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1846
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Stories published in 1846.
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New-Year’s Day.
By Miss Catherine M. Sedgwick
[p.83]
In the year 183-- , when speculation—that black art evasion of the laws God has instituted between labor and property, laws for the protection of human virtue—was at its fever height in the city of New York, Mr. Lyell, a gentleman whose years and position seemed to have moored him in one of those bays past which the stream might rush without dragging him with the torrent, returned to his home much excited. He was too much occupied with his own thoughts to observe that two young persons, whom his entrance disconcerted, were at that moment threading together one of those tangled paths that but for his ill-timed appearance might have led them into the bright world of their hopes. Ellen Lyell threw back the curls that had fallen over her burning cheek and resumed her worsted-work, heeding neither colors nor thread, and Haskett Mercer snatched the evening paper and seemed devouring its contents.
“I am glad to find you here, Mercer,” said Mr. Lyell, “it is not often I leave poor Ellen alone. Any thing new in the paper? Have you looked at the stocks? Still rising are they not?”
Mercer turned mechanically to the stock-table and read it aloud.
“Yes, up—up—up,” resumed Mr. Mercer. “What is the world coming to? every body is getting rich. William and Gordon have made a matter of forty thousand dollars since last week, Ellen.”
“Forty thousand since last week!” repeated Ellen without turning her eyes from her work.
“ Yes, forty thousand. Is that such every day news that you answer me like a faint echo. Forty thousand is worth your lifting your bright eyes from your work, Miss Ellen. If your brothers’ luck holds, they will soon be the richest men of their name.”
“Will they be the happiest?”
“To be sure—that is, they will be so much the happier as they are the richer. Mercer, why don’t you go out into this shower of gold? What is the use of always having your plate bottom side upward?”
“I am afraid, sir, that we are deluded by a false light and that which now seems gold will prove to be mist, and melt away.”
“Nonsense, Mercer, nonsense! Don’t I tell you my boys have realized forty thousand dollars?”
“They have capital, Mr. Mercer. I have none—at least none but my regular business education and my industry. These afford no basis for speculation. Indeed that has no basis. The indolent, ignorant and unscrupulous are the most daring in these times and, for the most part, the most successful.”
“It was so in the beginning, I admit,” said Mr. Lyell, “ but now everybody sees the times are peculiar and all are putting into the lottery. Town and country are alive! Prudent old merchants that have gone on in a jog-trot way the last thirty years are studying charts of new lots and maps of Western lands; lawyers are getting up monied in institutions; literary men are in Wall street, and widows are speculating in the stocks. Common rules wont do now, Mercer. Every thing goes by a succession of accidents. I am sure nobody can explain why property, real property, should be worth fifty per cent more than it was two or three years ago?”
“Perhaps, sir, if you were to say why it should sell for fifty per cent more, next year may solve the riddle. The present prices cannot be sustained. Land is at this moment selling upon a hypothesis of our having in a few years some millions of population on this island.”
“Well, if it be a delusion, why not take advantage of it, Mercer? My sons offered me a share in a purchase they are to make to-morrow. I promised them to consider of it. I have done so during my cool walk home this evening and come to the conclusion to follow the good old rule and let well enough alone. At my age the care of new riches would be burdensome. I have been just as I am all my life, which, in this up and down city, few can say. I am not far from the end and I had rather finish as I began. I have enough for Ellen and me, and my sons are getting rich on their own account. But you, Mercer—you are a young man; without a money capital, you will have a long struggle of it. You will grow gray before you will dare ask a woman to marry you, if instead of taking advantage of this strange state of thing, you plod on?”
“But what am I to do, Mr. Lyell?” replied Mercer, whose pulses were quickened by some of Mr. Lyell’s suggestions. “I have no money for the venture, and if I could obtain credit I would not without property to sustain it. There is quite too much of this dishonorable mode of business carried on among us.”
[p.84]
Ellen for the first time put in her word to say: “It seems to me this universal passion for riches is vulgar. Surely there is something better and nobler in this world to struggle for.”
“Whew, Miss Ellen! ‘Love in a cottage,’ is it? ‘That is bon pour la campagne,’ as the French say; ‘very well out in the bush,’ as your old Dutch granddame would have had it, but in town (and Mr. Lyell winked at Mercer) love can’t live in a cottage. It must have at least a neat two story house, with money enough to go to market in the morning and pay the servants on Saturday night.
“Now, Mercer, I am a prudent man and have no fears. I will endorse your note. You shall go into this speculation with the boys, and, as matters are going, you may sell out at the end of a month with a very decent little fortune. Your share of the purchase will be about twenty thousand dollars.”
“Enter not into temptation, Mr. Mercer,” said Ellen, with an arch smile. But Mercer had already entered in. His castle was already built in the shape of the neat two story house, and the conviction that Mr. Lyell had discerned his hopes and had presented the only mode of attaining them took possession of him. After a short silence and a stolen glance at Ellen, which conjured up intoxicating images in his brain, he snatched his hat, saying,” I will see your sons this evening, Mr. Lyell, and if they are disposed to let me into this partnership I will accept your very kind offer.”
“Not so very kind; no, if there were the slightest risk I would not make it—for twenty thousand dollars is nearly two thirds of all I am worth in world.”
“And if there be risk, I would sooner cut off my right hand than take it, be assured of that, Mr. Lyell.”
And never was there a more conscientious assurance, but unfortunately Mercer was beginning to feel the general intoxication. He found the young Lyells eager to admit him an equal partner in their speculation. They particularly liked him. They suspected their sister was not indifferent to him. They knew he was not to her. They were elated with their recent success, and fancied Mercer had only to embark with them to launch on the flood that led to certain fortune. But, alas! the ebb-tide had even then, unperceived, begun.
The purchase was made, all the late gains of the brothers invested and the father’s name pledged for Haskett Mercer.
Shortly after Mercer was employed by a company in New York to go to Illinois to examine some recent purchases of “fancy lots” made there. Before leaving the city he went to Mr. Lyell’s to take leave of Ellen. It was four o’clock—the steamer left the wharf at five. He had but fifteen minutes to spare. He had no purpose what to say, but he was in that excited state of mind when fifteen minutes gives the color to one’s life. Nature is in some minds more rapid than the magnetic telegraph.
“Miss Ellen is not home,” said the servant who answered to Mercer’s ring. “She and the old gentleman have gone down to Mr. Gordon’s.”
Poor Mercer turned away thinking how interminable the four weeks of his absence would seem, but vainly casting the fashion of the uncertain future, he little thought that was the last time his foot would be upon Mr. Lyell’s door step.
As he hastened up the street he met an old mercantile friend of Mr. Lyells, one of those men infallibly weather-wise in the trading world.
“I hope,” he said, “the Lyells have not made the purchase they were talking of?”
“They have.”
“I am sorry for it. It will be a bad concern. I am glad, at any rate, that my old friend’s neck is out of the scrape. It may prove a good lesson to the young men.”
Mercer had no time to hear further. He went on his way, and carried with him a load of remorse and anxiety.
His journey was long and painful. Wherever he went the demon of speculation had been before him and ruin was following in his train. His business was perplexing and detained him through the sickly season. He took the fever of the country, bad enough under any circumstances, but alarmingly aggravated by his complicated anxieties. Happily his ravings of Ellen Lyell, of angry father, and of bankruptcy fell on the ears of strangers. His discrete physician withheld the letters that came for him. Till, though still staggering debility, he was on the eve of beginning his homeward journey. There were several from the brothers Lyell, one from their father, and one from Ellen. This last was first read and ran as follows. “My dear friend, my father told me yesterday that he had written you. I fear his letter is filled with reproaches. You will not be surprised that disappointment and loss should irritate his too susceptible temper. Your agency in this unhappy affair will, I know, grieve you, but you should be consoled by remembering that you embarked in it at my father’s urgent request, and with expressed reluctance.
“For myself I have nothing to regret, our condition is yet far above want. The wise people tell us that fortune and ease are not the best ministers to the human character, and I already find that enforced occupation, if it does not end the evils it opposes, at least furnishes a panoply divine against ennui and repining.
“My brothers have waked from their dream of illimitable fortunes and have entered upon a career of patient industry. This early check is like to prove a great blessing to them. Already they
[p.85]
have time and tranquility for domestic enjoyment. We have heard of your illness. Do not let your friends continue in ignorance of your precise condition.
This letter was four weeks old. If the tears were unmanly that fell upon it they must be divided between the weakness of Mercer’s body and the weakness of his heart. Its generous tone fortified for the shock that was to follow.
The father’s letter began: “Your scoundrelly conduct, Mercer, in sneaking out of town and hiding yourself in the Western woods, while I was left to hear the brunt of this ruinous business is not to be forgotten. Never presume to come into my presence again, nor any presence, to speak to my daughter. Past friendships are forgotten—past injuries, which have involved me in remediless ruin can never be.”
The brothers’ letters were filled with details of mercantile disasters. They informed Mercer that in default of his payment of his portion of the purchase money, their father, at a great sacrifice of his property, had met his engagements, and that, after satisfying the debt, nothing remained to him but his house and a few thousand dollars. They absolved Mercer from blame and wrote with the courageous hope of youth.
But Mercer could not absolve himself. He had weakly yielded to the first temptation to join the rash and wicked throng who ‘make haste to be rich.’ He had departed from the principles which he had adopted as the rule of his life—the principle that fortune is the legitimate result of labor and that it stands low in the scale of human felicities.
Expiation of his faults was all that now remained to him, and he determined to waste no time in weak inaction and vain repairing. “I have lost,” he said, as his thoughts reverted to Ellen, with an anguish that cut through his heart, “the greatest blessing ever within the grasp of man. I will not too lose true honor.”
It was a brilliant new-Year’s morning in the year 184--. Many may still remember it. Ellen Lyell was still Ellen Lyell, but how changed since that memorable evening five years before, when love and its bright train filled the imagination of the young woman of nineteen! Sudden and sharp disappointment had followed, ad to that a softened, thoughtful regret, which gave rather a pensive aspect to a life filled with rigorous duty. She occupied with her father a very small house in Madison street, where by the rent of their nice house in Chamber street, the income of the wreck of her father’s property and her own earnings she contrived to continue to him the ease and comfort of his more prosperous days. She had risen early to arrange her household for the day and make her preparations for this pleasant gift season. She and her little German housemaid, her maid of all work, had before the day dawned put the last polishing touch of studious neatness, that adornment of a modest condition, to her two small communicating parlors.
“Now, Miss Ellen,” said Gretchen, “ every thing is ready and right.”
“Not quite, Gretchen; this window curtain has been pulled out of place. There, now the folds are even; do you hold it while I tie it.”
This was done, and both mistress and maid turning their eyes towards the sky at the same moment saw the moon still shining through the immeasurable depths of a clear winter sky.
“There!” exclaimed Gretchen, “is the waning moon seen over the right shoulder of us both on a New- Year’s morning: the best token of all the year, and sent not sought—for no eye but your’s, Miss Ellen, would have seen the curtain was not straight, and but for your seeing that we should have seen the moon.”
“Well, dear Gretchen, what particular happiness of the happy New-Year does this lucky sight betoken?”
“Ah, that the day must show, Miss Ellen. If you have a betrothed he will bring you the gifts you desire, or if you have not one, the day will show him to you. Something will chance concerning what maidens think most of. I see you don’t believe a word of it, Miss Ellen, but it is so in my country. Among my people there are signs and omens for every day in the year, and unseen spirits for every dark hour, but here you only see and hear with the eye and ear of flesh; not even the blessed Christchild, that comes to prince and peasant in my country, comes to this dreary land.”
“Dreary and disenchanted it seems to you, Gretchen, but our matter of fact lives save us from idle expectations. Now, for instance, if you and I, believing in this sign of your’s, were looking out for our betrothed or his gifts to-day, it would be all moonshine.”
“Oh, as to me, Miss Ellen, I am away from my people, and I have left my luck behind me; but you, what does Mr. Lawrence come every day for? And why is it that one launch of flowers has never time to fade before another comes in the place of it?”
“Nonsense, Gretchen, we are wasting time; bring me down the covered basket from my bureau.”
“Miss Ellen,” thought Gretchen, as she proceeded to obey her, “thinks I don’t know, but I can tell her there are some things that speak the same in all languages. I can tell what that look in the eye and that melt in the voice means as well as
[p.86]
another. Well, Mr. Lawrence is a nice man; good, every body says, young and rich, and that is what few ladies despise, and Miss Ellen knows the worth of it by the want of it. It’s only by working and sparing from year’s end to year’s end, that she gets wine for her father’s table and cigars for him to smoke. It’s strange how some people do all the work in this world and others all the play. The old man is often fretting and Miss Ellen never is. The workers are the happiest may be after all?”
We did not get at Gretchen’s thoughts by any necromancy. She was one of those liberal people who inflict the reveries of their solitary moments upon the first doomed ears they encountered, beginning their social chats with “I was thinking.”
The basket was brought and Ellen arranged the gifts she had prepared for her brother’s children on her beautiful lauristina whose top, as it stood in the corner of the room, brushed the ceiling. Net purses, gay colored bags, embroidered suspenders for a favorite little nephew, and dainty little bright slippers peeped from among the rich clusters of white flowers.
Skill and love were inwrought in all these pretty gifts. Every stitch in them had been set by Aunt Ellen’s kind hand: every flower upon them was an emblem of her unwearied love. Money could not buy gifts so rich.
“There is something for you, my good Gretchen,” said Ellen. Gretchen’s eyes sparkled as she took from her mistress’ hand a small, pretty plaid silk shawl. A shower of thanks were pouring from her lips when Ellen said, “ do not you see there is something within the shawl.” Gretchen unpinned and opened it. It was a picture, a colored view of a small town on the Rhine, done with great exactness of coloring and drawing, by a young artist friend of Ellen Lyell, at her request. Gretchen’s words were checked for a moment, but tears, far more eloquent than words, gushed from her eyes as she turned from the picture to Ellen?
“Oh, dear Miss Ellen,” she said, “ who but you would have ever thought of this? And now don’t you believe the blessed moon this morning, was a true token. Ah, Branbach! My dear old home! Ah, Miss Ellen, look here, look here just under that part of the castle. There is where we lived; there all the Wepels lived back and back in the ages, when the old castle that stands there now, on the very top of the rocks on that high hill—Oh, many’s the time Brant and Hildergund and I have climbed to it—What was I saying? Yes, when the castle that’s as old as St. Mark, had its jolly knights, the Wepels lived in the cottage below it, and when it was a prison of state it was one of my forefathers that kept the keys of the discarded room of torture, and when it was turned into a hospital it was my grandmother’s mother that tended the sick. There is the old chateau, too, and there the chapel, and there the old stone bench, and those parings; and there the very pile of dirt always before old Weisen’s door; and there, where you can almost touch the boats as they pass up and down the terrace garden to the old chateau, and there you turn and go up to the vineyard planted among the rocks, and so steep that they go on ladders to the vines. Oh, my beautiful land!—my home!—dear old Branback!” Poor Gretchen had forgotten herself—the picture of her home had worked a spell upon her imagination, and her last exclamations were in German.
“What is all this lingo about?” exclaimed Mr. Lyell, entering the room and effectually breaking the spell. “The little dirty village of Branback,” he added, turning his eyes on the picture. “I remember it well, and the greasy dinner I got there. I see no sign of breakfast, Ellen. Do you think I can eat your New-Year’s gifts?”
“Not eat the, but wear them, sir,” replied Ellen, placing at his feet a pair of new slippers. “We have set the breakfast table in the next room; it is quite ready. Bring up the coffee and cakes, Gretchen.”
“It will be cold there; it’s always cold there in the morning. What did you put in there for?”
“The children begged to have their presents hung on a tree, and I could not move my lauristina!”
“And they must have it their own way. It used to be ‘first come first served,’ but now the very last come is first and best served; the brat of a baby before its grandfather.”
Ellen made no reply, but opened the door into the next room where the fire having been kindled long before day-light, the air was genially warm, the coals glowed in the full grate, the coffee sent up its aromatic perfume—incense fit for the gods—and the lightest buckwheats were smoking on the table. There was a sausage too, (Mr. Lyell’s sine qua non,) and fresh honey and Scotch marmalade, his favorite dainties, got by Ellen with some trouble by way of a New-Year’s treat to her father. His frosty humor melted; the slippers he said “were a nice fit, the room was warm, and, the whole, he did not care if the children for once had it their own way, and it was thoughtful of you, Ellen, to get this delicious honey for me.”
Ellen was not hardened to the caprices of her father’s temper. She was fortified by the resolution not to resist but endure. She had long ago made up her mind that it was an infirmity not to be cured, but that patience was armor of proof against it. Patient continuance in well-doing is a sovereign remedy against most of the evils of life and a certain salvation from its worst remorse.
“Where is the morning paper, Gretchen, asked Mr. Lyell. Can’t you remember to put it on the table? You know I always want it.”
[p.87]
There is no morning paper on New-Year’s Mr. Lyell.”
“Ah, true! Give me last evening’s paper then.”
“The old gentleman must have his morning and his evening paper,” said Gretchen to a visitor in the kitchen,” though Miss Ellen would not even buy herself one new gown this New-Year’s; well, she looked pretty enough in her old ones. It seems as if her beautiful soul came out more and more every day into her face.”
Mr. Lyell’s eyes ran over the paper carelessly. Suddenly his attention was arrested, as Ellen observed, by something keenly interesting. He knit his brows, bit his lips, threw down the paper, lighted his cigar, smoked a few whiffs, then threw it away, walked up and down the room biting his nails according to his habit when excessively vexed, and was leaving the room when at the door he met Gretchen, all smiles, bringing in a very beautiful lady’s writing-desk of ivory inlaid in ebony.
“Where did that come from?” he asked.
“It is for Miss Ellen, sir, and the servant that brings all Mr. Lawrence’s flowers and things brought it.”
“John, from the Astor house; was there no message?”
“None, sir.”
“It is from Lawrence, of course, Ellen; splendid, is it not? Do you hear, Ellen? Do you see?”
“Yes, sir, replied Ellen, looking cold and impassive.
“I would not advise him to waste his gifts here. Strange—strange,” he muttered “that the only man you ever cared for should have been that rascal!”
“I do not deserve that, nor does Mercer,” she thought. “I wish Lawrence would send no more of his gifts here; they ruffle my father, and are embarrassing to me; my father was just getting into the spirit of the day. But it was something in the paper that turned the current. Stocks have fallen, I suppose; but what is that to us?” She was familiar with the stock-table for she read it every evening with her father. She looked it over. Stocks were rising, and she came to the natural conclusion that her father was vexed that he no longer had any interest in the prosperous turn the affairs of the city had taken.
That an old age which should have been serene and grateful should be chafed by sordid cares—that all her pains to soften it with the luxuries that habit had made necessary should be unfelt, filled Ellen’s bosom for a moment with sadness and a sense of injustice. It was but for a moment; she wiped away the gathering tears and turned to receive with smiles and caresses the children who were bursting into the room with their clamorous happy New-Year’s to Aunt Ellen. The stream must deposit a portion of the golden sands its channel is bearing onward. Ellen Lyell could not be unhappy while she was the source of happiness or cheerfulness. There are those who would have reckoned it a hard fate to minister to a thankless, fretful, exacting old man; to have been cut off in the prime of youth from the dearest expectations; to receive, as Ellen did at first, employment as favor and patronage; to see her gay young friends and fashionable acquaintance falling away from her; to be obliged to contract the circle of her wants, and to cut off the accustomed gratifications of her past position and the pleasures natural to her time of life. In all this there were elements enough of discontent to a common character.
But my friend Ellen’s was not a common character. She began with the great truth that it matters not so much how we are, as what we are—that is not our circumstances, but what we make of them, that is out great concern; not the agreeable sensations of to-day that are of most import to us, but the retrospect of to-morrow. If her father was more than usually unreasonable, she redoubled her patience. She smiled at the supercilious of late friends (friends after common parlance) become patrons, and she received gratefully employment from those whose respect was enhanced by the manifestation of virtues which the change of her condition brought into action. If her gay friends fell away from her she felt no asperity towards them; they had their pleasures, she her duties; there were few points of real sympathy between them, and in her secret heart she might well have thought she was rather the gainer than loser by the change in their relations.
One evil there was in her condition which was a serious unhappiness to her. The Mr. Lawrence to whom we have adverted, was her preserving lover. His sister was her favorite friend. He had an immense fortune. He was a young man of good principles and good feelings. The world said “ a splendid match for Ellen Lyell,” “You know the most fervent wish of my heart,” Margaret Lawrence had once said to her, and she said no more.
“You must do as you choose; all young people do so now-a-days,” said her father, “ but I would lay any wager you are the only woman in the United States who would not snap at Arthur Lawrence.”
“Do as you think best, my dear sister,” said her brother Gordon,” but I must say there are few worthier men than Arthur Lawrence.”
“You would marry Arthur Lawrence, Ellen,” said her brother William, “if you could forget—and those should forget who are forgotten!”
“You misunderstood me, William,” she replied, provoked to express the feelings her delicacy had restrained, “I would not marry Arthur Lawrence were he the only man in the world. I do not
[p.88]
love him, that should be reason enough. I cannot love a man whose character is no sense accords with mine. Arthur Lawrence is, you know it, William, a common man—nothing more nor less; of virtuous habits, no doubt; amiable and well disposed; but would you, would my father, would Gordon, would any of my friends esteem him a suitable match for me were he stripped of his fortune! I may seem to you proud or vain, or both; but I should require in my husband some correspondence of endowment, of cultivation, of capability, of taste to my own, and I hold that only to be a pure marriage where this exists. “I have not forgotten,” she added, blushing to her temples, “ that such a marriage was once within the circle of my hope; nor do I forget that it no longer is. I cherish no vain wishes no vain regrets. I see no danger of uselessness of dreariness in single life; no danger of wanting objects for my affections while yours and Gordon’s families are multiplying every year.”
“Forgive my, dear sister,” said her brother, “ we have erred in measuring you by common women.”
“That is not quite all your mistake, William; women are not allowed to use their powers of independence. The vulgar world has made marriage a necessity to them, and they dare not follow the true impulses of their hearts—the honest demands of their nature; and thus it comes that marriage, God’s own most blessed institution, is so often perverted to what it is.”
But we have left too long the conclusion of our short story. The day went on; Ellen’s visitors were not numerous, but they were old and well tried friends, with a sprinkling of young ones, who were attracted out of the fashionable beat by Ellen Lyell’s charms and graces, which, if they had lost the effect of novelty at twenty-four, in our world of Spring blossoms, had gained by their maturity, expression and force.
Arthur Lawrence came with the first and lingered to the last.
“I have not seen your father to-day,” he said to Ellen.
“You can see him,” said little Nelly Lyell, “for I saw him take a big parcel of papers off the entry table, and go up stairs with it, and I went to show him Aunt Ellen’s new desk; I could not make him look up from his papers; but he did not look cross, and he did not scold me, though I spoke twice to him.”
“Have you see Aunt Ellen’s new desk, Mr. Lawrence?”
“No, Nelly, I did not know your aunt had a new one.”
Ellen looked at him with surprise; but as Lawrence was one of those people who never ambush their actions, she was convinced he was innocent of the gift.
“Don’t you know, Aunt Ellen, who sent you the desk;” pursued the little girl.
“No, Nelly, I cannot even guess.”
“Oh, she does know, she does know,” insisted the child, mischievously, “ she knows it’s you—because you know you send her every thing; lots of flowers, and lots of books. I should love you if you gave me so many things; don’t you love him, Aunt Ellen?”
To Ellen’s infinite relief the door opened and her father appeared at it, not lowering as he had left her in the morning, but bright and smiling as a clear October sky at mid-day.
“Ellen, my dear,” he said, “I am going out to ask a friend to come home and dine with me; don’t ask any other company. You have a good dinner, I hope. Oh, Mr. Lawrence, I did not observe you; good day, sir”. He stood for a moment as if wavering, then beckoned Ellen to him and whispered—“if you want to know what company you are to have, look over the arrivals in last evening’s paper.”
But last evening’s paper was not to be found, and Ellen could get no solution of her father’s sudden good humor and extraordinary abstraction; for more extraordinary it was that he should have remained for one minute unconscious of Mr. Lawrence’s presence.
“There is no use,” said Lawrence that very evening, to his sister, “in thinking any longer of Ellen Lyell; she is as cold as an icicle to me.”
“You are right, my dear brother,” replied his sister, “Ellen knows her own mind, and is not a woman to be won by perseverance?”
“No, that is proved—well, it will be all the same a hundred years hence!”
This veritable conclusion of Mr. Arthur Lawrence’s love-tale proved that he was not matched with Ellen Lyell in heaven, where, as we honestly believe, all true matches are made.
All the Lyells—sons, wives and children remained, as was their custom on New-Year’s day, to dine with their father. The communicating doors between the rooms were thrown open. One table was arranged for the little people and their nurses, and the other for their elders.
“You see what your Aunt Ellen has done for you, my children,” said Gordon Lyell. “Mind and keep quiet, or my father will stand a chance of having rather too much of what your Aunt Ellen calls the ‘music of your voices;’ but why does he not come? I never knew him delay a dinner before. Who upon earth can this newly arrived friend of his be? Some old crone of an India merchant whom he knew forty years ago—oh, it’s that old Harvey, who was a school-mate of his and who has been consul this hundred years at ____, what do you call the place? I heard yesterday he had come home?
[p. 89]
“Whoever it may be,” said Ellen, “we should be grateful to him, for his arrival seems to have made it really a happy New-Year to my father.”
“He must be a special dear friend to reconcile my father to making another place at our small table. You know his notion of heaven, Ellen?—that there’s plenty of elbow-room there!”
“Hush, Gordon—they are coming; ring the bell for dinner, Willie!”
“Now for a reverend white head,” said Gordon, “make your best bows and curtsies, children, to grandpapa’s friend, and don’t speak above your breaths.”
The door opened and old Mr. Lyell, his face smiling all over, ushered in—not an ‘old crone,’ but a tall young man of six-and-twenty, with his head covered with bright chestnut hair—his large dark eye brightened and moistened with mingled emotions. Gordon and William Lyell sprang forward and grasped his hand. “Is it you, Mercer? My dear fellow, welcome—most welcome!”
Ellen’s first impulse was to run out of the room but her feet refused to move. She became frightfully pale, and little Nelly, whose eye, on all occasions, first turned to her aunt exclaimed, “what is the matter, Aunt Ellen?”
The exclamation produced a reaction. She rallied and the eloquent blood rushing to her check expressed the welcome she could not utter; she gave Mercer her hand: neither spoke. The awkward chasm was filled by Mr. Lyell. “Mercer deserves our welcome, boys,” he said;” he is a good man and true. He has worked hard for five years, and lived out of humanity’s reach, in China. I know what it is to live there, and here is some of the fruit of his industry—here are the documents.” Mr. Lyell threw on the table a parcel of papers. “He has paid his debt to me, with interest and compound interest—God bless him!”
“A little too much of this, my dear Mr. Lyell,” said Mercer, deprecatingly.
“Not a syllable too much; my children and grandchildren shall know who, of all men living, they should most love and honor.”
“This is much more,” said Mercer, rather embarrassed by Mr. Lyell’s excessive enthusiasm, “than an act of simple honesty deserves.”
Not a bit—not a bit. Simple honesty do you call it? Well—yes, paying one’s debts is simple honesty; but I can tell you it is the rarest of virtues now-a-days. You have not heard of repudiation out in China, have you? our new way of paying old debts. I hate these new fangled words and doings. But come, come to dinner, my children.”
A few days after when Ellen imparted to her loving maiden Gretchen, the secret of her engagement to Haskett Mercer, “Ah, ha! Miss Ellen,” she said,” I knew when that mysterious desk came the true love would soon come after it. Remember the waning-moon of New-Year’s morning, and don’t laugh at my country signs again.”
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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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New-Year's Day
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stock market speculation, love, and marriage.
Description
An account of the resource
A young man borrows money from his intended fiance's father and, after the stock market collapses, is estranged from her and family. Unbeknownst to the other, he works to repay her father, and she remains true to her love for him.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Source
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Columbian Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine (February 1846): 83-89.
Publisher
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Edited by John Inman and Robert A. West
Date
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1846
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Heather Harman; D. Gussman
Relation
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Also collected in The Gem of the Season for 1849. New York: Leavitt, Trow & Co., 1849.
Language
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English
1846
Braubach Castle
China
Columbian Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine
expiation
Germany
gift giving
grandchildren
laurestina (tree)
Love
marriage
New Year's Day
omens
repudiation
servants
Siblings
singlehood
speculation
stock market
-
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99810612bd8d9d535ea784f91a18bdec
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Title
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1848
Subject
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Stories published in 1848.
Document
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STRAGGLING EXTRACTS,
FROM A JOURNAL KEPT IN SWITZERLAND.
_____
BY MISS CATHERINE M SEDGWICK
_____
[p. 115]
MONDAY morning, June 1st, 1840. We left Lausanne this morning, and ascending the high hill on the route to Berne by voiturier’s pace, we had time for many a loving, lingering look at Lake Leman, no longer the “clear, placid Leman” of our dreams, of poetry of Rousseau and Byron; but enriched with the best realities of life. The friendship of the wise and good has made its borders a home to us—has consecrated it, so that it is no longer strange and foreign, but a part of the “holy land” of the heart; where that Temple stands which binds what is most precious on earth to that which is most ardently hoped for in heaven. A farewell seemed sent back to us from the lovely water. Shall I ever forget these last looks of the Lake? the rocks of Meíllerie? the Pain de Sucre? the Dent du Midi? I went within the walls of the cemetery on the declivity of the hill, to visit John Kemble’s grave. A gentleman was standing beside it. In my haste (the carriage was awaiting me) I did not at first notice him. As I turned to pluck a leaf from the cedar which overhung the spot, my eye met his; and with unusual frankness (he was obviously an Englishman) he said, courteously touching his hat: “We owe this homage to our countryman, and I am glad to see it rendered.”
“The name is a great one,” I replied, without thinking it necessary to vitiate my homage in his eyes, by saying that I was an American? or to
[p. 116]
tell him that the Kemble name had a more potent charm for me than that with which genius had prodigally endowed it.*
*[author’s note]: Campbell says, in his valedictory address to John Kemble:--
His was the spell o’er hearts
Which only acting lends;
The youngest of the sister arts,
Where all their beauty blends.
When I returned to the carriage, my companions eagerly asked me if I had observed the gentleman, who, from the distance at which they had seen him, struck them as having an air of unusual elegance.—“Yes, I had observed and spoken with him.”
********, who never fails to express her thorough prejudice, then said:--“He is not an Englishman.”
“Yes, he is English, and a military man.”
“Ah! Then he has been over the world, and perhaps in America, and learned something of manners and humanities!”
“With the latter,” I said, “I fancied Heaven had endowed him, for he has a very charming face.”
Both ***** and **** wished they had gone with me; a charming human countenance would be a pleasant variety from the only face they had seen to admire for a long while—the face of the country.
At a little village where we stopped to lunch, we went to the parish church to see Queen Bertha’s tomb, and her worm-eaten saddle.
Her remains were found in a subterranean part of the same church, and re-interred with an inscription, setting forth this Burgundian lady as an endower of monasteries, a constructor of roads, and a protector of the poor. She was a princess comme il y en a peu at present, in more than the doing of these magnificent acts, as appears from her saddle, on which she rode astride, with her bust above an iron ring that encircles her; and she spun as she rode—“not like you romantic girls,” as I said to my companions, “warp and woof of poetry and romance, but veritable thread of flax!”
FREYBURG.
Glad were we again to hail the picturesque gate of this old town. We left the carriage and walked in. The bourgeoisie were sitting around the old linden tree; a still strong and fresh memorial of enthusiastic patriotism. After the celebrated battle of Morat,
“Morat and Marathon, twin names shall stand,”
where a few Swiss gained a brilliant victory over a large Burgundian force, a young soldier of Freyburg, one of the “unbought champions,” left the patriot victors, and with a branch of a linden-tree in his hand, he ran all the way to his native city, which he entered crying “Victory!” and sank down dead from exhaustion. The linden-branch was planted on the spot. The tree flourished; and now there are tongues in its massive trunk and luxuriant branches, which are tenderly supported on a species of scaffolding.
