1
10
2
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/83e788cb3c5d39de5798cb9c0ee60cf1.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=tVlY%7Exfz2oLVC13rewidIundo62owWjQ0Xjrm63bKO-i4ZyDB4CY4KWOnKjapa%7EE98IEc5OQbWInU1HoT5WoAzkPWBOxbM1ALrreLMD7QKL75rfr7rgKHHkfCHLu-2lUS7R6SwfmAIyFjSeHdzOm%7ENCpnYznPZmI9O%7EOAtIhRkITQRNHMaMTSupkLdjoqgBOLp1P1omsZYLRjCiHTZGRxf8yGx8GL7UDBwMn4zUqMfa4TPa5lR5j0yBATpN15-9IntsUResjifxe7JSwuZucXa50eP9SbQd3WHIYy8JCKlaYizi7vIFY7ZKOSODz8PIzMU0Po26QwE8ri4qPp6FR8g__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
93d806ca3d019b9869b7eb19181cf95a
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
1845
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document.
AN INCIDENT AT ROME
____________________________
BY MISS C. M. SEDGWICK
[104]
During a sojourn of some months at Rome, Lady C---- kindly offered to take me in her droski to Tusculum, a drive, as nearly as I can recall the distance, of some dozen miles. Accordingly, on one of those days, (of which we have often a counterpart in our autumnal months,) when the sky is of its deepest blue, and so serene that the eye seems to penetrate depths never before revealed, we passed the gate of St. John Lateran and entered on the Appian Way. Most
“Things by season seasoned are,
To their right praise and true perfection.”
But to the Roman campagna change of season brings no change. In the spring when, elsewhere, there is a general resurrection of vegetable life – a joyous beginning of the procession of the year – this unchanging aspect of the campagna is most solemn. When all the rest of Italy, as far as nature is concerned, has the beauty, gladness and promise of youth, is in truth a paradise regained, there are here no springing corn, no budding vine-stalks, no opening blossoms, scarcely a bird’s note. Nature, elsewhere so active, so plastic, so full of hope, is here monumental – a record of the inexorable past.
But though there be no look of cheerful habitancy, there is a solemn beauty. You can scarcely turn your eye without a strong emotion, without involuntarily uttering a name that is a charmed word. “There is Soracte!” “There is Tivoli!” “There is the country of the Sabines!” “There are the beautiful Alban Hills!” Behind you is Rome with its natural elevations, its splendid domes, towers and obelisks, its brooding pines, and sad cypresses – surely the most picturesque, the most suggestive of cities. The vast solitudes around you are filled with records of Rome and its magnificent life-time; broken aqueducts sometimes extending for a quarter of a mile, and then standing in fragments of three or four, or perhaps a single arch. On every side are monuments and tombs, by which the poor tenants hoped to perpetuate their names. The high sepulchral grass waves around them, the stones are a blank, or if the name be preserved – as in the still nearly perfect tomb of Cecilia Metella – it is but a name, all the rest is left to conjecture.
Lady C---- had resided several winters at Rome, and was perfectly familiar with its antiquities, and generous in her communications, and so delightfully did the time pass away that we hardly seemed to have emerged from the Porta San Giovanni when we drove into the little town of Frascati. The landlord appeared at the carriage door, with the usual smiles and potency of an Italian host, and answering the ready “Yes – yes – my lady!” to all Lady C’s demands, (the chief one being a parlor with a pleasant prospect,) he ushered us into the house and up a dirty stairway, and opened the door and windows of a little parlor, exclaiming, “Ecco, ecco, mi ladi, ecco una bella veduta!” We rushed to the window, expecting a beautiful view of the campagna, but instead of that we could see nothing but the villainous little piazza we had just left, with the usual accompaniments of an Italian place, beggars and an idle rabble. Lady C. smiled, and turning to me said, “The house affords nothing better, or he would have given it to us,” and bowing to our host as if she were quite satisfied, he took her orders and left us to ourselves.
“At what are you smiling?” she said to me.
“At your un-English way of proceeding, my dear Lady C.
Pardon my impertinence, but it would have seemed to me more nationally characteristic if you had broken out upon our host for attempting to impose this piazza on you for a beautiful prospect.”
“But it is to his eye. You are right, my friend. I have lived long enough abroad to get rid of a few prejudices, and some inconvenient and very unwise English habits. I do not now conclude that a thing is of course wrong because it is not in our Island fashion; and I am just learning to endure with good temper what I cannot cure, and to find out that every country, I might almost say every creature, has a bright side, at which we may look and thank God. Truly I am often ashamed of my snarling, barking, arrogant countrymen.”
I was charmed with the candor of Lady C’s concession, but being well aware that such a concession is much of the nature of a personal humiliation, I turned the subject by asking Lady C. if she had been frequently at Frascati?
