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1840
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THE BEAUTY OF SONINBERG. (A LETTER from WIESBADEN.)
_____
By Miss Catharine M. Sedgwick, Author of ‘Hope Leslie,’ &c.
_____
MY DEAR J ----: You have often laughed at me for my ‘knack,' as you call it, of picking up stories by the way-side. Certainly my sympathies are not more diffusive than yours, but I am a more patient listener. You have but to listen to get those little personal revelations every one is ready to make, if you but touch the electric chord aright that binds you to your humble fellow-beings.
In going from Brussels to Waterloo a few weeks since, I took a seat on the box beside the coachman—a frank true-hearted looking youth—for the advantage of gaining answers to the questions that are constantly occurring to the traveller in a scene so full of novelty as is every part of the Old World to an American eye. Before he set us down again in Brussels, he had told me a history of personal hopes, projects and disappointments, that with a little skilful spinning would have furnished warp and wool for an octavo volume, with an appendix of ancestral anecdotes that he had better have effaced from the family archives. This will be a pretty good proof to you that I have not foregone my habits in crossing the ocean, but here at Wiesbaden I am cut off from their indulgence by my ignorance of the language. That does not, however, quite isolate me, for by a lavish use of half a dozen words that are common to the English and German, and by gracious tones and a decent kindness in return for the devotedness of the ‘Mädchen’ who attends us, I am so far in favor that I am sure she would confide to me her ‘petite belle histoire’ if she has any. ‘If!’ shame on that hypothetical ‘if!’ No one could hear the gentle tone of my good friend Cristine's voice, or see how easily the unbidden tear comes to her eye,* (her only eye, for in common with a large portion of her country-people she sees but with one,) without being sure that Cristine, though now in the depths of shady forty, might tell as ‘ower true tale’ of her losses. However, the period for the egotism of love is long past, and Cristine, instead of damming up her feelings to fret and wear inwardly, permits them to flow out in all kindly sympathies.
I just saw her in a position to illustrate this gracious disposition. She was standing on the platform of the well before the Duke of Nassau's new palace. She had filled her tub with water, and with the aid of a friend (these people by a sort of general social compact always interchange this kind office) had placed it on her head. My attention was arrested by seeing Cristine, who is no dawdler—no loiterer—stopping to listen to this friend, and as I came near enough to see her friend's face, I thought I too would have stood with the tub of water on my head, or up to my throat in the fountain, if necessary, to listen to the earnest speech of this peasant girl who had one of the sweetest faces I ever saw—and her whole heart was in it. I think she cannot be more than nineteen, but I will ask Cristine, and perhaps she will tell me some particulars of the girl's history, for Cristine, like all sympathizers, likes to tell as well as to hear. If I were a painter, I would paint them just as I saw them, the well and all. The girl in the peasant's dress, the dark blue woollen full petticoat fluted from top to bottom as neatly as a French frill, the close boddice, and the snow-white chemise sleeves. Her hair was (as is every creature’s of woman-kind’ in Germany) long,
[p. 235]
thick, and neatly combed and braided. But that of this gifted girl is longer and thicker than I have often seen, and of a rich full brown, darker than the national hue. She had, in common with other peasant-girls, a black silk cap covering just the back of the head, made of ribbon and with half a dozen streamers, or rather ends, for they only hang over the back of the neck. Cristine's friend's cap had a trifle of embroidery, and was garnished with beads; indeed I remarked in her whole dress an attention to becomingness that indicated a village beauty—a dressing for the world's eye, or, I should rather think, from a certain symptomatic ‘careless desolation’ in her manner, that the eye, for which she employed the limited art of the toilette, was all the world to her. She stood with her hand on Cristine's shoulder. I hardly knew which countenance I liked the best. The peasant-girl was evidently absorbed in some precious interest of her own at stake, while Cristine's honest kindly face expressed that entire unconsciousness of self and sympathy with another, that I fancy must characterize an angel's. I stood rivetted, gazing at them till Cristine caught my eye; and as I, unluckily, reminded her of the waiting mistress and home, and her diverse forgotten household duties, she murmured over and over again “Ja—ja—ja—wohl”, (“Yes—yes—yes—sure) and hastened homeward; and her friend too left the well.
This stone-well is to me the most interesting of the locales of this pretty town of Wiesbaden; an aqueduct brings to it from the Taunus Hills (a distance of a league and a half) an abundant supply of pure, soft and wholesome water. There is a stone column in the centre, surmounted by a lion grasping the arms of Nassau. The water rises within this column, and pours through ever-flowing pipes into a large reservoir. This is surrounded by a rudely carved curb, and a platform. Standing on this platform and leaning against the curb, you may see the maidens of Wiesbaden at all hours of the day, gossipping while their tubs are filling. Innocent gossip it is I am sure, from their sweet, low-toned voices and perennial good humor. Why is it, dear J--, that a well is linked with our poetic associations? Is it because it recalls home, and the thought of home unseals the fountain of poetry in the soul? Or is it because a well is a common feature in these Oriental stories that first awakened the poetic powers of our imaginations? The scene of the first love- story we probably ever read, the sacred story of Isaac and Rebecca's courtship, is, you know, at a well. Whether the well owes its immaterial beauty to all these sources I cannot say, but I never see one—whether it be like our own most rustic structures, composed of a single curb-pole and old oaken bucket, or like that which we went to see among the Carisbrook lions, or like that beautiful one of stone I saw the other day (still in perfection) among the ruins of Marksburg, or like this of Nassau–with- out seeing for the moment much more than the eye can see, and hearing more than the ear can hear. I listened for an instant, and then quickened my steps after Cristine.
By the way, I wonder no one has ever thought to drill young ladies into a graceful gait, by making them walk with burdens on their heads. I do not see but the German ladies go shooling and shambling along much in the fashion of other ladies, while the peasant-girls with large market-baskets piled with vegetables, or tubs of water containing three or four pails full, walk with a true, light step, and a quiet grace that a fine lady might envy, but could scarcely equal. I overtook Cristine, before she reached our door steps. I communicated my desire to know her friend's story, and she was willing enough gratify it, but I could comprehend but one word—and that word one which every woman would understand as, Falstaff knew the heir apparent, ‘by instinct’—“Liebehaber”—“Ah! a lover in the case, Cristine. Then I understand why the spoke so eagerly and you listened so patiently. # # #
I have just returned from a walk to the Weeping Oak. Its name indicates its peculiarity. It stands a little off the high road to Schwalbach, in advance of a wood of dwarf pines, and seems a fit type of the monarch of a fallen dynasty. The bark and boughs have the characteristic ruggedness and nodosity of the oak; and there is something touching in the drooping of the magnificent old limbs. It affects you like seeing an old man in sorrow and tears, and if you were ever inclined to believe the fanciful theory that gives to every tree a spirit, I am sure the old oak would persuade you to this faith.
I set off alone, and passing the Koch-brunnen, where these boiling waters are forever steaming up from their great cauldron, I turned into the Acacia walk, and out of it as soon as I could; for there is something in this long formal walk between pretensionary little trees, that are so trimmed as to look like barber's poles with a bushy wig on top, that is particularly disagreeable to me. At the foot of the Geisberg is a station for asses. Here these miserable animals, whose sad destiny in this world, it seems to me, must have some unforeseen compensation, stand all day awaiting the pleasure of the Wiesbaden visiters. I wish I could sketch them for you, with their grotesque calico housings, and their attendants, men and boys, in their dark blue blouses, lounging round them. Even these ass-drivers, the lowest class of hacks, importunate by profession, here partake the national good manners, and never importune you. If a look expresses a wish for them, they spring to your service, but they do not beset you with offers. So, thinking me probably no wiser than I should be for walking when I might ride, they let me pass, unmolested, up the Geisberg ascent.
The name of Wiesbaden—meadow-baths—describes its position. It is a little interval in the lap of the hills, and the Geisberg is one of the prettiest of the elevations that surround it. In our country, where, if we would have a rural walk, we must scramble over fences, and think ourselves fortunate if we can find a foot-path skirting a ploughed field, we can have no idea of the facilities an old country furnishes for this blessed recreation. Here there are no enclosures, no fences or hedges, and however devious your taste may be, you are sure of finding a path to wander whither you will.
I turned from the high road and wound round a plantation attached to an agricultural school. Orchards were on the slopes below me, and bits of rich green in the valley, while on the opposite hills the many colored crops were spread out much like pattern silks in the shop window. From the town rose up the vapor that is always steaming up from the boiling springs; and as I mounted higher, my eyes caught the spires of Mayence, and the gleaming Rhine, and away went my thoughts with it to the sea, and over the sea, and I had forgotten Wiesbaden and all that belong to it, till I found myself again on the high road, and not alone there. A sturdy young man passed me with the pack on his back which denotes the pedestrian traveler. He seemed wholly occupied with his own emotions, and though after passing me he often turned, stopped and looked back, he was evidently unconscious of my presence. His eyes saw only what his heart was full of, and, as he frequently passed his hand over his eyes as if to clear his vision, I came to the natural conclusion that he was leaving his home—that seeming to me, just now, the saddest circumstance of life. The traveller was attended by a little terrier dog, who seemed to me not quite to have made up his mind whether he would attend his master or not, for every now and then he turned and retraced his steps toward Wiesbaden, with his nose to the ground and his tail down, stopping and looking first toward the traveller and then toward his home, as if he were not sure which was the right way to pursue, having a divided love, or a divided duty, which is as bad. I pitied him. Presently he sprang up on a hillock by the read-side, cocked up his ears, then wagged his tail, vehemently, barked and darted into the wood. The traveller stopped, looked after him and shook his head, as much as to say–Well! you have made up your mind at last, poor fellow!". But presently he appeared again, issuing from a foot-way which, cutting through the pine wood on our left, entered the high road between me and the traveller. The dog was followed by the peasant girl I had seen at the well. An exclamation of surprise burst from the young man. I was too far off to hear what they said, and if I had heard I could not have understood. But their action was in a universal language. I saw she had followed for a last farewell, and that farewell seemed impossible. They walked on together, her hand upon his shoulder and his arm around her waist. The poor little dog seemed frantic with joy. He had now everything he desired in life. He ran first on one side, then on the other, barking, wagging his tail, jumping first on to his master then on to his mistress, till, neither noticing him, he ran along side looking wistfully in their faces as if saying, “Now you are together, what in the world can you be sorry for?” At that moment, I doubt not, they could have envied the dog's nature and thought it a happiness to look neither before nor behind them.
I followed slowly after them till they reached the oak—the weeping oak I mentioned to you. There they stopped, and as they stood leaning against the old trunk, and in the deep shadow of its drooping branches, I thought how much stronger, firmer, more resisting is the true love of two pure hearts than even this old tree that has stood here for centuries. That will perish at last; true love never. It was a broad stretch of imagination to suppose the love of these young people of this
[p. 236]
high nature, but never mind; I honestly give you my thoughts as they came, and if you had seen these humble lovers, you would not have wondered that they embodied my abstraction of true love.
I saw this was to be the parting place. I was near enough to hear the girl's sobs, and I turned away, ashamed to be an unpermitted though an unseen spectator. I walked very slowly, and for five minutes, (it seemed to me half an hour,) I did not look again. When I did look the lover was gone, and the girl was sitting on the little embankment formed by a trench that has been dug round the oak. Her face was buried in her lap, and one arm was round the little dog, whose paws were on her knees and his head lying disconsolately against her.
