a noble’s library. ‘Heir-looms are these,’ I thought; and said to Héry, “Such books are rare, I fancy, in your country.” “I beg your pardon,” he replied; “almost every dwelling has them.” These poor people are right: these are the records of their birth-right—the charters of their freedom—the title-deeds of their inheritance—and they should be written in fair type, and kept with reverent hands. I observed the woman who opened the door to us, give a sort of reconnoitring glance at our English friend—and then made an exclamation. She said something, to which he replied with few words and manifest emotion. *****, who begins to partake my interest in the stranger, asked Héry if he heard the words: “Partly,” he said; “the woman said, ‘You are the same gentleman who was here seven years ago, with the lady with eyes never to be forgotten?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘She is dead, then? God’s love be with her!’ ‘No.’ ‘No! And you parted? I thought death only could have parted you!’ ” He turned abruptly away, and it was a quarter of an hour before he rejoined us. I showed him a bunch of very beautiful forget-me-nots I had just gathered, glittering with rain-drops. He took out a pocket-book, and, opening a paper very elaborately folded, showed me a little knot of the same flowers, dried and faded, but the lovely blue still distinct among the pale green leaves. “They were picked here,” he said, “seven years since. Could one have dreamed these frail things would outlast a love that should have been eternal?” And then, as if he involuntarily betrayed himself, he hurried them back into his pocket-book, and did not rejoin me till after we came back to the inn—where we are now, awaiting our tea, and speculating upon the few threads we have extricated from the tangled skein of this new acquaintance. One additional word, and I have done writing journal for this day. Enter Héry with a card ; ***** seizes it and reads—“‘Lieutenant-colonel’ –yes it is, ‘ Lieutenant-colonel G----,’ printed; and then in pencil—‘begs to be permitted to take his tea with Miss S-----.’” I have sent a cordial reply, while my young ladies are discussing the card. “G-----,” says *****, “is not that the family name of the Earl of -----?” “Yes; but you know you do not regard earls.” “No; but one may respect an earl’s younger brother, who has attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel before he is thirty.” “Perhaps, the earl bought the commission for him,” I suggested. “No! no! I do not believe it: he looks as if he had earned it.” I am pleased to find, that my prepossessions are gaining confirmation. This has been an agitated, eventful evening. How far were we from anticipating the result of our detention at this inn! If we never see the passage of the Wengern Alp, we shall be consoled. The lieutenant-colonel came to our tea-table, which much resembled our own liberal evening meal at home. After we were seated round the table, our pretty buxom waiter brought in half-foot of honey-comb, from whose full cells the packed honey was oozing. This delicious preserve is a stable commodity of a Swiss table; and I have not yet seen a charge made for it—a proof of its abundance. The colonel seemed a little embarrassed at first coming among us, but was quite at his ease after taking an opportunity to say to me in a low voice, that I must have thought it very odd of him to make the communication he did to me—one hardly knew how it was—certainly, there were moments when one was hardly master of one’s self—when accumulated feeling-- [p. 120] suffering, perhaps—at a look of sympathy, burst all barriers;--he hoped I would forget it. The conversation then took a general turn. Colonel G-----, as well as ourselves, had visited Italy; and the discussion between him and *****, on various works of art, (her opinions are always her own, and not derived from any authority or reputation,) was animated. On many points they agreed; on some widely differed; but agreeing or not, every subject was converted to enjoyment by intelligence and sympathy. It is curious to see, how rapidly acquaintance ripens with people of congenial spirit who meet as travellers far from their home. All barriers are thrown down—all conventionalities forgotten; and we become almost as wise as little children in this matter. The evening was wearing away: it was nearly ten o’clock, when our landlady burst into the room, and addressing Colonel G----- said : “If you are a doctor, as they tell me, for the love of God, follow me!” “I am no doctor,” replied the colonel: “but what is the matter?” “Oh! There is a mother and her only child; and the child dying; and the mother going out of her senses!” “Is there no doctor nor medicine in your village?” “Not a dust of it. The doctor is at Interlaken, and the key turned on the medicine.” “I am no physician,” said the colonel, turning to me; “but my profession has made it my duty often to look