“Often.” she said, and the last time she was there was rather memorable, and she proceeded to relate the following story, some part of which I had heard from our consul at Naples. Three years before, letters had been received at Rome, and in those Italian cities most frequented by the English, requesting inquiries to be set foot for a certain Murray Bathurst, a young Englishman, who had come to the Continent early in the preceding spring, intending to make the tour of Italy chiefly on foot. His mother, a widow, had received letters from him as late as October. He was then on his return from Naples to Rome, purposing to embark at Civita Vecchia for Marseilles. The mother’s letters expressed the misery of her suspense and anxiety so touchingly that many persons became interested in her behalf. Her letters were enforced by others from persons of note. I remember Lady C. mentioned Wordsworth or Southey’s name. This adventitious aid could scarcely have been necessary to stimulate benevo-
[105]
lence. No adventitious aid would ever be in requisition if there were more of the human race like a certain little woman in Boston, who hearing an alarm given of a child being run over, rushed forward to rescue it with such signs of distress that a passer by asked, “Is it your child?” “No,” she replied, “but it is somebody’s child.” Diligent inquiries were made of the police, and the books of our consuls at the different cities examined. The result was that Murray Bathurst was traced from Milan to Naples, back to Rome, and thence to Civita Vecchia. His entrance from Rome into that most forlorn of all travelers’ depots was duly registered, and there all clew was lost. In vain were the registers of all the steamers and of every craft that left the port examined – there was no trace of him. It must have been the same Murray Bathurst that was noted elsewhere; for his tall, slender, un-English person, his large dark melancholy eyes, his pale complexion, and tangled long dark hair, were all so notable as to be recorded in the reports of the police. Many letters were written to the mother giving this unsatisfactory information, and expressive of condolence and regret that no more could be learned of the lost young man. In a little time the topic became trite, then was forgotten, and mother and son sunk into the oblivion of past things.
A year ran away, when one morning, just as Lady C. was sitting down to her solitary breakfast in the ---- palace, Mrs. Bathurst was announced. The name and its association had passed from Lady C’s memory. Mrs. Bathurst presented a letter of introduction, and said – “My apology for troubling you is that you are the only person in Rome whom I have ever seen before, and of whose interest and sympathy I feel assured.”
Lady C. was perplexed, but on glancing at the letter she expressed, I have no doubt with the graceful courtesy that characterized her, her readiness to serve Mrs. Bathurst in any mode she would suggest –“But where and when,” she asked, “have I had the pleasure of meeting you?”
“It is quite as natural that you should forget as that I should remember it – the meeting was accidental, but the place may serve to recall it to you. Do you remember, seventeen years ago, meeting a young woman in the widow’s weeds with a little boy, whose beauty I believe first attracted you, wandering about the Druidical remains at Stonehenge?”
“Perfectly – perfectly – and now, though certainly somewhat changed by time – more probably by recent sorrow – I recall your countenance. And that lovely boy, I am quite sure I should know him again. I never have forgotten his extraordinary look of curiosity and investigation as he wandered about amidst those stupendous ruins, nor the intelligent wonder with which he listened to our speculations.”
“And do you remember the subsequent evening we passed together at the inn, when our conversation turned on the antiquities of Italy, and you gave us some account of your then recent visit to Rome, and showed us many drawings in your port-folio, and gave my poor boy a beautiful sketch of one to the temples of Pæstum?”
“Yes, oh yes! and I remember being exceedingly surprised, and pleased, with the child’s extraordinary acquaintance with subjects of which few children of his age had ever heard.”
“Ah, it was then my pride, my fatal pride to instruct him on these subjects, which had always interested myself, and which had occupied much of my poor husband’s life. I developed prematurely, and most unwisely, his taste, and so concentrated his mind on the study of antiquities, that it became a passion. I was gratified by the development of what appeared to me extraordinary genius. Thus I fed the flame that was to consume my poor boy. I found too late that it was impossible to restore his mind to the interests natural, and of course healthy, to youth. My fortune was narrow. I lived with the most rigid economy to supply him with the means of education. He went to Oxford, where he acquitted himself honorably in all the prescribed studies. These were mere task work, except so far as the classics related to his favorite pursuits. His task done, he wasted his health in midnight antiquarian research. At the close of his college career we went into Devonshire at the invitation of my brother-in-law, Sidney Bathurst, to pass the winter.” At this point of her story Mrs. Bathurst paused, reluctant to indulge in the egotism of going into particulars not immediately connected with her loss, though greatly aggravating the calamity; but Lady C., full of sympathy, and not without curiosity, begging her not to omit any particular, she proceeded. “Sydney Bathurst had repaired the fallen fortunes of his family by a long residence in India. His mind was thoroughly mercantilized. He had rather a contempt for all young men, and such a thorough conviction of the unproductiveness of all learning, that my son’s pursuits did not shock him so much as I had feared. His only child, Clara Bathurst, was after his own heart, practical, cheerful even to gayety, careless of the past and future, and reflecting the present brightly as a mirror does sunshine. I soon perceived that her father’s design in inviting us was to give the young people an opportunity of falling in love. He naturally wished to transmit his fortune to one of his own name and family, and I – I trust without a covetous spirit – conscious that my son had no talent for acquitting fortune, was delighted with the prospect of his obtaining, with an amiable wife, the means of indulging his taste. Nothing – I am convinced of it – nothing goes right where fortune is the basis of a matrimonial project. Marriage is the Lord’s temple – the money-changers may not enter it with impunity. I must do myself the justice to say that fortune was not my primary object. I watched the indications of the young people’s affections with intense interest. There were few points of sympathy between them. My son seemed hardly to notice his cousin; at times, indeed, gleams from her sunny spirit entered his heart, but as if through a crack – no light was diffused there. With Clara the case was quite different. Affection is a woman’s atmosphere. We are flexible and clinging in our natures, and we attach ourselves to the nearest object. We lived in retirement. My
[106]
son had no competitor. He was gentle in his manners, refined, graceful – handsome. He had the reputation of learning and talent.
“Clara became quiet and thoughtful. She took to reading, and, poor girl! at last came to poring over the huge old books in which my son buried himself. She seemed winding herself into a sort of chrysalis condition, in the hope of a transition to come.
“The winter passed away without change to Murray. One idea absorbed him. Early in the spring he asked a private audience of his uncle, and when Mr. Sydney Bathurst was prepared to hear a disclosure harmonizing with his favorite project, my son modestly imparted his desire to come to Italy, his longing to explore the Etruscan remains whose riches were just then developing. He perceived his uncle’s astonishment, disappointment and displeasure, and he intimated that though poor he was independent. His purpose was to travel on foot, and he had ascertained by inquiries and calculation that the half of his annual allowance would pay for his meat, drink, and lodging, which should be all of the simplest.