I came straight home, unconscious by what way, and the moment I reached my own room, I rang the bell for Cristine, and keeping K---- by me for an interpreter, I told what I had just seen.
“Poor Grettel; poor Grettel!” she ejaculated as I proceeded; “God help her!” and when I finished she wiped away the shower of tears that had poured over her face, and smiling, said, “Never mind, Grettel has done right, and das ist besser!” ‘That is better,’ is a favorite phrase of Cristine's, and she always employs it when she wishes to express to me her entire satisfaction.
I will not set down all the particulars of my rather circumlutory conversation with Cristine, since I can very briefly tell the few circumstances explanatory of the love-scene I witnessed. It seems that Grettel lives at Soninberg, a most picturesque old village about two miles from here, close nestled under the ruins of the old castle of that name. She is the only child of her mother, a poor blind old woman, a widow who has no support comfort or solace under Heaven but Grettel.—Grettel is the Beauty of Soninberg, but as Cristine assured me, so discreet is her conduct that the old people say it is just as well her mother should be blind, for Grettel wants no eye to watch her. And she bears her honors so meekly that the prettiest girls of Soninberg are content Grettel should be first.
“But what will Grettel care for that,” said Cristine, “now Johanne is gone'.”
This Johanne, it seems, is a worthy youth who has served his apprenticeship with Leising, (our host,) a master builder here. He is a steady youth and a good workman, and having completed his term of service, including the itinerary year which is a part of every German artisan's education*[*] he was just about to set up for himself, when an unexpected course of duty and worldly advantage opened upon him, and overset all his castles in the air, beside the happy humble home which he fancied he had founded upon a rock, when Grettel promised to be its mistress.
Johanne, it seems has an uncle who went many years ago to America, and who is now a wealthy man in New-York.—He has written to Johanne that if he will come to America with his three young and orphan brothers, he will pay their passage, and take charge of their education and establishment there. For himself, Johanne said, he would not have given the offer a second thought—but the little boys! he stood in the place of a father to them, and he had no right to refuse.
“Oh! why,” he asked, “should their uncle, who had forgotten them so many years, just now remember them?”—The ‘why’ is easily told. He had lost his only son, and was too far advanced in life to hope to repair the loss.
The next thing to be done, after Johanne had made up his own mind, Cristine said, was to pursuade Grettel to go with him. “Johanne knew this would not be right, but men wereso used to having every thing their own way, that to pleasure themselves they were ready to pull down the walls God had set up.”
“Surely, surely,” Grettel said, “God would never forgive her if she forsook her old blind mother; and if in His mercy He should forgive her, she would never forgive herself!”
Johanne urged that her mother was very old—that she could live but a little while-and he must live a life-time without Grettel; that the neighbors could be kind to the old woman; that she would have a florin a month from the poor's box, beside many a casual gift when she was known to be quite alone; that his first earnings should be sent to her succor. He even went so far as to get the consent of a kind-hearted dame that the old woman should be removed to her house. Some of the neighbors, too, feeling it to be a very hard case for the lovers, joined their entreaties to Johanne's, and promised Grettel they would do all in their power for her mother. But as Cristine again and again assured me, the good child never ſaltered, and “das ist besser,” said the honest creature.
“Never, never will I bring tears from her blind eyes,” said Grettel. “God gave me to her, and till he separates us, I will not leave her.”
No arguments, no entreaties made her waver. The generous girl would not even permit her mother to know the sacrifice she was making, and when the old woman remarked that Grettel's step was heavy and her voice sickly, and begged her to take some odious nostrum, Grettel swallowed it and said nothing. “And then, when Johanne saw how good she was, he loved her better than ever, and before he went away, he said she had done right, and he did not deserve her. And for my part,” concluded Cristine, “if any man on earth gets Grettel, I think it will be more than he deserves.” By the way, our friend Cristine has contracted rather an humble opinion of the deserts of mankind; and, as often happens with ancient maidens, her charities for them contract as her sympathies with her own sex expand.
It is, as Cristine says, “a hard case.” Grettel has but obeyed the strong law of nature in setting her affections on one who, according to that law, should supersede father, mother and home, and when I think on the ease, social dignity and competence that reward the children of toil in our happy land, and see what a life of privation and hardship she must endure in this mouldering village of Soninberg, the sacrifice appears to me much greater than she knows it to be. However, she is, after all, rather to be envied than pitied. Strait and narrow is the way of self-denial, and she has entered therein—and obscure and unknown as she is, she will be one of ‘the few’ who, having resolutely chosen her duty for her law, will be rewarded with more than all the glory of this world; or even than all its love, which is a good deal more seducing.
----------
Our detention at Wiesbaden, dear J–, gives us an opportunity of seeing the strange chances of human life exemplified in the story of our poor friend of Soninberg. It is ten days since the parting at the Old Oak. When Cristine came into our room this morning, she looked haggard and sorrowful, and instead of her usual cheerful “Gutten Morgen,” she muttered something about “God's time and our time never coming together;" and before this first of Cristine's murmurings at Providence was interpreted to me, the cause of it was fully explained by her telling us that Grettel's mother was dead.
“If her poor dark life had ended but ten days ago,” Cristine said, “all would have been well enough, but now Johanne was on the sea, and who could reach him there? But it is I only, ladies, that am wicked enough to think of all this: Grettel grieving only that her mother has gone from her and thinks but of that. Grettel let the old woman believe that Johanne had gone to Frankfort to work at his trade, and was a comfort to her to think that he was just waiting to earn money enough to come back and marry Grettel. Oh! It made my heart beat as though it would come out of me when the old woman, in her last strength, rose up from her pillow and said, “Grettel, give my love and my blessing to Johanne; he is a good boy, and you will be a happy wife, and God send you as good a child for your old age as you have been to me—light to my heart when all other light was gone—God be thanked I have had you to the last—to the last.’—She sank back and did not speak again, and poor Grettel fell on her knees and said, “God be praised that I am here!’ And so I try to say to,” added Cristine in conclusion, “but indeed had it pleased God so, it would seem to work better round that the old body should have died ten days ago. But it's too late now, and so it does not signify; and poor Grettel must go on as I have done, working for others and caring for others—it's a lonesome life, ladies.”
Christine sighed deeply. It was a moment when the harness of life was galling, and though I felt how truly the poet’s words applied to her,
“With cheerful heart, and purpose pure,
So—our onward way is sure,’
I shall take a happier moment to enforce their consoling moral.
[p. 237]
I have elsewhere, my dear J----, described to you the various rural “Gast-hauser,' (guest-houses,) eating-gardens, and multiplied walks, provided about this place for the recreation of the Wiesbaden visitors. If you would lose yourself in a romantic solitude, you have but to go up the lovely valley of the New-Thal, to the forest of the New-Berg, where, in the green arched walks you will meet no one, not even such as should be found
‘In their assigned and native dwelling-place.’
Or you may mount to the old Roman water-tower, and see all these hills with their wavy outlines sloping down to Wiesbaden, and hung with vines and grain of every color, and in the distance the Rhine (its very name giving charm to the scene) for many a mile. Or if you have a town taste, and like the ‘sweet security of streets,’ you may promenade up and down the long walks in William street, where from the broad shadows of the double row of sycamores you may look out on the sunny pavement, the hotels, museum, &c., opposite to you, and the traveling post-equipages that are entering and leaving Wiesbaden, and to which it must take a long time to accustom an American eye, so that the horses without blinders, looking round as if they were on the point of speaking to you, the frightful distance between the wheel-horses and leaders, and the mystery of the safe guiding of the immense machine that comes lumbering on after him by the one postillion, shall cease to be a matter of curiosity.
Or if you like to hide yourself while you hear the din of the world all around you, you can go to the dark walks behind the colonnade. Or if you prefer ‘happy human faces,’ where there seems nothing but the spirit God has given them to make them happy, stray up the Acacia walk. There on the wooden seats you will see groups of the Bourgeois—men, women and children—looking as if they had not an anxiety or care on earth. But probably you, like myself and most of the world here, would prefer, day after day, and evening after evening, to all other resorts, the garden of the Cur-Saal. This garden, or rather pleasure-ground, occupies the whole interval between the hills from the centre of Wiesbaden to the village of Soninberg. The valley gradually narrows for two miles, and finally closes at the rocks on which the old castle of Soninberg was erected. The garden is a part of the Duke's private domain, and is kept in ducal order. You enter on each side of the Cur-saal, a public building about 300 feet long, where there are splendid apartments devoted to gambling all day and all night, excepting two or three times a week, when the roulette tables give place to music and dancing. Passing through a wood of catalpas, (unless you prefer going through the Cur-saal, and seeing the gentlemen and ladies standing round the table, losing and winning gold with apparent unconcern) you find a plot of ground behind the Cur-saal, occupied by tables and chairs, and coteries of Germans and English, regaling on Rhenish wines, coffee, cake and ices. I turned my back on all this, as usual, last evening, and took the way to Soninberg, skirting along the piece of artificial water—a clear large mirror to reflect the fine-dressed gentlemen and ladies and the far better dressed flowers that are flourishing round its brim. These gentlemen and ladies, by the by, seem to me to be travestied by a stately pair of white swans and a family of ducks that live on this water; the swans pompously sailing back and forth without an object in life, apparently, but to show off their beautiful forms and dress; and the ducks whirling and turning, and gabbling, and feeding—always feeding. But I am ashamed of an ill-natured thought here, where every living thing contributes to the cheerfulness of the scene.
Flowers, and choice ones too, are in profusion; for besides the rich fringe of geraniums, roses, pinks, myrtles and other precious plants around the edge of the water, you are constantly passing plots of heart's ease, astres, hydrangeas, strips of roses, and plantations of splendid dahlias. The walks are as intricate and multiplied as the space admits. As the valley narrows they diminish in number, and finally end in one which follows the windings of a little brook, too wide for you or me to leap, dear J----, but which H----, or any other active boy would think it no feat to jump over. It is this little brook, murmuring with a voice as soft and low as a German woman's, that gives the peculiar charm to this walk to Soninberg. The scenery is tame enough; indeed you see nothing but the garden, and the hills that slope to it. But the water is natural; it has a familiar home look and sound; and the tree (willows, locusts and poplars) and the clematis that hangs over them, and the clusters of bright red berries, all seem to have grown there at their own will and pleasure. For more than two miles, you follow the windings of the stream, and then as you approach the ruins of Soninberg, the valley has come to an end, and you mount the side of the hill.
Soninberg was one of the fortified castles of the Middle Ages. It must have occupied an important position, commanding the only pass from the upper to the lower valley.—The remains are still extensive. Arches and fragments of wall are standing at many hundred yards' distance from the Keep, and other masses of masonry in good preservation on the height. You can hardly imagine anything more picturesque in its way than this old village of Soninberg, with its little angular rookeries of rough beams and plaster all huddled together under the protecting shadow of the castle, like a brood of frightened chickens under the wing of their mother. Some of these little dwellings are niched in an angle of the old wall; others in part built of its fragments. Here a street runs under a narrow stone arch of the old fortification; there it passes the simplest of all rustic bridges over the very little stream that gladdens the garden, and here it ends against the mouldering chapel of the castle.