after the sick; and I will never travel without a small medicine-chest. If you will be kind enough to ascertain if I can be of any service, I shall be most happy.” I followed our hostess, who, without any ceremony, conducted me up stairs and into the distressed mother’s room. Ceremony would, indeed, have been out of place. There, writhing on a bed, lay a little girl of five or six; she was not in convulsions: they would have mercifully relieved her consciousness. Never did I witness more mortal agony. The mother was wringing her hands, kissing the child, rubbing her and exclaiming, “My God! my god! can no help be found?” I ordered a hot bath and fomentations; and begged our hostess to bring the doctor immediately in; hoping by giving Colonel G---- this title, to give some comfort to the poor mother. “Oh! Claire, my child, you will soon be better,” she cried; and then burying her head on the pillow, she sobbed frantically, “my all!--my all!” Colonel G---- entered, and instantly became as white as marble. He stood for a moment as transfixed; then beckoning to me, he left the room: I followed him. “These are my wife and child,” he said ; “what is to be done?--what can I do?” I believe I was inspired by the exigency of the case, to give prudent counsel. “Act,” I said, “as if they were not your wife and child; the little girl must be relieved at once, if at all; her mother is evidently incapable of doing or suggesting any thing. You must use all the resources you have; you must be calm and self-possessed. “I will—God help me ! I will,” he said; and we both returned to the bedside of the child. Fortunately, the mother was so completely absorbed, her eye so riveted to the child, that she never once looked at the supposed doctor. He administered a powerful opiate. The warm bath was brought; and after getting considerable relief from that, we applied the fomentations. All this time Colonel G---- was perfectly calm; and except from his frightful paleness, and a slight tremulousness that pervaded his frame, one would not have suspected any thing unusual. He spoke in a whisper, and only to me. I think it was not more than half an hour, though it seemed much longer, when the remedies began to take effect; and in a short time the little girl’s limbs became relaxed and quiet; and a sweet tranquility was diffused over her beautiful features. “Oh dear mamma!” she said, “I am so much better! I am almost well! what a good doctor!” The mother now for the first time, lifted her eyes to the good doctor. The blood rushed to her cheek, and then utterly forsook it. She attempted to speak; but the words died on her lips, and she fainted. In the exigency, Colonel G---- did, indeed, use all his faculties admirably. The little girl screamed; he first quieted her ; telling her, her mother would be well again directly; that she had been frightened with her suffering, and she was very tired ; and if she wished to have her well, she must keep quite quiet herself. “This lady,” he said, “will stay with you, while I lay your mother on a sofa in the next room; and give her something that will make her well again very soon.” He took the mother in his arms, and carried her into the adjoining parlor. The little girl, with the ready confidence of childhood, took my hand; and turning her cheek to it, said : “He is a good doctor;” and adding twice or thrice drowsily—“poor mamma!—dear mamma!” The opiate took effect; and she fell into a sweet sleep. I soon was informed by the stir in the next room, that the lady had revived. I heard voices softened by tears ; then calmer, more assured tones; and after a while, Colonel G---- came into the room. His face was radiant. He gently, and again and again, kissed his child; thanked me with a fervor beyond all measure; saying, that [p. 121] he was the happiest man living; and that he would explain everything to me in the morning. He asked me if I would pass the night beside the little girl, as his wife was in such a condition of alternate nervous excitement and exhaustion, that he dared not leave her, or permit her to resume her part beside her child. Of course I am most happy to do him this small service. So, having bid the girls good night, and having abstained from exciting my curiosity, and abating their night’s sleep, by any allusion to the extraordinary developments in this apartment, I have put on my dressing-gown, and have set down to my journal to record circumstances that have murdered my sleep for this night. The morning came in its due course; but, alas! no sun, and “no hope of the Wengern Alp!” as I heard Héry say, in reply to the eager inquiries of the young ladies, when he tapped at their door. We have an appointment to keep—we must go down to Grindelwald to day. “To Grindelwald, by the high-road!” exclaims ****; I had rather pass the Wengern Alp blind-fold, than not pass it.” “As well blindfold Mademoiselle,” replies Héry, “as while the Mittag-horn, the Breit-horn, and