“‘And how’, his uncle asked contemptuously, ‘was his rummaging and groping about the dusty old underground ruins of Italy fit him for any manly career? When was he to set about getting his living?’
“My son replied that what others called a living was superfluity to him, that he would not exchange his favorite pursuits for all England’s wealth – for himself he had no favor to ask but to be let alone; but that it would be an inexpressible comfort if, during the six months of his absence, he might leave me in my present happy situation – in the society of his cousin, whom he was sure I loved next to himself.
“‘The only sensible thing he said,’ exclaimed my brother-in-law, when he repeated to me the conversation, ‘Such folly is incomprehensible. But there is no use in interfering. Let him go his own way and take the consequence. Bread and water regimen in perspective is well enough, but, my word for it, he will be tired of it and Italy and its rubbish before six months are past.’
‘I will not go into more particulars of our conversation. I naturally defended my poor son, but I felt that Mr. Bathurst’s objections were sound. It ended in my acquiescing in Murray’s carrying out the plan he had made, and encountering the hardships he contemned, in the hope they would prove the best medicine for his diseased mind. But I was to learn that a mental, like a physical, condition which has been cherished and fortified by education cannot be changed by medicine. My son left us. Poor Clara, like Undine, had found a soul in the development of her affections. Her gayety was gone. So long as my son continued to write to us she read every thing she could lay her hands upon connected with the scene of his travels and the researches that particularly interested him. Since then she had read nothing. For a time she fell into a deep melancholy. From this she was roused, in part by my earnest entreaties, but more by the force of her own conscience. She is now a sort of lay sister of charity to the neighborhood, and she finds, as the wretched have always done, the surest solace for her own misfortunes in softening the miseries of others.”
So far Lady C. had told me Mrs. Bathurst’s story as she recalled it in her own words. Six months had elapsed since young Bathurst had been seen at Civita Vecchia. Mrs. Bathurst had come to Italy in the hope that she might obtain some clew that had escaped the less interested search of strangers. Her brother-in-law had supplied her amply with the means of traveling, and she had resolved never to abandon the pursuit while the least ray of hope remained. The circumstances on which she mainly rested her belief that nothing fatal had happened to her son were, that as he was of the Roman Catholic faith – that as he spoke Italian like a native, and as his complexion and features were much more like the Italian than his own northern race, he might for years wander about the less frequented parts of Italy without incurring the suspicion that he was a foreigner. She conjectured that on arriving at Civita Vecchia he had yielded to an unconquerable reluctance to leaving Italy. She had no very definite idea of what had since been his fate. She alternated between hope and despair without any reason but the condition of feeling she happened to be in. The source whence young Bathurst had derived his antiquarian enthusiasm was soon quite obvious to Lady C. The only mode of drawing Mrs. Bathurst from her sorrowful maternal anxieties was to plunge her into some obscure, unintelligible ruin in Rome. She preferred the dim Thermæ of Titus, Caracalla’s baths, or Sallust’s garden, to St. Peter’s, and the fragments of the palaces of the Cæsars to all the glories of the Vatican. But there were times when she was so steeped in grief, so near despair, that she seemed on the verge of insanity: and it was one evening after trying in vain to rouse and soothe her that Lady C. proposed a drive to Tusculum the next day. They accordingly set forth the next morning, and the mother seemed to be drawn away from her personal sorrows on this monumental road, for who, it is natural to ask here, can escape the common destiny of man “made to mourn?”
They drove into the little town of Frascati, and stopped at this same inn where Lady C. and myself were now discussing our cold chicken. The piazza was as thronged and noisy then as now, as these places always are in Italy, and most noisy in the meanest, poorest, lowest-fallen towns. As the ladies alighted screaming guides and clamorous beggars thronged about them. Mrs. Bathurst hurried into the inn. Lady C., more accustomed to the disagreeable juxtaposition of fleas, dirt and importunity, quietly stopped to make her bargain with a guide, and give, as is her custom, a small sum to the landlord to be dispensed to the poorest poor. Her eye was attracted by a lean and miserable man who stood behind the crowd, and apart from it, and who, pale, emaciated and haggard, with a threadbare cloak closely drawn around him, and seeming most of all to need charity, was apparently unobservant and unconcerned.
“My friend,” said Lady C. to the landlord, and
[107]
pointing to the man who had attracted her eye, “see to that poor wretch getting the largest share of my charity, and here,” she added, again opening her ever willing purse, “here is something more – get him a warm under-garment – he is shivering at this moment.”
“Ah, madame,” replied mine host, “he is well cared for; his senses are a little astray, and of such, you know, the Holy Virgin has special care. He wanders about from morning till night, and when, at evening, he comes into Frascati, there is not a churl in the town that would not give him a bed and lodging, though he never asks for either. He is innocent and quiet enough, poor fellow!”
“Has he no family – no relatives among you?” asked Lady C – but she received no reply – another carriage had drawn up, and the landlord with the ready civility of his craft was opening its door.
“Come with me to the other side of the house,” said Lady C. to Mrs. Bathurst, whom she found in a little back parlor overlooking the court. “Come with me and see a pensioner of the Holy Virgin – as our host assures me he is – a creature steeped in poverty, but without suffering, and with an aspect that having once looked upon you never can forget.” Before she had finished her sentence Lady C. was at the window of “la belle veduta,” overlooking the piazza. The throng of beggars was at the heels of the newly arrived gentry, and Lady C. looked about, for some time in vain, for the subject of her compassion. “Ah, there he goes!” she said, espying him. “Is there not a careless, objectless desolation in his very movement?”