These abodes of extremest poverty have at this moment a beauty and luxury that our gentlemen with their hot house graperies might envy. Between the lower and upper windows there is a grape vine in a regular festoon, and pendent from it just now (for it is a most fortunate season for the vine growers) bunches of grapes so full and beautiful that they could never seem ‘sour grapes,’ even to those who could not get them! A rich drapery,’ is it not, for these poor cottages? and some counterbalance for the luxuries of space and pure air which the poorest of our country poor enjoy. But I have forgotten in the village, that I am drawing near to the ruins, and am admonished by the rose color on the evening clouds that there is no time to loiter.
I passed through the great arched way where I suppose the port-cullis was, and ascending a steep acclivity by the side of a wall overgrown with wild plants, I went round the tower and through the labyrinthine walk, which has been formed by the Duke's order I suppose, of hawthorn and clematis, and which is a very simple and excusable bit of pretty petitesse amid these grand old ruins. I smiled at seeing here and there a table arranged with a circular seat. I do not believe the Germans could be tempted to go where there was not a table on which to set a bottle of their precious Rhenish, and half a dozen social glasses. After rambling around till I was tired, I seated myself at a projecting point, a good look-off; but instead of looking off I looked up, and directly above, seated on the ground and leaning her head against a broken wall, I saw my pretty peasant girl, Grettel. She had come here to think her own thoughts, I suppose, drawn by the mysterious sympathies of Nature that even the most uncultivated feel at some moments of their lives. And here, soothed by their maternal influence, she had fallen asleep. Her knitting-work, the ‘idlesse’ of every German woman, had dropped from her hand and lay on her lap. The delicate white flowers of a clematis that fringed the broken wall, shaded her cheek, and to complete the picture (for with the rose-colored clouds above mentioned it was a picture that might have tempted Cole's Heaven-loving pencil) the little terrier-dog was sleeping at her feet. Suddenly he awoke, raised his head, and cocked up his ears. His manner quickened my senses, and I fancied I heard a quick footstep behind a wall which intervened between me and the path. Grettel was still sleeping. A smile played on her lips. I thought she had forgotten her sorrows and was dreaming of Johanne, and I would have muzzled the little dog if I could, when he sprang up, barked and bounded off. Grettel awoke, and to a reality better than any bliss of dreams, for at the next instant I saw her in Johanne's arms.
We leave Wilsbaden to-morrow, but not till the last act in this drama of my peasant girl is played out. I have just seen Cristine in her gala dress, and with a truly fête-day face, prepared to go to Grettel's wedding, and to-morrow the happy pair set off for their home in the New World.
It seems that the good school-master of Soninberg, who, if he did not think with Helóise that letters were invented for the love-stricken maiden, was eager to make them subserve her use—at the moment of the death of Grettel's mother, wrote to Johanne at Hamburg. It had so happened that Johanne, ‘by the good will of Providence,’ as Cristine says, had failed in getting there at the time he intended, and was awaiting the sailing of an American ship. The letter reached him, and in Cristine's favorite phrase, ‘das ist besser;’ that is to say, all has ended as well as if Cristine's kind and loving heart had arranged the catastrophe.
__________
[Sedgwick’s notes]
* One is painfully struck on first going to the Continent with the prevalence of diseases of the eye among the lower classes. In an infant Charity School I visited at Wiesbaden, I think out of a hundred at least ten had diseased eyes. The women live out of doors, their babies in their laps or on the ground beside them. Bonnets are not worn by females of the lower orders of any age; there is therefore no protection for the eyes.
* [*] There is a law throughout Germany, requiring the artisan, when he has finished his apprenticeship to travel a year from city to city (visiting, if he pleases, Paris and London,) in order to improve himself in his art. When he arrives in a German town, he goes to the
herberg, a tavern kept for artisans, and there, after reporting himself to the police, finds employment. This is an admirable provision tending to facilitate the diffusion of the arts, and the enlargement of the artist's knowledge out of his art.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The Beauty of Soninberg. A Letter from Wiesbaden.
Subject
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Germany, travel, love and devotion.
Description
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The narrator writes a letter describing her travels in Germany, and recounts a love story about a beautiful young woman in the town of Soninberg.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. [Miss Catharine M. Sedgwick, Author of 'Hope Leslie' &c.]
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The Evergreen (May 1840), pp. 234-37.
Publisher
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New York: J. Winchester
Date
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1840
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D. Gussman
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Document
Language
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English
"God Soul and World"
1840
aqueduct
artisans
As You Like It
beauty
blindness
Carisbrook lions
Dogs
donkeys
Duke of Nassau
eye-disease
Falstaff
filial piety
Frankfurt
Geisberg
Germany
Goethe
Héloïse
Isaac
Kursaal Gardens
letters
Marksburg
Mothers
New York
old maid
Old World
peasants
Rebecca
Rhine
Schwalbach
servant
Shakespeare
Soninberg
Taunus Hills
The Evergreen
Thomas Cole
tourism
Travel
wells
Wiesbaden
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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1840
Document
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THE DEFORMED BOY
“THE great Basil mentions a certain art of drawing many doves by anointing the wings of a few with a fragrant ointment, and so sending them abroad, that by the fragrancy of the ointment they may allure others unto the house whereof they are domestics.”
We would borrow a hint from the artifice of the ingenious bird-catcher, and record, for the benefit of some of our young friends, a few acts of particular goodness that have chanced to fall under our own observation, in the hope that their love of virtue may be augmented by contemplating its lovely aspects and certain results.
The example of gratitude which we are about to record, though it is derived from one of the very limited means and in humble life, will, it is hoped, serve to illustrate the duty so often and so ably enforced by our benevolent philosopher Franklin, the duty of looking upon our fellow-beings as all children of one parent—members of one family; so that, if we receive a favour from one individual which we cannot return, we should bestow it on some other member of the family, and thus, to use the doctor’s own expression, keep it “going round.”
[10]
Much occurs to us to say on the uses and felicity of a grateful temper, but we are so well acquainted with the habits of our young friends, that we know they will skip the general remarks to get at the story, as nimbly as a little squirrel will leap over a heap of rubbish to grasp a single nut. To the story then.
In one of the small cities of Hudson there lived a Mrs. Aikin; a lady eminently blessed with affluence and happiness, and one who gratefully acknowledged the truth “freely ye have received,” and faithfully obeyed the admonition “freely give.”
On a bright but bitter cold morning in January, Mrs. Aikin’s family were assembled in the parlour to breakfast; a fine fire of hickory blazed on the hearth, and seemed to crackle defiance to the terrors of the cold, if indeed there was a crevice through which the cold could enter this snug and nicely calked parlour.
The family had just risen from their morning devotions; the servant was bearing in a tea-tray loaded with the hissing coffee-pot, tempting sausages, and a plate of buckwheat pancakes, when a violent ring at the door, thrice repeated, called everyone’s attention.
“Run, William, and open the door quickly,” said Mrs. Aikin; “I would not keep a dog on the outside of my door this morning.”
William obeyed and immediately returned, followed by a little fellow who ran, or, rather, waddled in after him. The child had short legs, a body disproportionately large, and a hump on his back. His head, though rather overgrown, was well formed, his hair light and curling, his skin very fair
[11]
his eyes a deep clear blue, and his whole expression that of infantine sweetness and innocence. Such a head and face surmounting a deformed body looked somewhat like a beautiful fruit on a gnarled stalk. The boy seemed almost stiffened with the cold; but, regardless of himself, and apparently impelled by instinct, he ran up to Mrs. Aikin, and, grasping her gown, he said, with a voice so tremulous as to be almost inaudible, “Oh, ma’am, do come and see what ails mother!”
“Why, who is your mother, child? And who are you?” asked Mrs. Aikin.
“Oh, do come and see ma’am—now—quick. I am afraid mother will burn the house up, for she is lighting the fire with all our clothes; she does not act like mother; do—do come and see what ails her.”
Little Lucy Aikin, a rosy-cheeked, kind-hearted little girl, was at first impatient at the delay of her breakfast; but she soon forgot herself, and, apparently with the expectation of comforting the child, took a sausage, and, wrapping it nicely in a buckwheat cake, she offered it to him.
“No, no,” said he, bursting into cries that expressed impatience and grief, “no, I am not hungry. I was hungry last night, and we were all hungry. Mother said so; and she began to cry, but she isn’t crying now!”
“There is something very urgent in this case,” said Mrs. Aikin, turning to her husband. “Let William serve you and the children, and I will go with the child.”
Mr. Aikin assented, for he perceived the boy’s distress was deep and unaffected—how should it be
[12]
otherwise! he was not, apparently, more than five or six years old.
Mrs. Aikin threw on her cloak, and, taking the child’s hand, he led her through a lane, which, running by the corner of her house, formed the communication between the street she lived upon and a street in the rear of that, where there were several one-story houses, or rather hovels, which had been erected as temporary habitations for the poorest class of people. Into one of the most wretched of these Mrs. Aikin followed her little conductor, and there she beheld a spectacle of misery that sufficiently explained the poor child’s distress. His mother sat on the hearth, with a pale, half-famished-looking infant in her arms, crying piteously, and seeking nourishment at her breast, where, alas! there was none. She was deliberately tearing up cotton frock, and throwing it, piece by piece, on the few embers that lay in the fireplace.
She rose on seeing Mrs. Aikin, as if from habitual good manners; and after looking round for a chair, she smiled and said, “Oh! I remember, they took my chairs; but pray be seated, ma’am. I have been trying,” she continued, “to kindle a fire to warm my baby and me; but my stuff is so light it goes out directly, and we don’t seem to get warm, ma’am.”
Mrs. Aikin perceived at a single glance at the poor woman’s burning cheeks and parched lips, that she was in the delirium of a fever. She approached her, and offered to take the child.
“Oh no,” she said, “not my baby; you know, when they took all the rest, they promised not to take my baby.”
[13]
“But let me try to quiet her for you.”
“No, I thank you ma’am; she is only fretting for her breakfast.” She put the infant again to her breast; the child seized it with the eagerness of starvation, and then redoubled its cries.
“I make but a poor nurse,” said the mother, smiling faintly; “I think it does not agree with me to live without food. Do you think that can be reason my baby does not thrive, ma’am?’ and she raised her eyes to Mrs. Aikin, as if appealing for her opinion. The tears of compassion were streaming down Mrs. Aikin’s cheeks, and the poor woman, apparently from pure sympathy, burst into loud sobs. The little boy threw himself on a bed in a corner of the room, and, burying his head in the bedclothes, tried thus to suppress his cries.
Mrs. Aikin, aware that the wants of these sufferers would not justify a moment’s delay of the succor they needed, called the boy to her, and despatched him to her husband with a note, which she hastily wrote with a pencil on the back of a letter. While he was gone she had leisure to observe the extreme wretchedness of the apartment, in which there was not an article of furniture save a straw bed and its scanty covering. There were shreds of the garments strewed about the floor, the “light stuff” the poor crazed woman had been burning to warm her infant.
“Have you been long sick, my friend?” she asked, with the faint hope of obtaining a rational answer.
“Sick! Sick!” replied the mother; “yes, a good while—I have been sick a trifle—the intermittent and the typhus—but I believe I am getting the better of it all, for yesterday I felt quite hungry.”