We rose early, and went on to the terrace of the Zeringer Hoff, which hangs over the deep abyss, worn by the Sarine; from here you see the beautiful suspension-bridge, which spans the gulf some hundreds of feet above the Sarine’s bed, and the little thread of a foot-bridge higher up in the gorge. It looked so very wiry and sharp in the misty distance, so faintly traced on the sky, that a faithful follower of the Prophet might have taken it for a vision of that bridge which carries few safe over. The great tower of the cathedral, and the towers on the declivities of the hills, look as they did in the dreary days of last autumn; but now it is summer, and there is beauty and gladness every where; in the little gardens niched on the hillside; in the laburnums and roses almost dipping in the water: they are smiles of immortal youth about images of age and decay. As we re-entered the hotel, I met the stranger of the cemetery. My companions passed on; but I took the privilege of my age, and in reply to a courteous recognition, spoke to him of our mutual experience during the past day’s travel. He, too, had stopped to see Queen Bertha’s riding equipment; that being one of the regular way-side lions. He spoke of the spindle; he liked that symbol of her sex’s destiny. It might be well for princesses to enlarge their horizon; it might even be necessary; but for women in private life, he liked a literal adherence to the domestic life for which they were made.
“If they were made for that alone,” I ventured to say.
“Perhaps,” he said, “you would admit apostolic authority; and St. Paul, I believe, is of my opinion.”
“There is a wide scope in St. Paul’s writings,” I replied, “and I thought he was of too generous a spirit to hold all women within one narrow pen of household duties.”
A second summons to breakfast, broke of the speculation upon which we had rather awkwardly fallen. When I reported it to my companions, ***** said, it was just like an Englishman—if he spoke at all, to say something disagreeable—no wonder that Madame de Stäel said an Englishman had two left hands; --who but an Anglo-Saxon would have pounced upon such a topic to a party of ladies?
The road from Freyburg to Berne lies through a country much like the richest and most beautiful
[p. 117]
parts of our own Berkshire—Berkshire without the Alps—Hamlet, the character of Hamlet omitted. The hills, even, have a loftier station than ours; and instead of our shabby fences, wherever there are divisions there are hedges.
Their cottages are the prettiest of all rural architecture, with their projecting roofs and galleries. Their farming utensils, ladders, rakes, etc., hanging under their shadow; the neat piles of wood husbanded under the same shelter; and the bee-hives close under the windows--a fitting emblem of this intelligent and producing people. The rosy, stout Bernese dames, and their chubby children, both in their prettiest of all costumes, give to the landscape a living beauty. The cheerful rural life here is a contrast to Italy, where there seems to be no rural habitancy. There, for the most part, the dwellings of the working people are crowded into narrow, stifling lanes; the few straggling habitations in the open country look like jails with their iron croisées. In the canton of Berne, I am often reminded of my own country;--if not an equality of condition, there are no contrasts—no frightful distances between man and man. There is a general diffusion of comfort—no grand seigneurs—no beggars. The cultivation and products, too, remind me of home. The grasses, the beautiful turf, the apples, cherries, willows, limes (the finest I have ever seen), and the elms. The gardens resemble our gardens at this season—the same dominance of utility and small tribute to beauty—a narrow hem of peonies, seringas, moss-pinks and yellow-lilies, round ample beds of lettuce, beets, etc.
We entered Berne at noon on market day, which occurs every Tuesday, and the concourse is greatest on the first Tuesday of the month; so we are fortunate in our day. The streets are crowded; the people are selling and bartering every species of movable property, from fat cattle, horses, etc., to light domestic manufactures, which the women carry about; some on wooden frames, while others have tapes, cords, and chains tucked into their apron-strings. There is a sprinkling of fresh, pretty little peasant girls, with natural flowers, curiously woven together, for sale. We jostled our way through the crowded streets; heeding every thing, but quite unheeded ourselves: not quite; for again we met the English traveller, and exchanged salutations. The peasants are better dressed than I have ever seen any rural population. Their clothes are of strong materials and enduring colors; and the white chemise-sleeves and waist, purely white, give to the whole appearance the paramount of charm and cleanliness. We are at the Faucon, excelling among the excellent Swiss inns. My English friend (friend! but acquaintance ripens apace in these foreign lands), sat next to me ; on ***** saying, that of all working women in the world, she would rather be a Bernese peasant, he said to me in a low voice, that the fly-cap would not be unbecoming to the young lady, with her light form and spiritual eye; but he thought it grotesque appendage to fat old women, or solid young matrons; they certainly are a most unaerial people.
THUN.
Here we are at the Bellevue—an inn in the midst of a garden tastefully laid out, and embellished with flowering shrubs. The river Aar is running away below us as if the Lake of Thun, of which it is the outlet, had been its prison. The little town of Thun is on our right, with chateau, church, and towers crowning the hill it covers; behind us is a precipitous green hill with a walk half way up to heaven, where a summer house is pitched to look out over this beautiful scenery, which seems like some exquisite picture become, by miracle, a reality. There is the lake, stretching for fifteen miles at the feet of these giant hills; and for mountains, the Stockhorn, the Neisen, and the Blumlis, whose eternal snows, cut into sharp angles, give the most startling effects of light and shadow—their existence here is blessing enough.
It is strange to see summer and winter side by side—inflexible winter, with the richest blossoming of summer. Man seems to live contentedly here on the patrimony God has given him—there is no commerce, no manufactures. The parent divides his agricultural property equally among his children; and from the very comfortable aspect of their homes, there would seem to be enough for their moderate wants. The valleys are thick set with corn, and the uplands devoted to pasturage. The woodlands belong to the commune, and the division is made by proper officers. The warmest slopes are covered with vines; and wine is so cheap, that each person has a bottle at dinner without an extra charge.
LAUTERBRUNNEN.
As we came into the little green steamer that was to carry us over the lake this morning, I again met our English traveller; and we shook hands as if we were old friends. He did not see fit to communicate his name, but he had ascertained ours on the register of the Faucon, and he soon began talking of New-York, where he had once been, and of Dr. H------’s and Mr. H------’s families, whose hospitable doors are always open to foreigners of any pretension. Even *****, with her cherished aversion of all Englishmen, admits that he is very pleasing—or, as she words it, very un-English. He has a shade of sadness over his fine face, that only passes for a moment
[p. 118]
when he is in very animated conversation. It is thrown there, I feel sure, from some settled sorrow. I told him he had lost a great deal by not arriving earlier at Thun. He said, civilly, that he was aware he was a loser, inasmuch as he had lost our society; but as to Thun, he was familiar with it—he had passed the happiest days of his life there, and he did not care to go there again. “And there,” he added, as we were passing a lovely villa which had once been a convent of the Chartreux, “there I lived one beautiful summer.” Some painful recollection smote him—he turned suddenly from me, and paced up and down the deck; and then, as if determined to master his sensations, he returned to my side, and directed my eye to the cascades leaping down the precipices, and then the beetling rock over the cave of St. Beatus, which he said he had once visited. “We penetrated several hundred feet,” he said, “and found some relics of human habitancy, but no traces of the dragon whom the saint is said to have ejected from his holy habitation. I wonder if it is only by living the life of a hermit that one can master a dragon?” He spoke in a tone so deep and expressive, that I involuntarily looked at him as if he were betraying a monomania.
I think he perceived the impression he had made; for, resuming his usual manner, he directed my attention to a straggling village far above St. Beatus’s cave, whose only access is a winding footpath.
“A rugged, difficult ascent,” I said.
“No, not very difficult,” he replied, “to youth and enterprise. I once made it with a young woman about the age, I imagine, of your young friends.”
“An Englishwoman?” I spoke involuntarily, for I have seen too many English to put a premeditated question.
“I beg your pardon,” he answered, “Swiss. We passed a week at the house of the pastor--an Oberlin—who so kindly led his flock in this stern and scanty pasture, that I learned from him to look with contempt upon the egotism of the old anchorite of the cave.”
With the enchantment of the scenery, and the interest of my new friend, the moments flew, and I left the steamer with regret for the carriage that our courier procured us at New-Haus. There was one vacant seat in the carriage; and, knowing that my acquaintance was bound for this place, I asked him to occupy it, feeling it to be but a common way-side humanity. At first he accepted it cordially; but then some difficulty about arranging his baggage occurring (for an Englishman can do nothing extempore), he declined, and we drove off ; my young women exclaiming, “How could you?” “What on earth will he think of us--he is an Englishman?” &c., &c. To all which I replied by asserting a calm confidence in our own dignity, and my assurance of that degree of education and refinement in my acquaintance, that it could not be compromised by a two hours’ drive with him.
I then excited their curiosity by items of his conversation which they had not heard, and by interpolating a few sighs, and even a tear which I was secretly sure he had repressed, I gave sufficient ground for their imagination to expatiate on. ***** was sure ‘he had a story, God bless him!”--and that was some comfort; and after a while we talked ourselves into an egotistic half-belief that he had followed us up into these high temples. **** and ***** of course reverently imputed to me the attraction; but I very well knew an elderly lady was a trifling make-weight when there were two charming young ones in the scale. However, as it fell out, we might have saved ourselves the trouble of our reciprocal concessions.
As we wound up the green valley towards Lauterbrunnen, we passed the castle of Unsprunnen. It is an old ruined tower, with a flanking turret, which has a pretty tradition attached to it of feud and love, the scaling of castle-walls, and carrying off of an only daughter, and, after years of bloody strife, a reconciliation by means of the child-robber appearing within the castle-wall, and presenting his young boy to the old father. The ruin, however, derives its chief interest from it being the locale of Byron’s Manfred--a fitting genius loci in the face of the magnificent Jungfrau. The valley narrowed as we advanced along the margin of the wild Lutschine, rather a torrent than a stream. The grandeur of this valley surpasses any thing we have seen yet. The valley itself is 2450 feet above the level of the sea. The height of the walls of rock that enclose it I do not know ; but, towering above all the rest, is the Junfrau, 14,000 feet high. Valley this can scarcely be called—there is a little life-giving earth at the base of these everlasting rocks. Its name, Lauterbrunnen, signifies “nothing but fountains”--and more than a hundred streams, leaping over the rocks, or trickling down them, may be counted from our inn-window—the Staubbach, (literally dust-fall,) the most beautiful among them. Byron has so accurately described it, that, in spite of it having become a hack quotation of the guide-books, I again transcribe it:
“It is not noon. The sunbow’s rays still arch
The torrent with the sunny hues of heaven,
And roll the sheeted silver’s waving column
O’er the crag’s headlong perpendicular,
And fling its lines of foaming light along,
And to and fro, like the pale courser’s tail,
The giant steed to be bestrode by Death,
As told in the Apocalypse.”
[p. 119]
After all, as Byron concludes in his still better prose description, it is “something wonderful and indescribable.”
The weather is misty this afternoon; and Héry, a charming Swiss guide, (for whom, for our journey through the Oberland, we have exchanged our Italian Gil Blas courier,) advises deferring the passage of the Wengern Alp till to-morrow; so we have been walking up this wondrous valley. ‘Dust-fall’ is a wretched name for the Staubbach, unless there be diamond dust. The height is so immense whence it falls, that it is broken into the smallest drops before it reaches the ground. Each little fall has an individual life and charm: *****’s quick fancy saw in them the types of the most lovely classic impersonations: “Cupid and the Dolphin,” the “flying Mercury,” &c., and it was just as she was expressing, with a rather Delphic obscurity, her idea, that we were joined by our English friend. He seemed much amused with what he called the extravagance of her imagination. But the light of his reason was in vain offered to its shadowy region. She ‘saw forms he could not see, and there was the end on’t.’
As we were crossing a bright meadow to look at the Lutschine where it issues from the great glacier of the Jungfrau, our curiosity led us to ask admittance into a wretched little Swiss cottage, that we might see its interior. On the table were lying a large Bible and hymn-book. I opened their clasps and found a paper and type worthy a noble’s library. ‘Heir-looms are these,’ I thought; and said to Héry, “Such books are rare, I fancy, in your country.” “I beg your pardon,” he replied; “almost every dwelling has them.”
These poor people are right: these are the records of their birth-right—the charters of their freedom—the title-deeds of their inheritance—and they should be written in fair type, and kept with reverent hands.
I observed the woman who opened the door to us, give a sort of reconnoitring glance at our English friend—and then made an exclamation. She said something, to which he replied with few words and manifest emotion. *****, who begins to partake my interest in the stranger, asked Héry if he heard the words: “Partly,” he said; “the woman said, ‘You are the same gentleman who was here seven years ago, with the lady with eyes never to be forgotten?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘She is dead, then? God’s love be with her!’ ‘No.’ ‘No! And you parted? I thought death only could have parted you!’ ” He turned abruptly away, and it was a quarter of an hour before he rejoined us. I showed him a bunch of very beautiful forget-me-nots I had just gathered, glittering with rain-drops. He took out a pocket-book, and, opening a paper very elaborately folded, showed me a little knot of the same flowers, dried and faded, but the lovely blue still distinct among the pale green leaves. “They were picked here,” he said, “seven years since. Could one have dreamed these frail things would outlast a love that should have been eternal?” And then, as if he involuntarily betrayed himself, he hurried them back into his pocket-book, and did not rejoin me till after we came back to the inn—where we are now, awaiting our tea, and speculating upon the few threads we have extricated from the tangled skein of this new acquaintance.
One additional word, and I have done writing journal for this day.
Enter Héry with a card ; ***** seizes it and reads—“‘Lieutenant-colonel’ –yes it is, ‘ Lieutenant-colonel G----,’ printed; and then in pencil—‘begs to be permitted to take his tea with Miss S-----.’”
I have sent a cordial reply, while my young ladies are discussing the card.
“G-----,” says *****, “is not that the family name of the Earl of -----?”
“Yes; but you know you do not regard earls.”
“No; but one may respect an earl’s younger brother, who has attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel before he is thirty.”
“Perhaps, the earl bought the commission for him,” I suggested.
“No! no! I do not believe it: he looks as if he had earned it.”
I am pleased to find, that my prepossessions are gaining confirmation.
This has been an agitated, eventful evening. How far were we from anticipating the result of our detention at this inn! If we never see the passage of the Wengern Alp, we shall be consoled. The lieutenant-colonel came to our tea-table, which much resembled our own liberal evening meal at home. After we were seated round the table, our pretty buxom waiter brought in half-foot of honey-comb, from whose full cells the packed honey was oozing. This delicious preserve is a stable commodity of a Swiss table; and I have not yet seen a charge made for it—a proof of its abundance. The colonel seemed a little embarrassed at first coming among us, but was quite at his ease after taking an opportunity to say to me in a low voice, that I must have thought it very odd of him to make the communication he did to me—one hardly knew how it was—certainly, there were moments when one was hardly master of one’s self—when accumulated feeling--
[p. 120]
suffering, perhaps—at a look of sympathy, burst all barriers;--he hoped I would forget it.
The conversation then took a general turn. Colonel G-----, as well as ourselves, had visited Italy; and the discussion between him and *****, on various works of art, (her opinions are always her own, and not derived from any authority or reputation,) was animated. On many points they agreed; on some widely differed; but agreeing or not, every subject was converted to enjoyment by intelligence and sympathy. It is curious to see, how rapidly acquaintance ripens with people of congenial spirit who meet as travellers far from their home. All barriers are thrown down—all conventionalities forgotten; and we become almost as wise as little children in this matter.
The evening was wearing away: it was nearly ten o’clock, when our landlady burst into the room, and addressing Colonel G----- said : “If you are a doctor, as they tell me, for the love of God, follow me!”
“I am no doctor,” replied the colonel: “but what is the matter?”
“Oh! There is a mother and her only child; and the child dying; and the mother going out of her senses!”
“Is there no doctor nor medicine in your village?”
“Not a dust of it. The doctor is at Interlaken, and the key turned on the medicine.”
“I am no physician,” said the colonel, turning to me; “but my profession has made it my duty often to look after the sick; and I will never travel without a small medicine-chest. If you will be kind enough to ascertain if I can be of any service, I shall be most happy.”
I followed our hostess, who, without any ceremony, conducted me up stairs and into the distressed mother’s room. Ceremony would, indeed, have been out of place. There, writhing on a bed, lay a little girl of five or six; she was not in convulsions: they would have mercifully relieved her consciousness. Never did I witness more mortal agony. The mother was wringing her hands, kissing the child, rubbing her and exclaiming, “My God! my god! can no help be found?”
I ordered a hot bath and fomentations; and begged our hostess to bring the doctor immediately in; hoping by giving Colonel G---- this title, to give some comfort to the poor mother.
“Oh! Claire, my child, you will soon be better,” she cried; and then burying her head on the pillow, she sobbed frantically, “my all!--my all!”
Colonel G---- entered, and instantly became as white as marble. He stood for a moment as transfixed; then beckoning to me, he left the room: I followed him.
“These are my wife and child,” he said ; “what is to be done?--what can I do?”
I believe I was inspired by the exigency of the case, to give prudent counsel.
“Act,” I said, “as if they were not your wife and child; the little girl must be relieved at once, if at all; her mother is evidently incapable of doing or suggesting any thing. You must use all the resources you have; you must be calm and self-possessed.
“I will—God help me ! I will,” he said; and we both returned to the bedside of the child. Fortunately, the mother was so completely absorbed, her eye so riveted to the child, that she never once looked at the supposed doctor. He administered a powerful opiate. The warm bath was brought; and after getting considerable relief from that, we applied the fomentations. All this time Colonel G---- was perfectly calm; and except from his frightful paleness, and a slight tremulousness that pervaded his frame, one would not have suspected any thing unusual. He spoke in a whisper, and only to me. I think it was not more than half an hour, though it seemed much longer, when the remedies began to take effect; and in a short time the little girl’s limbs became relaxed and quiet; and a sweet tranquility was diffused over her beautiful features.
“Oh dear mamma!” she said, “I am so much better! I am almost well! what a good doctor!”
The mother now for the first time, lifted her eyes to the good doctor. The blood rushed to her cheek, and then utterly forsook it. She attempted to speak; but the words died on her lips, and she fainted.
In the exigency, Colonel G---- did, indeed, use all his faculties admirably. The little girl screamed; he first quieted her ; telling her, her mother would be well again directly; that she had been frightened with her suffering, and she was very tired ; and if she wished to have her well, she must keep quite quiet herself. “This lady,” he said, “will stay with you, while I lay your mother on a sofa in the next room; and give her something that will make her well again very soon.”
He took the mother in his arms, and carried her into the adjoining parlor. The little girl, with the ready confidence of childhood, took my hand; and turning her cheek to it, said : “He is a good doctor;” and adding twice or thrice drowsily—“poor mamma!—dear mamma!” The opiate took effect; and she fell into a sweet sleep.
I soon was informed by the stir in the next room, that the lady had revived. I heard voices softened by tears ; then calmer, more assured tones; and after a while, Colonel G---- came into the room. His face was radiant. He gently, and again and again, kissed his child; thanked me with a fervor beyond all measure; saying, that
[p. 121]
he was the happiest man living; and that he would explain everything to me in the morning. He asked me if I would pass the night beside the little girl, as his wife was in such a condition of alternate nervous excitement and exhaustion, that he dared not leave her, or permit her to resume her part beside her child.
Of course I am most happy to do him this small service. So, having bid the girls good night, and having abstained from exciting my curiosity, and abating their night’s sleep, by any allusion to the extraordinary developments in this apartment, I have put on my dressing-gown, and have set down to my journal to record circumstances that have murdered my sleep for this night. The morning came in its due course; but, alas! no sun, and “no hope of the Wengern Alp!” as I heard Héry say, in reply to the eager inquiries of the young ladies, when he tapped at their door. We have an appointment to keep—we must go down to Grindelwald to day.
“To Grindelwald, by the high-road!” exclaims ****; I had rather pass the Wengern Alp blind-fold, than not pass it.”
“As well blindfold Mademoiselle,” replies Héry, “as while the Mittag-horn, the Breit-horn, and Gross-horn, are themselves blindfolded with clouds.”
“But what has become of the Colonel?” asked ****; and thought I, “Is he so taken up with his patients, that he has forgotten us?”
I confess, I was very unwilling to go off, without knowing more of his story; but I did not choose to press on the confidence which he might have reasons for withholding ; or at any rate, chose to withhold. He had early sent a message to me, to say, that the mother was much refreshed, and would resume her place by the child.
Our carriage was ordered—was at the door; and nothing from the colonel; and I was just writing him a civil farewell-note, when he rushed into the room, saying, “Is it possible you were going, without giving me an opportunity of thanking you—of speaking to you alone?” he added, turning to my companions, “though whatever I have to say to Miss S----, she can at her discretion communicate to you if you have any interest in the subject.”
The girls immediately withdrew; with interest quite enough to justify the communication which I had the pleasure of making to their astonished ears on the way to Grindelwald.
It seems that Colonel G----, some seven years ago,--then a very young, and a very impetuous young man, as he says,--was passing a few weeks in Zurich, when he fell distractedly in love with Miss V----. She was the only child of the widow of a rich banker; beautiful, and gifted with high qualities of mind and heart; but somewhat perverted and spoiled by the alternate doting and despotism of her mother, “a fierce old woman,” he called her; to whom I might remember his alluding, when he spoke of the dragon ejected by St. Beatus. He married Miss V----; the mother being delighted with the idea of a noble English alliance, and professing to have no concern at his having but a few poor hundreds per annum. She accompanied the new-married pair to England. There she was received by his proud family without any disguise of their estimate of the infinite distance between them. Her coarse passions were provoked. She imparted a degree of her jealousy and resentment to her daughter; and after one year, and before the birth of his child, they separated; and the mother and daughter returned to Switzerland.
“We were both,” he said, “the victims of our ignorance of life. We did not understand the true proportions of things—that the less must be sacrificed to the greater. We were both irritable and passionate; totally unfit to manage the most complicated and delicate relation of life—that in which unity and individuality are so marvellously blended, that not a fibre of one can be touched, without jarring and endangering the peaceful existence of the other. We parted,” he said; “and till yesterday, I never saw my lovely child. I had determined never to claim her ;--thank God, I felt a mother’s rights too deeply, ever to have thought of separating them. My wife had the expectation of immense wealth; I was poor, and too proud to sue for reconciliation. I have been five years in India, where my wife supposed me still to be. There I have earned some honor; and now, possessing an income suited to my military rank, I came to Switzerland, in the hope of regaining the domestic happiness I so recklessly threw away. I dreaded the mother. I came here to nerve myself, in the scenes where I passed the first week of my then blissful married life. Madame V---- died ten days since; and hither my wife,--led by divine inspiration, I think—came also.—You know the rest.”
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Straggling Excerpts from a Journal Kept in Switzerland
Subject
The topic of the resource
Travel in Switzerland, troubled marriage.
Description
An account of the resource
The narrator, "Miss S.", describes her travels in Switzerland with two young female companions, and their encounter with a mysterious English gentleman with a troubled past.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Source
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Sartain's Union Magazine, Volume II (January-June 1848): 115-121.
Publisher
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[edited by Caroline M. Kirkland]
Date
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1848
Contributor
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Kaley McDowell; D. Gussman
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Reprinted as "The English Colonel and His Wife" by Miss Catharine M. Sedgwick in The Gem of the Season: A Souvenir for 1851, 58-80. New York: Leavitt and Company, 1851 [pub. 1850].
Language
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English
Type
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Document
"Manfred"
1848
Alps
aristocracy
Battle of Morat
bible
Caroline M. Kirkland
children
class difference
doctors
Englishmen
forget-me-nots
Hamlet
John Kemble
Lord Byron
Madame de Stael
marriage
married women's property
medicine
mother's rights
Nature
Queen Bertha's tomb
rural life
Sartain's Union Magazine
St. Beatus
St. Paul
Swiss peasants
Switzerland
Thomas Campbell
tourism
Travel
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/67539f2ee17e08003194b36700bcdf40.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=NAvOzowQfJrwEV6qQ467TA1EffYWXF7kSJb9B5tk4ZU5DRTvrVEeDZIjowOe6Q%7EgZRNCh8LjvE8-ivIn%7E3LsipXoAGPfI83vtnaPIfK%7EBGL68utsAO3wmy%7EEnTJSLKfNF1LtMNYIrhZTbfuAu5dSeRlcWeMalX%7EpvnyAisabvvUHHdwuf9ETyZZrF9I32eNBQqPdRuHlcytbqPUwFsNZ9RDxVJ0IvT4mTHqkVED%7E6Tjtpl9DWCg90xx4jlNMy-6b5S0Hj9Hyy%7Etd3U9a5V2hHbLJ4FyPiEt7rvARVQ5rDEbpBBi28UbhbWUyBEAnrO8wkU69k%7EBWEKWBzvyUWDrrxQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
5d7506166e2a35732f0e2730ac8ffc79
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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1838
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
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THE WHITE SCARF.
BY MISS SEDGWICK.
“Be just, and fear not.
Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy country’s.
Thy God’s, and truth’s; then, if thou fall’st , O Cromwell,
Thou fall’st a blessed martyr.”
[1]
THE reign of Charles the Sixth is one of the most humiliating periods of the French history, which, in its centuries of absolute kinds and unquestioning subjects, presents us a most melancholy picture of the degradation of man, and disheartening prolongation of the infancy of society. Nature had given Charles but an hereditary monarch’s portion of brains, and that portion had not been strengthened or developed by education or exercise of any sort. Passions he had not; he never rose to the dignity of passion; but his appetites were strong,
[2]
and they impelled him, unresisted, to every species of indulgence. His excesses brought on fits of madness, which exposed his kingdom to the rivalship and misrule of the princes of the blood. Fortunately for the subsequent integrity of France, these men were marked by the general, and as it would seem, constitutional weakness of transmitted royalty; and were besides too much addicted to pleasure, to crave political independence or renown in arms, the common passions of the powerful and high-born.
Instead of sundering the feeble ties that bound them to their allegiance, and raising their princely domains to independence of the crown, they congregated in Paris, then, as now, the Paradise of the devotees to pleasure, and surrendered themselves, as their chroniclers quaintly express it, to “festins, mascarades, danses, caroles et ébattemens,” (every species of diversion,) varied by an occasional affray, an ambuscade, or an assassination. The talent, that is now employed upon the arts of life, in inventing new machines, and contriving new fabrics, was then exhausted in originating new pastimes. Games of cards, and the revival of dramatic entertainments,
[3]
date from this period,--the beginning of the fifteenth century.
There shone at Charles’s court one of those stars, that occasionally cross the orbit of royalty, whose brilliancy obscured the splendor of the hereditary nobility,--the lights, that, according to conservative opinion, are set in the firmament to rule the day and night of the plebeian world.
In the month of September, of the year 1409, a stranger, attended by a servant with a small travelling-sack, knocked at the gate of a magnificent hôtel in Paris. He was answered by a porter, who cast on him a glance of inquiry as keen as a bank clerk’s upon the face of an unknown bank-note; and, seeing neither retinue, livery, nor other insignia of rank, he was gruffly dismissing him, when the stranger said, “Softly, my friend; present this letter to the Grand-Master, and tell him the bearer awaits his pleasure! Throw the sack down within the gate, Luigi!” he added to his attendant, “and come again at twelve; “ and, without more ado, he took his station within the court, a movement in which the porter acquiesced, seeing that in the free bearing of the stranger, and in the flashing of
[4]
his dark eye, which indicated, it were wise not to question an authority that had nature’s seal. On one side of the court was fountain, and on the other a group of Fauns, rudely carved in wood. Adornings of sculpture were then unknown in France; -- the art was just reviving, and the ancient models still lay buried under barbaric ruins. Two grooms appeared, conducting, in front of the immense flight of steps that led up to the hôtel, four horses caparisoned for their riders, two for females, as was indicated by the form of the saddles, and the gay silk knots that decked the bridles, one of which was studded with precious stones. At the same moment, there issued from the grand entrance a gentleman, and a lady who had the comely embonpoint befitting her uncertain “certain age.” She called her companion “mon mari,” and he assisted her to mount, with that nonchalant, conjugal air, which indicated that gallantry had long been obsolete in their intercourse.
The interest the wife did not excite, was directed to another quarter. Mon mari’s eye was constantly reverting to the door, with an expression of eager expectation. “Surely,” said the lady, “Violette has had time to find
[5]
my eau-de-rose; --let us go, my husband,-- we are losing the freshness of the morning. She may follow with Edouard.”
“Go you, ma chère amie,” replied her husband. “Mount, Edouard, and attend your mistress, --my stirrup wants adjusting, -- I’ll follow presently. How slow she rides! A plague on old women’s fears!” he muttered, as she ambled off. “Ah, there you are, my morning star,” he cried, addressing a young girl who darted through the door and appeared well to warrant a comparison to the most beautiful of the celestial lights. She wore a Spanish riding-cap, a cloth dress, the waist neatly fitted to her person, and much in the fashion of the riding costume of the present day, save that it was shorter by some half-yard, and thus showed to advantage a rich Turkish pantalette and the prettiest feet in the world, laced in boots. “Is my lady gone?” she exclaimed, dropping her veil over her face.
“Yes, Violette, your lady is gone, but your lord is waiting for my lady’s mignonne. Come, mistress of my heart! here is my hand for your stepping-stone.” He then threw his arm around her waist, under the pretext of
[6]
assisting her to mount; but she darted away like a butterfly from a pursuer’s grasp, and, snatching the rein from the groom’s hand, and saying, “My lord, I am country bred, and neither need nor like your gallantries,” she led the horse to the platform on which the Fauns were placed, and, for the first time seeing the stranger, who stood, partly obscured by them, looking curiously upon this little scene, she blushed, and he involuntarily bowed. It was an instinctive homage, and she requited it with a look as different from that which she returned to the libertine gaze of the Count de Roucy, as the reflection in a mirror of two such faces, the one bloated and inflamed, the other pure and deferential, would have been. Availing herself of the slight elevation of the platform, she sprang into her saddle and set off at a speed, that, in De Roucy’s eye, provokingly contrasted with her mistress’s cautious movement. “who are you, and what do you here?” he said, turning to the stranger.
“My name,” replied the stranger, without condescending to notice the insolent manner of the question, “is Felice Montano, and I am here on business with the Grand-Master.”
[7]
“Did ye not exchange glances with that girl?”
“I looked on her, and the Saints reward by her, she looked on me.”
“Par amour?”
“I stand not here to be questioned; -- I ne’er saw the lady before, but, with Heaven’s kind leave, I will see her again!”
“Take care, -- the girl is my wife’s minion, the property of the house, --ye shall be watched!” muttered De Roucy, and, mounting his hourse, he rode off, just as the porter reappeared, attended by a valet-de-place, whose obsequious address indicated that a flattering reception awaited Montano.
Montano was conducted up a long flight of steps, and through a corridor to an audience-room, whose walls were magnificently hung with tapestry, and its windows curtained with the richest Oriental silk. Silver vases, candelabra of solid gold, and various costly furniture, were displayed with dangerous profusion, offering a tempting spoil to the secret enemies of their proprietors.
There were already many persons of rank assembled, and others entering. Montano stood apart, undaunted by their half insolent,
[8]
half curious glances. He had nothing to ask, and therefore feared nothing. He felt among these men, notorious for their ignorance and their merely animal lives, the conscious superiority of an enlightened man, that raised him far above the mere hereditary distinction, stigmatized by a proud plebian as the “accident of an accident.” Montano was an Italian, and proudly measured the eminence from which his instructed countrymen looked down upon their French neighbors.
As he surveyed the insolent nobles, he marveled at the ascendency which Jean de Montagu, the Grand-Master of the Palace, had maintained over them for nearly half a century. The son of a humble notary of Paris, he had been ennobled by King John, had been the prime and trusted favorite of three successive monarchs, had maintained through all his capricious changes the favor of Charles, had allied his children to nobles and kings, had liberally expended riches, that the proudest of them all did not possess, had encouraged and defended the laboring classes, and was not known to have an enemy, save Burgundy, the fearful “Jean sans peur.”