“I do not see that he differs from the other beggars, except that he stoops, and has a less noble air than many of them.”
“My dear Mrs. Bathurst! But you do not see his face, and therefore cannot judge – poor fellow, he is taking to the sunny steps of the church like the rest of them, and there is languidly laying himself down to his best repose.”
After cold chicken and a bottle of wine at Frascati, the ladies proceeded on foot to Tusculum, preferring to be discommoded by a walk, somewhat too long, to the perpetual annoyance of clamorous yelling donkey drivers. After having gone up the long hill to Tusculum, they turned into the Ruffuiella, Lucien Bonaparte’s villa, and finding little to attract them in its formal adornments, they soon left it. As they turned toward the gate Lady C. exclaimed, “There is my poor friend again! he has taken the road to Tusculum; I hope we may cross his path there, I want you to see his face, if I do not mistake, it has a story, and a sad one.”
“I am ashamed to confess to you,” replied Mrs. Bathurst, “how little curiosity I feel about him; how little I am touched by all the misery I see here. My whole sentient being is resolved into one distressful feeling. At times, indeed, I am roused from it, and the thought that I am in Italy, sends a thrill of pleasure though my frame. Even here, in Tusculum, at this highest point of excitement, where, under ordinary circumstances, the very stones would burn my feet, my sorrow comes back upon me like a thunder-bolt.”
“Drive it away now, if possible,” said Lady C. “It is worth your while, I assure you, to possess your mind in this place – here is a cicerone who will give a name, right or wrong, whenever we ask for it. He told me the other day, in good faith, that the ciceroni all take their name from Cicero, who, in his day, showed the marvelous fine things here to strangers! I asked the fellow who this Cicero was, and he answered, un gran maestro, who taught little boys all the languages in the world, besides reading, writing, and arithmetic! * [*See Rome in the 19th century] A fair specimen of the veritable information of these gentry.”
The ladies proceeded under the conduct of their guide, to survey the broken walls called “la Scuola di ciceroni,” as some learned expounders conjecture from the philosophical academy, the institution of which at his own house, in Tusculum, is mentioned in one of Cicero’s letters.
Mrs, Bathurst’s antiquarian enthusiasm began to kindle, her eye dilated, and her pale cheek glowed. In a happy oblivion, for the moment, of her personal anxieties, she left Lady C. seated on the broken fragment of a column almost overgrown by weeds and grass, and followed her talking guide, to look at the reticulated walls of a row of houses, at a disinterred Roman pavement, and among a mass of ruins at the gradus of an amphitheater. While she was thus occupied, the poor pensioner of the Virgin emerged from a tangled thicket near Lady C., bearing and bending over a large flat stone, which he had hardly strength to carry, and with his eye riveted to it as if he were perusing it, he sat down on the ground apparently without observing her, near Lady C’s feet. The hair, as he studiously bent over the stone, hung in tangled masses over his face, so as to hide all but its outline. At this moment Lady C. heard Mrs. Bathurst approaching from behind. She pointed to the man, and signified to her not to disturb him. The guide misinterpreting her action, said “Fear nothing, my lady, he’s an innocent madman, who passes his time wandering about these ruins, digging and groping – half the world are somewhat in his way – the Virgin muddles their brains and sends them here to spend their money in poor old Italy. By St. Peter!” he continued, going close to the antiquary and bending over him, “he has found something worth while this time. What is it, my good fellow?”
The crazed man, after scraping away the plaster and rubbish that adhered to the stone, had found what he sought, an inscription, defaced, and so far obliterated that no mortal could make it out, but this in no sort abated his joy – it was an inscription made by hands that had mouldered for centuries. Whether it now or ever signified any thing he cared not. He clapped his hands, and as if for the first time conscious of the presence of others, he shook back his hair, and turned his eyes toward the ladies for sympathy – sympathy, the first and last want of human nature. His eyes met theirs – met Mrs. Bathurst’s – his mother’s. He did not move, but from the gush of blood over the
[108]
deathlike paleness of his cheek, and a slight tremor that suddenly pervaded his whole frame, it was evident he recognized her, and that he felt at the same moment his changed and strange condition. The mother knew her son at a glance, and exclaiming, “Murray!” sprung to him and enclosed him in her arms. A shout burst from him so loud and so protracted, that it seemed as if it must shiver his frame – his mother recoiled and sunk fainting in Lady C’s arms.
The story of the unfortunate antiquarian has been already too long and too particular, and I shall only briefly add what remains to be told. A perfect stupor succeeded to Murray Bathurst’s recognition of his mother, and his first consciousness of his wretched condition. A fever ensued – medical attendants – tender nursing most remedial, the comforts from which he had long been estranged, nature and youth all combined to do the work of restoration. With the return of reason, came a horror of the passion that had led him astray, and he became as impatient as he had been reluctant to leave Italy. He remembered that after reaching Civita Vecchia, he felt like a lover tearing himself from the object of his passion. His feet seemed to grow to the rich dust of Italy. Day after day he delayed taking the passage. After wandering about late one night, he remembered awaking in the morning with a high fever, and from that time his memory became more and more obscure. He had dim recollections of being transported from one place to another, of missing, one after another, his articles of dress – of dreams of hunger and thirst – and of finding jugs of water and bread by his bedside – finally, all became a blank, till he awoke in his mother’s arms. Mrs. Bathurst, fearful of a relapse into his old habits of mind, lost no time in leaving Italy. She had since kept Lady C. informed of the progress of her son’s cure, which she now believed to be radical. He had the good sense to avoid all books related to his disastrous passion, and every thing associated with it. His uncle had received him with open arms, comforting himself with the verification of his prognostics for the past trials of his nephew, and saying somewhat coarsely, that to be sure the hair of the same dog would cure the bite, if you ate hide and all.