[14]
“And did you take anything?” asked Mrs. Aikin.
“Oh yes,” she answered, drawing near to Mrs. Aikin, and whispering with an air of great self-complacency, “I did indeed take something—all I had in the house-an excellent thing to blunt the edge of one’s appetite—laudanum—you know ma’am, it is doctor’s stuff and the doctors know how to cure an appetite.”
“God help you, poor woman!” exclaimed Mrs. Aikin.
“God help me!” reiterated the poor creature, with a piercing cry; “there is no help for me;” and she sunk on the side of the bed and wept freely. Mrs. Aikin was sensible that in this returning consciousness of her miseries there was a dawning of reason; she knew that her tears were a natural expression of feeling, and would afford her the quickest relief; and she permitted them to flow on without interrupting her.
In the mean time Mr. Aikin arrived, accompanied by a woman-servant laden with necessaries and refreshments, and a boy with a barrow of wood; a fire was kindled; nourishment was provided for the baby, and food offered to the deformed boy, who, now that he saw a relief at hand for his mother, ate ravenously. Cordials were administered to the mother; a physician was summoned, and a nurse provided for her; and, in short, everything was done that could be done, where there was benevolence to devise and ability to execute.
The lapse of a few days found Mrs. Shepard (for that was the poor woman’s name) quite recovered from the delirium into which she had been
[15]
driven by sickness and extreme misery. She related to her benefactress the few particulars of her melancholy history. It was not an uncommon one, and we shall not detail it at length, for we would not cloud the cheerful faces of our young readers with unnecessary sadness.
Mrs. Shepard was the daughter of a respectable farmer; the youngest of a numerous family. She was married when very young to one of those miserable beings who are always meeting with disappointments and bad luck, those sure plagues of the idle and shiftless. Her husband had health, a good trade, and abundance of friends; but, as the proverb says, “Who can help those who won’t help themselves?” Shepard changed one branch of business for another; he moved from place to place, but he never left behind him the faults that caused the failure of all his enterprises.
He went in the beaten track from idleness to intemperance and to bad company; and finally, lost to all sense of duty, he abandoned his wife and little ones in a strange place, after a sheriff had stripped his wretched dwelling of the little wreck of furniture he possessed.
But Mrs. Shepard was not left to perish. In her greatest extremity, when there seemed no help, and sickness and the sight of her starving children had driven her to distraction, Heaven directed to her relief a kind and efficient friend. Mrs. Aikin’s discretion and good sense equaled her benevolence. She thought that as God is his kind providence had seen fit to exempt her from the sore evils of life, she was bound to testify her gratitude by doing all in her power to mitigate the sufferings of others.
[16]
She remembered that our Saviour was familiar with our sorrows and acquainted with our griefs; and as it was not with her passing desire, but the rule of her life, to imitate him, she did not content herself with sending a servant with an inquiry or a gift to the poor, or with subscribing to charitable societies, but she visited the sick and the afflicted, and listened patiently to their very long, and often, to her as well as to others, very tiresome stories. She would enter with benevolent sympathy into the history of their cares and wants, and would even forget she had nerves while she gave her ear to the details of a loathsome sickness; in short, she never forgot the common people who have minds and hearts, and that often a more essential charity is done by fainting an influence over them than can be effected by pecuniary relief. We entreat our young friends to believe that, they will have treasures of kindness to impart far more valuable than Aladdin’s lamp. Fortunatus’ cap, or any gift of fay or fairy.
But we are digressing from our story—not uselessly, however, if we are strengthened the love of goodness in the breast of a single reader. Mrs. Aikin visited her humble friend every day till she was restored to comfortable health. It was then necessary that some means should be adopted for her permanent relief. She could be received with her children into the almshouse, but she preferred making any struggle to being dependant on public charity; “for that,” she said to Mrs. Aikin, “was what nobody took pleasure in giving, and no one was thankful for receiving.”
[17]
After many consultations with her benefactress it was determined that she should hire a small cheap apartment, and take in sewing. Mrs. Aikin promised her constant aid, and performed more than she promised; and Mr. Aikin, who was one the aldermen of the city, obtained for her a small weekly stipend from the corporation, who find this a much better mode of aiding the industrious poor than removing them from the excitements and pleasures of their own homes to public institutions.
Mrs. Shepard’s health was infirm, and her means were scanty, but she was so diligent and economical that she maintained her children with decency.
With the present she was not only contented, but grateful; the past she had borne with fortitude and patience. “Many a time,” she said to Mrs. Aikin, “when I have been reduced almost to despair, those words, ‘Put thy trust in the Lord, he will never leave nor forsake thee,’ have come to my remembrance, and I have taken courage and gone on again. When Richard, my poor little crooked boy, was born, I had two children older than he: they were both sick with the whooping-cough; the baby, that is, Dick, took it; I was myself in a weakly way; we had none of us the necessary medicines nor food; both my boys died; my poor baby was neglected; he mastered the whooping-cough, and fell into the rickets, which ended in making him the little misshapen thing you see. But it seems as if God had tempered the wind to the shorn lamb, for a better, or, in the main a happier child there never was than Dicky.”
The good mother was not blinded, as fond moth-
[18]
ers sometimes are, by partiality to unfortunate children; for Richard, or Dicky as he was familiarly, or rather Ducky as he was most commonly called, in an allusion to his short legs, Ducky was a perfect philosopher. Not a single crook of his little body had twisted his temper, or given one wrong turn to his disposition.
How much of his philosophy he owed to the faithful care of his mother, we leave to be estimated by those of our young readers who are so blessed as to possess parents who are continually watching over their morals and happiness. Mrs. Shepard was a poor woman, but she had received a good common education, the birthright alike of rich and poor in New-England, where she was brought up. She seldom found time to read a book herself; but devoted mothers can do that for their children which they cannot do for themselves; and Mrs. Shepard found, or made time to teach Richard to read before he could walk.
She would tie her baby into a chair beside her while she was washing, or ironing, or mending, and, at the same time, teach Dicky to repeat hymns and stories in verse which she had learned in her childhood. It was really a pleasing, and, at the same time, an affecting sight to see the little fellow, deprived as he was of the of the active pleasures usual at his age, sitting curled up on his chair, with his head unnaturally drawn down on his bosom, fix his bright, eager eye on his mother, repeat the words after her without missing a syllable, and chuckle with delight when he had mastered a couplet. Oh! who, when they see calamities thus mitigated, can help recalling that sentiment of
[19]
Scripture, “He remembereth our infirmities and pititeth us, even as a father pitieth his children.”
But how did Dicky escape the fretfulness of temper which so often attend deformity? Surely not by learning hymns. No; though this occupation lightened many an hour, we cannot attribute such power to it. He had naturally a sweet and cheerful temper, but this would probably have given place to the irritability that so often attends and aggravates disease and privation but for the unceasing watchfulness and patience of his mother. If he ever got into a pet (as what child does not sometimes?), her rebuke was mildly spoken; and if the pet amounted to a passion, it was soon subdued by her firm, tranquil manner. The sound of her low gentle, and tender voice operated like oil thrown on the stormy waves, which is said to smooth their surface wherever it touches them.
Mrs. Aikin suggested to Richard’s mother that she might give him a useful occupation by teaching him to knit. She immediately improved the hint; Dick was delighted with his new employment, and soon became such a master of the knitting-needle that he might have rivalled almost any old woman in the country. He was sitting one day on his mother’s door-step, protected from the sun by the shadow of a fine elm-tree, finishing a pair of suspenders which Mrs. Aiken had bespoken for her son, when a company of boys came marching in military procession up the street.
The young soldiers were equipped with wooden muskets; their hats were garnished with cocks’ tails for plumes; half a dozen pocket-handkerchiefs tied together, decked with white paper stars and
[20]
attached to a stick, formed their flag, their ”star-spangled banner,” and was as proudly carried by its bearer as more magnificent colours have been; a tin-kettle served for “a spirit-stirring drum,” and a “shrill fife” was blown by a sturdy little fellow, whose lungs seemed as inexhaustible as the windbags of old Æolus.
When they arrived opposite to Mrs. Shepard’s door, a proposal was made to halt under the elm-tree till their captain, Frank Hardy, should join them. “And, in the mean time, gentlemen,” called out mischievous little urchin in the rear, “let us give a salute to Miss Ducky Shepard, knitter to the light-infantry.”
“Hurrah for Miss Ducky!” shouted the boys, and the soldiers lowered their muskets, the standard-bearer waved his colours, and the little drummer beat a flourish. Dicky had at first entered into the sport, but now his countenance fell, he resumed his knitting which he had laid down, but his eyes were blurred with tears, his hands trembled, and his stitches dropped.
“Ah!” cried out the lieutenant, Miss Ducky don’t like your salute; never mind, Dick, Miss Ducky you shall be no longer. Gentlemen, fellow-soldiers, all who are for electing Miss Ducky captain, pro tem. will please hold up their right hands.” Fifty right hands were instantly elevated,” and another shout of “Hurrah for Captain Dick!” made the welkin ring.
As soon as the sounds had ceased, “Advance, Corporal Seation,” said the lieutenant, “and help me escort the captain to the head of his company.” The two boys took the unresisting child in their
[21]
arms and placed him at the head of their corps. “Turn out your toes captain,” said the lieutenant, touching Dicky’s short bow legs with his musket; “there, gentlemen, is a fine leg for a march!”
“Hold up your head, captain,” said the corporal; “there’s a captain to scare the enemy!” But poor little Dick could not hold up his head, and the tears that he had manfully repressed now gushed from his eyes and rolled down to his bosom.
At this critical moment there was a sudden movement in the ranks. “What is all this? said the real captain, Frank Hardy, springing on his lieutenant and corporal, and laying them on their marrow-bones. “Coward’s play, boys -- coward’s play; here, Dick, my little man, take my hand; brush away your tears, and I’ll see you righted.” Dick grasped the friendly hand that was extended to him, and Frank, after replacing him on the doorstep, instituted an inquiry into this cruel sport.
The eyes of the company were now turned to their popular commander, and all were preparing to trim their vessels whichever way he should cause the tide to set. He soon satisfied himself that the offence demanded an exemplary punishment; and, ordering his company to form into a hollow square, he made them a speech, full of eloquence and feeling, on the merits of Dicky and their own demerit, or, rather, the demerit of their ringleaders, for he skillfully contrived to make them the scapegoats, and to bind the offences of all the culprits on their backs. After the speech he proposed that the lieutenant and corporal should be degraded from their high command to the private ranks, and should be sentenced to pay a fine to Dicky of six cents each.
[22]
The sentence was passed by acclamation; the captain saw the decision enforced. The money which had been carefully husbanded for a treat after the day’s drill, was sullenly delivered into the commander’s hand, and reluctantly received from him by Dicky; reluctantly, for out little simple friend did not quite comprehend how “might made right;” and his feelings had been too deeply wounded to admit of consolation in this form. He was, however, in a degree comforted by the interposition of Captain Frank in his behalf; he felt that it conferred consequence on him, for Frank Hardy was a universal favourite among the boys; stout and active, good-humoured and kind-hearted, he was the champion of all the oppressed, and the corrector of all the wrongs in his neighborhood.