The suitors to the Grand-Master had as-
[9]
sembled early, as it was his custom to receive those who had pressing business before breakfast, it being his policy not to keep his suitors in vexing attendance. He knew his position even while it seemed firmest, to be an uncertain one; and he warily practiced those arts which smooth down the irritable surface of men’s passions, and lull to sleep the hydra, vanity.
“The Grand-Master is as true as the dial!” said a person standing near Montano; “the clock is on the stroke of nine; -mark me! as it striketh the last stroke, he will appear.”
Montano fixed his eyes on the grand entrance to the saloon, expecting, that, when the doors “wide open flew, “ he should see that Nature had put the stamp of her nobility on the plebeian who kept these lawless lords in abeyance. The portal remained closed, there was no flourish of trumpets, but, at a low side-door, gently opened and shut, entered a man low of stature, and so slender and shrunken, that it would seem Nature and time had combined to compress him within the narrowest limits of the human frame. His features were small, his chin beardless, and the few locks that hung, like silver fringe around
[10]
his head, were soft and curling as an infant’s. He wore a Persian silk dressing-gown over a citizen’s simple under-dress, and his tread was so soft, his manner so unpretending and unclaiming, that Montano would scarcely have looked at him a second time, if he had not perceived every eye directed towards him, and certain tokens of deference analogous to those flutterings and shrinkings that are seen in the basse cour, when its sovereign steps forth among his subdues and abject rivals. But, when he did look again, he saw the fire glowing in a restless eye, that seemed to see and read all at a glance,-- an eye that no man, carrying a secret in his bosom, could meet without quailing.
“Your Grace believes,” said the Grand-Master to the Duke of Orleans, who had been vehemently addressing him in a low voice, “that these mysteries are a kind of divertisement that will minister to our sovereign’s returning health?”
“So says the learned leech, and we all know they are the physic our brother loves.”
“Then be assured, your poor servant will honor the drafts on his master’s treasury, thought it be well nigh drained by the revels
[11]
of the late marriages. The King’s poor subjects starve, that his rich ones may feast; and children scarce out of leading-strings are married, that their fathers and mothers may have pretexts for dances and masquerades.”
“Methinks,” said the Count de Vaudemont, the ally and messenger of Burgundy, “the Grand-Master’s example is broad enough to shelter what seems, in comparison of the late gorgeous festival within these walls, but the revels of rustics.”
“The festivals within these walls are paid with coin from our own poor coffers,” replied the Grand-Master, “not drawn from the King’s treasury, after being coined from the sweat and tears of his subjects. But what have we here?” He passed his eye over a petition to the King, from sundry artisans, whose houses had been stripped of their movables by the valets of certain Dukes,-- these valets pleading the common usage in justification of this summary process. “Tell our good friends,” he said, “it shall be my first business to present this to our gracious sovereign; but in the mean time, let them draw on me for the amount of their loss. I can better afford the creditor’s patient waiting than our
[12]
poor friends, who, after their day’s hard toil, should lie securely on their own beds at night. Ah, my lords, why do ye not, like our neighbors of England, make the poor man’s cottage his castle.” After various colloquies with the different groups, in which, whether he denied or granted, it was always with the same gracious manner, the same air of self-negation, he drew near to De Vaudemont, who stood apart from the rest, with an air of frigid indifference, and apparent unconsciousness of the Grand-Master’s presence or approach, till Montagu asked, in a low and deferential tone, “What answer sendeth his Grace of B-b-b-b-b--?” Montague had a stammering infirmity, which beset him when he was most anxious to appear unconcerned. He lowered his voice at every fresh effort to pronounce the name, and this confidential tone gave a more startling effect to the loud, rough voice, in which the party addressed pronounced, “Burgundy! his Grace bids me say, that for some diseases blood-letting is the only remedy.”
“Tell Burgundy,” replied the Grand-Master, now speaking without the slightest faltering, an in allusion to the recent alliance of his own with the royal family, “tell Burgundy,
[13]
that the humblest stream that mingles with the Ganges becomes a portion of holy water, and that blood-letting is dangerous when ye approach the royal arteries! Ah!” he continued, turning suddenly to Montano, grasping his hand, and resuming his usual tone, “You, I think, are the son of Nicoló Montano, -- welcome to Paris! You must stay to breakfast with me. I have much to ask concerning my old friend. It is one and twenty years since your mother put my finger in your mouth to feel your first tooth. Bless me, what goodly rows are there now! So time passes!”
“And where it were once safe to thrust your finger, it might now be bitten off. Ha! Jean de Montagu?” growled Vaudemont.
“ When there are wolves abroad, we keep our fingers to ourselves,” replied Montagu.
These discourteous sallies and significant retorts were afterwards remembered, as are the preludes to an earthquake after the catastrophe has interpreted them. The assembly broke up, Montagu bidding his young friend to take a stroll in the garden, and rejoin him at the ringing of the breakfast bell. When that sounded, a valet appeared and
[14]
conducted Montano to a breakfast room, where game, cakes, and fruit were served on plate, and the richest wine sparkled in cups that old Homer might fain have gemmed with his consecrating verse. “I had forgotten,” said Montagu, “that a boy of two and twenty needs no whetting to his appetite; but sit ye down, and we will dull its edge. Ah, here you are De Roucy. We have a guest to season our fare this morning, the son of my old schoolmate, Nicoló Montano.” De Roucy bowed haughtily, and Montano returned the salutation as it was given. “Why comes not Elinor to breakfast?” asked Montagu of the Count de Roucy, who was the husband of his eldest daughter.
“She likes not strangers.”
“God forgive her! Felice Montano is no stranger;-- the son of her father’s first and best friend, --of the playfellow of his boyhood, -- of the founder of his fortunes, a stranger!”
“I thought you had woven your own fortunes, Sir.”
“So have I, and interwoven with them some rotten threads. Think not, De Roucy, I do not notice, or that, noticing, I care for your
[15]
allusion to my father’s craft. Come hither, Pierre.” De Roucy’s son, a boy of seven, came and stood at his knee. “When you are a grown man, Pierre, remember, that when your father’s fathers were burning cottages, bearing off poor men’s daughters, slaughtering their cattle, and trampling down their harvest-fields, -- doing the work of hereditary lordlings, --my child, your mother’s ancestor’s were employed in planting mulberries, rearing silkworms, multiplying looms—in making bread and wine plenty, and adding to the number of happy homes in their country.
“But, grandpapa, I wont remember the wicked ones that stole and did such horrid deeds!”
“Ah, Pierre, you will be a lord then, and learn in lordly phrase to call stealing levying. Go, boy, and eat your breakfast; -- God forgive me ! I have worked hard to get my posterity into the ranks of robbers !”
At another moment, Montano would have listened with infinite interest to all these hints, as so many clues to the history and mind of a man who was the wonder of his times; but now something more captivating to the imagi-
[16]
nation of two and twenty, than the philosophy of any old man’s history, occupied him, and he was wondering, why no inquiry was made about the companion of the Countess, and whether that creature, who seemed to him only fit to be classed with the divinities, was really a menial in the house of this weaver’s son.
“Your father,” resumed the Grand-Master, “writes with a plainness that pleases me. I thank him. It shall not be my fault, if every window in my sovereign’s palace is not curtained with the silks from his looms; and, if it were not that my son’s espousals have drained my purse, I would give you the order on the instant for the re-furnishing of my hôtel. But another season will come, and then we shall be in heart again. Your father does not write in courtly vein. He says, that, amid his quiet and obedient subjects, who toil and spin for him while he sleeps, he envies not my uncertain influence over a maniac monarch, and dominion over factious nobles. Uncertain, -- St. Peter ! What think ye, De Roucy? May not a man who has allied one daughter to your noble house, another to the Sire de Montbaron, and another to Meun, and now
[17]
has affianced his only son to the Constable d’Albret, doubly cousin to the King, may not he throw his glove in dame Fortune’s face?”
“Yes, my lord, and dame Fortune may throw it back again. He only betrays his weakness, who props himself on every side.”
“Weakness ! I have not an enemy save Burgundy.”
“And he who has Burgundy needs none other.”
“You are bilious this morning, De Roucy. But come, wherewith shall we entertain our young friend? We have no pictures, no statues. Our gardens are a wilderness to your paradises; but I have one piece of workmanship, that I think would even startle the masters of your land.” He called the servant in waiting, and whispered an order to him. In a few moments the door re-opened and a young girl appeared, bearing a silver basket of grapes. Her hair was golden, and, parted in front and confined on her temples with a silver thread, fell over her shoulders, a mass of curls. Her head was gracefully bent over the basket she carried, showing, in its most beautiful position, a swan-like neck. Her features were all symmetrical
[18]
and her mouth had that perfection of outline, that art can imitate, and that flexibility, obedient to every motion of the soul, in which Nature is inimitable. Her dress was of rich materials, cut in the form prescribed to her rank. The mistresses were fond of illustrating their own generosity, or outdoing their rivals, by the rich liveries of their train, while they jealously maintained every badge of the gradation of rank. Her dress was much in the fashion of a Swiss peasant girl of the present times. Her petticoat, of a fine light-blue cloth, was full and short, exposing a foot and ancle, that a queen might have envied her the power to show, and which she, however, modestly sheltered, with the rich silver fringe that bordered her skirt. Her white silk boddice was laced with a silver cord, and her short, full sleeves were looped with cords and tassels of the same material. “Can ye match this girl in Italy?” whispered the old man to Montano.
“In Italy! nay, my lord, not in the world is there such another model of perfection!” replied Montano, who, changed as she was, by doffing her demi-cavalier dress, had, at a glance, recognized his acquaintance of the morning.
[19]
“Thank you! Violette,” said Montagu, “are these grapes from your own bower?”
“They are, my lord.”
“Then they must needs be sweeter than old Roland’s, for they have been ripened by your bright eyes and sunny smiles.”
“Ah, but grandfather,” interposed little Pierre, “Violette did not say that, when I asked her for her grapes. She said, they would only taste good to her father, for whom she reared them, and that I should love Roland’s better.”
“And why did you not thus answer me, Violette ?”
“You asked for them, my lord, --the master’s request is law to the servant.”
“God forgive me, if I be such a master ! Take away the grapes, Violette, and send them, with what else ye will from the refectory, to the forester. Nay, -- no thanks, my pretty child, or, if you will, for all thanks let me kiss your cheek.” Violette stopped and offered her beautiful cheek, suffused with blushes, to Montagu’s lips.
“The old have marvelous privileges !” muttered De Roucy. The same thought was expressed in Montano’s glance, when his eye,
[20]
as Violette turned, encountered hers. She involuntarily curtsied, as she recognized the gallant of the court. “A very suitable greeting for a stranger, Violette,” said the Grand-Master ; “but this youth must have a kinder welcome from my household. It is Felice Montano, -- my friend’s son, -- give him a fitting welcome, my child.”
“Nobles and princes,” she replied, in a voice that set her words to music, “have welcomes for your friends, my lord ; but such as a poor rustic can offer, she gives with all her heart.” She took from her basket of grapes a half-blown rose. “Will ye take this, Signor?” she said, “ it offers ye Nature’s sweet welcome.”
Montano kissed the rose, and placed it in his bosom, as devoutly as if it had dropped from the hand of his patron saint. He then opened the small sack which his attendant had brought to the hôtel, and which, at his request, had been laid on a side-table. It contained specimens of the most beautiful silks manufactured in his father’s filature in Lombardy, unrivaled in Italy. While these were spread out and displayed, to the admiration of the Grand-Master, he took from
[21]
among them, a white silk scarf, embroidered in silver with lilies of the valley, and throwing it over Violette’s shoulders, he asked, if she “would grace and reward their arts of industry by wearing it ?”
“If it were fitting, Signor, one to whom it is prescribed what bravery to wear, and how to ear it,” she replied, looking timidly and doubtfully at the Grand-Master.
“It is not fitting,” interposed De Roucy.
“And pray ye, Sir, why not?” asked Montagu; “we do not here allow, that gauds are for those alone who are born to them; -- beneath our roof-tree, the winner is the wearer; -- keep it, my pretty Violette, it well becomes thee.” Violette dropped on her knee, kissed the Grand-Master’s hand, and casting a look at Montano, worth, in his estimation, all the words of thanks in the French language, she disappeared.
_______
Montagu insisted, that during the time his young friend’s negotiations with the silk vendors of Paris detained him there, he should remain an inmate of his family; and nothing loath was Montano to accept a hospitality,
[22]
which afforded him facilities for every day seeing Violette. His affairs were protracted; day after day he found some plausible pretext, if pretext he had needed, for delaying his departure; but, by his intelligence, his various information, and his engaging qualities, he had made such rapid advances in Montagu’s favor, that he rather wanted potent reasons to reconcile him to their parting. If such had been the progress of their friendship, we need not be surprised, that one little month sufficed to mature a more tender sentiment, a sentiment, that, in the young bosoms of southern climes, ripens and perfects itself with the rapidity of the delicious fruits of a tropical sun. Daily and almost hourly, Violette and Montano were together in bower and hall. Set aside by their rank from an equal association with the visiters of the Grand-Master, they enjoyed a complete immunity from any open interference with their happiness; but Violette was persecuted with secret gallantries from De Roucy, that had become more abhorrent to her since her affections were consecrated to Montano. At the end of the month, their love was confessed and plighted; -- the Grand-Master had given his assent to
[23]
their affiancing, and the Countess de Roucy had yielded hers, glad to be relieved from a favorite, whom she had begun to fear as a rival. The eighth of October was appointed for their nuptials. “To-morrow morning, Violette,” said Montagu to her on the evening of the sixth, “ye shall go and ask your father’s leave and blessing, and bid him to the wedding. Tell him, “ he added, casting a side-glance towards De Roucy, who stood at a little distance, eyeing the young pair “with jealous leer malign,” “that I shall envy him his son-in-law; --nay, tell him not that, I will not envy any man aught ; my course has been one of prosperity and possession, -- I have numbered threescore and fifteen years, -- I am now in sight of the farther shore of life, and no man can interrupt my peaceful passage to it!”
“Let no man count on that from which one hour of life divides him !” cried De Roucy, starting from his fixed posture, and striding up and down the saloon. His words afterwards recurred to all that then heard him, as a prophecy.
Montano asked, for his morning’s ride, and escort of six armed men. “I have travelled,”
[24]
he said to the Grand-Master, “over your kingdom with no defence but my own good weapon, and with gold enough to tempt some even of your haughty lords to violence; but, till now, I never felt fear, or used caution.”
“Because till now,” replied Montagu, “your heart was not bound up in the treasure you exposed. That spirit is not human, that is not susceptible of fear.”
The escort was kindly provided, and, by Montagu’s order, furnished with baskets of fruit, wine, and &c., to aid the extempore hospitalities of Violette’s cottage-home. Before the sun had nearly reached the meridian, she was within sight of that dear home, on the borders of the Seine; and her eyes filled with tears, as, pointing out to Montano each familiar object, she thought how soon she was to be far separated from these haunts of her childhood. It was a scene of sylvan beauty and rustic abundance. Stacks of corn and hay, protected from the weather, not only witnessed the productiveness of the well-cultured farm, but seemed to enjoy the security, with which they were permitted to lie on the lap of their mother earth, -- a rare security in those times of rapine, when the lazy nobles
[25]
might, at pleasure and with impunity, snatch from the laborers the fruit of their toil. The cows were straggling in their sunny pasture, the sheep feeding on the hill-side, the domestic birds gossiping in the poultry-yard, and the oxen turning up, for the next summer’s harvest, the rich soil of fields whose product the proprietor might hope to reap, as he enjoyed, through the favor of the Grand-Master, the benefit of the act called an exemption de prise. Barante, Violette’s father, was lying on an oaken settle, that stood under an old pear tree, laden with fruit, at his door. Two boys, in the perfection of boyhood, were eating their lunch and gamboling on the grass with a little sturdy house dog; while an old, blind grandmother, who sat within the door, was the first to catch the sound of the trampling of the horses’ hoofs. “Look, Henri, who is coming,” she said. The dog and the boys started forth from the little court, and directly there was a welcoming bark, and shouts of, “It’s Violette ! it’s our dear sister !” Amidst this shouting and noisy joy, Violette made her way to her father’s arms, and the fond embrace of the old woman.
“And whom shall I bid welcome, Vio-
[26]
lette ?” asked Barante, offering his hand to Montano.
“Signor Felice Montano,” answered Violette, her eyes cast down, and her cheek burning, as if, by pronouncing the name, she told all she had to tell.
“Welcome here, Sir,” resumed Barante; “ye have come, doubtless, to see how poor folk live ?” and the good man looked round on his little domain with a very proud humility.
“Oh no, dear father; he came not for that.”
“What did he come for, then, sister?” asked little Hugh.
“I came not to see how you live, “ said Montano, “but to beg from you wherewith to live myself,” and taking Barante aside, he unfolded his errand.
“Come close to grandmother, Violette,” said Henri, “and let her feel your russet gown. I am glad you come not home in your bravery, for then you would not seem like our own sister.”
“And yet,” said the old woman, with a little of that womanish feeling, that clings to the sex, of all conditions and ages, “I think
[27]
none would become it better; -- but, dear me, Lettie, how you’ve grown ! I can hardly reach to the top of your head.”
“Not a hair’s breadth have I grown, grandmother, since I saw you last; but now do I seem more natural?” and she knelt down before the old woman.
“Yes, -- yes, -- now you are my own little Lettie again, -- your head just above my knee. How time flies ! it seems but yesterday, when your mother was no higher than this, and its five years, come next All-Saints-Day, since we laid her in the cold earth. But why have you bound up your pretty curls in this net-work, Lettie?” Henri playfully snatched the silver net from her head, and her golden curls fell over her shoulders. The old woman stroked, and fondly kissed them, and then passed her shriveled fingers over Violette’s face, seeming to measure each feature. “Oh, if I could but once more see those eyes, -- I remember so well their color, -- just like the violet that is dyed deepest with the sunbeams, -- and that was why we called you Violette ; but, when they turned from the light, and glanced up through your long, dark, eyelashes, they looked black ;
[28]
so many a foolish one disputed me the color, as if I should not know, that had watched them by all lights, since they first opened on this world.”
“Dear grandmother, I am kneeling for your blessing, and you are filling my head with foolish thoughts.”
“And there is another, who would fain have your blessing, good mother,” said Montano, whose hand Barante had just joined to Violette’s.
“What? – a stranger ! – who is this?”
“One, good mother, who craves a boon, which if granted, he desires nought else; if denied, all else would be bootless to him.”
“What means he, Violette?”
“Nothing, -- and yet much, grandmother,” replied Violette, with a smile and a blush, that would, could the old woman have seen them, have interpreted Montano’s words.
“Ah, a young spark!” she said. “It is ever so with them, -- their cup foameth and sparkleth, and yet there is nothing in it.”
“But there is much in it this time,” interposed Barante; and, a little impatient of the periphrasing style of the young people, he proceeded to state, in direct terms, the char-
[29]
acter and purpose of his visiter, and said, in conclusion, “I have given my consent and blessing; for you know, mother, we can’t keep our Lettie, -- we bring up our children for others, not for ourselves, and, when their time comes, they will, for it’s God’s law, cleave their father’s house and cleave unto a stranger.”
“But why, dear Lettie,” asked the old woman, “do ye not wed among your own people? why go among barbarians ?”
“Barbarians !” dear grandmother, --if ye knew all that I have learned of his people, from Felice Montano, ye would think we were the barbarians, instead of they. Why, grandmother, Felice can both read and write like a priest, while our great lords can only make their mark. And so much do these Italians know of what the learned call the arts and sciences, (I know not the meaning of the words, but Felice has promised to explain them to me, when we can talk of such things, that our people call them sorcerers.”
“Ah, well-a-day ! I thought how it would be, when the Lady Elinor took such a fancy to your bonnie face, and begged you away from us. But why cannot ye content yourself at the Grand-Master’s ?”
[30]
“Oh, ask me not to stay there. He is kind as my father, and so is the Lady Elinor; but,” added Violette in a whisper, “her husband is a bold, bad, man; he hath said to me what it maketh me blush to recall.”
“Why need ye fear him, Violette.”
“If all be true that men whisper of him, he dares do whate’er the Evil One bids him. They say he was at the bottom of the horrid affair at the Hôtel de St. Paul, and that, at Mans, he it was, that directed the mad King against the Chevalier de Polignac.” * [1]
[31]
“But surely, dear child, the Grand-Master can protect ye.”
“Now he can, -- but we know not how long his power may last. They say that he is far out of favor with Burgundy, and none standeth
[32]
long, on whom he frowneth. Indeed, indeed, dear grandmother, it is better your child should fly away to a safe shelter.”
“Ye have given me many reasons; but that ye love, is always enough for you young ones. Well, -- God speed ye, -- ye must have your day; kneel down, both, and take an old woman’s blessing, it may do ye good, -- it can do ye no harm !”
This ceremony over, the boys, who heard they were bidden to the wedding, and who thought not of the parting, not any thing beyond it, were clamorous in their expressions of joy. Their father sent them, with some refection, to the men, who, at his bidding, had conducted their horses to a little paddock in the rear of his cottage, where they were refreshing them from his stores of provender.
The day was passing happily away. Never had Violette appeared so lovely in Montano’s eyes, as in the atmosphere of home, were every look and action was tinged by a holy light that radiated from the heart. Time passed as he always does when he “only treads on flowers,” and the declining sun admonished them to prepare for their departure. “But first,” said Barante, “let us taste to-
[33]
gether our dear patron’s bounty. Unpack that hamper, boys, and you, dear Violette, serve us as you were wont.” Violette donned her little home-apron of white muslin, tied with sarsnet bows, and, spreading a cloth on the ground under the pear tree, she and the boys arranged the wine, fruit, and various confections from the basket. “It’s all sugar, Hugh!” said Henri, touching his tongue to the tip of a bird’s wing. “And this is sugar, too! replied Hugh, testing in the same mode a bunch of mimic cherries. The French artistes already excelled all others in every department of the confectionary art, and to our little rustics their work seemed miraculous. “Hark ye, Hugh!” said his brother; “I believe St. Francis dropped these from his pocket, as he flew over.”
“Come, loiterers!” cried his father, “while you are gazing, we would be eating. Ah, that is right, Signor Montano! Is it the last time, my pretty Violette?” to Violette and Montano, who were leading the old woman from her chair to the oaken settle. “Come, sit by me, my child. Now we are all seated, we will fill the cup, and drink ‘Many happy years to Jean de Montagu!’”
[34]
As if to mark the futility of the wish, the progress of the cup to the lip was interrupted by and ominous sound; and forth from the thick barrier of shrubbery, that fenced the northern side of the cottage, came twelve men, armed and masked.
“De Roucy! God help us!” shrieked Violette.
“Seize her instantly, and off with her, as I bade ye!” cried a voice, that Montano recognized as the Count de Roucy’s.
“Touch her at your peril, villain!” cried Montano, drawing his sword and shouting for his attendants. Montano and Barante, the latter armed only with a club, kept their assailants at bay till his men appeared, and they, inspired by their master’s example and adjurations, fought valiantly; but one, and then another of their number fell, and the ruffians were two to one against Violette’s defenders. The rampart they had formed around her was diminishing. “Courage, my boys, courage!” cried Barante, as he shot a glance at his children, crouching round his old mother, motionless as panic-struck birds. “Courage! God and the Saints are on our side!”
“Beat them back, my men!” shouted
[35]
Montano. “Jean de Montagu will reward ye!”
“”Jean de Montagu!” retorted De Roucy, “his bones are cracking on the rack! Ah! I’m wounded! –‘t is but a scratch! – seize her, Le Croy! – press on, my men! –the prize is ours!” But they, seeing their leader fall back, for an instant faltered.
A thought, as if from Heaven, inspired Montano. De Roucy, to avoid giving warning of his approach, had left his horses on the outer side of the wood. Montano’s attendants had, just before the onset of De Roucy’s party, saddled their master’s horse and led him to the gate of the court; there he was now standing, and the passage from Violette to him unobstructed. Once on him and started, thought Montano, she may escape. “Mount my horse, Violette,” he cried, “fear nothing, --we will keep them back,--Heaven guard you!” Violette shot from the circle, like an arrow loosed from the bow, unfastened the horse, and sprang upon him. He had been chafing and stamping, excited by the din of arms, and impatient of his position; and, as she leaped into the saddle, he sprang forward like a released captive. Vio-
[36]
lette heard the yell of the ruffians mingling with the victorious shouts of her defenders. Once her eye caught the flash of their arms; but whether they were retreating or still stationary, she knew not. She had no distinct perception, no consciousness, but an intense desire to get on faster than even her flying steed conveyed here. There were few persons on the road, though passing through the immediate vicinity of a great city. Many of those, who cultivated the environs of Paris, had their dwellings, for greater security, within the walls; and, their working-day being over, they had already retired within them.* [2]
From a hostelrie, where a party of cavaliers were revelling, there were opposing shouts of “Stop!” and “God speed ye!” and, of the straggling peasants returning from market, some crossed themselves, fancying this aerial figure, with colorless face and golden hair streaming to the breeze, was
[37]
some demon in angelic form; and others knelt and murmured a prayer, believing it was indeed an angel. She had just made a turn in the road, which brought her within sight of Notre Dame and the gates of Paris, when she heard the trampling of horses coming rapidly on behind her. Her horse too heard the sound, and, as if conscious of his sacred trust and duty, redoubled his speed. The sounds approached nearer and nearer, and now were lost in the triumphing shouts of her pursuers. Violette’s head became giddy; a sickening despair quivered through her frame. “We have her now!” cried the foremost, and stretched his hand to grasp her rein. The action gave a fresh impulse to her horse. He was within a few yards of the barriers. He sprang forward, and in an instant was within the gates. “We are baulked!” cried the leader of the pursuit, reining in his horse; and, pouring out a volley of oaths, he ordered his men to retreat, saying, it was more than the head of a follower of De Roucy was worth, to venture within the barriers. As the sounds of the retiring party died away, Violette’s horse slackened his speed, and was arrested by the captain of the guard, who had
[33]
just begun the patrol for the night. To his questions Violette replied not a word. Her consciousness was gone, and, exhausted and fainting, she slid from the saddle into his arms. Fortunately he was a humane man; he was touched with her innocent and lovely face; and, not knowing to what other place of shelter and security to convey her, he procured a little, and carried her to his own humble home, where he consigned her to the care of his good wife, Susanne. There being then little provision for the security of private property and individual rights, Montano’s horse was classed among those strays, that, in default of an owner, escheated to the King, and was sent, by the guard, to the King’s stables; and thus all clue to Montano was lost.
As soon as Violette recovered her consciousness, her first desire was to get news of those whom she had left in extremest peril; and, as the readiest means of effecting this, entreated the compassionate woman, who was watching at her bedside, to send her to the Grand-Master.
“The Grand-Master!” replied the good dame; “Mary defend us ! what would ye with him?”
[39]
Violette, in feeble accents, explained her relations with him, and her hope, through him, to obtain news of her friends. Susanne answered her with mysterious intimations, which implied, not only that he, whom she deemed her powerful protector, could do nothing for her, but that it was not even safe to mention his name; and then, after promising her that a messenger should be despatched, in the morning, to her father’s cottage, she administered the common admonitions and consolations, that seem so very wise and sufficient to the bestower, --are so futile to the receiver. “She must hope for the best; “ – “she must cast aside her cares;” – “sleep would tranquilize her;” – “brighter hours might come with the morning; but, if they came not, she might live to see what seemed worst now, to be best, and, at any rate, grieving would not help her.”
Thus it has been from the time of Job’s comforters to the present; words have been spoken to the wretched, as impotent as the effort of the child, who, stretching his arm against a torrent, expects to hold it back! But, to do dame Susanne justice, she acted as well as spoke; and the next morning a messen-
[40]
ger was sent, and returned in due time with news, which no art cold soften to Violette. Her father’s cottage was burned to the ground, and all about it laid waste. Some peasants reported, that they had seen the flames during the night, and men, armed and mounted, conveying off whatever was portable, and driving before them Barante’s live stock. What had become of the poor man, his children, and old mother, no one knew; but there were certain relics among the ashes, which too surely indicated, they had not all escaped. Poor Violette had strength neither of body nor mind left, to sustain her under such intelligence. She was thrown into a delirious fever, during which she raved continually about her murdered family and Montano, who was never absent from her thoughts. But, whatever an individual sufferer might feel, such scenes of marauding and violence were too common to excite surprise. “Barante,” it was said, “had but met at last the fate of all those, who were fools enough to labor and heap up riches, for the idle and powerful to covet and enjoy.”
This feeling was natural and just in the laboring classes, when the valets of princes were legalized robbers, and were permitted,
[41]
whenever their masters’ idle followers were to be accommodated, not only to slay the working man’s beeves, and appropriate the produce of his fields, but to enter his house and sweep off the blankets that covered him, and the pillows on which his children were sleeping. Those, who fancy the world has made no moral progress, should read carefully the history of past ages, and compare the condition of the laborers then, like so many defenceless sheep on the borders of a forest filled with beasts of prey, to the security and independence of our working sovereigns. They would find, that the jurisdiction of that celebrated judge, who unites in his own person the threefold power of judge, jury, and executioner, was then exercised by the armed and powerful; that it was universal and unquestioned, whereas now, if he ventures his summary application of Lynch law, his abuses are bruited from Maine to Georgia, and men shake their heads and sigh over the deterioration of the world, and the licentiousness of liberty!
On the ninth day of her illness, while Susanne was standing by Violette, she awoke from her first long sleep. Her countenance was changed, her flaming color was gone,
[42]
and her eye was quiet. She feebly raised her head, and bursting into tears, said, “Oh, why did you not wake me sooner ?”
“Why should I wake you, dear?”
“Why! do you not hear that dreadful bell?” The great bell of Notre Dame was tolling. “They will be buried,--the boys and all, --all, --before I get there!”
“Dieu-merci, child, your people are not going to the burial; -- that bell tolls not for such as yours and mine. We are thrown into the earth, and Notre Dame wags not her proud tongue for us.”
“Ah, true, --true.” She pressed her hand on her head, as if collecting her thoughts; and then, looking up timidly and shrinking from the answer, she said, “Ye ‘ve heard nothing of them?”
“Nothing as yet; but you are better, and that’s a token we shall hear. Now rest again. It is a noisy day. All the world is abroad. It’s the nobles’ concern, not ours; so I pray ye sleep again, and, whatever ye hear, lift not your head; there be throngs of bad men in the street, and where such are, there may be ugly sights. I will go below, and keep what quiet I can for ye.”
[43]
Susanne’s dwelling was old and ricketty. The apartment under that, which Violette occupied, was a little shop, where dame Susanne vended cakes, candies, and common toys. Violette could hear every sentence spoken there in a ordinary tone; but, owing to Susanne’s well-meant efforts, her ear caught only imperfect sentences, such as follow.
“Good day, Mistress Susanne ! will you lend me a lookout from your window to see the -----”
“Hush!”
“There are Burgundy’s men first; ye’ ll know them, boy, by the cross of St. Andrew on their bonnets; and there are the Armangacs, -- see their scarfs!”
“Speak lower, please neighbour!”
“It’s well for them they have provided against a rescue; -- the bourgeois are all for him, -- every poor man’s heart is for him; for why? he was for every poor man’s right; God reward him.”
“Pray speak a little lower, neighbour.”
“But is it not a shame, dame Susanne?
[44]
But ten days ago and all, save Burgundy, were his friends, and now-----”
“There he is, mother ! see ! see!”
“They stop ! Oh, mother, see him show his broken joints ! Mother ! mother ! how his head hangs on one side ? Curse on the rack, that cracked his bones asunder ! ”
“Hush ! I bid ye hush !”
“Who can that goodly youth be, that stands close by his side ? See, he is speaking to him !”
“Oh, he looks like and angel,-- so full of pity, mother!”
“By St. Dominic, neighbour, the boy is right!”
“Oh, mother, what eyes he has ; -- now he is looking up, --see!”
“Hush!”
“But look at them, dame Susanne,-- would ye not think the lamp of his soul was shining through them?”