A more fitting mistress than Italy had taken possession of the young man’s imagination, and health and cheerfulness were in her train. The last letter communicated the marriage of the cousins – and now Mrs. Bathurst said they could look back with tranquil minds, to that “beautiful region” where
“A spirit hangs o’er towns and farms,
Statues and temples, and memorial tombs.”
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
An Incident at Rome
Subject
The topic of the resource
English travelers in Italy, antiquarianism.
Description
An account of the resource
The narrator, traveling in Italy, meets an English lady, who recounts the story of Mrs. Bathurst and her son Murray, a young antiquarian who goes mad while conducting research in Rome. He is eventually reunited with his mother and restored to sanity.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
C[atharine]. M[aria]. Sedgwick
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Graham's Magazine [edited by George R. Graham], March 1845: 104-8.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1845
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Gabriela Siwiec
D. Gussman
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
1845
antiquarian
antiquities
beggars
Cicero
Frascati
Graham's Magazine
India
Italy
madness
marriage
merchants
Mothers
pride
Roman Catholic
Rome
sons
Southey
sympathy
Tusculum
Wordsworth
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/806e9c78adc1c6a6a670877ecd9f6ac6.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=Uvzg3B2CGLrjYjFFahjZHtURya-U13Rozq52gtuyUhLldKVQSZKvG9pRwVNGeNzHnL1sB7v9vlVcJHJI8N4nWnpR8vigR6toMkuBgEtGO3vASJyK5-zugx9dQQFIgcsRzhCqwHEFErbtjtZX3bOkH%7ESKMhD8NGXxDpjpLXyRng3l1G2gX3TFeuFNMVlHFJ4sEHVL8fssLRImpCk4MFrhsiWBd-4-WhEEV8sJV8TFHMnLFfV3b8KEiK4oDgaYLaSqoomufQSkGLcFuTxu-5xwi2W1seaXdx6wty1rwynMEn3x07ZwlUauUGgoMu1YcgOpnUWWtqQcGfuMk1QKUG8TrQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
10a95d6b33d1568c46862dcefeaee848
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
1840
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.
Marietza.
_____
Some of you, my dear girls, remember that, in November, 1837, our secluded home was visited by a stranger whom all the civilized world delight to honour, and that you soon found the honour, reverence, and observance due to the celebrated writer merged in your love for the woman.
You remember the story of the Greek girl Marietza which she told us one happy evening when you were permitted to gather round her in the little parlour. We can recall her sweet voice, the graces of her language, and the varying expression of her face while she related the startling incidents of the young girl's life, and recalled the vivid interest that a personal knowledge of her had excited.
These pleasant recollections will invest the story with a charm to you, which it cannot possess for my other readers, for whom the picture must be transferred from a painter's to a common light. But, as there are some pictures worth looking at in any light, I trust to my true and unadorned story to fix attention for a few moments.
You do not remember, my young readers, but you may have heard of the bloody war which the oppressed Greeks waged for their independence against their cruel masters the Turks. It was a long time before the Grecian island of
[53]
Scio took any part in the contest. The Turkish dominion was less felt there than in Greece. The island, as you will perceive if you look at your maps, lies almost under the shadow of the Asiatic coast. It has a rich soil, and in its happy days was so highly cultivated, so loaded with the fruits and flowers of that fortunate clime, that it is described as filled with gardens. There was a higher cultivation there, too, than that of the earth. There were schools and colleges, richly endowed, where the people of both sexes were instructed in the sciences, and in the accomplishments of the most civilized parts of Europe. The Sciots had an extensive commerce. They had resident merchants in the great commercial cities of Europe. They carried on nearly all the trade between Greece and the Turkish cities of Smyrna and Constantinople. Their wealth was deposited in these cities, as we may say, in the very coffers of the Turks; they had, therefore, much more to hazard by a war than their compatriots. Their civil government was in the hands of elders, who adminis- tered it mildly and prudently. Prudence is the virtue (par excellence) of elders. They do not rashly risk the security, prosperity, and ease of peace, for the present glory, and distant and doubtful advantages of war. But if a war can ever be approved by Heaven, it was the war waged by the Greeks for religion and liberty. The patriot Sciots could not very long remain passive spectators of the struggles of their countrymen; nor did they long wait before the aggressions of their masters gave them occasion and impulse.
In May, 1821, a small squadron of Ipsariots (pa-
[54]
triot Greeks) appeared off their coast. The aga, or military governor, immediately resorted to measures that had already been taken at other Greek islands of the Archipelago. He seized forty elders and bishops, and shut them up in the castle as hostages for the good conduct of the people.
A large number of troops was brought from the neighbouring coast of Asia Minor, and garrisoned in the island, and the inhabitants were subjected to their excesses and lawless depredations. Assassinations were frequent; the wealthy inhabitants were plundered on every side, till, stung to madness, there was an attempt made to rouse the people to resistance. But hard it was themselves to light the fire that was to consume their pleasant homes and sweep over their garden-lands, and they were still hesitating, when two adventurers, Burnia and Logotheti, from Samos landed on Scio with a small band of followers. The prudent elders made every effort to prevent the peasantry joining them. The aga took his measures—tyrants never hesitate—and, selecting his victims from the best families, he doubled the number of hostages. The aga expected aid from the Continent. The Sciots hoped the Greek fleet would come to their aid, but they hoped in vain. On the 22d of April a Turkish fleet of fifty sail anchored in the bay, and immediately began to bombard the town. The Sciots were deserted by their Samian friends, who seemed to have come among them, as the falcon returns to his species, to lure them into the hands of their enemies.