When the company marched away, poor Richard’s sorrows broke out afresh, and, running to his mother’s room, he threw the knitting on the floor, and said, in a voice half suppressed with sobs, “I never will touch that work again.”
“Why, what is the matter with you Dicky?” asked his mother; “I never saw you in such a flurry.”
Richard recounted, as well as he was able, the story of his wrong, and Mrs. Shepard listened with all a mother’s patience; and, when he concluded, she tried in vain to remove the impression from his mind that it was his “girl’s-work” that had been the cause of his mortification. “Hurrah for Miss Ducky, knitter to the light-infantry,” still sounded his ears, and drowned every argument she could urge. Shame, that most unpleasant feeling, was ever after most indissolubly associated
[23]
with his work. The most obedient of all good boys, he would resume his knitting in compliance with his mother’s commands, but he never took it up voluntarily--never again relished it. Thus was this poor little fellow deprived of an innocent and useful pastime by a company of unfeeling boys. Perhaps we ought rather to say inconsiderate, for young people are more apt to be thoughtless than cruel; and we believe that those who laughed loudest and longest at Dicky’s drool little figure, would have wept with the ingenuous sorrow of childhood if they could have known the pang their laugh inflicted.
Our young readers may have heard of the philosopher’s stone; there is an art that far exceeds the power ascribed to that gem of the alchemist: the art by which a good person extracts instruction from every event, however adverse, is certainly superior to that which transmutes base metal into gold.
The incident we have related made Mrs. Shepard fully aware of Richard’s susceptibility to the mortifications to which his deformity rendered him liable, and henceforward she constantly endeavoured to arm him with fortitude. It is unnecessary to recount all she said and did to accomplish this purpose. Perhaps it would not make much figure in print, for Mrs. Shepard was so quiet and simple in her way, that one would as soon expect (provided there was neither experience nor knowledge on the subject) a tree to grow from an acorn an any great effect to proceed from her efforts. She had good materials to work on, docile disposition and sweet temper; and so completely successful
[24]
was she, that Richard, as he grew older, bore all sorts of jibes and jokes without wincing, His sweet, enduring temper disarmed mischief of its sting, and converted ridicule into respect. At the Lancaster school, where he was monitor of a class composed of boys of every disposition, some much older, and all a head taller than himself, he was treated with as much deference as if he had been six feet high, and had had the limbs of Apollo.
Since the memorable day of the training, he had maintained a constant friendly intercourse with his champion, Frank Hardy. Dick would do anything on earth to serve Frank, and Frank was sword and shield to Dick. But, notwithstanding this strict alliance between them, they were in some respects widely different. Unfortunately, those good principles had not been instilled into Frank that prompted Richard to do right, as well from duty as from impulse. Frank’s mother was a widow, and he was her only child; and she indulged him excessively, or restrained him unreasonably, according to the humour she happened to be in, without any regard to the right of the case or his ultimate good.
Frank was what everybody calls a warm, good-hearted fellow with a bright, sunny face, and a merry disposition, that won his way to all hearts. He loved pleasure extravagantly, as was natural, for he was on all occasions contriver of the sport and master of the revels. On one fourth of July, he had planned a sailing excursion to a village in the vicinity. Each member of the party was to contribute half a dollar to the expenses, and poor Frank was in utter consternation when, on apply-
[25]
ing to his mother, in the confident expectation of obtaining the money, she denied it to him. He entreated and expostulated, but all in vain; she was out of humour, and if she had been a Midas she would not have given him the half dollar. Frank left her disappointed and mortified; he knew that his companions were awaiting him, and, ashamed to meet them and explain the cause of his inability to meet them and explain the cause of his inability to join them, he went in quest of Dick to bear his errand to them. He found him at a huckster’s shop, where he was in the habit of going in his leisure time, and making himself useful by performing small services.
Richard was alone in the shop, busily arranging some fruits which were to be placed in the window as specimens. “Oh!” he exclaimed, on seeing Frank, “what a royal day you have got for your sail.
“A royal day, indeed,” replied Frank, looking up wistfully to the bright, cloudless sky.
“You had better make haste, Frank, for the boys will be waiting for you. Jim Allen and Harry Upham went along half an hour ago. Jim bought twelve oranges of Mr. George, and Mr. George lent Harry his flute; two merrier fellows I never saw; and they told me, if I saw you, to hurry you on.”
“I am not going at all, Dick.”
“Not going at all!” exclaimed Richard, struck by the words and by the sorrowful tone in which they were uttered. “Are you sick, Frank?” he asked, looking with great concern in his friend’s face.
“No, not sick,” replied Frank, and half ashamed
[26]
that he had betrayed so much feeling on the subject, he averted his eye, and it fell on a newly-coined, glittering half dollar which was lying on the counter. “Oh if that half dollar were mine,” was his first, and, certainly, most natural thought. He turned again to the door--all the military of the town were out in honour of the day--drums were beating merrily, colours flying, and everybody, old and young, seemed to be animated with the spirit of the day. Frank looked down the street; he saw two or three of his young associates running towards the river. He again turned his eye to the tempting half dollar. Richard’s back was towards him--temptation pressed--opportunity favoured; one moment more of reflection, and he would have resisted, but he did not allow himself that moment; he grasped the half dollar, and, when Richard again turned, he was gone.
Richard wondered a little at the singular manner of his friend; but he was too intent on the task of his friend; but he was too intent on the task that had been assigned him to think much of it, till, his work being finished, he looked for the money, which had been left on the counter, in payment for a brush he had sold in the absence of George Sutton, the clerk, who had gone on an errand to the next street.
The poor child was trembling with the discovery of the loss when the clerk came in. “So, Dicky,” he said, “you have made a sale in my absence. I met Mrs. Lincoln’s servant with the brush. Where is the money, Dick?” he continued, unlocking the money-drawer, and standing ready to put in the half dollar.
“I have not got the money, Mr. George,” Richard replied, with a trembling voice.
[27]
“Not got it!” exclaimed Sutton; and a suspicion darted across his mind which he could not bear to harbour for a moment. “Not got it!” he repeated. “What does this mean, Dick; where is it?”
“I cannot tell,” said Richard, faltering so much that the words were scarcely articulate.
George Sutton sprang over the counter; took the poor child, who now shook like an aspen leaf, by the arm, and, looking steadily in his face, which blushed crimsons, he exclaimed, “What can have tempted you to steal that money?”
Richard started back --his face became pale as death--his little crooked form was drawn up to an expression of dignity, for it expressed truth and innocence. “Steal! Mr. George,” he said, and he now spoke with a firm voice; “you know I would not steal one penny for the whole world.”
“I don’t think you would, Dick- I can’t think you would,” replied George, touched by the child’s appeal, and more than half convinced by his fair, direct look. “I have always found you honest, boy, and true as the sun. But where is the money? Has any one been in the shop since the man bought the brush?”
Richard’s countenance again fell- again his voice faltered. “Oh do not ask me; I cannot tell you, Mr. George,” he said.
“But you must tell me, Dick, or you must never come into the shop again.”
“Then I never will come into it again,” replied Richard, “for I never will tell;” and, bursting into tears, he ran out of the shop, leaving the clerk utterly at a loss what construction to put on his conduct.
[28]
George Sutton, though not the proprietor of the shop, was the sole manager of its concerns. His master was engaged in another branch of business; and, knowing his clerk to be perfectly trustworthy, he confided the affairs of the shop entirely to him. Thus trusted, young Sutton felt the obligation to be very exact in the performance of his duties. His first determination was to expose the affair to his principal; but he had one of the kindest hearts in the world; he really loved poor little Dicky; and, believing him innocent, he could not bear to expose him to the bad opinion of a stranger; he therefore paid the half dollar out of his own pocket, and said not a word to anybody on the subject.
Richard returned home with his heart full. He passed without notice all the gay parade of “Independence” -- and there was enough of it to satisfy patriots and charm boys -- and entered his mother’s humble dwelling; and there he would probably have yielded to the inquiries she would naturally have made into the cause of the disturbance--for what boy of nine years could withstand the sympathy of a tender mother--but Mrs. Shepard was in no state to observe his agitation. She had been seized that morning with pains and agues, which were, as she well knew, the prelude to violent sickness.
Richard was instantly despatched for a physician, who came, but could not avert a terrible fever, which raged for four weeks, and then left this afflicted woman in a hopeless consumption.
Mrs. Aikin had removed the previous spring to the country; but, before her departure, she had ta-
[29]
ken care to recommend Mrs. Shepard to some of her friends, who were humane and active in their charities, and Mrs. Shepard’s wants were soon known and relieved, as far as benevolence could relieve them. Mrs. Aikin was informed of her humble friend’s situation, and she wrote her a kind letter, enclosing some money, and telling her to spare herself all anxiety about her little girl, for she would take her into her own family, and provide for her so long as she should want a home. Thus relieved from solicitude concerning her youngest child, all Mrs. Shepard’s anxiety centred in Richard. He was too young to be apprenticed to a trade and there was no person whom Mrs. Shepard had the right or the courage to ask to provide for him in the mean time.
Our young readers are, we trust, quite inexperienced in the sorrows of life: when they learn them, as learn them they must, may they have that spirit in which they can be borne--even the sorest of them--poverty, sickness, and death.
Better than many a long sermon on resignation and trust in the goodness of God--far better would it be if we could present to the mind’s eye the humble apartment of this Christian woman, when, conscious of the fast approach of death, and that this was perhaps her last opportunity of prayer with her children, she had, in the energy of her feeling, raised her weak and wasted form from the pillows which supported her. Richard and little Mary knelt by her bedside; she held their hands in hers; her raised eye gleamed brightly, for
“The immortal ray
is seen more clearly through the shrine’s decay;”
[30]
and, making a last effort, she uttered in a low but perfectly distinct voice, “My father in heaven, to thee I commit these little ones.” She paused, and closed her eyes--once more she opened them, smiled on her children with an expression of ineffable peace, and murmured in a low whisper, “God will provide;” her face was then slightly convulsed, she let go of their hands, and sunk back on the pillow.
The physician had stood unobserved in the door way; he now moved towards the bed, and exclaimed involuntarily, “She is gone!” Poor little Richard had never seen death before, but he knew what it all meant; he locked his arms around his mother’s neck, and sobbed out, “Mother--mother--mother!” till he could speak no longer; and his little sister, crying because her brother cried, repeated again and again, “Mother will speak to you when she wakes up, Dicky-- do stop crying.”
But we must pass over this scene and the two sad days that followed. The little girl was removed to the house of a friend of Mrs. Aikin, and was sent to that lady by the first conveyance that offered; and, without Richard’s knowledge, arrangements had been made for his being transferred to the almshouse immediately after the funeral.
There were but few persons who followed the remains of Mrs. Shepard to the grave; but if the hearts of those few had been laid open; it would have been seen that there was more honour paid to her humble, unquestionable virtue (if human esteem confers honour), than is rendered by many a sweeping procession, that attracts the eyes of multitudes with its unseemly parade. Among these
[31]
few followers was Frank Hardy; since the 4th of July he had never spoken with his little friend. He had some times seen him in the street; but conscience, that most uncomfortable companion to the guilty, conscience had led him to avoid Richard. Hardy had accidentally heard of Mrs. Shepard’s death, and his good feeling prevailing over every other, he went to the funeral and returned from the grave to the house, anxious to know how Richard was to be provided for. The physician and the clergyman also went home with the child; and, after consoling them as well as they are able, they told him that he was to go to the almshouse for the present.