“See him kiss the poor, broken hand, that hangs down so! God bless him! There’s true courage in that; and see those same lips, how they curl in scorn, as he turns towards those fierce wretches! He is some stranger-youth. Whence is he, think ye, Susanne?”
[45]
“I think by the cut of his neck-cloth, and the fashion of his head-gear,” replied Susanne, who for a moment forgot her caution, “he comes from Italy.”
The word was talismanic to Violette. She sprang from her bed to a window, and the first object she saw amidst a crowd was Montano; the second, her protector and friend, Jean de Montagu, the Grand-Master. He was stretched on a hurdle, for the torments of the rack had left him unable to sustain an upright position. Violette’s eye was riveted to the mutilated form of her good old master. Her soul seemed resolved into one deep supplication; but not one word expressed its intense emotions, so far did they “transcend the imperfect offices of prayer.” Not one treacherous glance wandered to her lover, till the procession moved; and then the thought, that she was losing her last opportunity of being re-united to him, turned the current of feeling, and suggested an expedient, which she immediately put into execution. She had taken her white scarf, in her pocket, to the cottage, to show it to her father; and through her delirium she had persisted in keeping it by her. She now hung it in the window, in
[46]
the hope, that, fluttering in the breeze, it might attract Montano’s eye. She watched him, but his attention was too fixed to be diverted by anything, certainly not by a device so girlish. The procession moved on. The hurdle, and the stately figure beside it, were passing from her view. She threw the casement open, and leaned out. The scaffold, erected at the end of the street, struck her sight. She shrieked, fainted, and fell upon the floor. That one moment gave the color to her after-life. She had been seen, and marked,
-- and was remembered.
----------
The Duke of Burgundy had taken advantage of a moment, when Charles was but partially recovered from a fit of insanity, to compass the Grand-Master’s ruin. The nobles had wept at Montagu’s execution, but they had been consoled by the rich spoils of his estate. There was no such balm for the sovereign; and it became a matter of policy to get up some dramatic novelty to divert his mind, and prevent a recurrence to the past, which might prove dangerous, even to Burgundy. Accordingly, a new mystery was
[47]
put in train for presentation, and one month after the last act of Montagu’s tragedy, and while his dishonored body was still attached to the gibbet of Montfaucon, the gay world of Paris assembled, to witness the representation of a legend of a certain saint, called “The Espousals of St. Thérèse.”
The seat over which the regal canopy was suspended, corresponded to our stage-box, and afforded an access to the stage, that royalty might use at pleasure. The King was surrounded by his own family. His wandering eye, his vacant laugh, and incessant talking, betrayed the still disordered state of his mind; for when sane, amidst a total destitution of talents and virtues, he had a certain affability of manner, and the polish of conventional life, which, as his historian says, acquired for him the “ridiculous title of ‘well-beloved.’” On Charles’s right sat his Queen, Isabel of Bavaria, a woman remarkable for nothing but excessive obesity, the gluttony that produced it, and the indolence consequent upon it, -- and a single passion, avarice. And sovereigns, such as these, are, in some men’s estimation, rulers by “divine right”! Behind the Queen, a place was left vacant for the Duke of Or-
[48]
leans, who, in consequence of a marvelous escape from death during a thunder-storm, when his horses had plunged into the Seine, had vowed to pay his creditors, and had, on that very day, bidden them to a dinner, at which he had promised the dessert should be a satisfaction of their debts. “So soon from your dinner, my lord” said his Duchess to him as he entered, with and expression of face, which indicated a fear that all had not gone as she wished.
“Yes. A short horse is soon curried.”
“What? Came they not? Surely of the eight hundred bidden, there were many who would not do you such a discredit, as to believe your virtue exhaled with the shower?”
“Ah, their faith was sufficient,-- they came, every mother’s son of them, butchers, bakers, fruiterers, and all.”
“And you sent them away happy?”
“Yes, with one of the beatitudes; -- blessed are those who have nothing! I charged my valets to turn them back from my gate, and to tell them, if they came again, they should be beaten off!”
There was a general laugh through the royal box. The Duchess of Orleans alone
[49]
turned away with an expression of deep mortification. Valentine Visconti, daughter of the Duke of Milan and Duchess of Orleans, was one of the most celebrated women of her time. Her lovely figure might have served for a model of one of the chef-d’oeuvres of her classic land. As she sat by the gross Queen, she inspired the idea of what humanity might become, when invested with the “glorified body” of the Saints. Her soul beamed with preternatural lustre from her eyes, and spoke in the musical accents of her beautiful lips. Her gentleness and sympathy, more than the intellectual power and accomplishments, that signalized her amidst a brutified and ignorant race, gave her an ascendancy over the mad King, which afforded some color to the wicked imaginations of those, who, in the end, accused her of sorcery! –an accusation very common against the Italians of that period, whose superior civilization and science were attributed to the diabolical arts of magic. The secret of Valentine’s power over the maniac King has been discovered and illustrated by modern benevolence. She could lead him like a little child, when, for months, he would not consent to be washed or dressed,
[50]
and when these offices were performed at night by ten men, masked, lest, when their sovereign recovered all the reason he ever possessed, he should cause them to be hung for this act of necessary violence!
The spectators, while awaiting the rising of the curtain, were exchanging the usual observations and salutations. “Valentine,” whispered the beautiful young wife of the old Duke of Berri, “did not that man, --mon Dieu, how beautiful he is! – who stands near the musicians, kiss his hand to you?”
“Yes, --he is my countryman.”
“I thought so; --he looks as if the blood of all your proud old nobles ran in his veins; --the Confalonieris, Sforzas, Viscontis, and Heaven knows who.”
“He has a loftier nobility than theirs, cousin; his charter is direct from Heaven, and written by the finger of Heaven on that noble countenance. As to this world’s honors, he boasts none but such as the son of a rich and skilful weaver of silks may claim.”
“Mon Dieu! Is it possible; he is a counterfeit, that well might pass in any King’s exchequer. But he looks sad and abstracted, and, seeing, seemeth as though he saw not. Know ye, cousin, what aileth him?”
[51]
“Yes, but it is a long tale; the lady of his thoughts has strangely disappeared, and, though for more than a month he has sought her, day and night, he hath, as yet, no trace of her. He has come hither ton-night at my bidding, for I deeply pity the poor youth, and would fain divert his mind; -- but soft, --the curtain is rising!”
“Pray tell me what means this scene, Valentine?”
“It is the interior of a chapel. You know the legend of St. Thérèse?”
“Indeed I do not. I cannot read, and my confessor never told me.”
“She was betrothed to one she loved. The preparations were made for the espousals, when, on the night before her marriage, she saw, in vision, St. Francis, who bade her renounce her lover, and told her, that she was the elected bride of Heaven; that she must repair to the convent of the Sisters of Charity, and there resign the world, and abjure its sinful passions. You now see her obedient to the miraculous visitation. She has concluded her novitiate. One weakness she has as yet indulged. She has secretly retained the last gift of her betrothed. Hark! there
[52]
you hear the vesper-bell. She is coming to deposite it at that shrine yonder.”
A female now entered, closely veiled and clad in a full, grey stuff dress, that concealed every line of her person. She held something in her hands, which were folded on her bosom, and walking, with faltering steps, across the stage to the shrine, knelt and made the accustomed signs of prayer. She then rose, and raising the little roll to her lips, kissed it fervently, and then, as if asking pardon for this involuntary weakness, again dropped on her knees, and depositing the roll, withdrew. It would seem, she had entered completely into the tender regrets of the young saint she impersonated, for a tear she had dropped on the last bequest of the lover was seen, as it caught and reflected the lamp’s rays. Immediately, through an open window in the ceiling, a dove entered, the symbol of the Holy Spirit. It was not uncommon, in these mysteries, to bring the sacred persons of the Trinity upon the scene. The bird descended, and took the roll in his bill. As he rose with it, it unfolded, and the white silk scarf, given to poor Violette, represented the last earthly treasure of Saint Thérèse. The dove made
[53]
three evolutions in his ascent, and disappeared. While the cries of “Bravo! Bravissimo! Petit oiseau! Jolie colombe!” were resounding through the house, the Duchess of Berri whispered to Valentine, “See your Italian! he looks as if he would spring upon the state! how deadly pale! and his eyes! blessed Mary! they are like living fires! Surely he is going mad!”
“Heaven help him!” replied the gentle Valentine. “I erred in counselling him to come hither! Would I could speak with him.”
“Never mind him now, cousin; the scene is changing; --tell me, what comes next?”
“Next you will see St. Thérèse praying before her crucifix, --ah, there she is! there is the coffin in which she sleeps at night, -- there the death’s-head she contemplates all day.”
“Shocking! shocking! I never would be a nun.”
“It is but for the last days of her penitence. After her vows are made, she, like all her order, will be devoted to nursing the sick, and succouring the wretched, --a happier life than ours, cousin!”
“Think ye so? Methinks the next world
[54]
will be soon enough to be a saint, and do such tiresome good deeds. But why has she that ugly mantle drawn up over her head, so that one cannot see her hair, or the form of her neck and shoulders?”
“Be not so impatient. You see the door behind her. The Devil is coming into her cell under the form of her lover. Ah, there he is!”
“Bless my heart, if I were the Devil, I would never leave that goodly form again. Now she’ll turn! now we shall see her face! Pshaw! she has pulled that ugly mantle over, for a veil.”
“Pray be still, cousin; --this is her last temptation. I would not lose a word. Listen, --hear how she resists the prince of darkness.”
“The pretended lover performed his part so as to do honor to the supernatural power he represented. At first, he would have embraced the saint; but she shrunk from him, and, reverently placing her hand on the crucifix, stood statue-like against the wall. He then knelt and poured out his passion vehemently. He reminded her of their early love, -- of the home, where he had wooed and won her;
[55]
he besought her to speak to him, -- once to withdraw her veil, and look at him. She was still silent and immovable. He described the wearisome and frigid existence of a conventional life, and then painted, in a lover’s colors, the happiness that awaited them, if she would but keep her first vow made to him. He told her, that horses awaited them at the outward gate. The force of the temptation now became apparent. The weak, loving girl, was triumphing over the saint. Her head dropped on her bosom, her whole frame trembled, and was sinking. Her lover saw his triumph and sprang forward to seize her. But her virtue was re-nerved; she grasped the crucifix, and looking up to a picture of the Virgin, shrieked, “Mary, blessed mother! aid me !”
The Evil One extended his arm to wrest the crucifix, when, smitten by its holy virtue, he sunk through the floor, enveloped in flames. The saint fell on her knees, the dove again descended and fluttered around her and the curtain fell.
In those days, when conventual life had lost nothing of its sacredness, and men’s minds were still subjected to a belief in the visible interference of good and evil spirits in men’s
[56]
concerns, such a scene was most effective. The spectators were awed; not a sound was heard, till the Duchess of Berri, never long abstracted from the actual world, whispered, “Valentine, did you see your Italian when she shrieked; how he struck his hand upon his head! and see him no, what a color is burning in his cheek! He will certainly go mad, and, knowing you, he may dart hither before we can avoid him. Will ye not ask Orleans to order those men at arms to conduct him out; -- you know,” in a whisper, “ I have such a horror of madmen.”
“You need have none, believe me, in this case. My poor countryman is suffering from watching and exhaustion, and his imagination is easily excited. The next scene will calm him. The saint, victorious over the most importunate of mortal passions, will resolutely make her vows, and receive the veil.”
“Oh, then we shall see her face, after all?”
“Yes, and with all that factitious charm, that dress and ornament can lend it; for, to render her renunciation of the world more striking, she is to appear in a bridal dress, decked with the vanities that we women cling last to; -- but hush! the curtain is rising!”
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The curtain rose, and discovered the chapel of a convent. The nuns and theor superior stood on one side, a priest and attendants on the other. A golden crucifix was placed in the centre, with a figure of the Saviour, as large as life. Before this, St. Thérèse was kneeling. Her dress was white sik, embroidered with pearls, with a full sleeve, looped to the shoulder with pearls. A few symbolical orange-buds drooped over her forehead, certainly not whiter than the brow on which they rested. Her hair was parted in front, and drawn up behind in a Grecian knot of rich curls, and fastened there with a diamond cross. St. Thérèse looked, as most saints would, (not as a saint should,) pale as monumental marble; her eyes not raised to Heaven, but riveted to earth, as if she were still clinging to the parting friend. The priest advanced to cut off her hair, the last office previous to investing her with the grey gown and fatal veil. As he unfastened the diamond cross, her bright tresses fell over her neck and shoulders, and, reaching even to the ground, gave the finishing touch to her beauty, and called forth a general shout of “Beautiful! beautiful! most beautiful!”
[58]
Over every other voice, and soon stilling every other, was heard the King’s, and seized with an excess of madness, he rushed upon the stage clapping his hands and screaming, “She is mine! my bride! Out with ye, ugly nuns! She is mine! mine!” finishing each reiteration with a maniac yell.
“Nay, she is mine! my own Violette! my betrothed wife!” interposed Montano, springing forward and encircling Violette with one arm, while he repelled Charles with the other.
A general rising followed. The stage was filled with the nobles, rishing forward to chastise the stranger who had presumed to lay his hands on sacred majesty. A hundred weapons were drawn, and pointed at Montano. There was a Babel confusion of sounds. At this crisis, Valentine penetrated into the midst of the mêlée, whispering, as she passed Montano, “Leave all to me.”
The lords, who had more than once seen her power over the madness of their sovereign, fell back. She placed herself between the King and Montano, and putting her hand soothingly on Charles’s side, she said, with a smile, “Methinks, my lord King, we are all beside ourselves with this bewitching show, -- we know
[59]
not who or what we are. Here is a churl hath dared come between the King and his subject, and you, my sovereign,” (in a whisper,) “have strangely forgotten your Queen’s presence. Unhand that maiden, sir stranger. Kneel, my child, to your gracious sovereign, and let him see you loyally hold yourself at his disposal.” Violette mechanically obeyed.
“Nay, my pretty one, kneel not,” said Charles, still wild, but no longer violent. “Ah, I had forgot! here are the bridal orange-buds. Come, --come, you lazy priest, --come marry us!” Violette looked as if she would fain again take refuge in Montano’s arms.
“To-morrow, my lord King, will surely be soon enough,” whispered Valentine with a confidential air, and, pointing to Isabel, she added, “ it would not seem well to have the rights performed in her presence!” The Queen, with characteristic nonchalance, had remained quietly in her place, where she seemed quite absorbed and satisfied in devouring a bunch of delicious grapes.
“You are right, dear sister,” replied the King, --thus, in his softened moods, he always addressed Valentine,--“it is not according to church rule to marry one wife in presence
[60]
of another!” He then burst into a peal of idiotic laughter, which, after continuing for some moments, left him in a state of imbecility, so nearly approaching to unconsciousness, that he was conveyed to his palace without making the slightest resistance.
A general movement followed the King’s departure, and cries rose, that the stranger must be manacles and conveyed to prison. The Duchess of Orleans interposed. “My lords,” she said, “I pray ye give this youth into my charge. He is my countryman. I will be responsible for him to our gracious sovereign.” There were murmurings of hesitation and discontent. “In sooth, my lords,” added Valentine, “ye should not add an injustice to a stranger to our usages, to the error you have already committed this night, in bringing our royal master, but half recovered from his malady, into this heated atmosphere and exciting scene; -- it were well, if we can avoid it, to preserve no memorials of this night’s imprudence.” This last hint effected what an appeal to their justice failed to obtain, and the lords permitted Montano unmolested to withdraw with the Duchess of Orleans.
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Intent on making those happy, who could be happy, Valentine bade Montano and Violette attend her to her carriage. When they were alone, Violette’s first words were, “My father, --my brothers, Montano, can ye tell me aught of them?”
“They are safe, --safe and well, in all save their ignorance of you, dear Violette,” replied Montano; “and by this time they are arrived in my happy country.”
“Thank God! – and my dear old grandmother?”
“Nay, ask no farther to-night.”
“Better it is, my good friend,” said Valentine, “to satisfy her inquiry now, while her cup is full with joy, and sparkling; --you can bear, my child, patiently a single bitter drop.”
“She was murdered, then?”
“She is at rest, my child, --lay your head on my bosom, --we should weep for the good and kind.”
Before the little party separated for the night, Violette told how, in consequence of having been seen at the window on the day of Montagu’s execution, she had been sought out by the managers of the mystery, and
[62]
compelled, in the King’s name, to obey their behests.
“And to-morrow,” said Valentine, “ye shall obey mine. I, too, will be the manager of a mystery, and real espousals shall be enacted by Montano and Violette; then, ho! for my happy country.”
----------
[Sedgwick’s notes]
* [1] The two passages, here referred to, so well illustrate the character of the times, that I am induced to translate them from Sismondi’s History of the French.
“Among these festivals, there was one which terminated sadly. A widow, maid of honor to the Queen, was married a second time, to a certain Chevalier du Vermandois. The King ordered the nuptials to be celebrated at the palace. The nuptials of widows were occasions of extreme licentiousness. Words and actions were permitted, which elsewhere would have called forth blushes, at a time when blushes were rare. The King, wishing to avail himself of the occasion, assumed, with five of his young courtiers, the disguise of a Satyr. Tunics besmeared with tar, and covered with tow, gave them, from head to foot, a hairy appearance. In this costume they entered the festive hall, dancing. No one recognised them. While the five surrounded the bride, and embarrassed her with their dances, Charles left them to torment his aunt, the Duchess of Berri, who, though married to an old man, was the youngest of the princesses. She could not even conjecture who he was. In the mean time, the Duke of Orleans approached the others, with a torch in his hand, as if to reconnoiter their faces, and set fire to the tow. It was but a sally of mad sport on his part, though he was afterwards reproached with it, as if it were an attempt on his brother’s life. The King discovered himself to the Duchess of Berri, who covered him with her mantle, and conducted him out of the hall.” Four of the five perished.
The historian, after saying, that Charles, conducting his army into Brittany, left Mas one very hot day, and that, while riding over a sandy plain, under a vertical sun, and excited by a trifling accident and some random words of his fool, he became suddenly mad, proceeds; “He drew his sword, and, putting his horse to his speed, and crying ‘On, on ! Down with the traitors!’ he fell upon the pages and knights nearest to him. No one dared defend himself otherwise than by flight, and, in this access of fury, he successively killed the bastard De Polignac, and three other men. At first the pages raged him; but when he attacked the Duke of Orleans, his brother, they perceived he had lost his reason.” The historian proceeds to say, that, not daring to control him, they agreed upon the expedient of letting him pursue them till he was exhausted; but finally a Norman knight, much loved by the King, ventured to spring up behind him and pinion his arms.
* [2] “In despotic countries, rights are only respected inasmuch as they are sustained by power. The inhabitants of towns, even the poorest, had a certain degree of force. Their title, bourgeois, in the German, whence it is derived, means confederates, a reciprocal responsibility.” – Études de l’Économie Politique, par Sismondi.
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 White Scarf
Subject
The topic of the resource
15th-century France, the Armagnac-Burgundian Civil War, romance.
Description
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An historical romance set in 15th-century France, focusing on a relationship between a French servant girl and an Italian nobleman that is disrupted by political conflicts and rivalries in the court of Charles VI.
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Sedgwick, Catharine M. [By Miss Sedgwick]
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The Token, edited by Samuel G. Goodrich, pp. 1-62.
Publisher
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Boston: Otis, Broaders, and Company
Date
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1839 [pub. 1838]
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D. Gussman
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Reprinted in The Hesperian: or, Western Monthly Magazine, vol 2., no. 5, 1839, pp. 375-390. Collected in A New England Tale and Miscellanies by Catharine M. Sedgwick, New York: George P. Putnam & Co., 1852, pp. 295-334.
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Document
Language
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English
15th century
1838
1839
A New England Tale and Miscellanies
Armagnac-Burgundian Civil War (1407-1435)
bourgeois
Charles VI of France
Count de Vaudemont
Duke of Burgundy [John the Fearless]
feudalism
France
Historical fiction
Isabella of Bavaria
Italians
Italy
Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi
Jean de Montagu
John - Duke of Berry
literacy
Louis I Duke of Orleans
lynch law
marriage
mystery play
Notre Dame
Romance
scaffold
St. Therese
The Hesperian
The Token
torture rack
Valentina Visconti (Duchess of Orleans)
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/68f58347e550646b36cbf19d6fadcbd7.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=PX-DIexxBNbIUB4-gViieBqxjO0xrpdbrPLIKU4kv4dREj2YTDa9kspmRWkBa3jyAYcI7g5MyYC6CCEKr72NBo%7Exrw8ClAbDkDGyBCteV0H0g6sdu-fXhSxQRyzygDbxJDjDq8N28l3ykOK9Uu1XJHijPKHbs30b7kVYCb9N5xCRH75UbaDW65miU2Q1KndBMtxOCNApyE0TvsnOldyRpaGL8KO5duy88KB1acJRYlkaj1MHAqiLdwEqni95gEIxNpMrZ7Sfh1mC3R3lmXnG7qEKu3ZZAY-qifqEaBQr0mfDYK5ldFqH8pgHsIWZrbslUlRLy8D2pAJwhu5gKANMHg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
51cb66a62bd05ddfe28adee6b0f075d5
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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1833
Subject
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Stories published in 1833.
Document
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Text
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A REMINISCENCE OF FEDERALISM
By Miss Sedgwick
‘O shame on men! devil with devil damn’d,
Firm concord holds: men only disagree
Of creatures rational, though under hope
Of heavenly grace: and God proclaiming peace,
Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife.’
Milton.
A calm observer who has scarcely lived half the age of man, must look back with a smile at human frailty, rather than with a harsher feeling upon the subjects that have broken the world in which he has lived, (be it a little or a great one,) into opposed and contending parties. The stream for a while glides on with an unbroken surface, a snag interposes, and the waters divide, and fret, and foam around it till chance or time sweep it away, when they again commingle, and flow on their natural unruffled union. This is the common course of human passions. The subject in dispute may be more of less dignified; the succession to an empire, or to a few acres of sterile land; the rival claims of candidates for the presidency, or competitors for a village clerkship; the choice of a minister to England, or the minister of our parish; the position of a capital city, or of an obscure meeting house;* [1] the excellence of a Catalani, or of a rustic master of psalmody; a dogma
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in religion or politics; in short any thing, to which, as with the shield in the fable, there are two sides.
Some who have lived to swell the choral song to Adams and Jefferson, and blend their names in one harmonious peal, will remember when the one, in his honest distinction, was a patriot hero, and the other the arch enemy of his country. For myself, having been bred, according to the strictest sect of my political religion, a federalist, I regarded Mr. Jefferson, (whom all but his severest enemies do not now deny, to have been a calm, and at least well-intentioned philosopher,) as embodying in his own person whatever was impracticable, heretical and corrupt in politics, religion and morals. Some impressions of my early childhood which were connected with the subsequent fate of obscure but interesting individuals, have preserved a vivid recollection of those party strifes that should now only be remembered to assuage the heat of present controversies.
I was sent when a very young child, (I am not the hero of my own story, my readers must therefore bear with a little prefatory egotism,) to pass the summer in a clergyman’s family in Vermont, in a village which I shall take the liberty to call Carrington. Whether I was sent there for the advantage of a better school than my own village afforded, or for the flattering reason that governs the disposition of most younger children in a large family, to be got out of the way, the domestic archives do not reveal. Whatever was the motive I am indebted to the fact for some of the most interesting recollections of my life. The first absence from home
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is a period never forgotten, and always vivid. How well do I remember the aspect of that long, broad, and straight street that traversed the village of Carrington, as it appeared to me when I first entered it. The meeting house, with its tall, grenadier looking steeple; the freshly painted school house, the troop of shouting boys springing from its portal; the neat white houses with Venetian blinds, and pretty court-yards and gardens, the dwellings of the physician, the lawyer, and the merchant, the modest gentry of the place; and that, to my youthful vision, colossal piece of architecture, a staring flaming mansion, (I afterwards learned that Squire Hayford was its master,) with pilasters, pillars and piazzas, a balustrade, cupola, and four chimneys! Even then I turned my eyes from this chef-d’oeuvre of rustic art to the trees by the way side, whose topmost boughs in their freshest green, (for summer was still in its youth,) were flushed with the beams of the setting sun. And I eagerly gazed at the parsonage which stood at the extremity of the plain, flanked by an orchard of scrawny neglected apple-trees, its ill-proportioned form, and obtrusive angles sheltered by the most ample elm that ever unfolded its rich volume of boughs. A willow there was too, I remember, that hung its tresses over the old well-curb, for there Fanny Atwood and I have cracked may a ‘last year’s butternut,’ sweeter to us far than the freshest, most flavorous nuts of the south, or any thing else would now be.
It is difficult, in our leveling and disenchanted days, to recal the awe that thirty years ago the puritan clergy of New England inspirited in the minds of children.
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Who is there bred in the land of pilgrims, that has not in his memory an immaculate personage, tall or short but always erect, with a three-cornered cocked hat, long blue yarn stockings drawn over the knee, silver shoe buckles and a silver headed cane, looking stern and unrelenting, as if he embodied the terrors of the law? Who does not remember depressing his voice and checking the ‘little footsteps that lightly pressed the ground,’ as he passed the minister’s house, the domain that seemed to him to shut out all human sympathies, to stand between heaven and earth, a certain purgatory, at least to all youthful sinners?
With such prepossessions I entered Doctor Atwood’s family. The Doctor himself was absent on some pastoral duty when I arrived. I was soon put at my ease by the hospitalities of his social family. How the prejudices of childhood melt away and disappear in the first beam of kindness! A most kind and simple hearted race were the Atwoods. Miss Sally, the oldest, was housekeeper; a bountiful provider of ‘spring beer,’ cherry pies and gingerbread. Man and woman too, and above all a child, is an eating animal. The record of culinary virtues remains long after every other trace of good Miss Sally has faded from my mind. The second sister was Miss Nancy, a ‘weakly person’ she was called, and truly was. I can see her pale serious face now, in which sensibility to her own ailments, and solicitude for those of her fellow mortals, were singularly blended; her slender tall figure, as she stood shaking that vial with contents so mysterious to me, which she called her ‘mixture;’ her hands all veins and chords
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that seemed to have been made to spread plasters. Miss Nancy, in poetic phrase, was a ‘culler of simples.’ She gathered herbs, (for my friend Fanny called them sickness,) for all the village, and administered them too. She could tell with unerring certainty when motherwort would kill, and boneset would cure. Forgive me, gentle reader, (for Miss Nancy could not,) if I have mistaken an alias for a species. In brief, Miss Nancy was one of those prudent apprehensive people peculiarly annoying to children. Her memory was a treasure house of hair breadth escapes and fatal accidents; and her eye would fix upon that imaginative column in the newspapers devoted to the enumeration of such fancy articles as ‘caution to youths;’ ‘fatal sport;’ ‘hydrophobia!’ &c. &c., as a speculator devours the price of stocks. Malvina was the third daughter; I knew little of her, for she was a lady of the shears, and pursued her calling by keeping the even tenor of her way through the neighborhood, making ‘auld claiths look amaist as weel’s the new.’ I should have said that Malvina was among the few who would go through life content with the sphere providence had assigned her, without one craving from that ‘divinity that stirs within;’ limiting her ambition to pleasing the little boys, and satisfying their mammas, and her desires to her well earned twenty-five cents per day. But Malvina married and emigrated. Her husband was, as I have heard, a disciple of Tom Paine, and poor Malvina, who was only adequate to shape a sleeve or collar, began to reason of ‘fate and free will,’ foreknowledge absolute; and afterwards, when she visited her friends, she bewailed their irrational
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views, wondered they could believe the bible! and would have enlightened them with that precious textbook, the Age of Reason, had not Dr. Atwood consigned it forthwith to an auto-d-fé.
The doctor, according to the common custom of New England clergymen, who have an income of four or five hundred dollars a year, had educated several sons at college. One was a thriving attorney and counselor at law, in New York, and two others, (who closed the account of the doctor’s first marriage,) were keeping school, and qualifying themselves for the learned professions. The doctor in middle life, as it is by courtesy called, but long after his sun had declined from its meridian, had married a young and very pretty girl, who, by all accounts, looked much beside her autumnal consort, like a fresh blown rose attached to a stalk of sere and yellow leaves. The human frailty the doctor betrayed in his preference of this lamb of his flock over certain quite mature candidates for his conjugal favor, gave such scandal to his parish that the good man was fain to leave Connecticut, the land of his forefathers, and remove to Vermont, then called the new state, where his domestic arrangements were viewed with more indulgence. His wife, who seems to have had no fault but that one which was mending every day, died in the course of a few years, after having augmented the doctor’s wealth by the addition of one child.
This child was the gem of the family, and a gem of ‘purest ray serene,’ was my little friend Fanny. Fanny Atwood! Writing her name even at this distance of
[108]
time makes my heart beat quicker. Affection has its bright, its immortal names, that will live after the trump of fame is a broken instrument, and the names it has pealed over the world are with all forgotten things. Perhaps I commit a mistake in making Fanny Atwood the heroine of a story. It may be that like those wild flowers she so much resembled, that are so delicate and sweet in their native green wood, but so fragile that they fade and droop as soon as they are exposed to the eye of the sun, and appear spiritless and insignificant when compared with the splendid belles of the greenhouse, on which the art of the horticulturist has been exhausted, so my little rustic favorite may seem tame, and she and her fortunes be derided by the fine ladies, if any such grace my humble tale with a listening ear.
I have known those who have drank of the tainted waters of a city till they confessed that the pure element as it welled up from the green turf, or sparkled in the crystal fountain of a mountain rock, was tasteless and disagreeable! But I know those too, who, though they have mastered the music of Rossini, have yet ears and hearts for wood notes wild. Nature is too strong for art, and those who are accustomed to the refinements of artificial life, may look without a ‘disdainful smile’ on Fanny Atwood as she was when I first saw her; as she continued, the picture of simplicity and all lovable qualities. She had a little round Hebe form. Her neck, chest, shoulders and arms were the very beau ideal of a French dress maker, so fair and fat; her hands were formed in the most delicate mould, and dimpled as an infant’s; her hair was of the tinge between flaxen
[109]
and brown; glossy and wavy. Her mouth bore the signet of the sweet and playful temper that bade defiance to all the curdling tendencies of life, it was certainly the fittest organ for ‘words o’ kindness’ that could be formed. She had a slight lisp; graceful enough in childhood, but happily, as she grew up, it wore off. The line of her nose was sufficiently Grecian to be called so by her admirers, but her eyes, I am compelled to confess, even while I yet feel their warm and gentle beam upon me, were not according to the rule of beauty; they were clear and bright as health and cheerfulness could make them, but they lacked many shades of the violet, and were smaller than the orthodox heroine dimensions. If my bill of particulars fail to present the image of my friend, let my readers embody health, good humor, order, a disinterestedness, considerateness or mindfulness, a quick sympathy with joy and sorrow, in the image of a girl of nine years, and it cannot fail to resemble Fanny Atwood. She would have been a spoiled child, if unbounded love and indulgence could have spoiled her; but she was like those fruits and flowers which are only made more beautiful or flavorous by the fervid rays of the sun. She sometimes tried Miss Sally’s patience by a too free dispensation of the luxuries of her frugal pantry, and Miss Nancy’s by deriding her herb teas, even that ‘sovereignest thing on earth,’ her motherwort; and once, when in the act of raising a dose of the panacea, the mixture, to her lips, she let fall dose, vial and all; accidently, no doubt; but poor Miss Nancy! I think her nerves never quite recovered the shock. However,
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these offences were soon forgiven, and would have been, if magnified a hundred fold, for in the touching language of old Israel, she ‘was the only child of her mother, and her mother was dead.’
I was within a few months of Fanny’s age when we first met, and with the facility of childhood we became friends in half an hour. She had presented me to her two favorites, a terrier puppy and black cat, between whom she had so assiduously cultivated a friendship that she had converted their natural gall into honey, and they coursed up and down the house together to the infinite amusement of my friend, and the perpetual annoyance of the elderly members of the family. Nothing could better illustrate Fanny’s power than the indulgence she obtained for these little pests. Miss Sally prided herself on her discipline of animals, but she was brought to wink at Fido’s misdeeds, suffered him to sleep all day by the winter’s fire, and when she once or twice resolutely ordered him out for the night, she was persuaded by Fanny to get up with her and let him in. And the cat, though Miss Nancy’s aversion, fairly installed herself on a corner of Fanny’s chair, and was thrice a day fed from her plate.