Scio became the scene of indescribable horrors. Its inhabitants, men, women, and children, were all
[55]
massacred. The houses were plundered and then burned, not one left standing excepting those belonging to the foreign consuls.
Three days passed before the Turks left the city to penetrate into the recesses of the island. The following passage is from an eyewitness who escaped. He wrote to his friend, "Oh God! what a spectacle did Scio present on this memorable occasion! On whatever side I cast my eyes, nothing but pillage, murder, and conflagration appeared. While some were occupied in plundering the villas of rich merchants, and others in setting fire to the villages, the air was rent with the mingled groans of men, women, and children who were falling under the swords and daggers of the infidels. The only exception made during the massacre was in favour of young women and boys, who were preserved to be afterward sold as slaves. Many of these young women, whose husbands had been butchered, were running to and fro frantic, with torn garments and dishevelled hair, pressing their trembling infants to their breasts, and seeking death as a relief from the fate that awaited them."
My dear girls, when you read such details, horrible but not exaggerated, of the miseries that have been suffered in our days, do you realize them? I believe not. The people are thousands of miles removed from you. They speak a foreign language. Their religion is not your religion; their customs and manners differ from yours. But all human beings are essentially alike; they have the same passions, affections, and wants, and their resemblance increases as they approach the same grade in civilization. The Sciots were an in-
[56]
structed and accomplished people. They were Christians. And if in imagination you will transfer the scenes above described to your own town and villages—to your own happy homes, and, if you can, picture to yourselves your fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters, the subjects of these cruelties, your sympathies, I think, will no longer sleep!
But I am aware that the picture of a famishing Jewish mother, wandering with her child away from her fallen city, would affect you more than a crowded canvass, which should represent all the multitude of the Jews realizing the curses that had been denounced upon them, so I fancy that the story of Marietza will interest you more than the most minute history of the massacre at Scio.
Perhaps you consider yourselves already taken in by being compelled to read this prefatory bit of history, as the customers of the Yankee pedlar were, who, if they purchased one of his cheeses, were compelled to take also one of his grindstones. Pardon me—I will go to my story without farther delay. Ten days were given to slaughter. Gardeners and others, who had been seized and carried on board the Turkish ships, on the supposition that they could reveal hidden treasures, were, to the number of 500, hung! This was the signal for the execution of the hostages in the citadel. Many young women, with their children, had fled to the mountains and hidden themselves in caves, where numbers died of terror and hunger, and others lived on fearing a worse destiny. Among these was a noble Grecian lady, the mother of Marietza. Her husband and three sons had been massacred
[57]
before her eyes; and with the two remaining children, Marietza and a boy, she had, almost by miracle, escaped, and hid herself and them in a cave in the mountains. There they were discovered and dragged forth by the hair of their head. They hoped and prayed for death, but death was no longer the order of the day. They were reserved for market, put on board a Turkish ship, and conveyed to Alexandrea.*[1] They were exhorted and commanded by the man who called himself their owner to renounce their religion. They endured all sorts of petty persecution; but, wretched, wearied, weak, and young as they were, they remained steadfast.
The Greek religion is a modification of the
[58]
Roman Catholic, and does not essentially vary from it. It is difficult for you, my dear girls, to conceive the detestation that an oppressed people feel for the religion of their oppressors; but, 1 hope, not equally difficult to imagine the clinging you would feel to the religion that had made you patient in such tribulations as our poor Greek mother and her children had endured. They were still very young; Marietza, I think, about twelve, her brother a year older: and their mother, fearing they might yield to the threats or persuasions of their Turkish master, continually exhorted them to steadfastness. She soon had the saddest proof that her fears were groundless. She was standing with her children in the balcony of a house near the river, and overlooking it. Their Turkish tyrant was insisting that her boy should give some sign of faith in the Prophet. The boy refused; and, with all the fervour of his Greek nature, expressed his hatred of Mohammed, his faith, and his followers. The Turk struck him. The boy was maddened; and, springing to the ground, he ran to the river. Whether he intended to drown himself, or whether he merely obeyed an impulse to escape anywhere from the presence of the Turk, no one could tell; for, while his head was still above water, the Turk drew a pistol from his belt and shot him through the brain. The mother and sister saw this, and lived; and I have no doubt that, after the first horror was past, they blessed God the boy had escaped from the evils that still impended over them.
The sister of the Pacha of Egypt was then at Alexandrea. She was a Mohammedan fanatic, so
[59]
sincerely devoted to her religion that she bought captives to convert them to the Mohammedan faith. The master of Marietza, hoping the zealous lady would set a due value on the possibility of offering to the Prophet two such beautiful converts (for the mother was still handsome, and Marietza lovely as an Houri), took them to the princess's apartments. They had entered the court, but there was some delay in getting admission. While they stood on the steps, the shrinking, frightened girl leaning on her mother, who could have recognised in her drooping figure the same being who, but a few weeks before, was gayest among the gay girls of Scio, dancing on the sea-beach, by the moonlight and by the music of rustic pipes, the Romaika, their classic national dance? Who could imagine this figure, that looked now pale and fixed as if it were cut in stone, linked with other young and graceful forms, chasing in the evolutions of this poetic dance the retreating wave, boldly following it till it turned, then, as it chased her back, dashing off the foam from her winged feet? Yet this had been, and, in spite of Marietza's present despair, something very like it was again to be.