“To the almshouse!” he exclaimed. “Oh, don’t take me to the almshouse.”
“But where will you go, Dicky?” asked the doctor.
“I have nowhere to go,” replied the child; “I will stay here; I an’t afraid to stay alone in mother’s room.”
“You cannot stay here, my poor boy; this room is not yours, you know; what objection have you to the almshouse?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I hate the almshouse. Everybody hates the almshouse;” and the poor little fellow turned from his friends, laid his head on his mother’s pillow, and wept bitterly. Frank Hardy stood aside, listening with concern to every word that was uttered; he now drew near to Richard and whispered “Why don’t you go, Dicky, and speak to Mr. George Sutton? He was always a friend to you.”
“He is not my friend now,” replied Richard, in
[32]
a voice which, though scarcely audible, reached Frank’s heart.
“What makes you think so, Dick?” asked Frank, so agitated that he hardly knew what he said. Richard raised his head from the pillow, and fixed his eye on Frank. “Frank,” he said, “Mr. George thinks that it was I that stole the half dollar from him last Independence.”
These few words revealed the whole state of case to Frank. He perceived that Richard had been suspected, and had voluntarily, magnanimously borne suspicion rather than betray him; his tenderest feelings had been awakened by the desolate condition of the afflicted child; and he now looked at him a sentiment of awe, for his little crooked body really seemed to him to contain a celestial spirit. “Oh, Dicky! You have been too good to me,” he exclaimed; and, unable to endure or repress his feelings, he ran out of the house.
The gentlemen told Richard that they could wait no longer for him, and he prepared to accompany them; but when he looked round upon his home for the last time, it seemed as if his heart would burst. If our young friends will consider what it is they love in their homes, they will not wonder at Richard’s grief. It surely is not a great house nor fine furniture; but it is the voice of kindness, and the unwearying, unchanging love of parents; the sports and caresses of brothers and sisters, and all the endearments that make a happy home a picture of Heaven. The doctor soothed, the clergyman wiped Richard’s eyes; and at last, succeeding in quieting him,
[33]
they led him between them to the almshouse, and, after many kind expressions of good-will, they left him there. The poor child slunk away into the corner of the large desolate apartment into which he had been conducted; he looked around upon the sullen, discontented faces of the strange throng that filled it, each taking his or her evening meal at a solitary board; he thought of the nice little cherry table at which he had been accustomed to participate the simple meal with his mother and sister, their hearts filled with thankfulness and cheerfulness, and their faces lit up with smiles. He did not, perhaps, institute precisely the comparison we have made, but it was the change--the change--that struck upon his heart. “I can’t--I won’t stay here,” he said to himself; “I had rather starve in the street than stay here.” Some supper was offered to him, but he declined it; and a little time after he stole unobserved into the passage, groped his way into the yard, run into the street, and was out of sight long before he was missed.
He knew not whither to bend his steps; scarcely knew where he was, till, looking up, he perceived that he was close to George Sutton’s shop; the recollection of the young man’s former kindness darted a ray of hope upon his darkened mind. It was perhaps more his pressing need of pity than any defined expectation of relief that made him ascend the steps; but there his heart failed him, and he sat down. He was wearied and exhausted; it was a frosty night early in November, and he was shivering with the cold. He felt utterly forsaken. He looked up to Heaven; the moon
[34]
was shining brightly; he thought of his mother; he remembered that he had seen her, when in the deepest distress, kneel down and pray to God, and rise up again comforted. He recollected her last words, “God will provide;” and he repeated the Lord’s prayer. He who feedeth the young ravens when they cry unto him, heard and answered the helpless child. Richard had scarcely said “Amen” when he was startled by the opening of the shop-door, and, rising on his feet, he saw Frank Hardy coming out of the shop.
“Oh Dicky, is that you?” he exclaimed. “Come in, come in; I have told everything to Mr. George, and he likes you better than ever, now; and I am sure,” he added, putting his arm around Richard’s neck, “I am sure I love you better than all the world besides.”
Richard was astounded; he knew not what to say, but he followed Frank into the shop. “Is that you, my good boy Dicky?” exclaimed George Sutton at the first glimpse of him; and, grasping his hand, he said,” you are an honest boy and a noble boy, Dick, and I always believed you were, in spite of appearances; but now Frank has made all clear, and, if he had known everything, he would have done you justice long before this, Dicky: reparation wipes out offences, and I’m sure you will forgive and forget all, especially when you see how Frank repents the past; bitterer tears has he shed than any that have dropped from your eyes, my poor boy.”
“That I have, indeed,” said Frank; “and, till this evening, I have never had one such real happy hour since Independence as I had before; but
[35]
I’m sure, Dicky, I never had a thought of the trouble I had brought you into. I have read on many a tombstone ‘an honest man’s the noblest work of God;’ but, for my part, I think an honest boy and such a little boy as you, Dick, that will bear to be suspected rather than expose a friend, is something nobler still.”
How long Frank would have run on thus, we know not, for happiness is very talkative; but he was interrupted by Richard. The sudden change from the outcast feeling with which he had sat on the door-step, from the solitude and the stillness of the night, to the lighted shop, friendly voices, and cheerful looks, overpowered him with a confused sense of happiness; he burst into tears; “I don’t know what it is makes me cry now,” said he, “for I feel very glad.”
“You have been tried too much to-day, Dicky,” replied George Sutton. “Sit here by the fire with Frank, while I go and bring you some supper; and then you shall go to bed, in the little back room, and in the morning we will see what can be done. I am not afraid,” he continued, as he opened the shop-door, “for all that has come and gone, to leave you and Frank in the shop together.”
When his kind friend returned, Richard ate his supper heartily; and when he snugged down in bed alongside of George Sutton, he thought again of his mother’s last words, and fell asleep repeating to himself “God will provide.”
_____
[36]
Eighteen months subsequent to the events we have related, Mrs. Aikin paid a visit to the place of her former residence. One of her first inquiries was for Richard Shepard. She was informed that she might hear of him at the store of George Sutton. She immediately went there, and found Mr. Sutton established in a well-furnished store of his own. As soon as she had introduced herself and made known her errand, Sutton called “Dicky;” and Richard came waddling into the shop as fast as his little legs could bring him, and delighted beyond expression at the sound of Mrs. Aikin’s voice. His eyes glistened, and his face brightened and smiled all over. After she had made many inquiries of him, had drawn from him a particular account of his mother’s last hours, and had told him that, with Mr. Sutton’s permission, she should take him into the country to pass a little time with his sister, she dismissed him.
When he was gone she inquired of Mr. Sutton if he continued as good a child as he had been.
“As good, ma’am? There can be no better; he is worth his weight in gold to me. He understands the shop business almost as well as I do myself; and he is so good-natured and obliging, and has such pleasant ways, and is, withal, such a droll-looking little chap, that he brings many a customer to the store.”
Mrs. Aikin thought, as she looked in Sutton’s honest, frank, and benevolent face, that he did not stand much in need of aid to attract good-will to the shop. “I understand,” she said “ of Richard’s account of himself, that he has been with you ever since his mother’s death. I do not quite see
[37]
how you could provide for him all that time; for I think you did not begin for yourself till last Spring.”
“I did not, ma’am; and I found it difficult to save enough out of my small wages to pay the boy’s board, though I got him boarded for a trifle. But I did make it out, without any miracle; it was only working a little harder and faring a little harder, and you know that is nothing, ma’am, after it is past.”
“But how,” asked Mrs. Aikin, “could you, in such circumstances, think of assuming such an expense?”
Sutton seemed for a moment greatly embarrassed by this question. He blushed deeply, and his eyes filled with tears. “I could not help it, ma’am,” he replied; “when I was five years old, my parents died, and left me, as I may say, on the street. Some kind people took me in, brought me up, and provided for me; and when this poor little motherless child came to me, I seemed to hear a voice saying, ‘Remember what was done for thee; go thou and do likewise.’”
_____
This is the real instance of that efficient gratitude which makes a favour “go round,” alluded to in the beginning of our story. It is neither exaggerated nor embellished by fiction; and we hope we have not misjudged in deeming it a fact worthy of being rescued from the oblivion that is too apt to pass upon the good as upon the bad actions of men.
One word more, and this humble tale is finish--
[38]
ed. Frank Hardy reaped all the benefit that is to be derived from virtuous associates. The friendly counsel of Sutton induced him to fix himself in a regular employment, and his subsequent upright conduct fully expiated his single offence. He never ceased to feel and manifest affection and gratitude to Richard; and he has been heard to say, that he was sure, if Solomon had known Dicky, he would have pronounced that, instead of four, “there be five things upon the earth which are little, but they are exceeding wise.”
We scarcely need add, that Richard was allowed the gratification of a visit to his sister; but our readers may have some pleasure in being told, that when the brother and sister again parted, Mrs. Aikin presented each of them a breastpin containing their mother’s hair, and on their reverses was inscribed, “God will provide.”
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Deformed Boy
Subject
The topic of the resource
Charity, virtue, and honesty.
Description
An account of the resource
A poor young boy, whose legs have been affected by rickets, attracts the attention and charity of kind friends due to his good humor and virtue.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria [by the author of "The Linwoods," "Poor Rich Man," "Love Token," "Live & Let Live," &c.]
Source
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<em>Stories for Young Persons,</em> pp. 9-38.
Publisher
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New York: Harper & Brothers
Date
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1840
Contributor
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Angie Lydon, Michael Nicosa, Cyntheara Tham, L. Damon Bach, D. Gussman
Relation
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Originally published as <em>The Deformed Boy. </em>By the author of "Redwood," &c. Brookfield: E. and G. Merriam Printers, 1826. <br />Reprinted as <em>The Deformed Boy.</em> By the author of "Redwood." Springfield: Merriam, Little & Co, 1831.<br />Collected in Stories for Young Persons, 1840, 9-38, reprinted 1841, 1842, 1846, 1855, 1860; reprinted 184? By the author of "The Linwoods," "Poor Rich Man," "Love Token," "Live and Let Live," &c. London: W. Smith.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
1840
4th of July
abandonment
Aeolus
Aladdin's lamp
almshouse
Apollo
benevolence
Benjamin Franklin
boyhood
charity
Christianity
Consumption
Cotton Mather
deathbed
deformity
fairy
Fortunatus' cap
funeral
gender roles
girls-work
God
gratitude
H. Gally Knight
Honesty
Independence Day
intemperance
juvenile literature
knitting
laudanum
literacy
Magnalia Christi Americana
marriage
Midas
Mothers
orphans
Ovid
philosopher's stone
poverty
prayer
Proverbs 30:24
Psalm 103
public assistance
public education
rickets
self reliance
sewing
shame
shopkeeper
sons
star-spangled banner
Stories for Young Persons
tears
virtue
widows
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/d2ad7d6c90a01bae227a30feb1825b5e.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=Aps0RijM2-8nC4mWqa4HOxuXOlThAGmnWBrp7epI6mefBnHTGfOtYEqSajtDOZLkz6nuUbD87d4M0Y9TG7dtHS7iKFvtLhABjcnRR3wYj74M3JG9PTM1xJ853c-4Ov%7EKPOhGPxtalEYdiy0Z33ocvX2ceBVElr%7Esuzoy4%7EoIPayJ8nz7ORH731HLT-cfUePissH6evXqlauX52vWGhSzRcrA9j%7EPudLsdCkDtNYpjuWpmCQ-wjjQzm9yDBKh1ssz%7E7OlgSZqP5Uf9TpuTxUlTRkstBouQJSBU1WRBgVtoIUaP3t89Xt2QTr4uY3M2QSahICfW0KkB53NPy-JwvlWzA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
30ee78c748a67e4b47d0bf76bc9de689
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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1835
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.