As I have said, Fanny and I made rapid progress in our friendship. She had introduced me to her little family of dolls, which were all patriotic, all of home manufacture, and I had offered to her delighted vision my compagnon de voyage, a London doll; in our eyes the master piece of the arts. We were consulting confidently on some matters touching our respective families, when I heard the lumbering sound of the
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doctor’s chaise, and I felt a chill come over me like that of poor Jack, the bean-climber of aspiring memory, when seated at the giant’s hearth, and chatting with his lady, he first heard the homeward step of her redoubtable lord and master. My prejudices against the clerical order were certainly not dispelled by my first impressions of Doctor Atwood. He wore a thick set fozy wig, cut by a sort of equatorial line around the forehead. His chin was not a freshly mown stubble field, for it was Saturday, and the doctor shaved but once a week. His figure was tall and corpulent, and altogether he presented a lowering and most forbidding aspect to one who had been accustomed to a more advanced state of civilization than his person indicated. I had retreated to the farthest corner of the room, dropped my head and hidden my doll in my handkerchief, when Fanny, to my astonishment, dragging me into notice, exclaimed in the most affectionate tone, ‘Oh, father, how glad I am you have come! I wanted you to see C----‘s doll; she is the most perfect beauty! are you not glad she’s come?’ Now meaning me, not the doll.
The doctor made no reply for a moment, and when he did, he merely said, without a sign of courtesy or even humanity, ‘How d’ye do, child, pretty well?’
‘Father!’ exclaimed Fanny in a tone which betrayed her mortification and disappointment. I shrank away to my seat, abut Fanny remained hovering about the place where her father stood, lost apparently in sullen abstraction. The doctor sat down. Fanny seated herself on his knee, (I wondered she could.) ‘How
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funny your wig looks! father,’ she said, ‘its all awry.’ Then laughing and giving it a fearless twirl, she took a comb from the doctor’s waistcoat pocket, smoothed it down, threw her fat arms round his neck and kissed him first on one check, then on the other, saying, ‘you look quite handsome, now, father!’ Scanty as my literature was, a classical allusion occurred to me; ‘Beauty and the Beast!’ thought I, but far would it have been from the nature of that Beast to have been as dull to the caresses of Beauty as the doctor seemed to Fanny’s. She was evidently perplexed by his apparent apathy; for a moment she laid her check to his, then sprang from his knee and went to a cupboard about ten inches square, made in the chimney beside the fireplace, (an anomaly in the architecture, these puritan cupboards were,) and drew from it a long pipe, filled, lighted, and put it in her father’s lips. He received it passively, smoked it with continued unconsciousness, and when the tobacco was exhausted, threw pipe and all out of the window. Fanny looked at me and laughed, then suddenly changing to an expression of solicitude, she leaned her elbow on the doctor’s knee, looked up in his face, and said in a voice that must penetrate to the heart, ‘what is the matter, father?’
The doctor seemed suddenly to recover his faculties; to come to himself, in the common phrase, and with tears gushing form his eyes, he said, ‘Fanny, my child, poor Randolph’s mother is dead.’
‘Dead, father! What will Randolph do?’
‘Do, Fanny? Replied the doctor, brushing off his tears, ‘why, he will do his duty; no easy matter in the
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poor boy’s case.’ The doctor then proceeded to relate the scene he had just come from witnessing, and which had melted one of the tenderest hearts that ever was in a human frame, uncouth and repelling as that frame was. The facts which will explain the doctor’s emotions are briefly these. There was a certain Squire Hayford residing in Carrington, the proprietor of the stately mansion we have noticed. He was a democrat, according to the classification of that day, and one of the most impassioned order. A democrat in theory, but in his own little sphere as absolute a despot as ever sat on a throne. He was the wealthiest man in Carrington, owned most land, and had most ready money; in short, he was the great man of the place, and, as was happily said on another occasion, ‘the smallest of his species.’ Of all the men I ever met with he had the most unfounded and absurd vanity. His opinions were all prejudices, and in each and all of them he held himself infallible. He was the centre of his world, the sun of his system, which he divided into concentric circles. Himself first, then his household, his town, his county, his state, &c. Fortunately for himself, he had adopted the popular side in politics, and with a character that would have been particularly odious to the sovereign people he made himself an oracle among them. This man had one child, a daughter, a gentle and lovely woman as she was described to me, who some fourteen years before my story begins, had married a Mr. Gordon, from one of the Southern States. It was a clandestine marriage. Squire Hayford having refused his consent, because
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Gordon was a ‘southerner,’ and he held all ‘southerners’ in utter contempt and aversion, and never graced them with any other name than slave drivers, with the addition of such expletives as might give force to the reproach. Gordon was a high spirited man and an ardent lover, and he easily persuaded Miss Hayford to escape from the unreasonable opposition of her father, and transfer her allegiance to him. This was her first disobedience, but disobedience to him was an unpardonable sin in the squire’s estimation, and he permitted his only child to encounter the severest evils, and languish through protracted sufferings, before he manifested the slightest relenting. She lost several children; she became a widow, was reduced to penury, and sacrificed her health in one of our southern cities, in an attempt to gain a livelihood as governess. Her father then sent her a pitiful sum of money, and the information that a small house in Carrington, belonging to him was vacant, and she might come and occupy it if she would. The kindness was scanty, and the manner of it churlish enough; but disease and penury cut off all fastidiousness, and Mrs. Gordon returned to Carrington with her only son Randolph.
Here she languished month after month. The bare necessities of existence were indirectly supplied by her father, but he never spoke to her, and, what affected her far more deeply, he never noticed her son, never betrayed a consciousness of his existence.
Adversity, if it does not sever the ties of nature, multiplies and strengthens them. Never was there a tenderer union than that which subsisted between
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Randolph and his mother, and nothing could have been more natural than Fanny’s exclamation when told of Mrs. Gordon’s death, for it seemed as if the life of parent and child were fed from the same fountain. As my readers are now acquainted with the relative position of the parties, I shall give the doctor’s account to Fanny in his own words. ‘I left the chaise at Mrs. Gordon’s door, my child,’ said he, ‘that Randolph might take her to ride. They had ridden but a short distance when she complained of faintness, and Randolph turned back. She had fainted quite away just as they stopped at their own door. There was a man riding past; Randolph called to him for help. He came and assisted in carrying the poor lady to her bed. When she recovered her senses, she looked up and saw the man; it was her father, Fanny!’
‘Her father! what, that hateful old Squire Hayford?’
‘Yes, my child. Providence brought him to her threshold at the critical moment. When I called for the chaise, I went in. I saw she was dying. Randolph was bathing her head with camphor, and his tears dropped on the pillow like rain. Her father stood a little way from the bed. He looked pale and his lip quivered. Ah, Fanny, my child, death takes hold of the heart that nothing else will reach. When Mrs. Gordon heard my step she looked up at me and said, “I believe I am dying; pray with me once more Doctor Atwood; pray that my father may forgive—that—he—may—” here her voice faltered, but she looked at Randolph, and I understood her, and went to prayer.
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‘But, father, what did Squire Hayford do? you know he swore a horrid oath last independence that he would never hear “Parson Fed* [2] pray again.” ’
‘Yes, yes; Fanny, I remember, and he remembered too, for he walked out of the door and stood in the porch, but I took care to raise my voice so loud that he could not help hearing me. The Lord assisted me, my child; words came to me faster than I could utter them; thoughts, but not my thoughts; words, but not of my choosing, for their pierced even my own heart. When I had done, Squire Hayford came in, walked straight to the bed, and said, “Mary, I forgive you; I wish your troubles may be all at an end, but I am not answerable for your past sufferings; I told you what you must expect when you married that southern beggar.” ’
‘Father,’ exclaimed Fanny, ‘why did you not stop him.’
‘I did long to knock him down, Fanny, and I though Randolph would, for his black eyes flashed fire; but oh, how quick they fell again when his mother looked up like a dying saint as she was, and said, “Father, let the past be past.” ’
‘ “Well,” said he, “so I will; and as I am a man of deeds and not of words, I promise you I will do well by your boy; I will take him home, and he shall be the same as a son to me, provided—” ’
‘Here he paused. I think she did not hear his last word, for her face lighted up, she clasped her hands
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and thanked God for crowning with such mercy her dying hour; then she drew Randolph down to her, kissed him, and said, “now, my son I can die in peace.”
“But,” said her father, “you have not heard me out, Mary. Randolph must give up the name of Gordon for that of Hayford—”’
‘Oh, father,’ interrupted Fanny, ‘he did not, did he?’
‘Let me finish, child. The poor lady at the thought of her son giving up his dead father’s name, heaved a sigh so deep and heavy, that I feared her breath would have gone with it. She looked at Randolph, but he turned away his eye. ‘My dear child,’ she said, ‘it must be; it is hard for me to ask and you to do, but it must be; speak Randolph, say you accept the terms.’
‘Thus pressed, the poor boy spoke, and spoke out his heart, “Do not ask me that, mother;” he said, “give up my dear father’s name! No, never, never.” ’
‘ “My child, you must, you will be destitute; without a home, a friend, a morsel of bread.” ’
‘ “I shall not be destitute, mother, I can work, and is not Doctor Atwood my friend? and besides, mother, I care not what becomes of me when you are gone.” ’
‘ “But I do my son; I cannot leave you so. Oh, promise me, Randolph.” ’
‘ “Do not ask me, mother; I cannot give up the name I love and honor above all others, for that—” ’ I know not what the poor boy might have said, for his mother stopped him. “Listen to me my son,” she said, “my breath is almost spent; you know how I have been punished for one act of disobedience; how much misery I brought on your dear father, on all of us; you may
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repair my fault. Oh, give me peace, promise to be faithful in your mother’s place to her father.” ’
‘ “I will promise any thing, dear mother; I will do any thing but take his name.” ’
‘ “All is useless without that;” her voice sunk to a whisper,--“dear, dear child,” she added, “it is my last wish.” I saw her countenance was changing, and I believe I said, ‘she is going,’ and poor Randolph cried out, ‘Mother, mother, I will do every thing you ask—I promise—’ a sweet smile spread over her face. He laid his cheek to her’s, she tried to kiss him, but her lips never moved again, and in a few moments, my dear Fanny, she was with the saints in heaven.’
Fanny’s tears had coursed down her cheeks as her father had proceeded in his narration. Soon after I heard her repeating to herself, ‘Randolph Hayford, Randolph Hayford; I will never call him any thing but Randolph; but I suppose I shall not often have a chance to call him any thing. That cross of Squire Hayford hates you so, father, he’ll never let Randolph come and see us; he’ll never let him go any where but to some dirty democrat’s.’
I now look back, almost unbelieving of my own recollections, at the general diffusion of the political prejudices of those times. No age nor sex was exempt from them. They adhered to an old man to the very threshold of another world, and they sometimes clouded the serene heaven of such a mind as my friend Fanny Atwood’s.
The rival parties in Carrington were so nearly balanced, that each individual’s weight was felt in the
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scale. All qualities and relations were merged in the political attribute. I have often heard, when the bell tolled the knell of a departed neighbor, the most kind hearted person, say, ‘we’ or ‘they have lost a vote!’ Good Doctor Atwood was as sturdy in his political as in his religious faith. He had a vein of humanity like my Uncle Toby’s, that tempered his judgment in individual cases, but in the abstract I rather think he believed that none but federalists and the orthodox, according to the sound school of the Mathers and Cottons, could enter the kingdom of heaven. With this creed, with an ardent temperament that glowed to the last hour of his life, and with the faculty of expressing pithily what he felt strongly, and without fear or awe of mortal man, he was, of course, loved almost to idolatry by his own party, and hated in equal measure by the rival faction.
I have said that the village street of Carrington traversed a hill and plain. The democrats for the most part occupied the hill. What an infected district it then seemed to me! The federalists, (alas! was it an augury of their descending fortunes?) lived in the vale. The most picturesque object in the village, and one as touching to the sentimental observer as Sterne’s dead ass, was a superannuated horse; a poor commoner, who picked up an honest living by the way side. His walk was as regular as Edie Ochiltree’s, or any other licensed gaberlunzie’s. He began in the morning, and grazing along, he arrived about midday at the end of his tour, he then crossed the street and returned, now
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and then resting his weary limbs in the shadow of a tree planted by the way side. Thus sped his innocent life. It was an edifying sight to see the patience and satisfaction with which he gleaned his scanty portion of the bounties of nature. Jacques would have moralized on the spectacle. The children called him Clover, why, I know not, unless it were an allusion to his green old age. He was a great favorite with the little urchins; the youngest among them were wont to make their first equestrian essays on Clover’s bare back. My friend Fanny’s gentle heart went out towards him in the respect that waits on age. Many a time have I known her to abstract a measure of oats from the parson’s frugal store, and set it under the elm tree for Clover, and as she stood by him while he was eating, patting and stroking him, he would look round at her with an expression of mute gratitude and fondness, that words could not have rendered more intelligible.
Strange as it may seem, even poor Clover was converted into a political instrument. This ‘innocent beast and of a good conscience,’ was made to supply continual fuel to the inflammable passions of the fiery politicians of Carrington. His sides were pasted over with lampoons in which the rival factions vented their wit or their malignity safe from personal responsibility, for Clover could tell no tales. Thus he trudged from the hill, a walking gazette, his ragged and grizzled sides covered with these militant missives, and returned bearing the responses of the valley, as unconscious of his hostile burden, as the mail is of its portentous
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contents. Sometimes, indeed, Clover carried that which was more accordant with his kind and loving nature.
As Fanny had predicted, after Randolph’s removal to the great house, his grandfather prohibited his visits at Doctor Atwood’s, but Fanny often met him in the lagging walk to school, berrying, nutting, and on all neutral ground, and when they did not meet, they maintained a continual correspondence by Clover. The art was simple by which they secured their billetdoux from the public eye, but it sufficed. The inside contained the effusion of their hearts. The outside was scribbled with some current political sarcasm or joke. The initial letter of Randolph’s superscription was always F., Fanny’s G., for she tenaciously adhered to the name of Gordon. The communications were attached by the corners to Clover. I found recently among some forgotten papers one of Fanny’s notes, and childish as it is, I shall make no apology for inserting it verbatim.
‘Dear Randolph—I thank you a thousand times and so does C--, for the gold eagles. There never was any thing in the world so beautiful, I do’nt believe. They are far before the grown up ladies. We shall certainly wear them to meeting next Sabbath, and fix them so every body in the world can see them, and not let the bow of ribbon fall down over them, as Miss Clarke did last Sabbath, cause she has got that old democrat, Doctor Star, for a sweetheart; but I managed her nicely, Randolph. In prayer time when she did not dare move, I whirled round the bow
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so the eagle stood up bravely, and flashed right in Doctor Star’s eyes. I did not care so very much about having an eagle for myself, (though I do now since you have given it to me,) but I thought it very important for C— to wear the federal badge, because her father is a senator in Congress. Father is almost as pleased as we are. I see Clover coming, and I must make haste; poor old fellow! I heard his tread when it stormed so awfully last night, and I got father to put him up in our stable. Was not he proper good? It was after prayers, too, and his wig was off and his knee buckles out. There, they all go out of Deacon Garfield’s to read Clover’s papers. Good bye, dear, dear Randolph. F.A.’
If my readers are inclined to smile at the defects of my heroine’s epistle, they must remember those were not the days when girls studied Algebra, and read Virgil in the original before they were ten years old. Besides, I have not claimed for Fanny intellectual brilliancy. The manifestations of her mind were (where some bel esprits last look for it,) in the conduct of her daily life.
But I am fondly lingering on the childhood of my friend. I must resolutely pass over the multitude of anecdotes that occur to me, to those incidents that are sufficiently dignified for publication.
Eight years flowed on without working any other change in the condition of my friends in Carrington than is commonly effected by the passage of time. Doctor Atwood continued his weekly ministrations, varied only by a slight verbal alteration in his prayer.
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During Mr. Adams’ presidency, he implored the Lord to continue to us rulers endued with the spirit of their station. When Mr. Jefferson became chief magistrate, he substituted ‘give’ for continue. Miss Sally still brewed and baked with her accustomed energy. Miss Nancy by the too lavish consumption of her own nostrums, had lost every thing but her shadow. Squire Hayford was more opinionated and insufferable than ever. Poor old Clover was dead, and at Fanny’s request, had been honorably interred beneath the elm tree, his favorite poste restante. Fanny had preserved the distinctive traits of her childhood, and at seventeen, was as good humored, as simple, as lovely and, (as more than one thought,) far more loveable than when I first knew her.
The sad trials of Randolph’s youth had early ripened his character, and had given to it an energy and self-government that he could have derived alone from the discipline of such circumstances. The lofty spirit of his father had fallen on him like the mantle of an ascending prophet. His mother’s concentrated tenderness had fostered his sensibility, and the influence of her dying hour passed not away with the days of mourning, but stamped his whole after life.
Who has ever lost a friend, without that feeling so natural, that a painter of nature has put it into the mouth of a man lamenting over a dead beast? ‘I am sure thou hast been a merciful master to him’ said I. ‘Alas!’ said the mourner, ‘I thought so when he was alive, but now that he is dead I think otherwise.’
The solution of this universal lamentation and just
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suffering, must be found in the fact that the very best fall far short of the goodness of which their Creator has made them capable. It is in the spirit of expiation that far more deference is paid to the wishes of the dead than the living; and affectionate and devoted as Randolph was to his mother, I doubt if she had lived, that she ever could have persuaded him to the sacrifices and efforts he made for her sake when she was dead. He immediately assumed the name of Hayford, without expressing a regret, even to Fanny; and accustomed as he had been to the control alone of his gentle mother, he submitted without a murmur to the petty and irritating tyrannies of his grandfather. He suppressed the expression of his opinions and surrendered his strongest inclinations at the squire’s command. Never was there a case in which the sanctifying influence of a pure motive was more apparent. The same deference which Randolph paid to his relative, might have been rendered by a sordid dependant, but then where would have been that moral power which gave Randolph an ascendancy even over the narrow and unperceiving mind of his grandfather, and which achieved another and a more honorable triumph.
A Mrs. Hunt, a widowed sister of the squire, presided over the female department of his family. She was a well intentioned woman, a meek and patient drudge, who had been content to toil in his house, year after year, for the poorest of all compensations, presents; the common and wretched requital for the services of relations. Mrs. Hunt had been sustained in her endurance by a largess that now and then fell upon her
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eldest son, and by the hope that ultimately her brother’s fortune would descend to her unportioned children. This hope was suddenly blighted by his adoption of Randolph; and Randolph, of course, became the object of her dislike, and he daily suffered those annoyances and discomforts, which a woman always has in her power to inflict. To these he opposed a respectful department; a mindfulness of her convenience and comfort, and a generous attention to her children, which smoothed her rugged path, and all unused as she was to such humanities, won her heart. It was not long before the good woman found herself going to him, whom she had regarded as her natural enemy, for aid and sympathy in all her troubles.
If I am prosing, my readers must forgive me. It has always seemed to me that we may get the most useful lessons from those who are placed in circumstances not uncommon, nor striking, but to which a parallel may be found in every day’s experience. It is a common doctrine, but one not favorable to virtue, that characters are formed by circumstances. If it be true, my friend Randolph was a noble exception; his character controlled circumstances; and, by the best of all alchymy, he extracted wholesome food out of the materials that might have been poison to another.
His boyish affection for Fanny Atwood had ripened into the tenderest love, and was fully returned, without my friend ever having endured the reserve and distrust that are supposed to be necessary to the progress of the passion. Trials their love had, but they came from without. Doctor Atwood had heard the squire had
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said, ‘the parson might try his best to get his heir for his daughter Fanny; he’d never catch his heir, though he caught Randolph!’ The good doctor was a proud father, and a poor man, and, though it cost him many a heartache, he shut his doors against Randolph.
Meanwhile, the squire’s self complacency (the squire had the art of making every body’s merit or demerit minister to this great end of his being,) in Randolph increased. He was proud of his talents, his scholarship and his personal elegance, though his fac-simile resemblance to his father was so striking, that the squire was never heard to speak of his appearance, except to say, ‘what a crop of hair he has, just like all the Hayfords!’
There was on peculiarity about Randolph, that puzzled his grandfather. ‘The fellow is so inconsistent,’ said he to himself one day, after he had been reviewing his account books; ‘when he has money of his own earning he pours it out like water; gave the widow fifty dollars last week, but he seems as afraid of spending my cash as if I exacted Jews’ usury; quite contrary to the old rule, ‘light come, light go.’ I have footed it right; eight years since Mary died—day after we lost Martin’s election by the parson’s vote; can’t be mistaken; he’s got through college, fitted for the law, and I have paid out cash for him but ninety-nine pounds, five shillings, and three pence, lawful! By George! the widow’s brood has cost me more in that time. Ah! it’s number one after all; is sure of it at last, and that southern blood can’t bear an obligation. Trust me for seeing into a millstone. I can tell him he’ll have to wait; I feel as young as I did thirty years
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ago; sound grinders, good pulse, steady gait. Ten years to run up to three score, and ten may last to eighty. Grandmother Brown lived to ninety and upwards; why should not I? when I quit, am willing Randolph, (wish his name was Silas,) should have it. If it was not for that southern blood he’d be about the likeliest of the Hayfords. All his obstinacy comes from that ‘I’ll not disobey you, sir, and even if I would, Miss Atwood would not marry me without your consent; but be assured, sir, I shall never marry any other!’ We’ll see, my lord; while I can say nay, you shall never marry that old aristocrat’s daughter. Just one-and-twenty now; guess you’ll sing another tune before you are twenty-five. Time to go up to the printing office; wonder if we shall have another Hampden this week; confounded smart fellow that.’
Then looking at his watch and finding the happy hour for country ennuyés, the hour for the mail and daily lounge, had arrived, the squire sallied forth to take his morning walk to the printing office, the village reading room.
There was a weekly journal published in Carrington, the ‘Star’ or ‘Sun,’ I forget which, but certainly the ascendant luminary of the democrat party. There had appeared, recently, in this journal, a series of articles written temperately, and with vigor and elegance, on the safety of a popular government.
The writer advocated an unlimited trust in the sanitive virtue of the people; he appeared familiar with the history of the republics that had preceded ours, and
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contended that there was no reason to infer our danger from their brief existence. He maintained, (and it will now perhaps be admitted with truth,) that distrust of the people was the great error of the federalists; that the prestiges of the old government still hung about them, and that they were committing a fatal mistake in applying old principles to a new condition of things.
These articles were read, lauded and republished. The name of the author was sought, but in vain. Even the printer and the editor, (I believe one person represented both these august characters,) were ignorant, and could only guess that it was a judge—, or lawyer—, the lights of the state. But conjecture is not certainty, and the author still remained the ‘great unknown,’ not only of Carrington, but of the county and state.
The squire returned from his morning lounge with a fresh journal, containing a new article from Hampden, the signature of the unknown author. A fresh newspaper! Its vapor was as sweet as a regale to the little vulgar pug-nose of our village politician as the dews of Helicon to the votaries of the muses. It so happened that Randolph was sitting in the parlor, reading, when the squire came in. ‘Have you seen the paper, this morning, Randolph?’ he asked.
‘No; I have not.’
‘I guess not, I have got the first that was struck off. Another article from Hampden, I understand. He is answered in the Boston Centinel. They own he writes ‘plausibly, ably and eloquently;’ the d—speaks truth for once I guess the Boston chaps find their
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match at last.’ The squire had a habit not peculiar to him, but rather annoying, of reading aloud a passage that either pleased or displeased him, without any regard to the occupations of those around him. His comments, too, were always expressed aloud. He drew out his spectacles and sat down to the paper. His sister, Mrs. Hunt, was sewing in one corner of the room, and Randolph sitting opposite to him, but apparently absorbed in his book. ‘Too deuced cool,’ grumbled the squire, after reading the first passage. ‘Ah, he warms in the harness; not up to the mark, though; I wish he’d give ‘em one of my pealers.’ ‘Good, good; wonder what the Centinel will say to that.’ ‘By George, capital! I could not have writ it better. I would have put in more spice, though.’
‘Ha! as good as the Scripture prophet.’ ‘Listen, Randolph.’ The squire then read aloud. ‘We are aware that prediction is not argument, but we venture to prophesy that in twenty years from this time the federal party will have disappeared. The grandsire will have to explain the turn—’
‘Term, sir,’ interposed Randolph.
‘Yes, yes, term. The grandsire will have to explain the term to the child at his knee. We shall be a nation of republicans, and whenever—’
‘Wherever, sir.’
‘So it is; wherever an American is found, at home or aboard—’
‘Abroad, sir.’ This time there was a slight infusion of petulance in Randolph’s tone, and still more in the squire’s at the repeated interruptions as he proceeded.
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‘At home or abroad, in office or out of it, in high station or low, he will claim to be a Republican, and cherish the title as the noblest and happiest a civilian⎯’
‘Citizen, sir⎯noblest and happiest a citizen can claim.’
‘Confound you, Randolph!” exclaimed the squire, dropping the paper and fixing his eyes on his grandson; ‘how do you know the words before I speak them?’ This was rather an exclamation of vexation than suspicion. Randolph was conscious that in involuntarily interposing to save his offspring from murder he had risked a secret, and he answered the squire’s exclamation with a look of confusion that at once flashed the truth upon his obtuse comprehension. He jumped up, clapped Randolph on the shoulder, exclaiming, ‘You wrote it yourself, you dog, you can’t deny it. It’s a credit to you, a credit to the name. But you might have known I should have found you out. Just like all the Hayfords, keep every thing snug till out it comes with a crack.’
‘I thought all along,’ meekly, said Mrs. Hunt, who had been plying her needle unobserved and unobserving, ‘I thought all along cousin Randolph wrote them pieces.’
‘Now shut up, widow,’ retorted the squire, ‘you did not think no such thing; just like all fore-thoughts, come afterwards. Now, ma’am please to step out; I must have a little private conversation with Mr. Hampden.’
‘Be kind enough before you go, aunt,’ said Randolph, ‘to promise me that you will say nothing of what has
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just passed. I have made no admissions, and I do not wish to be thought the writer of the Hampden articles.’
Mrs. Hunt, of course, promised to be faithful. As soon as she was out of hearing, ‘What does that mean?’ asked the squire. ‘It is all stuff to make a secret of it any longer.’
‘I think not, sir. The articles have far more reputation and influence, (if I may believe they have influence,) than if they were known to proceed from a young man whose name has no authority.’
‘Hoity-toity! who’s got a better name than yours? a’nt willing the Hayfords should have the credit, hey!’ Randolph did not vouchsafe any reply to the squire’s absurd mistake, and after a few moments his gratified vanity regained its ascendancy.
‘The pieces please me,” said he, “though if you had told me you were writing them I could have given you some hints that would have improved them. They want a little more said about men, less of principles. They want fire too; egad, I’d send ‘em red-hot bullets; but they’ll do; you’ve come out like a man, on the right side, and now I believe, what I felt scary about before.’ Here the squire paused, and fixed one of his most penetrating glances upon Randolph. ‘I believe you will vote to-morrow, and vote right.’ Randolph made no reply.
A few words will here be necessary to explain the dilemma in which Randolph was about to be placed. The annual election of a representative to the state legislature was to occur the next day. The rival parties in Carrington were known to their champions to be exactly balanced. There was not a doubtful vote
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except Randolph Hayford’s. He had never yet voted, not having till now arrived at the requisite age. He had not thrown himself into the scale of either party. His opinions were independent, and independently expressed. The squire’s hopes of his vote were very much encouraged by the Hampden articles, but still there were circumstances in this case that made him somewhat apprehensive.
‘Your vote,’ resumed the squire, ‘will decide the election to-morrow.’ Again he paused, but without receiving a reply. ‘I can’t have much doubt which way Hampden will vote, but I like to make all sure and fast. Randolph, I know what scion you want to see engrafted on that tree.’ The squire pointed to the only picture in his house, a family tree, that in a huge black frame stretched its frightful branches over the parlor fireplace. On these branches hung a regiment of militia captains, majors, colonels, sundry justices of the peace; precious fruit all, supported by an illustrious trunk, a certain Sir Silas Hayford, who flourished in the reign of Charles the First. Strange and inconsistent as it may appear with his ultra democracy, never was there a man prouder of his ancestral dignities, or more anxious to have them transmitted, than our village squire.
‘Randolph,’ he continued, assured of success by the falling of Randolph’s eye, and a certain half pleased, half anxious expression that overspread his face. ‘Randolph, I have always said that I never would give my consent to your marriage with that old aristocratic parson’s daughter. But circumstances alter cases. I am a man that hears to reason when I approve of it. I have no
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fault to find with the girl; never heard her speak; believes she’s well enough.’ Randolph bit his lips. How hard it is to hear an idolized object spoken of as if she were of the mass of human kind. ‘To come to the point, Randolph,⎯if you’ll go forward to-morrow like a man, and give in your vote for Martin and make Ross’ scale kick the beam, I’ll withdraw my opposition to this match. Hear me out. I’ll do more for you. I’m pleased with you, Randolph. I’ve just received the money for my Genesee lands. I’ll give you two hundred pounds to buy your law library, and you may go next week to any town in the state you like, and open your office, and be your own man, and take your girl there as soon as you like.’
‘Good Heaven!’ exclaimed Randolph, ‘you can offer nothing more; the world has nothing more to tempt me.’ And he left the room in a state of agitation in which the squire had never before seen him. The squire called after him,— ‘Take time to consider, Randolph. To-morrow morning is time enough for your answer.’
In the course of evening, Randolph met Fanny Atwood. Whether the meeting was accidental, I cannot pretend to say. It would seem to have been disobedience in my friend to have kept up her intercourse with Randolph after the doctor had shut his doors upon him. But Fanny well knew there was nothing beside herself, the doctor loved so well as Randolph; nothing that in his secret heart he so much desired as to see them united, and that his resolute and rather harsh procedure in excluding Randolph from his house had been a sacrifice of his own inclinations to his
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honest pride. This being the state of matter, it cannot appear strange that Fanny should be willing to meet him when ‘with rosy blush,
‘Summer eve is sinking;
When on rills that softly gush,
Stars are softly winking;
When through boughs that knit the bower,
Moonlight gleams are stealing.’
Or at any of those times and places which nature’s and our poet had appointed to tell, ‘Love’s delightful story.’
The lovers took a sequestered and favorite walk to a little waterfall at some distance from the village. Here, surrounded by moonlight, the evening fragrance and soft varying and playful shadows, they seated themselves on the fallen trunk of a tree, one of their accustomed haunts.
When they first met, Fanny had said, ‘So Randolph, your secret is out at last.’
‘Out! is it?’
‘Pshaw, you know it is. Your grandfather hinted it at the post office, and the town is ringing with it.’
‘I am sorry for it. I was aware that my grandfather knew it, but I have seen nobody else to-day. Has your father heard it, Fanny?’
‘Yes; finding it was out, I told him myself. Dear father! he both laughed and cried.’
‘Cried!’
‘Yes; you know that is no uncommon thing for him to do. He was grieved that you had to come out on the democratic side, for you know he thinks a democrat next to an infidel; but then he was pleased to find you could write such celebrated articles. He has said all
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along that they had more sense and reason in them than could be distilled from every thing else written by the democrats. Now he is amazed, he says, that a boy, (you know he calls every one a boy that is not forty,) should write so wisely, and above all, so temperately.’
‘Ah, my dear Fanny, adversity, though a ‘stern rugged nurse’ she be, enforces a discipline that makes us early wise. Heaven grant that her furnace may not be heated so hot as to consume instead of purifying.’
‘What do you mean, Randolph? you are very sad this evening. Are you not well? You are not troubled about this secret. I thought you looked very pale; what has happened to you?’
Randolph kissed the hand that Fanny in her earnestness had lain on his, ‘My dearest Fanny,’ he replied, ‘since you have exchanged those vows with me that pledge us to ‘halve our sorrows as well as double our joys,’ you have condemned yourself to trials too severe for your sweet and gentle spirit.’