Gross-horn, are themselves blindfolded with clouds.” “But what has become of the Colonel?” asked ****; and thought I, “Is he so taken up with his patients, that he has forgotten us?” I confess, I was very unwilling to go off, without knowing more of his story; but I did not choose to press on the confidence which he might have reasons for withholding ; or at any rate, chose to withhold. He had early sent a message to me, to say, that the mother was much refreshed, and would resume her place by the child. Our carriage was ordered—was at the door; and nothing from the colonel; and I was just writing him a civil farewell-note, when he rushed into the room, saying, “Is it possible you were going, without giving me an opportunity of thanking you—of speaking to you alone?” he added, turning to my companions, “though whatever I have to say to Miss S----, she can at her discretion communicate to you if you have any interest in the subject.” The girls immediately withdrew; with interest quite enough to justify the communication which I had the pleasure of making to their astonished ears on the way to Grindelwald. It seems that Colonel G----, some seven years ago,--then a very young, and a very impetuous young man, as he says,--was passing a few weeks in Zurich, when he fell distractedly in love with Miss V----. She was the only child of the widow of a rich banker; beautiful, and gifted with high qualities of mind and heart; but somewhat perverted and spoiled by the alternate doting and despotism of her mother, “a fierce old woman,” he called her; to whom I might remember his alluding, when he spoke of the dragon ejected by St. Beatus. He married Miss V----; the mother being delighted with the idea of a noble English alliance, and professing to have no concern at his having but a few poor hundreds per annum. She accompanied the new-married pair to England. There she was received by his proud family without any disguise of their estimate of the infinite distance between them. Her coarse passions were provoked. She imparted a degree of her jealousy and resentment to her daughter; and after one year, and before the birth of his child, they separated; and the mother and daughter returned to Switzerland. “We were both,” he said, “the victims of our ignorance of life. We did not understand the true proportions of things—that the less must be sacrificed to the greater. We were both irritable and passionate; totally unfit to manage the most complicated and delicate relation of life—that in which unity and individuality are so marvellously blended, that not a fibre of one can be touched, without jarring and endangering the peaceful existence of the other. We parted,” he said; “and till yesterday, I never saw my lovely child. I had determined never to claim her ;--thank God, I felt a mother’s rights too deeply, ever to have thought of separating them. My wife had the expectation of immense wealth; I was poor, and too proud to sue for reconciliation. I have been five years in India, where my wife supposed me still to be. There I have earned some honor; and now, possessing an income suited to my military rank, I came to Switzerland, in the hope of regaining the domestic happiness I so recklessly threw away. I dreaded the mother. I came here to nerve myself, in the scenes where I passed the first week of my then blissful married life. Madame V---- died ten days since; and hither my wife,--led by divine inspiration, I think—came also.—You know the rest.” 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 Straggling Excerpts from a Journal Kept in Switzerland Subject The topic of the resource Travel in Switzerland, troubled marriage. Description An account of the resource The narrator, "Miss S.", describes her travels in Switzerland with two young female companions, and their encounter with a mysterious English gentleman with a troubled past. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sedgwick, Catharine M. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Sartain's Union Magazine, Volume II (January-June 1848): 115-121. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [edited by Caroline M. Kirkland] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1848 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaley McDowell; D. Gussman Relation A related resource Reprinted as "The English Colonel and His Wife" by Miss Catharine M. Sedgwick in The Gem of the Season: A Souvenir for 1851, 58-80. New York: Leavitt and Company, 1851 [pub. 1850]. Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Document "Manfred" 1848 Alps aristocracy Battle of Morat bible Caroline M. Kirkland children class difference doctors Englishmen forget-me-nots Hamlet John Kemble Lord Byron Madame de Stael marriage married women's property medicine mother's rights Nature Queen Bertha's tomb rural life Sartain's Union Magazine St. Beatus St. Paul Swiss peasants Switzerland Thomas Campbell tourism Travel