THE UNPRESUMING MR. HUDSON.
BY MISS SEDGWICK.
[p. 17]
It chanced to me, during the last travelling season, to fall in with a party who, like myself, were destined for a fashionable watering-place. The most conspicuous members of this party were Mrs. Campbell, (a widow,) and her only and very pretty daughter, Louisa, whose name, according to modern usage, was gallicised into Louise. The mother was educated in the old school, or, to speak more accurately, in no school at all; but, if she were ignorant, she was unpretending; and it is, perhaps, as well to have the mind vacant, as to have it filled with foreign, ill-assorted, and undigested materials, that encumber it without increasing its riches or productiveness.
All Mrs. Campbell's pride, of every kind and degree, was concentrated in Louise. She had been,
[p. 18]
till this summer of her seventeenth year, at a fashionable boarding-school in one of our large cities. She had had approved masters, and, as her doting mother said, and reiterated, neither time nor expense had been spared in her education; and accordingly, in her mother's acceptation of the word, she was educated. She played and sang so well, that Mrs. Campbell averred she had rather listen to her than to Pedrotti or Mrs. Wood. She drew very prettily—she had learned by heart two entire plays of Goldoni—she made wax flowers, which her mother assured us were quite as natural as real ones —and she spoke French—like other young ladies. If the circumstances, relations, and issues of this brief life require anything more, the balance, (as our mercantile friends have it,) had not been thought of by the mother, or prepared for by the daughter. To do Miss Louise justice, however, she had not been spoiled. She was gay and good-humoured; she had the most good-natured self-complacency— no uncomfortable awe of her superiors—(I rather think she did not believe in their existence)—no jealousy of her equals, and to her inferiors she was kind-hearted.
[p. 19] It was in a stage-coach on a warm day in June that the day broke on our acquaintance. Mrs. Campbell was a lady of facilities, and we had not travelled a half-day together, before, by means of half a dozen ingenious, wayfaring questions, she had ascertained all she cared to know of us, and had liberally repaid us with what she thought we must care to know of her. Besides us there were two persons in the coach not so easily perused. The one a Colonel Smith, (Smith, happily called the anonymous name, and certainly that most tormenting and baffling to an inquirer,) and the other a Mr. Charles Hudson. Col. Smith's demeanour was very unlike his name, marked, high-bred, and a little aristocratic. "A gentleman, he certainly was," Mrs. Campbell said, as soon as we had an opportunity of holding a caucus on our fellow- travellers, but whether he were of the Smiths of New York, Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Carolina, and so on, through the States, she could not ascertain. However, the cardinal point was settled. He was a gentleman, by all our suffrages; and this most important matter established,
[p. 20]
we were at liberty to interchange with him the common civilities of life!
Mr. Hudson was a more puzzling case for our inquest. Mrs. Campbell remembered to have met a very respectable family of Hudsons at Saratoga, who were from Boston—at least she was almost sure they were, but our Mr. Charles Hudson, in reply to certain leading remarks of hers, had said he had never been in Boston. She remembered, too, when she was in Baltimore, some twenty years before, to have seen a family of Hudsons who were very intimate with the Carrolls—this was equivalent to a patent of gentility—but Mr. Hudson affirmed he did not know the Baltimore Hudsons. One of us remembered a certain Mr. Hudson who once had unquestioned circulation in the beau monde of New York, but whence he came, was either not known or forgotten. Miss Louise had heard a young friend say she had danced with a Mr. Hudson in Washington—this could hardly be admitted as a credential, and we were at last compelled to wait till we could adjust the gentleman's claims by his merits! The disquieting anxieties of
[p. 21]
some good people in our country, on the head of family or rank, is very like a satire on the fancied equality resulting from republican institutions.
Mrs. Campbell was not inclined to be over-fastidious, but she gave it in charge to her daughter to be "rather reserved," while we remained on the level arena of a stage-coach. Miss Louise paid as much deference to her mother as could be expected, reserve not being the quality par excellence of American young ladies. In the course of the morning, an accident to the coach compelled the passengers to walk for some distance down a steep and winding descent. The morning was beautiful. The air deliciously tempered. The majestic oaks and maples of Virginia, like its inhabitants (to borrow a rustic phrase from one of their mountaineers), “stout of their country,” threw their broad dense shadows over our path—the rhododendron, then in its glory, was in profusion around us, and wild roses, with other unknown and unnumbered flowers on every side.
Our party was not of the most romantic materials, but as we descended the gorge, and looked below us on a sea of the topmost branches of lofty trees,
[p. 22]
and long before us to a narrow and winding ravine, sunk between the mountains, and affording just space enough for a road beside a brawling stream, we were, though, as I have confessed, not of the most susceptible materials, all excited by this fresh and beautiful aspect of nature. The pretty Louise, with the elastic step and joyous spirit of youth, leaped down the rocks and over the runs, singing, laughing, and exclaiming at every step. Her mother toiled after her, calling out, “Louise, my dear, you'll fall. Put on your bonnet, my child, you'll be one freckle—Louise! Louise! your gloves off! how absurd!” But Louise heard not, or heeded not. She ran on like another Atalanta, defying the gentlemen to overtake her, and, like her prototype, giving them a fair chance, by often stepping aside to crop a flower too inviting to be resisted. They all followed her lead—all but Mr. Hudson, who coolly walked beside the elder ladies—pointed out the best stepping-places—gave them his arm when necessary— and gave them the flowers he gathered, reserving only a few of the choicest. Mrs. Campbell touched my arm, and whispered, “We need no ghost to tell
[p. 23]
us for whom those are destined.” The lumbering coach came on, and one after another the pedestrians were picked up. Louise's colour was heightened by exercise, and her eyes were sparkling with excited spirits. She was something like a flower in the desert—the only one among us, young or pretty, and she was flattered and petted on all sides. She sat between her mother and myself, on the back seat, and was continually putting her pretty face forward on one side and on the other, to answer the compliments and sallies directed to her from the gentlemen who occupied the middle and front seats. As, with the exception of Mr. Hudson, they were all of the trustworthy, elderly, papa and uncle order, this did not imply any undue forwardness in our young friend. At any rate, Mr. Hudson, the only member of the party not hors du combat, did not profit by the vantage-ground she offered, to advance his acquaintance with her. He, now and then, glanced his eye at her, and a strikingly open, gentlemanly eye had Mr. Hudson, (so said the mo- ther,) and sometimes smiled at the jeux d'esprit that might have derived a portion of their brilliancy from the bright lips through which they passed, as water
[p. 24]
takes a hue from the precious ore through which it sometimes issues. “Mr. Hudson appears quite to appreciate Louise,” whispered Mrs. Campbell, “and yet did you ever see any one so unpresuming? He has not even ventured to offer her the bouquet he gathered for her!”
“For me, mamma, are you sure he gathered it for me?”
“Certainly, my love, for whom else could it be?”
Louise was determined the flowers should not fail of their destination, through the youth's over-modesty.
“How sweetly pretty your flowers are, Mr. Hudson!” she began.
“They are both sweet and pretty, Miss Campbell.”
“Fragrant, you mean?” Mr. Hudson bowed assentingly; “that is delightful, where could you have found them? I never can find a sweet wildflower. I am passionately fond of fragrant flowers; indeed, I think flowers without fragrance are quite an imposition. Look at these," she held up the bunch with which she had seemed, a few moments before, quite satisfied; “a French flower-girl could
[p. 25]
make quite as good!” she threw them with a pretty toss of her head, out of the window; and still on this hint, Mr. Hudson spake not—to the point.
He very coolly smelt his flowers, and said, he wished a certain Englishman were in the coach, whom he had heard assert that American flowers had no fragrance—that the climate, like the satyr, blew hot and cold on them; melted and froze the odour out of them. He thought he would he satisfied that his opinion, like some other foreign opinions, was rather the result of his own ignorance, than of a just appreciation of the products of the country.
Mrs. Campbell heard his long speech out—begged leave to smell his flowers—then passed them to her daughter, and she, after some eloquent “Ohs!” and “Ahs!” returned them to Mr. Hudson, who received them with a very polite inclination of his head, but without anything like the anticipated, “pray keep them!” I looked at the mother, expecting to see her a little crest-fallen, but no! her face was the very picture of confidingness and good-humour, with a slight touch of pity for the self-denying modesty of her new acquaintance. “I do not
[p. 26]
doubt,” she said to me at the first opportunity, “that Mr. Hudson has been to France, where, they tell me, it is reckoned very improper to offer attentions of any sort to a young unmarried lady. He is uncommonly unpresuming! but do you not think he is a little too particular?”
“He may be so—but particularity is a good fault in a stage-coach, Mrs. Campbell.”
“Certainly, that is a very just remark, and it will be quite time enough to encourage him when we arrive at the Springs.”
At “the Springs” we arrived in the course of the following day, and were received and had our places assigned us as one party, of which the “unpresuming” Mr. Hudson made, so to speak, an integral part. No mode of ripening an acquaintance is so rapid as that of travelling two or three days, more or less, in a stage-coach. In a steamboat, if you are reserved, sullen—Anglois—(we quote a French synonyme)—you may go apart, upon the upper, or the lower deck—fore or aft—you may drop your veil and look down into the water, or turn your back upon the company, and gaze upon the shore— or you may creep into a berth, and draw a curtain
[p. 27]
between yourself and the world; but what art— what device—what panoply, can resist the social system of a stage-coach! Scott somewhere says, I believe in his chapter upon equality, that it exists only among the Hottentots; he overlooked the temporary but perfect democracy of a stage-coach, where each is reduced to a unit, and feels, whatever his rank, fortune, or distinctions may be, as he is packed, crowded, and pinioned in, that his next neighbours virtually address to him what a surly fellow in a “Jackson Meeting” yesterday, said to a poor man who remonstrated against being jostled and squeezed, “What are you, sir? you are nothing, sir, but an individual!”
But with the good-humoured and kind-hearted, instead of hostility, there is a neighbourly fellow- feeling, nurtured by the intimate relations of a stage-coach. Our fellow-passengers seem to us like cotemporaries,—we have set out with the same purposes and hopes—met with the same disappointments and mischances—“we have had our losses together;” in short, in a stage-coach, as in every mode and condition of human life, sympathy—the electric chain of social being—may be developed,
[p. 28]
and, instead of gall and vinegar, we may enjoy the sweetest of all draughts—the milk of human kindness.
Franklin wrote an essay upon the morals of chess. A chapter on the morals of travelling might not be unprofitable in a country like ours, where half the population is afloat three months of every year.
But my short story must be finished without (I fear!) a moral of any kind.