‘Randolph, if my spirit is sweet and gentle, it can the better bear them; and besides, nothing can be a very, very heavy trial that I share with you. But tell me quick what it is? I am sure I shall think of some way of getting rid of it.’
Randolph shook his head, and then related his morning’s conversation with his grandfather. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘you see the cruel predicament in which I am placed. You, my beloved Fanny, the object of my fondest hopes, all that makes life attractive and dear to me, are placed within my grasp; an honorable career is opened to me, escape from the galling thralldom of my
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grandfather’s house, from the perpetual annoyance of his vulgarity, his garrulity, jealousy, and petty tyrannies; and this, without the slightest deviation in the spirit or even the letter from my promise to my dying mother.’ Randolph paused. Fanny watched every motion of his countenance with breathless expectation; she could not speak; she did not know what remained to be said, but she ‘guessed and feared.’ He proceeded. ‘But the price, Fanny, the price I am to pay for these ineffable blessings! I must give my vote to an unprincipled demagogue, and withhold it from an honest man. I must sacrifice the principles that I have laid down to govern my conduct. They may be stigmatized as juvenile, romantic, and fantastical; as long as I believe them essential to integrity, I cannot depart from them without a consciousness of degradation. My moral sense is not yet dimmed by the fumes of party, and it seems to me as plain a proposition as any other, that we ought only to support such men and such measures as are for the good of the country, and the whole country. It seems to me, that no man enlists under the banner of a party without some sacrifice of integrity. My grandfather says to me, in his vulgar slang, ‘between two stools you will fall to the ground. Be it so. It will be ground on which I can firmly plant my foot, and look up to heaven with consciousness that I have not offended against the goodness that made me a citizen of a country destined to be the greatest and happiest the world ever saw, provided we are true to our political duties. Dearest Fanny, do not think I am haranguing and not feeling. God knows I have had a sore conflict;
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my heart has been wrung. You cover your face. Have I decided wrong?’
‘Oh, no, no;’ she replied in a voice broken by her emotion. ‘For all the world, I would not that you should have decided otherwise. And yet, is it not very, very hard? I mean for you, Randolph. For myself, I have a pleasant home, and I am happy enough while I can see you every day, and be sure each day that we love one another better than we did the last. Besides,’ she added, looking up with her sunny smile, ‘on some accounts it is best as it is; it would almost break father’s heart to part from me; and, as he says, dear Randolph, when the right time comes, ‘Providence will open up a way for us.’’
‘Then, Fanny, you approve my decision?’
‘Approve it, Randolph! I do not seem proud, perhaps; but it would humble me to the very dust to have you think even of acting contrary to what you believe to be right. Oh, if we could only live in a world where it was all love and friendship and no politics!’
Randolph smiled at the simplicity of Fanny’s wish, and expressed, with all a lover’s fervor, his admiration of the instinctive rectitude of her mind. He confessed that he had resolved and re-resolved his grandfather’s proposition, in the hope that he might hit upon some mode of preserving his integrity and securing the bright reward offered him, but in vain.
Our lovers must be forgiven if they protracted their walk long after the orthodox hour for barring a minister’s doors. My friend, still the ‘spoiled child,’
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found her old sister Sally sitting up for her; and as they crept up their rooms, ‘They say old maids are cross,’ said Fanny, ‘but they don’t know you who say so. You remember, sister, when you used to love to walk by the moonlight, with a certain Mr.⎯⎯⎯?’
‘Whisht, nonsense, Fanny,’ said our ‘nun demure,’ but she finished the ascent of the stairs with a lighter step, and as Fanny kissed her for good night, she saw that a slight blush had overspread her wan cheek at the pleasurable recollections called up. So true is woman to the instincts of her nature.
On the next morning, Randolph was absent, and Mrs. Hunt said, in answer to his grandfather’s inquiries that he had ridden to the next village on business, and had left word that he should return in time for the election. The squire was excessively elated. He was on the point of obtaining a party triumph by the casting vote of his grandson; he should exhibit him for the first time in the democratic ranks, ‘enlisted for the war,’ with the new blown honors of Hampden thick upon him. There are elevated points in every man’s life, and this morning was the Chimborazo of the squire’s.
At the appointed hour the rival parties assembled at the meeting house; that being in most of our villages the only building large enough to contain the voters of the town, is, notwithstanding the temporary desecration, used as a political arena. There the rival parties met as (with sorrow we confess it,) rival parties often meet in our republic, like the hostile forces of belligerent nations, as if they had no interest nor sentiment in common.
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The balloting began. Randolph had not arrived. The squire, though not yet distrustful, began to fidget. He had taken his station beside the ballot box; a station which, in spite of its violation of the courtesies if not the principle of voting by ballot, is often occupied by eager village politicians, for the purpose of peering into the box, and detecting any little artifice by which an individual may have endeavored to conceal his vote. Here stood the squire, turning his eyes from the door where they eagerly glanced in quest of Randolph, to the box, and giving a smile or scowl to every vote that was dropped in. ‘What keeps the parson back?’ thought he, knitting his gristled brows, as he looked at Doctor Atwood, ‘he is always the first to push forward.’ This was true. The doctor’s principles kindly coincided with his inclination in bringing him to the poll, but once having ‘put in his mite,’ as he said, ‘into the good treasury,’ he paid so much deference to his office, as immediately to withdraw from the battle-field.
The doctor had controlling reasons for lingering on this occasion. Fanny had acquainted him with Randolph’s determination. The old man was touched with his young favorite’s virtue, and the more (we must forgive something to human infirmity,) that Randolph’s casting vote would decide the election in favor of the federal party. The balloting was drawing to a close, and still Randolph did not appear. The doctor now fully participated the squire’s uneasiness. He took off his spectacles, wiped them over and over again, and strained his eyes up the road by which Randolph was to return. ‘It was not like him to flinch,’ thought the sturdy old man, ‘he is always up to the mark.’ Still,
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as the delay was prolonged his anxiety increased. ‘Better have come boldly out on their side than sneak off in this fashion. I might have known that no one tainted with this jacobinism could act an upright manly part. He writes well, to be sure; find sentiments, but nothing so namby pamby as sentiment that is not backed up by conduct. Well, well; we are all in the hands of the Lord, and he may see fit yet to turn his heart; poor little Fanny; I’ll throw in my vote and go home to her.’ The doctor gave one last look through the window, and now, to his infinite joy, he descried Randolph approaching. In a few moments more he entered the church. His vote had been a matter much debated and of vital interest to both parties. As he entered, every eye turned towards him, and a general murmur ran round the church. ‘He’ll vote for us!’ and ‘he’ll vote for us!’ passed from mouth to mouth, and as usual the confident assertions were vouched by wagers. Whatever wrestlings with himself Randolph might have had in secret, he was too manly to manifest his feelings to the public eye, and he walked up the aisle with his customary manners, revealing nothing by look or motion to the eager eyes of his observers; though there was enough to daunt, or at least to fluster a man of common mettle, in the well known sound of the doctor’s footsteps, shuffling after him, and in the aspect of the squire standing bolt upright before him; confidence and exultation seeming to elevate him a foot above his ordinary stature.
‘Ha,’ thought he, ‘every man has his price; bait your hook with a pretty girl, and you’ll be sure to catch these boys.’ At this critical moment, Randolph
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dropped in his vote. It was open, fairly exposed to the squire’s eye, and it bore in legible, indubitable characters, the name of the Federal candidate. The doctor involuntarily grasped his hand, and whispered, ‘You have done your duty, my son, God bless you!’
Words cannot describe either the squire’s amazement or his wrath. Randolph had presumed too far when he hoped that the decency due to a public meeting would compel his relative to curb his passion, till reflection should abate it. It burst forth in incoherent imprecations, reproaches, and denunciations; and Randolph, finding that his presence only served to swell the storm, retreated.
The votes were now counted, and notwithstanding Randolph’s vote, and, contrary to all expectation, there proved to be a tie. Some federalist had been recreant. The balloting was repeated. Doctor Atwood had gone, and the democratic candidate was elected by a majority of one.
This unexpected good fortune turned the tide of the squire’s feelings. His individual chagrin was merged in the triumph of his party. They adjourned to the tavern to celebrate their victory in the usual mode of celebrating events, by eating and drinking. Excitement had its usual effects on our unethereal squire, and he indulged his stimulated appetite somewhat beyond the bounds of prudence.
Even the tiger is said to be comparatively good natured on a full stomach. The squire’s wrath was appeased by the same natural means; and when Hampden was toasted, he poured down a bumper, saying
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to his next neighbor as he did so, ‘I might have known a fellow with his nonsensical notions would have voted for the man he thought best of.’ The conviviality of our politicians continued to a late hour. Libations were poured out to all the bright champions of their party. The moderns unfortunately swallow their libations. Finally, the squire proposed a parting glass to ‘the confusion and overthrow of all monarchists, aristocrats, federalists, or despots, by whatever name called,’ and in the very act of raising it to his lips, he was seized with an apoplexy, which, in spite of his ‘sound grinders, full pulse, steady gait and grandmother Brown having to lived to ninety,’ carried him off in the space of a few hours, leaving his whole estate real and personal to his legal and sole heir, Randolph Hayford.
And how did Randolph bear this sudden reverse of fortune in his favor? This versification, as it truly seemed, of the doctor’s prophecy, that ‘Providence would open up a way for them.’
In the first place, he laid the axe to the root of the Hayford tree, renouncing at once and forever the name, (of which he had so religiously preformed the duties,) and resuming with pride and joy his honored patronymic. He then, by a formal deed of quit claim, relinquished all right and title to the estate, real and personal, and goods and chattels of Silas Hayford, Esquire, in favor of Martha Hunt, said Silas’ sister.
Thus emancipated, and absolved from all farther duties and obligations to the name of Hayford, with a character improved and almost perfected by the exact performance of self-denying and painful duties, he
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began his professional career, depending solely on his own talents and efforts; thank heaven, a sure dependence in our favored country.
My sweet friend, Fanny, who seemed to be the pet of destiny, as well as of father, sisters, and friends, was thus indulged in bearing the name of Gordon, to which she so fondly adhered. She was soon transferred to Randolph’s new place of residence, and without breaking her father’s heart by a separation. He having rashly preached an ultra federal sermon on a fast day, that widened the breach between himself and the majority of his parish, so far, that it was impossible to close it without emulating the deed of Curtius. To this the good doctor had no mind, and just then most fortunately (we beg his pardon, his own word is best,) ‘providentially’ receiving a call to vacant pulpit in the place of Randolph’s residence, he once more transferred his home; spent his last days near his favorite child, and at last, in language of scripture, ‘fell asleep’ on her bosom.
----------
[Sedgwick’s notes]
[1] This fruitful subject of dispute, has rent asunder many a village society in New England.
[2] Federalist.
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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A Reminiscence of Federalism
Subject
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Federalists and Democrats, partisanship, voting, friendship, courtship.
Description
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The narrator recounts the partisan divide between Federalists and Democrats in a New England town by reminiscing about a childhood friend, and her suitor's coming of age.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M. [By Miss Sedgwick]
Source
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The Token, edited by Samuel G. Goodrich.
Publisher
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Boston: Charles Bowen
Date
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1834 [pub. 1833]
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Jenifer Elmore, Naomi Lau, Kaylin Ricciardi, Abigail Skinner
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Collected in Catharine Sedgwick, Tales and Sketches. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, and Blanchard, 1835: pp. 9-43. Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, vol. 1, edited by Nina Baym, pp. 1017-38. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1998.
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English
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Document
"Hymn to Adversity" (1782)
"Il Penseroso" (1645)
1833
1834
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768)
Acts 7.60
Angelica Catalani
anonymous publication
aristocracy
As You Like It
ballots
Beauty and the Beast
Chimborazo
clergy
coming of age
Cotton Mather
courtship
Curtius
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death-bed promise
Democrat
Edie Ochiltree
elections
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Gioachino Rossini
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Increase Mather
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Judges 11:34
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Laurence Sterne
lawyer
letters
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newspapers
Norton Anthology of American Literature
Paradise Lost
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Shakespeare
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Tales and Sketches -First Series
The Age of Reason (1794)
The Antiquary (1816)
The Token
Thomas Gray
Thomas Jefferson
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Tristam Shandy
Uncle Toby
Vermont
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widowers
William Cullen Bryant
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/6dbe76dacbcf79a6c57d3176adf0229f.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=M8nmU7VIApuqcykPEOMj3kxw6Hr0xe2A3cP4mrUIMNjmhEJZiYg5qMMg17Jfn2JRqL0RstCF2y%7Et5OdPjRbjsthxb%7Etqn6yjRfYd81xd1p5qB5DUTH8qrDQt7O9paOdUmg4xGUQpcZwO0HP-4uvB6HtUFPOs%7EqOOdERHZactBF2S0i1N8gO09y%7EoQ32htnQJZ66sn58HulomkuIRtIykQhikeZpv266BXSU37yXm2Mobzluv0eCO5QHPMNUXDT1VoZ0POAaQZ-kxL2iHJ4HBulk1OmO2rrxl%7EYHWEGCAsSzIXwQuOosLDL3RAH%7Evhg2e3QcOKfYnhz%7EbPq1vomfHvQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
dca14a578024dc81f86bcd1fd6da74c1
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1839
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Second Thoughts Best.
By Miss Sedgwick.
“Grace, being the soul of your complexion, shall keep the body of it ever fair.” –Measure for Measure
It is a common saying, that no individual profits by another’s experience,—there are few, we believe, that profit by their own; few to whom may not be justly applied that striking saying of Coleridge that “experience is like the stern lights of a ship, which only illuminate the way that is passed.” But, of all the scholars I have ever known in this ever-open school of experience, my friend, Mrs. Dunbar, is the most unteachable. With a fair portion of intellect, with a quick observation, and fifty years’ acquaintance with the world, she is as trustful, as credulous, and as hopeful, as, when a child, she believed the rainbow was a rope, of substantial, woven light, with a golden cup at the end of it; that there was a real man standing in the moon, and that the sky would, one of these bright days, fall,
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and we should catch larks. Being of a benevolent and equable temperament, her credulity has the most happy manifestations. Her faith in her fellow-creatures is implicit, and her confidence in the happiness of the future unwavering; so that, however dark and heavy the clouds may be at any given moment, she believes they are on the point of breaking away.
I have known but a single exception to the general and pleasant current of my friend’s life. One anxiety and disappointment crossed her, which even her blessed alchymy could not gild or transmute. Her husband lost all his fortune; this was not the cross. Mrs. Dunbar said, she saw no reason why they should not take their turn on Fortune’s wheel; she did not doubt they should come up again, and, if they did not, why, her own private fortune was enough to secure them from dependence and want. Her husband had none of her philosophy, or, rather, happy temperament;—philosophy gets too much credit. He had an ambitious spirit, and his ambition had taken a direction very common in our cities; an aspiration after commercial reputation, and the wealth and magnificence that follow it. Mr. Dunbar had mounted to the very top rung of the ladder, when, alas, it fell! and his possessions and hopes were
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prostrated. A fever seized him in the severest hour of disappointment, and the moral and physical pressure killed him. But this was not the cross. Mrs. Dunbar loved and honored her husband, without having any particular sympathy with him. He imparted none of his projects to her, and neither interfered with nor participated her quiet, every-day pursuits and pleasures; so that no harmonious partnership could be dissolved with less shock to the survivor. Mrs. Dunbar, beside the common-place solaces, on such occasions, such as, “We must all die,” “Heaven’s time is the best time,” had a particular and reasonable consolation in being relieved from the sight of unhappiness that she could not remove or mitigate. This was not selfishness, but the necessity of her nature, which resembled those plants that cannot live unless they have sunshine, and plenty of it.
Mrs. Dunbar had one son, Fletcher, a youth of rare promise, who was just seventeen at his father’s death. He most happily combined the character of his parents,—the aspiring and firm qualities of his father, and the bright spirit of his mother. His education had been most judiciously directed by his father; and his mother, without any system or plan whatever, had, by the sponta-
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neous action of her own character, most happily moulded his affections. At seventeen, Fletcher Dunbar seemed to me the perfection of a youth; with a boyish freshness and playfulness, and a manly grace, generosity, and courtesy. Much more attention than is usual in our country had been given to the adornments of education; but his father, who had all respect to the solid and practical, had taken care that the weightier matters were not sacrificed; and he had a prompt reward. So capable and worthy of trust was Fletcher at his father’s death, that the mercantile house in which he was clerk offered him, on advantageous terms, an agency for six years, in France and England. Mrs. Dunbar consented to his departure. But this parting of the widow from her only son, her only child, and such a child, was not the cross. “There was nothing like throwing a young man, who had his fortune to carve, on his own responsibilities,” she justly said. “Fletcher would get good, and not evil, wherever he went. She should hear from him by every packet, and six years would soon fly away.” And they did, and this brings me to the story of that drop, that diffused its bitterness through the cup of my friend till now had preserved sweet and sparkling.
The six years were gone; six years they had
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been to Fletcher, of health, prosperity, and virtue. I need say nothing more for a young man, who had been exposed to the temptations of London and Paris. The happy day and evening of his arrival had passed away. Uncles, aunts, and friends had thronged to welcome him, and gone to their homes, and Mrs. Dunbar was left alone with Fletcher and Ellen Fitzhugh.
I have said, that Mrs. Dunbar had but one child; but, if it be possible for the bonds of adoption to be as strong as those of nature, Mrs. Dunbar loved Ellen as well as if she had been born to her. This instance was enough to prove, that there may be the happiness of a maternal affection without the instincts of nature, or the feeling of property in the object, which more selfish natures than my friend’s require. Ellen was the child of a very dear friend of Mrs. Dunbar, who, from a goodly portion of nine daughters, surrendered this, the fairest and best, to what she then deemed a happier destiny than she could in any other way secure for her.
I do not believe Mrs. Dunbar could have told which she loved the best, Ellen Fitzhugh or her son; in truth, they were so blended in her mind that they made but one idea. When she saw Ellen, Fletcher was in her imagination; when she
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thought of Fletcher, Ellen was the present visible type through which her thoughts and affections went out to him.
Now he had returned; they were under the same roof;—Fletcher was three and twenty, with a handsome fortune to begin the world with; and Ellen was just eighteen, with
“a countenance, in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A creature not too bright or good
For human nature’s daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.”
Never was there a fitter original for this beautiful description of the poet, than Ellen Fitzhugh; and could there be any thing more natural that Mrs. Dunbar’s firm belief, that Fletcher would set right about weaving into an imperishable fabric of golden threads she had been spinning for him?
The first evening had passed away; the old family domestics had received from Fletcher’s hand some gift “far fetched,” and enriched with the odor of kind remembrance; and Mrs. Dunbar and the young couple lingered over the decaying embers, to talk over the thousand particulars that are omitted in the most minute correspond-
[207]
ence. “Pray tell me, Fletcher,” asked Mrs. Dunbar, “who was that Bessie Elmore you spoke of so frequently in your last letters?”
“Bessie Elmore! Heaven bless her! She was the daughter of a lady who was excessively kind to me the last time I was in London. She bore a striking resemblance to Ellen, so I called her cousin,—a pretty title to shelter a flirtation;—I should inevitably have lost my heart, but for the presumption of asking her to give up her country.”
“Was she very like Ellen?”
“Excessively; her laugh, too, always recalled Ellen’s. She was a charming little creature!”
Ellen blushed slightly, and Mrs. Dunbar’s happy countenance smiled all over as she said, “Ellen is very English in her looks.”
“Yes, aunt, a ‘rosy, sturdy little person,’ as English Smith used to call me.”
“Not too sturdy, Ellen,” said Fletcher, “and not too little,—just as high as our hearts, mother, is she not?”
“She has always just filled mine,” replied the delighted mother, who had already jumped to the conclusion that the affair was as good as settled, and the wedding, and the happy years to follow, floated in rich visions before her. She ventured on one question she was anxious to have
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settled. “You have no occasion to go abroad again, Fletcher?”
“None. A happy home, in my own country, has long been my ‘castle in the air,’ and now, thank Heaven, I can give it a terrestrial foundation.”
“Ellen is not the person to relish this ‘taking for granted,’” thought Mrs. Dunbar; Fletcher should be more reserved.
Fletcher soon turned the current of her apprehensions. “Pray,” he asked, “what is the reason, Ellen, that you and my mother have so seldom mentioned Matilda Preston in your letters of late?”
“We have seen much less of her than usual the winter past. Matilda cannot
‘To a party give up what was meant for mankind.’
I suppose you know she has been a ‘bright and particular star’ this winter,—a belle?”
“Has she? I am sorry for it!”
“So is not Matilda. She enjoys her undisputed reign. She has, to those she chooses to please, captivating manners, and you know she is talented. The beaux, of a score of years standing, declare there has been nothing like her in their time. She is beset with admirers and lover. She says she is obliged, when she goes
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to a ball, to keep an ivory tablet under her belt, with a list of her partners. Some wag pasted up on Carroll Place, where the Prestons live, ‘Apollo’s Court,’ on account of the perpetual serenades there. Poor Rupert Selden told me, he has thrown away half a year’s commissions on bouquets and serenades to her, which, in his own romantic phrase, had ‘ended in smoke.’ She is said to be engaged.”
“Engaged!” Fletcher bit his nails for two or three minutes in deep abstraction, and then added, “To whom is she engaged?”
“Pray don’t look so distressed, cousin; I only reported it as an on dit,—I forgot your flame for Matilda.”
“Pshaw, Ellen! but who is the person?”
“The preeminent person at the present moment is Ned Garston.”
“Ned Garston! a monkey, --impossible!”
“Oh, he is much improved by foreign travel, and, if still a monkey, a romantic monkey, a monkey en beau. He has put himself into the hands of some Parisian master of the science of transforming the deformed, and has come forth the tableau vivant, copied after a famous picture of some Troubadour in the Louvre.”
“What do you mean, Ellen?”
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“I mean, that Ned Garston’s very pretty, black hair hangs in hyacinthine curls over the collar of his coat,—that he wears tresses, like a girl’s, on each side of his face, and mustachios and whiskers that would befit a grand Sultan. The girls call him ‘the Sublime Porte.’”
“And is it possible that Matilda Preston, that gifted, beautiful creature, is going to throw herself away upon this Jackanapes?”
“How wildly you talk, Fletcher!” interposed his mother, “you have not seen Matilda Preston since she was a mere child.”
“But a rare child, my dear mother; Matilda Preston, at thirteen, was a fit model for sculpture and painting. She moved like a goddess, and her faculties were worthy such a form. Lord bless me, what a sacrifice!—is it a sacrifice to Mammon, Ellen?”
“Do not insist that the sacrifice is certain,”—
“I have no doubt it is his fortune,” said Mrs. Dunbar, for the first time, I believe, in her life, turning a scale against an absent person that might have been struck in her favor, “that is to say, fortune and style. Garston has the most showy equipage in the city, and his family, you know, are all in the first fashion.”
“The fashion would have more influence with
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Matilda than fortune, I suspect. You know, aunt, she refused Stanhope Gilmore, who is very rich, and very clever into the bargain.”
“But you remember, Ellen, she told us her father would never have consented to her marrying a loco-foco.”
“Loco-foco! what the mischief is that, mother?”
“Why——the lowest of people—an agrarian, you know—a Tory.”
“What does my mother mean, Ellen? I never heard such a confusing combination of terms.”
“You surely know what we mean by Whigs and Tories?”
“Not I.”
“Do you never read our newspapers?”
“Very seldom,—never the party papers. An American abroad is ashamed of the petty wrangling, virulence, and vulgarity of our political papers. We care only for the honor and prosperity of the country at large. We love our countrymen, by whatever name they are called, and it makes us heart-sick to take up one of our popular journals and see it proclaimed, that ‘a crisis is at hand!’—that ‘the country is on the brink of ruin!’—that ‘the constitution is in jeopardy!’ and can only be saved by a doubtful ma-
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jority, rallying with all their strength against a corrupt faction, about to prostrate the liberties of the country! The only way to keep your temper is never to look into a newspaper. But, pray, can you tell me what are these loco-foco Tories?”
Poor Mrs. Dunbar never disturbed the serene heaven of her mind with politics. She received a very vague impression from the persons she associated with, and in accordance with this impression, she now replied, “I don’t know precisely,—I remember my father talking about the Tories in Revolutionary days being the enemies of their country, and I suppose it is just the same now.”
Mrs. Dunbar answered in good faith. The changes of the last sixty years, the new formations, and the remodellings; the old parties with new names, and the new parties with old names, still existed in her mind as the ideas had originally entered it, as banded Whigs and Tories. Fletcher laughed at her reply and said, “I see, my dear mother, you are just where I left you. The loco-focos, I take it for granted, Ellen, are the administration party.”
“Yes.”
“And Stanhope Gilmore, sprung from the most aristocratic family in the State, is a loco-foco?
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and Matilda Preston’s father, of a purely democratic origin belongs to the aristocratic party?”
“Just so.”
“Well, thank Heaven, our party associations may make a great uproar, but they can never have the element of danger while they are so unstable and accidental!”
A ring at the door, and the entrance of a note “To Miss Fitzhugh,” cut the thread of Fletcher’s generalizations. He cast his eye on the note, and exclaimed, “That I am sure is from Matilda Preston, though I have not seen her writing for six years. If there is nothing private in it will you allow me to look at it, Ellen?”
“Certainly, there is nothing private, only such a strange proposition!”
“Read it aloud, please, Fletcher,” said Mrs. Dunbar; and Fletcher read as follows:
“Dearest Ellen,
“You are engaged to go to Mrs. Reeves’s costume-ball to morrow evening. Some tiresome people have been persuading me to appear as Rebecca. Now I am well aware, that, in the article of beauty, I am not fitted to impersonate the lovely Jewess, but I am half inclined to try it, because I can so well arrange a dress for the
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character. Mamma has a remnant of a last century’s dress, a bright yellow India silk, embroidered with silver, that, with my ostrich feather and agrafe, will do admirably for the turban. I do not quite comprehend Rebecca’s simarre, but I think the bodice of my brocade will do as substitute.
“My note was interrupted by a visit from Madame Salasuar. She offers me her diamonds,—à bas pride, I’ll wear them. They are essential to give the Eastern character of magnificence. Then, you know my ‘sable tresses,’ my ‘aquiline nose,’ my ‘dark complexion,’ and my ‘Oriental eyes,’ as De Ville will call them, will all work in as accessories, to give a vraisemblance to the tableau vivant.
“Now, my sweetest Ellen, I cannot appear as the Jewess, unless you accompany me as the Lady Rowena. Pray,—pray do not refuse me, why should you?
“Perhaps you think ‘l’obscurité convient aux femmes’; — my dear, it will come soon enough when there are kitchens and nurseries for us to supervise,—let us buzz a little while in the sunshine first.
“Do you know a possible Ivanhoe among the invited? I do not. My acquaintances are all
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party-going, unknightly gentry enough. Garston proposes to appear as Brian de Bois-Guilbert!!! The perverse winds and waves! if they had but sent us Fletcher Dunbar!” (Here the reader blushed, smiled, and hesitated. “Read on, my son,” said his mother impatiently, and on he stammered.) “A Palmer’s dress, in which you know Ivanhoe first appears, would have been just the thing for Fletcher’s advent from foreign land, though the uprooted oak, the device of his shield at the tourney, and the motto, Desdichado, (Disinherited,)” would have ill fitted dear Mrs. Dunbar’s heir-apparent. It is so intolerably provoking that he has not arrived, when he is probably within two days’ sail of us. He is so clever and with such a born-hero look! Perhaps, after all, he might be cross and refuse; so let us be philosophers, and do as well as we can without him. You, dearest Ellen, will not refuse me? You will be the ‘Queen of Love and Beauty’; I only the poor Jewess, who, you remember, the Prior of Jorvaulx swore was far inferior to the lovely Saxon Rowena.”
“Is Matilda Preston out of her head?” exclaimed Mrs. Dunbar. “A fitting character for you, truly, Ellen, that pompous, cold, disagreea-
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ble, insipid Rowena. Don’t think of it, my dear child.”
“I shall not think of it for other reasons, aunt. I cannot conceive of any thing more absurd than for me to personate a beauty,—a tall beauty, too! born ‘to the exercise of habitual superiority, and the reception of general homage.’”
“I see no objection in that, my dear child. There are not half a dozen readers of Ivanhoe, who remember whether Rowena was tall or short; and as to beauty, that is, as to what is really engaging and captivating, I am sure”——
“Pray, dear aunt,”——
“The servant is waiting for an answer,” said Mrs. Dunbar’s maid.
“He shall have it instantly,” replied Ellen, taking up her pen.
“Stop one moment, my dear cousin,” said Fletcher, laying his hand on hers; “if it is not too disagreeable to you, say Yes. I should particularly like surprising Matilda, and joining you at this ball in the way she proposes. I do not see, that, in merely dressing in costume for Rowena, and calling yourself that name, you arrogate yourself beauty, and queenship, and all that. Where you make one of a group, the resemblance is a matter of inferior consequence.
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Matilda’s Jewess will be so striking, that she will shelter all our imperfections.”
Ellen still hesitated, and looked perplexed, and Fletcher added, “I see it annoys you, — it is a sacrifice of your prepossessions, — write the note as you at first intended.”
The word sacrifice seemed to Ellen to set her reluctance in a ridiculous light, and she felt ashamed of having hesitated, at this moment of Fletcher’s return, to acceded to a request that involved pleasure to him. “I will write it as I should have intended, if I had not been more thoughtful of myself then of others’ pleasure. You must make up your mind, aunt, to my doing the Lady Rowena too much honor! Shall I tell Matilda I can find an Ivanhoe, and that we will meet her at Mrs. Reeve’s at ten?
“Thank you, Ellen, — yes, — but pray don’t give a hint of my arrival; let us see, what was the Palmer’s dress, — do you remember, mother?”
Mrs. Dunbar did not; but, believing and hoping in her heart it would be something so unsuitable as to induce Fletcher to abandon the project, she eagerly sought the first volume of Ivanhoe on the book-shelf, and gave it to him. Fletcher opened at the entrance of the Palmer into Roth-
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erwood. “ ‘A mantle of coarse, black serge,’” he read aloud, “admirable! that is easily got up, and can be easily thrown aside. ‘Coarse sandals bound with thongs on his bare feet.’ By your leave, Sir Palmer, I shall not meddle with those. ‘A broad and shadowy hat, with cockle-shells stitched on its brim.’ Excellent! ‘A long staff shod with iron, to the upper end of which was attached a branch of palm.’ As we are not to tramp to Holy Land, we will omit the shoeing. The branch of palm is the grand point. That can be got from my old friend Thorburn.”
“And what is Ellen’s dress to be?” asked Mrs. Dunbar, — “I hope that will not be forgotten.”
“My dear mother, forgive me, —Ellen was busy with her note, —finished and sent is it! –you always execute while others are planning, Ellen. Ah, here is the description; ‘Hair betwixt brown and flaxen,’ — yours has a touch of the auburn, — the Saxon red.”
“Red!” interposed Mrs. Dunbar, “Ellen’s hair red! It has a true golden tinge.”
“Red gold, mother.”
“At any rate, Fletcher, it is not red, flaxen, or brown; I might have remembered Rowena’s hair was flaxen, — everything about her was unmeaning.”
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“ ‘Her hair,’ ” proceeded Fletcher, “ ‘was braided with gems.’ ”
“Le Fleur will manage all that,” said Mrs. Dunbar, “with my set of pearl.” She began to feel a little womanly interest in the getting up of the dress.
“‘A golden chain,’ ” proceeded Fletcher, “‘to which was attached a small reliquary of the same metal hung round her neck.’ That, my dear cousin, you must allow me to manage, that is, if a cross will do in place of a reliquary, and, as they are both symbols of the same religion, I do not see why it will not.” He unlocked a very beautiful dressing-case, which he now told Ellen he had brought for her, and took from it a rich gold chain, with an exquisitely wrought cross attached to it. “I brought this prophetically,” he said, clasping it round Ellen’s neck.
“Would the chain, and not the cross, had been prophetic!” thought Mrs. Dunbar, and she heaved a deep sigh.