After a tedious waiting they were led to a small antechamber, where persons having business with the princess were passing and repassing. Some Greeks, who had been that morning bastinadoed for refusing to abjure their religion, were stretched on the floor writhing with pain. A very old man beckoned to Marietza. She threw aside her veil, and leaned respectfully towards him. "Do not think, my poor child," said he, " that you can suffer stripes as well as bonds. I am old, and death is
[60]
better for me than life ; and yet, when I felt the bastinado to-day, I bit my tongue through to save myself from saying, as they bade me, that their cursed Mohammed was the prophet of God. Confess him now, my poor child, and retract when you can. You are young—you will have time for repentance —time to hope for God's forgiveness."
"No, father, no," replied Marietza; "my mother has told me there is double guilt in sinning because you know God forgives sin! No; mother says we must be baptized with Christ's baptism—"
"Poor child, you are so young—you cannot endure it."
"I can, if it be God's will. See here; I have been trying what I can endure;" and she pushed up her muslin sleeve, and showed the old man where, while she had been standing there, she had, to prove her fortitude, and without shrinking, pinched her arm black. The old man uttered an exclamation of mingled pity and admiration. "Besides, it would be a double shame for me to turn infidel," she added, "for my name is Marietza."*[2]
"A curse upon ye, then !" said a brutal old Turk, spitting in her face in token of the hatred he bore her name. Another Turk, an old man too (there are good Samaritans in all nations), extended to her an embroidered handkerchief drenched in a delicious perfume. She wiped away the defilement, and the blood gushed from her heart to her cheek, and she raised her eyes, glowing with a silent prayer, as she remembered that her Saviour was spit upon.
[61]
At this moment,, when she looked as beautiful as one of Raphael's saints, two young Englishmen came from the audience-room. They stopped, riveted to the spot by Marietza's beauty. Her mother advanced and drew down her veil, and directly after their master signed to them to follow him to the presence of the princess. She was evidently so much struck with the extreme beauty of Marietza, that the cupidity of the Turk was excited, and he asked for her double the price he had intended. The princess refused it. He abated, but still insisted on extravagant terms; and at last, the princess, quite disgusted, told him that she would have nothing more to say to him; and, like many a grasping trader, bitterly repenting his avarice, he withdrew. The hearts of our poor captives sunk as they turned away. They had hoped to escape from the hateful presence of the murderer of their son and brother, and there had seemed something like escape from despair—something bordering on protection, in passing into the hands of one of their own sex.
The two young Englishmen were awaiting their return, and followed them at a respectful distance. Soon after they sought an interview with their Turkish master, and eagerly inquired of him the names, rank, and former condition of his captives. They ascertained that he had failed in his treaty with the princess; and also that, in consequence of this disappointment, he was prepared to lower his terms. The young friends were filled with pity for the captives, no doubt augmented by Marietza's beauty; for it must be confessed that beauty is a wonderful
[62]
inciter of a young man's compassion. One of the young men, Reginald Butler,*[3] was the son, as those who heard the story will remember, of a friend of the lady who told it to us. He was an only son, most beloved, and most worthy of love. His mother, a widow in easy circumstances, was residing with her daughters in England, while he was seeking (and finding, too) his fortune abroad. He was not, however, rich enough to pay the money demanded for the redemption of the captives; but he would not leave them in the Turk's hands, and he and his friend agreed to pay equal portions of the purchase-money. They did so, and Marietza and her mother were transferred to them. My dear young friends, you know so little of the evil in the world, that I trust you will hardly understand me when I say that Butler's associate looked on Marietza with too bold an eye; and Butler, fearing that some undue advantage might be taken of her helpless and dependant position, paid to his partner his portion of the purchase-money, and removed the mother and daughter to a little country-house in the neighbourhood of Alexandrea, where he provided them with every comfort and indulgence within his power to procure for them.
They had no common language in which they could hold communication; and these poor females, believing that they had only changed owners, were apprehending every possible, and even impossible evil. The terrors they had suffered, the starvation they had endured, and, more than all, the unnatu-
[63]
ral disruption of their dearest ties, had impaired their health and affected their imaginations, so that they were on the brink of insanity, and looking on every side for new dangers and miseries. Butler said that Marietza was so emaciated, that he sometimes thought, when he looked at her, she might disappear from his sight like the White Lady of Avenel. He bought a horse for her to ride, in the hope that the exercise and the fresh air would give new impulse to her young life; but she afterward said that, whenever he took her out, she thought he was going to conduct her to some wild place to murder her! He provided every delicacy the market afforded, and bought her the most delicious fruits; but poor Marietza for a long while rejected everything, tormented with the imagination that he was fatting her to kill her!
By degrees, both mother and daughter truly interpreted the language of his generosity and most assiduous kindness, and then there was no limit to their gratitude. The mother, content and grateful for the present, became in some good degree resigned to her calamities; and Marietza, with the elasticity of girlhood, returned to health, and all the brightness of health and hope as soon as she was relieved from the pressure of her fears. Then she rode and ate, and became as fat and as blooming as her benefactor desired. You perhaps know that in warm climates the person is earlier developed and the physical system sooner matured than in our cold land. At twelve Marietta had the attractive graces of a girl of sixteen. Her benefactor's benevolence was transmuted to love. He wrote to his mother in
[64]
England all the particulars of Marietza's story, confessed the state of his heart, and proposed to her to receive Marietza under her protection, and to give her an education fitting the wife of her son.
The project might have struck some elderly ladies as romantic, but Mrs. Butler sympathized perfectly with her son. She had entire confidence in the truth and steadfastness of his affections. She would have preferred, she said, that he would have married one of his own countrywomen; but, for the world, she would not thwart the wishes of one who had fulfilled all her wishes. Thrice blessed, my dear girls, is the mutual confidence of parents and children!