The Springs, or rather the Spring, which we had selected for our poste restante for some days, was the celebrated Sweet Spring in Union County in Virginia. We chanced to have arrived there before the fashionable season. Our pretty Louise was very near the sad predicament of a belle without a beau. She had, however, plenty of admirers and attendants. Bachelors of some forty or fifty years' standing; widowers from the south, who had come up to the springs to get rid of their bile and their sad memories, and young married men there were who were permitted by their good-natured wives to ride and dance with Louise.
Louise was of the happy disposition that takes “the goods the gods provide,” and enjoys them; that
[p. 29]
never, to use a vulgar simile, throws down the actual bread and butter for the possible cake. The Virginia Springs have few artificial contrivances for pleasure, and it was delightful to see in the pretty Louise the inexhaustible resources of a youthful and cheerful spirit. She would talk by the half-hour with the old Frenchman who obtains a little pécule by keeping the bath and furnishing fire and towels for the ladies, “for what it pleases them to give him.” She would listen to his stories of the French revolution, and his assurances in Anglo-French, (forty years of his threescore and ten had been passed in America,) that she spoke French like a Parisienne. She was, like a butterfly, perpetually on the wing over that beautiful lawn, (how profanely marred by the ugly little cabins that dot it!) which swells up from the deep dell in which the Spring is embosomed, and where, like some sylvan divinity it is sheltered and hidden by a guard of magnificent oaks and elms.
Mrs. Campbell, though the essence of good-nature, was not just then in so satisfied a frame of mind. It was her daughter's debut as a young lady, and she had seen visions, and dreamed dreams of lovers
[p. 30]
and their accompaniments, offers, refusals, and an acceptance! No wonder that the scarcity of the raw material, the warp and woof of which the good mother expected to have woven the matrimonial fabric, should have proved trying to her. Its natural effect was to enhance Mr. Hudson's value; and while Mrs. Campbell unceasingly commended his unpresumingness, she gave him the kindest encouragement to dispense with it, and sometimes appeared a little nettled at his obstinate modesty. Walks were often proposed, but Mr. Hudson, instead of taking a tempting and accessible position beside the young lady, would attend her mamma, or modestly leave them both to the elderly gentlemen, and stray along alone. Once, I remember, a stroll was proposed to a romantic waterfall. The gentlemen whose services we had a right to command were playing billiards. “I am sure,” said Mrs. Campbell, “we may venture to ask Mr. Hudson— he is so unpresuming!”
Accordingly he was asked, and politely joined us —Mrs. Campbell (albeit still ignorant of Mr. Hudson's parentage, fortune, &c.) was all affability— Miss Louise was all gaiety and frankness—so pretty,
[p. 31]
so attractive, so aided by the sylvan influences that in “love-breathing June” dispose the young and susceptible to the sentiment par excellence, that I confess I marvelled that our young friend remained the unpresuming Mr. Hudson.
One evening, at Mrs. Campbell's suggestion, a dance was got up. It was a difficult enterprise, but by the aid of one or two married pairs, and a philanthropic elderly single lady, we mustered a sufficient number for a cotillion. “You and Louise will have hard duty this evening. It is to be hoped she may prove an agreeable partner,” said Mrs. Campbell to Mr. Hudson, as he led off her daughter; “of course,” she added, in a whisper, to her next neighbour, “they must dance together, but I should not have hinted it to him if he were not so very unpresuming!”
But Mr. Hudson did not find the necessity strong enough to overcome that quality of his disposition, which now began to appear to us all, as potent as a ruling passion. He evidently enjoyed the dance with his graceful partner, then modestly resigned her hand, and filled up the measure of his virtue by
[p. 32]
dancing with the unattractive married ladies, and finally crowned it by leading off a Virginia reel with the above-mentioned single lady.
When I parted with Louise for the night, “what a gentlemanly, agreeable man is Mr. Hudson!” said she, “and as mamma says, so very unpresuming!”
The next day was fixed for Mrs. Campbell's departure. She was going to the Natural Bridge. I went to her room to pass the last half-hour with her, and while she was expressing her sincere regret at leaving us all, including Mr. Hudson, on whom she bestowed her usual encomium, we saw a servant bring his baggage from his cabin, and place it with that destined for the Natural Bridge. “Well! well!” exclaimed Mrs. Campbell, who could not, and indeed did not attempt to conceal her satisfaction, “still waters run deep! I suspected all the while----”
“Pshaw! Mamma—do hush!” said Miss Louise, whose smiles, in spite of her, betrayed that her mind had, simultaneously with her mother's, seized on the solution of Mr. Hudson's mysterious unpresumingness.
“La! Louise, my darling, we need not mind
[p. 33]
Miss-----; I am sure she is so discerning, she must have seen, as I did long ago, that Mr. Hudson was like young Edwin in “Edwin and Angelina.’”
“Then he has not yet talked of love,” I asked, rather mischievously.
“Bless me! no! This, however, is a pretty bold step, going to the Natural Bridge with us—but—n’importe, as Louise says, he will do nothing hasty--I am sure of it—he is so unpresuming!”
Whilst we were talking, the Fincastle coach arrived, and it was announced to Mrs. Campbell that there must be a delay of an hour or two before it would proceed, as it required some repair, and (as every body knows who has travelled in Virginia) there was no other carriage to take its place en route. The servant who communicated this to Mrs. Campbell, told us that a very nice-looking gentleman, and his lady, and daughter, had arrived in the coach, who were to remain at the Sweet Springs. “Who were they? and what were their names?” She did not know, “but she reckoned they were somebody, for they had a heap of baggage.” It was immediately proposed that we should abandon the cabin, and reconnoitre the drawing-room and
[p. 34]
piazza, in quest of the new-comers. In those strongholds of ennui—watering-places—the perusal of new faces is as exciting as the covers of a fresh novel to the fair patronesses of a circulating library. We were disappointed in our purpose. We met no one but Mr. Hudson. He seemed, since we parted, a changed man; and instead of the listlessness, abstraction, and indifference—to all which it pleased Mrs. Campbell to apply the term unpresumingness—he was all expression and animation. Once only the flow of his spirits was checked for an instant, when Mrs. Campbell said with a complacent smile, “I was very glad to see your baggage brought out for the Fincastle coach.” He stammered and blushed, and she changed the conversation. Louise was touched by the consciousness of having produced a sensation, and was quiet and retiring, and Mr. Hudson so much more attentive and interested than I had ever seen him before, that I began to think the mother was not at fault, and that our Mr. Hudson was as like the unpresuming hermit lover, as a whiskered, well-dressed, Springs’ lounger could be. I was confirmed in this belief, and convinced that he would soon “talk of
[p. 35]
love,” when, on going with Louise to her cabin in search of something she had left behind, we saw, on her table, a book neatly enveloped in white paper, on which was written in pencil, “To L. C. from C. H.,” and under it the trite quotation from the text-book of lovers, “The world is divided into two parts—that where she is, and that where she is not.” “How very odd !” exclaimed Louise, blushing, and smiling, and untying, with a fluttering hand, the blue ribbon wound around the envelope. She opened the book. It was a blank album, with flowers pressed between its leaves, the very flowers that the “unpresuming Mr. Hudson” had not the courage to offer to Louise on the first day of their acquaintance. Here they were embalmed by love and poetry; for on each page was pencilled a quoted stanza from some popular amorous poet. We had hardly time to glance our eyes over them, when the horn of the Fincastle coach sounded its note of preparation. “What am I to do?” said Louise; “why did not that stupid chambermaid give me the book before; he thought I had seen it, and that explains his being in such spirits, and mamma telling him, too, she was glad he was going on with us! he
[p. 36]
must think it as good as settled! What am I to do? I can't leave it—can I?”
“Not if you choose to take it,” I replied, implying the advice she wished.
“Then do, dear Miss, just wrap it up in that shawl of yours, and while I am getting into the coach, you can just tuck it into my carpet-hag. I can show it to mamma, and if I return it, there is no harm done, for he is so unpresuming! but is it not droll, his flaming forth so all of a sudden?”
Very “droll!” and inexplicable, certainly, did appear to me this new phase of the Proteus passion, and marvelling, I followed my young friend, scrupulously concealing the album in the folds of my shawl. As we left the door of the cabin Louise had occupied, we saw, in the walk just before us, the two ladies of whose arrival we had been apprized.
“Oh!” exclaimed Louise, “how much that young lady's walk is like Laura Clay's!”
At the sound of her name the stranger turned, and proved to be an old schoolmate of Louise's. I took advantage of the moment when the young ladies were exchanging their affectionate greetings,
[p. 37]
to perform my delicate commission, and having ordered in the carpet-bag, I had drawn it into one corner of the room, and was just unlacing it, when the two girls came in.
“How very provoking,” said Louise, “that we are going just as you have arrived.”
“And only think,” returned her friend, “of the chambermaid telling me I was to have the room of a young lady going in the Fincastle coach, and my never dreaming of that young lady being you, and we could have had such nice times in that room together, I have so much to tell you!”
“And I have the drollest thing to tell you!” said Louise; “but, by the way, I heard you were engaged,”—the young lady smiled—“is it true?”— she nodded assent—“Oh, tell me to whom? I am dying to know—the deuce take that horn!—just tell his name.”
“Charles Hudson.”
“Charles Hudson!!”
“Yes, my dear—Charles Hudson—is it not too curious you should have been a week here with him, and not found it out?”
Louise was too much astonished to reply. She
[p. 38]
cast an imploring glance towards me, and I, while I relaced the bag, returned a look that assured her the album should be secretly restored to its right place. Mr. Hudson's unnatural coldness to the charms of my pretty little friend, the mystery of the book—Miss Clay's initials being the same as Miss Campbell's—all was explained. Louise concealed her blushes in a hasty parting embrace, and as she stepped into the carriage, I heard her mother saying to Mr. Hudson,
“Not going with us! why did you change your mind?”
“Some friends have arrived here, Madam, whom I expected to have met at the Natural Bridge.”
Mrs. Campbell bowed for the last time to the unpresuming Mr. Hudson. The coach drove off, and left me meditating upon the trials of a pretty young girl who is chaperoned to watering-places by a silly, expecting, and credulous mother.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Unpresuming Mr. Hudson
Subject
The topic of the resource
Travel, fashionable-watering places, marriage market.
Description
An account of the resource
A mother and daughter meet an eligible bachelor at a fashionable resort, and are confused by his disinterested behavior.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The Gift, edited by Eliza Leslie, pp. 17-38.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Philadelphia: E.L. Carey & A. Hart.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1836 [published in 1835]
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
D. Gussman
Relation
A related resource
Reprinted in The Boston Weekly Magazine, vol. 1, no. 43, June 29, 1839, p. 337-338.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
"Edwin and Angelina"
1835
1836
Andrew Jackson
Atalanta
bachelors
Benjamin Franklin
Carlo Goldoni
Carlo Pedrotti
dancing
daughters
Eliza Leslie
Female education
Fincastle coach
gentlemen
gift book
Hottentots
individualism
Jackson meetings
love poems
manners
marriage market
Mary Ann Paton (Mrs. Wood)
modesty
Mothers
Natural Bridge
Oliver Goldsmith
single life
Sir Walter Scott
stage-coach
Sweet Spring
The Gift
Virginia
watering-places