“The memory of affection is always prophetic, Fletcher,” said Ellen; “it links the memory of past to future kindness.”
“What, my dear?” asked Mrs. Dunbar; “I don’t clearly understand you.”
The chain and the cross were too suggestive
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to Ellen’s mind to admit of any very clear explanation. Fletcher’s quick eye perceived her embarrassment, and imputing it to the awkwardness that very commonly attends receiving a gift, he went on with the book. “ ‘Her dress was an under gown and kirtle of pale green silk.’ ”
“Your new gown is the very thing, Ellen,” interrupted Mrs. Dunbar; “how fortunate! green, your own color.”
“Ellen’s color the emblem of desertion! mother?”
“No, no indeed, Fletcher; no one who has ever loved Ellen could forsake her.”
Fletcher, all unconscious of the feeling that was bubbling up from his mother’s heart, coolly proceeded in his trying process. “Here is a stumbling-block! ‘The Lady Rowena wore a long, loose crimson robe, manufactured of the finest wool, which reached to the ground.’ ”
“A stumbling-block? By no means, Fletcher; Amande can convert my India shawl into such a robe without the least injury to it, and I’ll answer for it the Lady Rowena’s mantle was dowlas to that. Is there any thing else?”
“ ‘A veil of silk interwoven with gold.’ ”
“My Brussels lace will be just the thing; it is magnificent, and will shelter without concealing.”
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At another time Ellen’s right joyous spirit would have found merriment enough in the project of arraying her little, unobtrusive person in a crimson robe, flowing to the ground, and at the simplicity of good Mrs. Dunbar, in supposing she could carry off any thing “magnificent.” She had another kind of veil to wear, for the first time in her life, to conceal her feelings, and to assume cheerfulness she did not feel.
Mrs. Dunbar retired for the night. Ellen, after despatching some trifling home affairs, was following her, when Fletcher, who had been leaning abstractedly on his elbow, said, “Ellen, do not go; I have something to say to you.” Ellen turned with a beating and foreboding heart. “Tell me, Ellen, honestly, is it your belief that Matilda Preston is engaged to Garston?”
“I do not believe she is.”
“Why are you in such haste? Sit down, — there, thank you; but do not look as if I had murder to confess, — I have only to tell you the weakness and the strength of my heart. You know, my dear Ellen, — cousin, — sister, I should rather call you, for, without any tie of blood, no sister was ever dearer, there is no one but you to whom I can communicate my feelings, projects, and hopes, —from whom I can take coun-
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sel. To begin, then when I left America you and Matilda Preston were very intimate. I do not find you so much so now; what is the cause of this alienation?”
“There is no alienation, Fletcher; we are intimate still.”
“Affectionately intimate?”
“Matilda is very kind, — very affectionate to me.”
“And you not so to her? I am sure you never repelled affection with coldness. There must be some reason for this. My mother, too, seems to have a prejudice against Matilda; pray be frank with me, Ellen.”
Frankness was Ellen’s nature. She was one of the few beings in this world, who are thoroughly and habitually, by nature and by grace, true. For the first time a cloud had passed over her clear spirit. She began to speak, faltered, began again, and finally said; “It may be more mine than Matilda’s fault, that we are less intimate than formerly. Our circumstances, our tastes are different. I think Matilda is much what she was when you left us, — that is, — that is, allowing for the difference between a school-girl and a belle, Fletcher.”
“A belle! — how I hate the term. But how
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could it be otherwise in a city atmosphere, with Matilda’s beauty, talents, and accomplishments? I see she is not quite to your taste, Ellen; I am sorry for it, but this is better than I feared. Now for my confession is brief. When I left you, I was a reserved boy. Neither you, nor my mother, probably, ever suspected my predilection, but for two years I had been desperately in love with Matilda Preston. I believed she loved me. We exchanged many a love-token, many a promise. It is true she was a mere child, I a mere boy; but there are such childish loves on record, Ellen. The germ of the fruit is in the unfolding bud. It may, after all, have been, on her part, a littler innocent foolery, forgotten long ago; but, if so, I was coxcomb enough to take it all in dead earnest. Through my six years of absence I have cherished, lived upon, these remembrances. All my projects, all my successes have blended with the thought of Matilda; and, blessed by Heaven in my enterprises, I have now come home determined to throw myself at her feet, if I find her what memory and a lover’s faith have painted her.” Fletcher fixed his eye on Ellen. Hers fell. “Will you not, — can you not, Ellen, give me a ‘God speed’?”
The flush on Ellen’s cheek faded to a deadly
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paleness. After a moment’s hesitation, she summoned her resolution; and, raising her eye to meet Fletcher’s, replied, with a tolerably steady voice, “do not ask a ‘God speed’ of me now Fletcher; — wait till you have seen Matilda, and studied her character, as you to study that on which the happiness of your life is to depend; and then, if your ripened judgment confirms your youthful preference, you shall have my” — “God speed,” she would have said but her honest tongue refused to utter the word to which her heart did not answer, and adding, “my earnest wishes, — my prayers,” she burst into irrepressible tears, and, horror-struck at what she feared was a betrayal of her true feelings she fled, without even a “good night,” to her own apartment.
The truth did once flash across Fletcher’s mind. “It is a phenomenon to see Ellen in tears, save at some touching tale or known grief,” he thought; “Ellen, with her ever bright buoyant spirit, — her ‘obedient passions, will resigned.’ Has my dear, imprudent mother, with her equal fondness for us both, been kindling a spark of tenderness in Ellen’s heart?” The thought was no sooner conceived than rejected. There was no latent vanity in Fletcher’s mind to please itself with cherishing it. It was happily improbable,
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and it soon gave place to thick-coming and most pleasant fancies. But one cloud hovered over them, — Mrs. Dunbar’s and Ellen’s all too evident distrust of Matilda. “I will ‘study her character,’ and abide by the decision of my ‘ripened judgment,’ ” resolved Fletcher. Alas for the judgment of a young man of three and twenty as to talented beauty of nineteen with the desperate make-weight against it of a long-cherished love!
When love takes possession of a mind perfectly sane in other respects, it acts like a monomania. This one idea has on independent existences, a complete ascendency, and absolute rule. The faculties of perception, comparison, judgment, have no power to modify, — the will no control over it. An angel, surely, should keep
“Strict change and watch, that —
No evil thing approach or enter in”
the paradise of the affections.
The trials of the evening were not over for Ellen. It was her invariable custom to undress in Mrs. Dunbar’s apartment, and to have a little gossip over the interests of the closing day, and the anticipations of the leaf of life next to be turned, before they parted for the night. This is the
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hour, that, of all others, unlocks the treasures of the heart. Memory pours out her hoarded stores and young hope shows, by her magic lantern, her visions of the future.
Ellen had often sat with her loving friend over the dying embers, reading and re-reading the passages in Fletcher’s letters, where he dwelt on the fond remembrance of home. Every mention of Ellen, and the letters abounded with them, his mother repeated and repeated, and always with an emphasis and smile, that sometimes made Ellen’s blood tingle to her fingers’ ends. And yet, simple as a child, the good woman never dreamed that she was communicating her faith and hopes, and awakening feelings never to sleep again. This she knew, as a matter of principle and discretion, would not be right; and, while she never said to Ellen, in so many words, “My heart is set on your marrying Fletcher, and I am sure his is, even more than mine,” she did not suspect she was conveying this meaning in every look, word, and motion. And even now, when the pillars of her “castle in the air,” were tumbling about her head, she had no apprehension that Ellen would be crushed by them. They were to meet now for the first time, with the most painful feeling to loving and trusting friends, that
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their hearts must be hidden with impenetrable screens; but, such was the transparency of dear Mrs. Dunbar’s heart, that, put what she would before it, the disguise melted away is the clear light, — to tell the truth, Ellen’s was little better; her safety was in the dim sight of the eye to be eluded.
She washed away her tears, called up all the resolution she could master, and repaired to Mrs. Dunbar’s apartment, whom she hoped she might find by this time in bed, and get off with her “good-night kiss”; but, instead of this, she was pacing up and down the room, not a pin removed.
“Dear aunt, not in bed yet?”
“No, my dear child, — I did not feel like sleeping the first night, you know, of Fletcher’s being here; — it’s natural to have a good many wakeful thoughts of past times, and so forth.” While saying this she had turned her back, and was busying herself at the bureau, the tone of her voice, and the frequent use of her handkerchief, conveying the state of her feelings as precisely to Ellen, as her streaming eyes would, had she shown them.
“Now you are at the bureau, aunt, please to take out your crimson shawl,” said Ellen, luckily hitting on an external object to engage their
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attention. Mrs. Dunbar fumbled at the drawers long enough to give herself time to clear her voice and dry her eyes, and then, throwing the shawl in to Ellen’s lap, she said, “You are welcome to that, and every thing else I have in the world, God knows, my dear child; but I don’t wish you to go to Mrs. Reave’s to-morrow evening, — I don’t think you will enjoy yourself.”
“It’s no very rare thing, at a party, not to enjoy one’s self, aunt. I shall certainly have the pleasure of obliging Fletcher.”
“That’s true, Ellen; — but then it was not like him to ask you, when he saw it was so disagreeable to you. I don’t see why he should set his heart upon this foolish Ivanhoeing.”
“But you see why he does, aunt.” Ellen spoke with a smile, melancholy, in spite of her efforts.
“Yes, I do, I do!” cried Mrs. Dunbar, her tears gushing forth afresh; “I see that Fletcher has the most unexpected, incomprehensible, unreasonable, unfortunate, strange, dreadful, wonderful, and amazing interest in Matilda Preston. I had never so much as thought of it, — it’s insanity, Ellen, — he is as blind as a beetle.”
“It is a blindness, aunt, that is not likely to be cured by the presence of Matilda Preston.”
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“That’s just what I feel, Ellen. Men are always carried away with beauty. I thought Fletcher was an exception; but he is not, or he would tell the gold from the glittering.”
“But, aunt, you do Matilda and Fletcher injustice. She has fine qualities; and, if what you now expect should happen, you will look on Matilda with very different eyes.”
“Never, Ellen, never in the world, —she will always seem to stand between men and —I mean, — I mean, — I can’t tell you, Ellen, what I mean. But this I will say, come what will, no one can ever take your place to me, —you are the child of my heart, — you have grown up at my side — I can never love another daughter; — whomever you marry, Ellen, wherever you go, your home shall be my home.”
“No, no, aunt,” said Ellen, hiding her tearful face on the bosom of her faithful friend, “I shall never marry, — never.” And before Mrs. Dunbar could reply, she gave her good-night kiss and left the room.
“Is it possible she could have understood me?” exclaimed Mrs. Dunbar. After a little reflection she quieted her apprehensions with the thought that she had a hundred times before spoken just as plainly, and Ellen had not suspected what she meant. She was like the child, who, shutting his own eyes, fancies no one can see him.
When Ellen left Mrs. Dunbar’s room, she went mechanically down stairs to perform her last household duty, which was to see that the doors were secured. On the floor, at the street-door, she perceived a note; and, on taking it up, saw it was addressed to a Miss Little, Miss Preston’s dress-maker, who lived opposite the Dunbars’ dress-maker, who lived opposite the Dunbars’. It had been accidentally dropped by Miss Preston’s careless servant. It was unsealed, and Ellen, taking it for granted it related to something about the costume for the Reeves party, and that it might be important to have no delay in getting it into the hands of the artiste, rang the bell for the servant, intending to send it, though the hour was unseasonable. Diana, Mrs. Dunbar’s crippled old cook, called out from the kitchen stairs to Miss Ellen, that “Daniel had just gone up to bed.” Daniel, like his pagan mate, Diana, had lived out, and overstayed his lease of threescore and ten with kind Mrs. Dunbar; and Ellen, hesitating to call him down, ventured to open the note, to see if it were a matter of any importance. It contained only the following three lines:
“Pray, Miss Littell, if you have any dealings
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with Mrs. D.’s family, do not mention that you informed me of the arrival of her son.
“M. P —.”
“I thought so!” exclaimed Ellen, involuntarily. “What is it, Ellen? What did you think?”
asked Fletcher, who, unheard by her, had just come into the open door for something he had left behind.
“Oh, nothing, — nothing at all,” said she. He playfully attempted to wrest the note from her hand, till, seeing she anxiously retained it, he desisted, and she returned to her own apartment, where she breathed freely for the first time for many hours, and where she spent a long, sleepless night in expelling from her mind her shattered hopes, and forming her plans for the future.
“Ought I not,” she said, in her self-examination, “to have obeyed the first impulse of my heart, and when Fletcher appealed to me, to have told him frankly my opinion of Matilda.” After much meditation the response of her conscience was a full acquittal. She had done all that the circumstances of the case and her relations to the parties allowed, in withholding her ‘God speed’ till Fletcher’s ripened judgment should authorize his decision. She reflected, that Matilda’s char-
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acter had seemed to her to have the same radical faults six years before, that it had now, and that, in spite of them, Fletcher loved her then. Perhaps she judged those faults too strictly. Perhaps her judgment was tinged by her self-love; for she was conscious, that, in the points so offensive to her, she was constitutionally the opposite of Matilda Preston. She looked again at Matilda’s discrepant notes of that evening, and charitably allowed, that she had at first felt too much displeasure at what struck her as absolutely false, but what, after all, might be an innocent stratagem to get up a dramatic scene, and perhaps to shelter emotions at a first meeting with Fletcher. “But oh, Matilda, why always a stratagem? Why never let the appearance answer to the reality? Why never trust yourself to simple truth?” Because Matilda was afraid, that truth would not serve her so well as she could manage for herself. We have no doubt our friends, the Phrenologists, would, with a very fair intellectual development, have found a great predominance of the organs of self-esteem, love of approbation, and cautiousness on Matilda’s head. She had an intense love of admiration, not merely of her personal charms, for her preëminent beauty was settled by universal suffrage, and she
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had no anxiety about it; but she would be thought, in all the circle of her acquaintance, to be the most capable of disinterested friendship and of self-sacrificing love; her tastes were in favor of all the virtues, — she really wished to be amiable and excellent; but the virtues have their price, and they will not abate one jot or tittle; — that price is self-abasement, self-forgetfulness, and generosity. “Hard it is to climb their steeps;” and they can only be achieved by painful and persevering efforts. At the first real trial appearances vanish like vapor, — there is no cheating in the long run in the matter of goodness.
With all Matilda’s fine taste, with her susceptibility to opinion, and her eager desire of praise, she was no favorite. Her intense selfishness would penetrate all disguises, — her consciousness of herself was always apparent, — there was never a spontaneous action, word, or look. In all this she was the very opposite of Ellen, who, most strictly watchful of the inner world, let the outer take care of itself. This gave a freedom and simplicity to her manners, and a straightforwardness to all her dealings, that inspired confidence. Matilda, in the midst of her most brilliant career, had, whenever silent, an expres-
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sion of care and dissatisfaction, — a rigidity and contraction of the upper lip, (often criticized as the only imperfection of her beauty,) that betrayed the puerile anxieties in which she was involved, the web she was perpetually weaving or raveling. There is no such tell-tale as the human countenance, or rather, we should say (with more reverence) God has set his seal of truth upon it, and no artifice has ever yet obscured the Divine impression. Ellen Fitzhugh’s lovely face was the mirror of truth, cheerfulness, and affection.
“There is no use,” thought Ellen, as she pursued the meditations in which we left her, “in trying to conceal my feelings, — I cannot, — I never did in my life, — I must just set to work and overcome them. Dear Mrs. Dunbar, all those sweet fancies that you and I have been so busily weaving, the last six years, must be sacrificed at once and for ever; and I must just learn to think of Fletcher, as I did when a little girl,— as a dear, kind brother; — that should be, — it
shall be, enough.” This resolution was made with many showers of tears, and sanctified with many prayers, ejaculated from the depths of her heart; and, once made, she set about, with most characteristic promptness, contriving the means for carrying it into execution.
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“In the first place,” thought she, “I must have something extraordinary to occupy me, or I shall be constantly, and oh how painfully, watching Fletcher’s every look and action; in spite of myself, I shall be hoping and fearing. This must not be, for I know how it must all end! It occurred to her, that it was nearly as important to divert Mrs. Dunbar’s attention as her own, and a lucky thought came into her head. Mrs. Dunbar’s physician had been urging her, for some weeks, to have a little wen removed, that was growing in a dangerous neighbourhood to her eye. Mrs. Dunbar was timid and procrastinating; but, with Fletcher’s aid, Ellen felt sure of persuading her this was the very best time for the operation. Then she determined at once to put in execution a project she had conceived, of teaching a poor, young blind girl, a pensioner of Mrs. Dunbar’s, music. Ellen was an accomplished musician; and she certainly was not over sanguine in believing, that the prospect of qualifying a drooping, dependent creature to earn an independent existence, would make sunshine for some hours of every day.
With these, and other similar plans in her head, which were necessarily deferred till after the Reeves ball, Ellen appeared the next morn-
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ing with a light and strong heart, and a correspondent face, voice, and manner. Oh, if rightly put to the test, what unthought of powers there are in those who every day yield themselves the passive victims to uncontrollable circumstances;
“powers
That touch each other to the quick, in modes
Which the gross world no sense hath to perceive,
No soul to dream of.”
Ellen talked over with Fletcher, with real interest and unaffected cheerfulness, the arrangements for the evening. If she had put into action all of Talleyrand’s diplomacy, she could not so thoroughly have convinced him, that his surmise of the preceding evening was unwarranted. Half of Mrs. Dunbar’s griefs were removed by the conviction, that her favorite did not share them!
We could fill a volume with the details of the ball, and the circumstances of the following six weeks, and all the developments of character and feeling which came from them; but we must cut down our history to the dimensions of its Procrustes’ bed. We must say for our favorite Ellen, that, bating a few inches of stature, she did honor to the character she reluctantly assumed. Her usually sparkling eyes were languid from the sleeplessness of the preceding night, and
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her color, which, in heated rooms, was apt to be uncomfortably high, was abated and fluctuating, and her dress, so happily arranged and judiciously modified, that the Saxon beauty, for once, fairly divided the suffrages with the brilliant Rebecca. But with the mere externals ended all resemblance to the truth of the characters. The Palmer, the Christian devotee, had nor eye, nor ear, but for the proscribed Jewess; and Rebecca was all delight at finding, beneath the broad brim of cockle-shells, and the Slavonian, the contour and air of a very elegant young man, who, she felt assured, had returned no less her ardent lover than the boy she had parted with six years before. She managed her prepared surprise so awkwardly, that Ellen wondered at Fletcher’s blindness. He was indeed blind! As to poor Garston, he was so enchanted with himself in the Templar’s costume, that he never once dreamed how near he was to a more portentous overthrow than that of his prototype on the field of Ashby de la Zouch.
We must pass over the next six weeks with merely saying, that Ellen executed her plans, — that Mrs. Dunbar found, in the complete success of a dreaded operation, a very considerable counteraction to what she still maintained was by far
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the greatest grief of her life. But it was plain, that even in no selfish grief could her benevolent feelings be merged. She was exceedingly excited with Ellen’s marvellous success with her musical pupil, and she had the most eager pleasure, every day, in the result of a subscription Ellen had set on foot for the yet unpublished book of a poor author, or, rather, a very poor man, and good author. We must confess, that Ellen had her hours of conflict, agitation, and despondency, when life was a burden; but even then, though the eclipse seemed total to her, she saw light beyond the shadow. Is there ever total darkness to the good?
Fletcher made her his confidante. This was a pretty severe trial; but she tried to feel, and did feel, in some measure, the sympathy he expected; and she was prepared by degrees for the final communication, that he and Matilda had plighted faith. In spite of her resolutions and efforts she turned excessively pale, and tried in vain to command her voice to speak; but this did not surprise Fletcher. All deep emotions are serious. He had never himself been more so than at this moment of the attainment of the dearest, the long-cherished wish of his heart. One hour before he had felt a pang that he in vain tried to
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forget, when, while their mutual vows were still warm on their lips, Matilda had left him in haste, lest she should not be the first at the opening of a newly-arrived case of French millinery! He painfully contrasted this with Ellen’s emotion, — with his own; and a thought arose through the mists of his mind, repressed as soon as perceived, that there were more points of sympathy between him and Ellen Fitzhugh, than he had found with Matilda.
As to poor Mrs. Dunbar, whom Ellen trusted she had quite prepared for the crisis, she took to her bed, upon the first intimation of it, with a head-ache that lasted, unintermitted, as never had head-ache, or heart-ache, with her before, for three days. In vain Matilda came to ask her blessing. Mrs. Dunbar was unaffectedly too ill to receive her. “With God’s help and time,” said the good lady to Ellen, “I will do my duty to Fletcher’s wife; but as to seeing Matilda Preston now, that‘s quite impossible, — and as to ever loving her as a child, as I do you, my own dear Ellen, that‘s not to be looked for.—’ The wind bloweth where it listeth.’” Mrs. Dunbar was no philosopher; — her instincts alone had led her to the discovery of the great truth, that our volitions have no power over our affections.
Ellen, now that all was decided, kept her eye
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resolutely on the bright side. “I am very sorry, aunt,” she said, “you did not feel equal to seeing Matilda this morning; I have seen her more brilliant, but never one half so interesting. Love has given an exaltation to all her feelings, — has breathed a soul into her face. There was a gentleness and a deference in her manners to Fletcher, that is quite new to her. She feels his superiority, and it may work wonders on her character.”
“Do you think so, Ellen?—well,—for Fletcher’s sake, — God bless him! — I’ll hope for the best. I am not an observing person, Ellen; but I have often remarked, that love, like showers from Heaven, is reviving to the thinnest soil, and every thing is fresh, and sweet, and beautiful for a little while; but the flowers soon fade, — the grass withers, — nature will take a natural course.”
“But, aunt,” replied Ellen, with a smile, “may not grace subdue nature?”
“No, my dear, no; it may help nature on in its own way, but not change it. I am sure I have tried my best for the last six weeks to put down nature; but it is too strong for me, Ellen.” Mrs. Dunbar wiped away a flood of tears, and then went on. “Ellen, I have been thinking this was a good time, while we are all
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so wretched,—I mean, while I am,—to speak to Fletcher about looking over that private desk of his father’s. Will you take it to him, dear? You know I have never looked into it. Before strangers come into the family, it is best to have papers that concern no one but us, disposed of. You need not say that to Fletcher; but I can trust you, dearest child, to say nothing to him that appears unfriendly to Matilda; — just give him the desk and key.”
Ellen did so; and, at the first leisure moment, Fletcher sat down to its examination. He found nothing of particular interest till he came to a file of letters, marked, “Correspondence with Selden Fitzhugh.” Before transcribing the only two letters of interest to the reader, it is necessary to premise, that the elder Dunbar and Fitzhugh had been intimate from their childhood, and that, after their marriage, the closest friendship united their families. A letter from Fletcher’s father to his friend, which seemed to have been written soon after his failure, ran thus:
“Dear Fitzhugh,
“My ruin is total. The labors, the enterprises, the successes of twenty years, are wrecked, — nothing remains. I am the victim, in part, of the
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folly of others, in part, I confess it with shame, of my own grasping. I had competence, I desired riches, and thus it has ended. But the worst is to come, my dear friend. I have made shipwreck of your little fortune, as well as of my own hopes. I have been obliged to give up all my property to satisfy my indorsers, according to the received notion, that debts to them are debts of honor, and I have not wherewith to pay a penny of the thirty thousand dollars you trusted to me without bond, mortgage, or security of any sort. This is the requital of your generous, but too rash friendship!
“Fitzhugh, I am a heart-broken man. My hope and energy are gone. If it were not so, I might promise you a day of restitution, —I should expect it myself; but all before me is dark and dreary. Even now I feel as if a fever were drying up the fountains of life. Forgive me, — pity me, my dear friend; I curse my own folly. You will not curse me, but, believe me, I would coin my heart’s blood to make you restitution.
“Your miserable friend,
“F. Dunbar.”
The following answer to Mr. Dunbar’s letter
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was dated at Mr. Fitzhugh’s country residence; and written a week later than his.
“Dear Dunbar,
“I am truly sorry for your misfortunes; but, my dear fellow, take heart of grace. If you have made a total shipwreck, as you say, why so has many a good fellow before you. The storm will pass, — you can fit out again; only don’t carry quite so much sail, and take out a clearance for some other port than El Dorado. As to my money, believe me, on my honor, after the first surprise and shock were over, the loss has not given me a moment’s uneasiness. I would not have put the money at risk for myself, or you, if I had not secured an adequate provision for my good wife, and eight dear little girls, and Ellen into the bargain, if ever she comes home to us. Our wants are moderate, and our supplies sufficient; and, believe me, a few thousand dollars to be added to the inheritance of each of my girls would not make one of our bright hours brighter. They will never hear of the loss, for I have taken care they should not count upon money that I had subjected to the chances of mercantile life. I have been thus particular to tranquillize you, my dear friend. If finally you
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retrieve your circumstances, you will pay the debt, and all will be well; — and, if you never pay it, — why it will be just as well.
“Ever faithfully yours,
“SELDEN FITZHUGH.”
“God bless and reward you, noble, dear friend,” was an indorsement on the back of this letter, dated two days before Mr. Dunbar’s death, and written by himself, evidently with a weak and tremulous hand.
Fletcher had read and re-read the letters, and had sat for an half hour meditating on their contents, when Matilda, who had called, on an appointment with Ellen, opened the door, and, seeing him deep in occupation, was retreating, when he said, “Pray come in, Matilda, you are the person I most wished to see.”
“That, I trust, is not very singular! But what is the matter, Fletcher? Are you making your will?”
“I am thinking over the disposition of my worldly effects,” he replied, with a very faint smile. “Will you read these letters, Matilda?”
“Yes; but, for Heaven’s sake, don’t look of solemn; I should think they were from the dead to the living.”
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“They are,—read them, and tell me what you think of them.”
Matilda read his father’s, while Fletcher perused her countenance with a far deeper interest than she evinced. “I see nothing very particular in this,” she said. “Your poor father seems to have taken his failure sadly to heart. I never heard before that Mr. Fitzhugh lost by him. But the Fitzhughs are very well off for the country, and I suppose it did not matter much. Ellen was probably adopted by your mother as an offset.”
“No; my mother never knew any thing of the business.”
“No! Oh, I forgot,—Ellen has lived here all her life. But why are you so sad, dear Fletcher,—there is no use in fretting over past troubles?”
“You have read but one of the letters, Matilda,” said Fletcher, coldly, without noticing her last reply!
“So I see; but I was thinking so much more of you than of the letters!” She read Mr. Fitzhugh’s. Fletcher’s eye was riveted to her face; there was no change of color, no moistening of the eye, the return messages of a kindred spirit to a generous action. “How well he took it!”
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she said in her ordinary tone of voice. “I have often hear your mother say, that Ellen was just like her father, making the best of everything,— ‘from evil still educing good.’” Matilda saw that Fletcher expected something more from her; but what, exactly, she could not divine. “Mr. Fitzhugh’s letter must have been a balm to your father’s wounded spirit, just as that sad time,” she added, and paused again. A servant entered and filled the awkward interval with some good reason why Miss Ellen would not keep her appointment.
“I am not sorry,” said Matilda, when the door closed, “for now, dear Fletcher, you will go with me.”
“No, Matilda, I cannot.”
“But you will,” she urged, laying her hand persuasively on his shoulder, and with a look that would have seemed to defy denial. “Come, come away, Fletcher, from these musty papers,—you will be devoured with blue devils; come, I must go, and I will not go without you.”
“You must excuse me.”
“You are unkind, Fletcher,” said Matilda, and her starting tears showed that she could feel keenly. Her pride would not brook any further entreaty, and she abruptly left the room, not doubting, however, that she should be intercepted, or
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immediately followed by her penitent lover. But she reached her own home unmolested, and retired to her own apartment, hurt and offended, and resolved, when Fletcher should come to his senses, to be unrelenting. There was ring after ring at the street-door, and visiter after visiter was announced; but the only one she cared for came not, and to every one else she was denied. At last the servant brought a note from Fletcher. “There must be something more than one note,” thought Matilda, as she broke it open. The current of her feelings was somewhat changed as she read what follows:
“My Dearest Matilda,
“Forgive me, I pray you. I have seemed unreasonable and sullen to you, and I have done you in my heart more wrong than I have expressed. That heart is wholly yours, and no feeling it harbors shall ever be hidden from you. The truth was, that I expected the letters would have called forth more feeling than they did. I ought to have rejected (and have since), that our feelings depend much on our humors,—that your mind was preoccupied,—and that, having no particular interest in the parties, you could not participate the strong and painful sympathy
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that then thrilled every nerve in my frame. I was wrong, and again, on my knees, I beg you to forgive me! I have bound myself to tell the whole truth; and must confess, that I expected still more,— that I expected you would anticipate the conclusions which of course were instinctive with me; but I should have remembered, my dear Matilda, that women, having no business habits or notions, the duty devolving on me at this moment would not have occurred to you. That duty plainly is, to pay my father’s debt to the Fitzhughs. There is no legal obligation, but a moral obligation, and an added debt of gratitude, that no human law could make more binding, or could invalidate. If I had a family dependent on me, there might be a question; but, situated as I am, there can be none. The debt, with its accumulation of interest, will swallow up nine tenths of the property I have acquired; but, with the remnant, with rare experience for three and twenty, with business talents, and a fair reputation, I shall soon go forward again. That event, which is to be the crowning joy of my life, must be deferred for two years. This is no small trial of my philosophy,—of my religion (for I will use the right word); but, with this bright reward ever in view, no labors, no difficulties will daunt my
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spirit. Dearest, dearest Matilda, forgive me for having for a moment doubted you. It was the first time. I believe, as I believe in all truth, it will be the last.”
The following brief note, in pencil, was returned by the servant:
“Come see me at nine, this evening. I shall be alone and disengaged then, and not till then. In the mean time, make no disclosures of your inventions to your mother, to Ellen, or to any one.”
The interval was one of reposeful confidence to Fletcher, and of that celestial joy that springs from an ability, and an immovable resolution, to perform a right action at a great personal sacrifice. We claim for him no great merit in yielding the money. Any right-minded young man full of health and hope, and conscious capacity, might have done this without a pang; but Fletcher was a passionate lover, and he had to encounter the miserable uncertainties of a hope deferred.
Let us see how the interval was passed by Matilda. After much agitating self-deliberation,
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she called her mother to her counsel. Mrs. Preston was the prototype of her daughter, save that what was but in the gristle with the daughter, had hardened into bone with the mother, and save that Matilda, from having had an education very much superior to Mrs. Preston’s, had certain standards and theories of virtue in her mind’s eye, that had never entered the mother’s field of vision. Matilda, too, from having been all her short life in fashionable society, did not estimate it as so high a rate as her mother, who has paid for every inch of ground she had gained there.
Matilda related her last interview with Fletcher, and showed his note. “Do you believe,” said Mrs. Preston, after reading it, “that Fletcher Dunbar will be so absurd as to adhere to this plan?”
“I am sure he will. He is perfectly inflexible when he makes up his mind to what he thinks a duty, however ridiculous it may appear to others.”
“Of course, my dear, you are absolved from your engagement.”
“If I choose to be.”
“If I choose! My dear Matilda, you know how much it was against my wishes that you should form this engagement,—that you should
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give up the most brilliant match in the city for what, at the very best, would be merely a genteel establishment. But the idea of your going into the shade at once, giving up everything, and living, perhaps, at lodgings, or setting up your housekeeping with two servants that you must look after all day, and spend your evenings making your husband’s shirts, by a single astral lamp, ride in an omnibus (you might ride in that splendid carriage), and treat yourself, perhaps, to one silk gown a year,—and all for what? To humor the notions of a young man, who is in no respect superior to Garston, except that he is rather taller, and has a straighter nose, and darker, larger eyes, not much larger either!”
Mrs. Preston had struck a wrong note. Matilda shrunk back from the path her other was opening, as the images of her two lovers passed before her.