I do not know how Butler reconciled Marietza's mother to parting with her child; but you all know that mothers will make any personal sacrifice for the advantage of their children; and probably the hearts of both mother and child were so overflowing with gratitude to their benefactor, that they would have acquiesced in whatever he proposed, even their parting. Parted they were.
Marietza went to England, where she was received into Butler's family as if she had a natural claim to their love. She was at once daughter and sister. Her exquisite beauty, set off by her Greek costume and Oriental grace, riveted every eye; her enthusiasm, affectionateness, buoyancy of spirit, and the free and animated manner natural to her people—which no misfortunes could long depress, or conventionalism restrain, or even an English atmosphere damp—made her a perpetual spring of delight to every circle she entered. She was courted and flattered on every side. Men
[65]
richer, handsomer, and of higher rank than Reginald Butler were devoted to her; but her affections never for a moment wavered from him.
Fashion robbed her of some of her outward graces, for they took her to Paris, and submitted her to the levelling processes of dressmakers, milliners, and hairdressers; but the world did not invade her heart.
At the expiration of four or five years Butler came to England to claim his bride. His friends dreaded the meeting. He had suffered from a protracted illness. His face was sallow and furrowed, and he had become, not absolutely bald, but so near it as to look a score of years older than when Marietza parted from him.
"Do I not look to you shockingly changed, Marietza?" he asked, as soon as the first emotions of meeting were over. "Shockingly! No, not shockingly changed, Reginald. Your heart is not changed—nor is mine."
These words, uttered with all her characteristic fervour, satisfied her lover; and he was not in the least disturbed when she said, with a mischievous curl of her beautiful lips, "I have danced in London with prettier men than you, Reginald!"
Marietza betrayed an Oriental love of magnificence when the arrangements for the wedding were making. The Butlers were a quiet people, who disliked display and notoriety; but they yielded in this, as in everything, to Marietza. She would have the church bells rung, and a procession of carriages, as in her own country. Her lover lavished the most costly bridal gifts upon her, and she showed her trousseau to my friend with the sort
[66]
of ecstatic pleasure that a child has with its holyday gifts. She clapped her hands, and skipped over chairs and sofas. Immediately after their marriage they returned to reside in Alexandrea.
And here, if I had invented the story, I should leave it; for the wedding is the legitimate stopping- place in a tale, though in life but the beginning of its deepest interests.
Eighteen months after the departure of Butler with his beautiful young bride, his mother received a letter from him, informing her that Marietza had died in his arms with the plague!
This seems to you, my dear girls, a sad conclusion; and sad is always the disruption of happy domestic ties; but remember, it is but a passing sadness. Death is to the good the last of pain, and trial, and disappointment; and to the good, death opens the gates of immortality and felicity.
[Sedgwick’s notes]
* [1] The prisoners were for the most part sold in Smyrna and Constantinople. "On June 19th, an order came to the slave- market for the cessation of the sale; and the circumstances which are believed to have occasioned that order are singular, and purely Oriental. The island of Scio had been granted many years before to one of the sultanas as an appropriation, from which she derived a fixed revenue, and a title of interference in all matters relating to police and internal administration. The present patroness was Asma Sultana, sister of the sultan; and that amiable princess received about 200,000 piastres a year, besides casual presents, from her flourishing little province. When she was informed of its destruction, her indignation was natural and excessive; and it was directed, of course, against Valid, the pacha who had commanded the fort, and the capudan pacha, to whose misconduct she chiefly attributed her misfortune. It was in vain that that officer selected from his captives sixty young and beautiful maidens, whom he presented to the service of her highness. She rejected the sacrifice with disdain, and continued her energetic remonstrances against the injustice and illegality of reducing rajahs to slavery, and exposing them for sale in the public markets. The sultan at length yielded to her eloquence or importunity. A license, the occasion of hourly brutalities, was suppressed; and we have reason to believe that this act of care and unprecedented humanity may be attributed to the influence of a woman."— Waddington's Visit to Greece.
* [2] Marietza is the Greek for Mary, and the name is given in honour of the Virgin.
* [3] We have not given the true name, as that might not be agreeable to him if, by any strange accident, he should ever hear of the publication of his story.
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
Marietza
Subject
The topic of the resource
1822 Greek uprising on the island of Chios, cross-cultural romance.
Description
An account of the resource
A Greek/Chian girl witnesses the destruction of her home/island as a consequence of the 1822 uprising against Turkish domination, and subsequently marries her English protector.
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
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<em>Stories for Young Persons</em>, pp. 52-66.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
New York: Harper & Brothers
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1840
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
D. Gussman
Relation
A related resource
Collected in <em>Stories for Young Persons</em>, 1840, 52-66, 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. <br /><br />Sedgwick, Catharine Maria, 1789-1867, and Cairns Collection of American Women Writers. <em>Stories for Young Persons</em> ... New York: Harper & Brothers, 1840. HathiTrust Digital Library https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007092366 Accessed 11 July 2019.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Document
Language
A language of the resource
English
1840
Alexandria
captives
Chios
Christians
Constantinople
daughters
Death
Egypt
Englishmen
execution
Faith
girls
Good Samaritan
Greece
Greek Independence
Greek Orthodox
hostages
Houri
infidels
Jews
Juvenile fiction
London
marriage
massacre
Mohammed
Mothers
Muslims
Oriental
Ottoman Empire
Pacha
patriots
plague
Prophet
revolution
Romaika
Roman Catholic
Scios
Sir Walter Scott
Smyrna
sons
Stories for Young Persons
Turks
war
White Lady of Avenel