“Oh, mamma,” she exclaimed, “there is a horrid difference between them; and if I only could persuade Fletcher to abandon this notion”—
“Well, my dear, in my opinion, if he loves you, he will;— if he does not, why then you lose nothing and gain everything. Luckily your engagement is a secret, as yet, and you have
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taken no irretrievable step. Garston was here this morning,—a look could bring him back to you.”
“But, mamma, to give up what I have been so long dreaming of?” “Yes, and whatever young girl dreams of, and wakes up betimes to pretty dull realities. How should you like, for instance, to wash the breakfast things, and stir up a pudding,—to wash and dress your children, and make a bowl of gruel for your dear mamma-in-law?”
“Oh detestable!” Matilda pondered for a few moments, and then said, “I really think, if Fletcher loves me, he will sacrifice his feelings to me. I am sure he owes it to me, after the sacrifice I made to him;—I have certainly proved myself disinterested, but I do not like to be treated as if I could be set aside, and wait for the working of any fancy that comes up. I will tell him so,—I am resolved. He must take the responsibility of deciding it.”
The evening came, and, when the clock struck nine, Fletcher entered Miss Preston’s drawing room, his fine countenance beaming with the serenity and trustfulness of his heart; but Matilda’s first look sent a thrill through it, that was like the snapping of the chords of a musical instrument at the moment it is felt to be in perfect
[253]
tune. She advanced towards him, and gave him her hand as usual, and she smiled; but it was a mere muscular movement, the expression was anything but a smile. Her beautiful face had all the rigidity that a fixed and painful purpose could give to it; but it was a purpose that depended on a contingent, and to that contingent the smile and the responding pressure of her hand were addressed.
Her eyes were red and swollen, and, for the first time, her dress was not elaborately arranged.
She spoke first, “You do not love me, Fletcher!”
“Not love you, Matilda! God only knows how tenderly I love you.”
“No, Fletcher, you do not love me,—the truth has broken upon me with irresistible proof.”
“What do you mean, Matilda? What have you heard? Surely it is not—it cannot be”—
“It is, Fletcher. Your note has nullified our engagement. I have judged you by my own heart. I have questioned, examined that, and I am sure that no fancied duty,—no absolute duty could have forced me,—much less persuaded me at its first intimidation, to expose the happiness that was just within our grasp to the hazards of time.”
Fletcher poured out protestations and prayers,
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and concluded with assuring Matilda, that, “if she would share with him, at the present moment, his acted fortune, if she would at once risk the uncertainties that he must encounter, he should be a happier and prouder man than all the wealth in the world could make him.”
Matilda burst into tears. “It is not right,—it is not generous,” she said, “to put what you consider a test to me. It is none. You must acquit me of any groveling care for money. You have but to look six weeks backward to remember, that the first fortune in the city was waiting my acceptance, and fashion, and brilliant family connexions. I sacrificed all, without a shadow of regret, to you, and now I am thought very lightly of in comparison with a fancied duty.”
“A fancied duty? Good Heaven!”
“A real duty, then; but so questionable, that nine men out of ten would pronounce it no duty at all. It is not the money. I care as little for that as you can; but it is the terrible truth you have forced on me,—you do not love me.”
“Matilda, you wrong yourself,—you wrong me.”
“Prove it to me then, Fletcher. Let our relations be what they were yesterday,—burn those letters, and forget them.”
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“Never!” cried Fletcher, indignantly, “so help me God,—never.”
“Then the tie that bound us is sundered,—our engagement is dissolved.”
“Amen!” said Fletcher, and he rushed from the house,—his mind confused and maddened with broken hopes, disappointed affection, and dissolving delusions.
There is one painful but sure cure for love. The slow-coming, resisted, but irresistible conviction of the unworthiness of the person beloved.
* * * * *
A little more than two years had passed away, when one bright morning, at the hour of ceremonies visiting, a superb carriage, looking more like a ducal equipage than one befitting a wealthy citizen of a republic, drew up a Mrs. Dunbar’s door. The gilded harness was emblazoned with heraldic devices, and a coat of arms was embroidered in gold on the hammer-cloth, and painted on the pannels. The coachman and footman in fresh and tasteful liveries, were in the dickey, and the proprietor of the equipage (in appearance a very inferior part of it) was seated on the box with a friend. Within the
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coach was a lady, magnificently dressed in the latest fashion. She seemed
“A perfect woman, nobly planned
To warn, to comfort, and command;”
but she had thwarted the plan,—she had extinguished the “angel light,” — she had herself closed the gates of Paradise, and voluntarily circumscribed her vision to this world. She had foregone the higher element for which she was destined; but the wings she had folded for ever betrayed by their fluttering her disquietude with the way she had chosen. The face that, turned heavenward would have reflected Heaven, was fixed earthward, and the dark spirits of Discontent and Disappointment brooded over it.
There is a baser traffic going on in this world of ours, than that which the poet has immortalized in his history of Faust, carried on under the forms of law, and with the holy seal and superscription of marriage.
The lady alighted from the coach and was on the door-step awaiting her husband. He did not move, the footman had rung the bell, and Mrs. Dunbar’s servant stood awaiting the entrée.
“Are you not going in with me, Ned?” she asked.
“Not I,—I hate bridal visits.”
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“Oh, come with me, I entreat you,” she said, earnestly.
“It’s a bore! I can’t. Bob and I will drive round the square, and take you up as we return.”
The lady looked vexed and embarrassed; but there seemed no alternative.
“Is there much company in the drawing-room, Daniel?” she asked.
“None, ma’am. Miss Ellen, that is, Mrs. Dunbar, the bride,—Miss Ellen that was,—don’t see company in a regular way, as it were.”
“No? I heard she did. I’ll leave my card now.”
While she was taking it from her card-case the door opened, and Fletcher Dunbar, with a manner the most frank and unembarrassed, advanced, and offered her his hand. “Pray, Mrs. Garston,” he said, “do not turn us off with a card; we are at home, and, like all happy people, most happy to hear congratulations.”
Matilda Garston had not been under Mrs. Dunbar’s roof since the memorable morning, when she found Fletcher at his father’s desk. How changed was life now to all parties! Fletcher had awakened from the dream of boyhood to a reality of trustful love, to which his “ripened judgement” had set its seal.
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Ellen, who had resigned her hope of reigning in Fletcher’s heart, was not its elected and enthroned queen. She looked like the embodied spirit of home, and domestic love and happiness. The two young women contrasted like the types of spiritual and material world.
Our good friend, Mrs. Dunbar, was at the acme of felicity. It would have been in vain for her to try to express the overflowing of her heart, and try she did not. It sparkled and ran over like a brimming glass of champagne.
“I am truly glad to see you here again, Matilda,—Mrs. Garston, I mean,” she said; “I really am, my dear. And now we have met, old friends together, I will tell you, that I never had one hard thought, no, not one, at your breaking off with Fletcher. It was providential all round. Fine pictures should have fine frames;—you, my dear, just fit the one you are set in, and our little Ellen was made to be worn, like a miniature, close to the heart. I used to be a believer in first love, now I think ‘second thoughts best.’ ”
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Title
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Second Thoughts Best
Subject
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Courtship, marriage, love, duty.
Description
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An engagement is jeopardized by the couple's conflicting values and attitudes towards love and duty.
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Sedgwick, Catharine M. [By Miss Sedgwick]
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The Token, edited by Samuel G. Goodrich, pp. 201-258.
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Boston: Otis, Broaders, & Company
Date
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1840 [pub. 1839]
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L. Damon-Bach with Asa Anderson, Deanna Depaz, Megan Hennessey, Emily Moss, Kevin White, and Dr. Jenifer Elmore with Adriana Duebel, Ariana Fernandez, Lauren Sumner, and Julianna Weiss
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Volume reissued as The Moss Rose, New York: 1846; and as The Honeysuckle, New York: 1848. Story reprinted in New-Yorker (31 August and 14 September 1839, pp: 386 and 406, and in The Rural Repository, 28 September 1839, pp 57-60 and 12 October 1839, pp. 65-69.
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English
"Address to Kilchurn Castle Upon Loch Awe"
"Faust"
"Principles and Prudence in Politics: The Friend"
"She Was a Phantom of Delight"
"The Seasons: A Hymn"
1839
1840
2 Corinthians 1:22
All's Well That Ends Well
Apollo
Ashby de la Zouch
bankruptcy
belle
Charles Maurice de Tallyrand
courtship
Death
Democrat
duty
El Dorado
engagement
Ephesians 1:13
factionalism
Isaiah 40:8
Ivanhoe
James Thomson (1700-1748)
Jewess
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
John 3:8
John Milton
letters
loco-foco
Louvre
Love
Mammon
marriage
Measure for Measure
Oliver Goldsmith
Paradise Lost
party politics
phrenology
Procrustes bed
Samuel G. Goodrich
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Shakespeare
Sir Walter Scott
speculation
sultan
tableau vivant
The Token
Tories
Whigs
widows
William Wordsworth
-
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1849
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MUCH has been said for and against the first enkindling of this sentiment in the young bosom. All sixteen is for it, much experience, alas! against it. There is certainly something very enchanting in that first love to which all the freshest visions of youth are ministering and subsidiary—which copies its idol in the pure heaven of its own breast without spot or blemish— which fears no change, nor shadow of change— the love, while hope has never been cheated, expectation disappointed, or faith broken—the love that glows in the fire of its own enthusiasm, and is pure as innocence itself, and radiant with "clouds of glory" from our elder home. Most happy—most blessed are those on whose first love the seal of reality has been set, whose summer has developed and ripened the seed sown in spring tone, and who worship through life, at the altar on which the vestal fire was lighted!
Something of this I said to a friend, who, with an equivocal smile, replied, that she would tell me a true story of the first love of a friend of hers. I record it here, as well as I can remember, in her very words, without exaggeration or change of any kind.
It is only necessary to depart from reality so far as to use assumed names. "I was staying," said my friend, (the relator was an English woman,) "at Avonside, with Lady Anne Harvey, during a vacation at our boarding school. She was an intense sixteen. Lady Anne's education was completely, up to fifteen, the English nursery education. At fifteen she was as ignorant and undeveloped in all that relates to the wonderful relations of man and woman, as the children of your country at five or six. Her dear, kind papa, was the type of all grown up men, and her teasing, tormenting, noisy, but still loving brothers, of the younger portion of that species. Boarding school is a hot bed that develops nature very rapidly and unwholesomely. Lady Anne in the course of a few weeks, was born into a new world there. She read, clandestinely, with the rest of us, the romances—they were mere love stories in those days, or the passionate poetry that was smuggled into the institution—an institution of the severest order—of Madame Racine. Her Latin book would lie shut on her lap, and her glowing cheek rest on her French theme, while she listened to highly colored descriptions of charming young men, or heard related in still more glowing language, the real or fanciful love-passages of her young companions. I was two years older than Lady Anne. But time, in enlarging my horizon, had not chastened my imagination. I conceived a most passionate affection for my charming friend. Feeling very humbly about my own personal charms, my young love's young dreams were for Lady Anne. She was my heroine of romance, and all my romantic lore was lavished upon her; so that precious sentiment which, as I now think, should be developed charily, was nourished into most premature and rank growth.
Sir Guy Harvey's park grounds are some of the oldest in England, with long avenues, loving walks, bosky dells, and sparkling waters. There are points of most beautiful view, and many a painter goes there for sketches of that rich, old rural cultivation, characteristic of our country. Lady Anne, at her father's request, rose one morning to show me the rising sun, from a point of view much celebrated, and which Sir Guy thought unrivalled. A winding path by a crisp little brook, overhung with flowery shrubs led to it. It was at the highest point in the park, and crowned with an oak, as old and more beautiful than the royal oak at Boscobel. Under this oak tree were rustic scats, and a table; and as we approached it, we observed a rustling of the high shrubbery that screened the seat from us. Some one was, evidently, hastily retiring from the place, and when we reached it, there were proofs that a real person, and no ghost, had just preceded us. A pencil was dropped by the bench, and on it lay a highly finished sketch of my friend, as she had sat with me, (I was omitted !) the day before near a lovely rosary, trying her maiden fortune, in the fashion of Margaret, in Faust, by picking off the leaves of a rose. Lady Anne blushed as she perceived the unmistakeable resemblance. "How spirited!" she said. "How expressive! how like !" I said. "But who can have done it?" she asked. "Some poor, old artist," I replied, mischievously, "who has run down from London for a breath of fresh air. I have known a hundred in my father's studio, who could do it;" my little friend looked disappointed, and I added, "perhaps it is a young artist—an amateur—it is charmingly done; but then a mere amateur artist might have done it."
"I think it was an amateur artist," Lady Anne said, simply; "do you think it is right for me to keep it?"
"Certainly, it was designed for you, no doubt; and the designer will be very much disappointed if it do not prove an introductory epistle."
All day we discussed this incident, as girls only can discuss such a trifle. We expected from some one of our many daily visitors, to hear of an artist being in the neighbourhood; but, though we introduced the subject of painting and artist, and every topic connected with them, we obtained no light on our surmises. The next day, on a green bank, by a path we daily frequented, we found another sketch, lying under a stem of lovely roses, of a species that did not grow in Sir Guy's grounds. Here my pretty friend again appeared as she had eat the preceding day, under a tree overhung with flowering vines, while I read to her. The little brook was curling away beyond us, or rather beyond her, for the artist seemed never to take me into his field of vision. Her large black Newfoundland was lying at her feet, and her prettiest of poodles lovingly enfolded in its huge paws. "How very strange!" she exclaimed. "How very pretty!" I said, "but where on the earth, or under the earth, does this conjurer hide himself, that we get not a glance of him, or a suspicion of his presence?"
It was true, that the labyrinthine walk and dark woodlands of the park afforded abundant hiding places, where one might see unseen. For a whole week, each day, these mysterious sketches appeared, each lovelier than the last, each more stimulating to our curiosity, more flattering to my friend's inexperienced vanity.
From the beginning of our recreation, Lady Anne had been learning the art and mystery of driving; and every day, attended by a groom, we took a delicious drive in her mother's pony phaeton, within the park. On the Sunday following the week of our artistic intercourse with her admirer, she had ordered the groom to open the park gate; and, tempted by the beauty of the coming evening, and more by the free spirit of youth, that ever longs to get beyond bounds, we sallied forth. We did not return till the last ray of the long English twilight was fading away. Lady Anne dreaded her father's disapprobation, (she had nothing from that gentle good man more severe to dread,) and she drove rapidly. There was a steep bank, and a sharp turn near the park gate, for which she was too inexperienced to calculate; and in bringing the horses round too swiftly, she overset the carriage, and we were thrown out, and down the bank. As soon as we could rally, for we were not much hurt, but palsied with terror,—we found ourselves, or rather Lady Anne found herself supported and aided by a young man, who had come, Heaven knows whence, to her rescue. The groom was compelled to give his attention to the horses, and the aid of the stranger was indispensable to support the trembling girl to her home. We were met at the door by the father and mother, already apprised of the accident, and amidst exclamations of, "Are you hurt, my child !"—" Nor you, dear Miss ?"—"Thank God!"—"How could you be so indiscreet, Anne?" They did not forget civilities to our cavalier, who, whatever else he might be, was an unquestionable gentleman. He had lodgings at a few miles distance from Avon-side. "You will doubtless," Sir Guy said to him, "take the trouble to come tomorrow, to enquire after these young ladies, to whom you have done such essential kindness; do us the favor to come over to dinner, we dine at six." The stranger accepted, in a manner that proved him familiar with the offices of good breeding, and with a certain modesty that quite won Sir Guy's heart; for, like most persons well advanced in life, he deemed that the quality wanting in the young men of the day.
Of course, as soon as we retired to our own rooms, Lady Anne and I compared notes. The stranger could be none other, than her artist admirer. There was a glowing expression, a tremulousness of voice, that betrayed an interest beyond that of a stranger; and if other proof were wanting, I had not been too much terrified to observe the paraphernalia of an artist, which he dropped, and left on the bank where we were upset. Lady Anne confessed she felt the throbbings of his heart, when she was obliged to lean against him; and she remarked, that the tone of his voice was musical,—or, certainly the most expressive she ever heard. Her aristocratic prepossessions did not, however, forsake her, even at this romantic beginning of her first romantic adventure. She was quite sure, "he was not merely a professional artist, he was well-born, that was evident in his fine aristocratic features, his deportment, his voice, his turn of expression." “It is quite true," said my friend, continuing her relation, "that our English aristocracy have a cast of feature, rarely found among the lower classes; though quite common with yours, who, however, with their straight noses, and thin lips, have an intensely vulgar expression." I, however, laughed at Lady Anne, and told her that I thought the mind inspired the form, and that beauty and grace were the outward signs of the beauty chartered by Heaven alone.
Basil Astley, that was the name of our hero, made rapid advances in Sir Guy's favor. Sir Guy was himself an amateur artist. He had portfolios filled with sketches made in Italy and Switzerland, when he was a young man; his walls were adorned with pictures from his own designs. The dear, good man's perceptive powers were not sharp, and in the indulgence of his own innocent little egotisms, he never dreamed of the passionate love to which he was unwarily giving such opportunity of nurture and growth. He invited Astley to become his guest. He walked with him over his lovely place, suggested sketches, which were executed immediately and charmingly. He little dreamed of the episodes that were enacting in the bowery park, and during the moonlight evenings, — he was sand-blind, — for never did I see two young creatures more passionately in love than Anne and Astley. It was like nothing but the love of Romeo and Juliet. He was not more than one and twenty,—and she not seventeen, which to our cold northern blood is not more than the fourteenth year of the girl of Verona. She was Astley's idol, and the idol's love matched his idolatry. No woman's instinct could mistake the bliss that shone in the faces of these young people. The mother saw it, and the father was immediately apprised of her discovery. He had looked upon Anne as a child, and she was now caught in toils that no woman's strength is strong enough to break. What was to be done? The affair must be crushed, and at once. Astley was a poor young artist, of obscure birth. Anne boasted a long line of noble ancestry, and had a fortune in her own right. Justly considered, perhaps, these accidental advantages would have been but a fair offset against Astley's high gifts, and by uniting the two young people the social equilibrium would have been restored; but, in my country, society is cast in an inflexible mould. Lady Anne must be mated with her equal in social advantages. She was destined by her father for the son of a neighbor, the friend of his youth—of his life- time. The young man well born, well educated, well principled, and amiable — the beau ideal, or rather the beau actual of discreet papas, was at that present travelling. Sir Guy, as prudent as Brutus, had not even communicated his secret hope and purpose to his wife. Sir Guy was not the cleverest man in the world, but he had good sense, and what is better even than that, a good, most kind, most affectionate heart. The inspiration of such a heart's instincts is far better than the subtlest policy. Sir Guy at once asked a private interview with Astley. He told him that he was aware of the passion into which youth and opportunity had betrayed both him and his child. He did not reproach him, he did not even express a shade of displeasure,—but only sympathy and tenderness. He treated the continuance of their intercourse as simply impossible. He assured Astley that he had never for a moment doubted his honor,—that he was perfectly certain that he would not for the world, after a half hour's cool reflection, take advantage of the romantic fancies of a child. He expressed great regard for Astley, unbounded confidence in his genius, and hope of his future career; advised to his going immediately to Italy, and concluded by saying that, as Astley already knew, he had been enamoured of art in his youth,—that when he was in Italy, he had been struck with the struggles of his countrymen there, and that when he returned, he had set apart a certain sum for their aid and encouragement. That sum, well husbanded, had now become enough to support a young man for four or five years in Rome; and if Astley would go there, and permit Sir Guy to remit it to him from time to time, he would give him the great pleasure of executing a long cherished project.
To so much reason and kindness there was no answer but acquiescence.
Before they separated, Sir Guy said, "It will be a solace to you both, perhaps, to have a parting interview. As you will feel compelled to leave us to-morrow morning, you can have a last moonlight walk in the Park, where the starry influences will be no longer dangerous." A few more words of the kindest interest were spoken, and they parted. Lady Anne was then summoned to her father's presence. He communicated to her, with the utmost delicacy, the discovery of her love. He did not reason about or discuss it, but to her, as he had done to Astley, he spoke of its indulgence as simply impossible. He did not utter a harsh or a grating word, but was all love and tenderness, as if it were an inevitable sickness of a little child that he was treating. He told her, in conclusion, that Astley was to take his departure in the morning for Italy; and that she would meet him in the park for a parting interview, where he would be at nine o'clock, awaiting her and her friend. Anne left her father, weeping, trembling, heart-broken, but with not the smallest notion of resisting his will,—or rather her destiny, which to her it seemed to be. She came to me, and remained in my arms, with throbbing pulses, sighs, drenching tears, and half uttered sentences of submissive wretchedness, till it drew near nine o'clock. We then went to the park together, and by a sure instinct to the favorite haunt of the lovers, a closely sheltered walk. Astley was awaiting us. I left them, remaining near enough to secure to them the propriety of my proximity. Hour after hour they walked or sat together,—sometimes I heard the murmur of their voices, sometimes intermitted sobs. The day was dawning, and I was obliged to tell them so, to dispel the last shadows of their lovely dream. Ah! I never witnessed such a parting. They both seemed rooted to the ground. "Eternity was in their lips and eyes."—I was at last obliged to take Anne away, and to half drag, half carry her, more dead than alive, to her own apartment. Poor Astley was left lying on the ground. I heard dear Sir Guy still pacing his room, as we passed his door.
This all happened fifteen years ago. Last summer I was passing a week with my friend, Lady Anne, now Mrs. Charles Wyndham. A charming little matron she is, after the most approved models, 'fair and fat,' though not yet forty. She has four or five lively children, and is surrounded by the contentments that are in such perfection in affluent country life in England. We were one day at dinner, when her husband, a sensible, good humored man, and a right minded member of parliament, said, " Anne, my love, I saw in the London Times, this morning, the death of Basil Astley."
"Did you, indeed?" she replied, as she would to the announcement of the death of any other man. I involuntarily turned my eyes to read her soul in her face; but there was no writing there— not the movement of a muscle—not the change of a shade in her color. After one minute, she asked, "A little more soup, Charles?"
The "first love" was forgotten.
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Title
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"First Love"
Subject
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Romance, English countryside, courtship
Description
An account of the resource
Story about a young woman's passionate first love, her parents' intervention, and her subsequent happy marriage to another man.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine Maria
Miss C. M. Sedgwick
Source
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<em>Sartain's Union Magazine</em>, Volume IV, No. 2, 81-82.
Date
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1849
Contributor
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D. Gussman
Relation
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Reprinted in <em>The Dewdrop</em>, (Philadelphia, 1852) 43-45.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
courtship
English countryside
marriage
parents
Romance
Sartain's Union Magazine
-
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879b40d88edf66fde9c0c71135332670
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Title
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1843
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
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COUSIN FRANK.
By Miss Sedgwick.
[p. 512]
Gray, in the most familiar of his exquisite Stanzas in a Country Church-yard, (“Full many a gem” &c.) has expressed most poetically the waste of a false position in life. The fond partiality of every village generation finds in its own burying-ground some “village Hampden,” some “mute, inglorious Milton,” or
“Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood.”
It is a signal good fortune, when an individual has a right position in life. The office of President of the United States is one of the highest among men, and he who worthily fills it is the peer of kings and autocrats. Washington, the elected head of the American people, was truly king of kings. But if the nation put in that high place a man only fitted to be a clever ward politician, or a skillful overseer of a plantation, he is a mark in the pillory, not the light set on a hill.
We see every day men in a false position; in places as ill-fitting as a garment a world too wide, or perchance too narrow. Men are raised to offices of trust and honor, that are worthy neither of the one nor the other; and stout frames, which nature has built of muscle and sinew able to subdue the wildest of our wild land, are in places behind counters, that women of right and grace should fill. Do we not all know ladies in drawing-rooms, cumberers of that ground, who would have figured as first-rate milliners? And mistresses of our city palaces, who would have been inestimable market-women? And yellow, languid, fine ladies, who in the right vocation of chamber-maids, would have been brisk and blooming? And do we not know those in obscure and humble places, who, shuffled to their right position, would bring with them the graces so much wanted to give a zest to high life? There are men born to the inheritance and ministration of a princely fortune, who are only fit to keep a livery stable, or drive four in hand; and there are spiritual teachers, whose whole lives should be passed in the humblest class of learners. Bachelors there are, who would have been pattern husbands and idolized fathers; and husbands and fathers, who should have gone roaming and growling alone through life. It is this prevailing disorder and unfitness, that makes it so peculiarly delightful to see a friend in the right position—that gives to fitness the effect of harmony.
This felicity of the right position is most strikingly illustrated by a charming friend of mine, who, having an innumerable host of young cousins, is best known by his most common appellative, “Cousin Frank.” A discerning girl has tried to fix upon him the sobriquet of Pickwick, but there was a general outcry against this; we were too jealous of the originality of our friend, to blend him in any way with another. Perhaps, we did not all of us fully appreciate the gentle qualities—the romantic benevolence—the exquisite gentlemanliness of the Don Quixote of Mr. Dickens’s creation; and besides, the very sound of “Cousin Frank!” is a key-note to our affections. “Cousin Frank” is not too young—and I cannot remember that he ever was—for any kind office; and he never will be “too old” for any service of humanity. He is not rich, thank Heaven, for if he were, he would have cares of his own; nor is he poor, and thank Heaven for that, too, for then he would have sordid anxieties. If he were too tall, he might on some occasion (there is a universality in Cousin Frank’s occasions) be inconveniently conspicuous; and if he were too short, he might not always command the respect of those who measure dignity by feet and inches; so he is just right—just as high as all our hearts.
Again, “Cousin Frank” is not in the dilemma of one of Mr. Bulwer’s heroes, “too handsome for anything,” but were you to question his beauty in
[p. 514]
a certain circle, any one of a dozen fair young creatures would exclaim, “Cousin Frank not handsome!—I wonder then who is!” He certainly has what our English friends call “a nice countenance;” just that amount of good looks that makes a young lady who has his arm in a company of strangers, feel very complacent.
We have said there is a universality in “Cousin Frank’s occasions of benevolent usefulness”—we cannot enumerate them. He is the dear and privileged friend of a half-a-dozen families, and the mainspring of three. If there be a pleasant party on foot, “Cousin Frank” must come to make it pleasanter; if a dull one, he must come to make it endurable. If an agreeable dinner is planned, “Cousin Frank” is the guest to make sure all its pleasant little hilarities; if a heavy one is apprehended, he must do its dull honors. A perilous winter’s journey can only be encountered with “Cousin Frank: “ an enticing pic-nic would still be nothing without him. If there be an awkward secret that must be confided to some one. “Cousin Frank” is the chosen recipient; he never tells, and if help be possible, help will come from him.
“Cousin Frank” is no amateur of music, real or pretended. I doubt if he could distinguish an air of Bellini from a sonata of Beethoven. Yet he goes to more concerts than any man in town; for Grisi or Lablache would sing in vain to any of our score of girls, if “Cousin Frank” were not there. The lectures—we must confess it—sparing neither sex nor ate, they have well nigh exhausted even “Cousin Frank’s” patience, and he was once seen looking grave and doubtful when one of his prettiest cousins asked him to attend her to the “Tabernacle.”
For himself, “Cousin Frank” eschews parties; but if there be a timid womankind among us, who fears to go alone in a carriage, he is called upon to attend her; or if there be a frugal one who would fain save coach-hire, he is again called upon, and “Cousin Frank” is that good, that “dainty spirit,” that “does always come when you do call him.” But he is not merely the preux chevalier of young and pretty girls—most bachelors are willing servants of these; he is the visiter of the neglected, the prop of the old, the cheerer of all. He has that true chivalry which Charles Lamb said he would believe in when he saw the best seat in a coach given to a forlorn old woman.
As to country commissions, scarce a mail arrives without bringing a flood of them for “Cousin Frank.” The tide never ebbs. For example by the last: “Poor B. is getting deafer and deafer every day. It is a sad sight to see the tears in his eyes when he perceives his little boy’s lips moving without hearing the accents that come from them. Ask your Cousin Frank to look in at the new-fangled instruments for the deaf, and send us a report of them.” “G_____’s eyes are getting worse again;” then comes a statement of the case, and the unfailing conclusion, “Ask your Cousin Frank to step into Elliott’s and consult him about her going to town.” Again: “We are impatient to see Stephens’s new work; ask your Cousin Frank to forward it by the first opportunity.” And once more: “Ask your Cousin Frank to send me a couple of dozen of good Port and a half-box of the best cigars; he knows how to choose both.”
But we forbear, lest through our dull medium our readers may be—as no one ever yet was—tired of “Cousin Frank.” This is not the place to speak of his blessed part in the domestic tragedies of his friends; that memory is cut in to their hearts, and its memorial is written down in the book of which the angel of life keeps the record. Such a character as “Cousin Frank” is a rare social blessing, and its felicity is to have fallen into the right position—upon a family where there is an alarming and most inconvenient preponderance of womankind.
Every now and then we have a rumor that “Cousin Frank” is about “to give to a party what was meant for mankind;” and his cousins look jealously on certain of their charming friends on whom he seems to them to smile to benignly. The cloud passes off. The statue has found its true niche—the picture its best light. “Cousin Frank” must not be married. This would be like giving to an individual an exclusive right to the sunshine—allowing to one family the monopoly of the Croton water. No: all crowns but the crown matrimonial to our dear “Cousin Frank!”
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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
Cousin Frank
Subject
The topic of the resource
Bachelors, vocation, benevolence.
Description
An account of the resource
The narrator offers a sketch of a bachelor who is loved by family and friends for his generosity and benevolence.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine Maria
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
United States Magazine and Democratic Review, Vol. 12, May 1843, pp. 512-513.
Publisher
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Edited by John L. O'Sullivan
Date
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1843
Contributor
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Matt Burton, L. Damon-Bach, D. Gussman
Relation
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Reprinted in New World (6 May 1843): 537-38. Collected in Sedgwick, Catharine, Tales and Sketches, Second Series, 163-168, 1844.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
1843
bachelors
benevolence
Charles Dickens
cousin
Croton Aqueduct
Don Quioxte
Edward Bulwer Lytton
George Washington
Giulia Grisi
John Milton
Ludwig van Beethoven
Luigi Lablache
marriage
Pickwick
service
single life
Tales and Sketches - Second Series
Thomas Gray
United States Magazine and Democratic Review
Vincenzo Bellini
vocation
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5300b53043dc1cb493d8cbce565ae0f7
Dublin Core
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Title
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1836
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
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FULL THIRTY.
By Miss Sedgewick.
[p. 212]
‘In faith Lady, you have a merry heart.’
‘Yea my Lord, I thank it, poor fool, it keeps on the windy side of care.’
THE first visit I paid after coming to town this winter, (this, to New York, most disastrous winter of 1836) was to Mrs. Orme, and her daughter Augusta.
Augusta I knew well and loved. She is the very impersonation of the spirit of cheerfulness, if brightness, intelligence, youth and health should be the indicated attributes of that spirit. Mrs. Orme was a stranger to me except by report. She was a southern lady by birth, and had resided with her family for many years at New Orleans, and at her house there, and her plantation in the neighborhood, some of my friends had enjoyed that hospitality which the southern members of our great family so generously and so gracefully extend to their brethren of the north. She had had several children, healthy and promising till they approached the age of maturity, when they were in turn the victims of the bilious diseases of their native climate. The anxiety consequent upon these repeated losses, induced the mother to consent to a proposal that Augusta should go to the North, where a different climate might avert the anticipated danger. Augusta came to Massachusetts, and the separation that was to have been for one year, was, by various circumstances, prolonged to five. At
[p. 213]
the expiration of that period, her mother, having in the mean time lost two younger children, and buried her husband, came to the north with impaired health and a fortune reduced, but still ample for her wants. Here, either from the change of climate or the more potent influence of the re-union with her daughter, she was in a very few months so renovated, that she determined to remain at least till time (“Time, the consoler !” ) should render the local association with her sorrows less vivid. She had relatives in the fashionable circles of New York, who she thought would give éclat to Augusta's introduction to society, and this decided her to fix her residence in this city. No two persons, of the same sex and country, and both amiable and well principled, could be more different than my laughing, singing, self-relying friend Augusta, and her timid, nervous, dependent mother. This difference, in part constitutional, was confirmed by education. Education, though it may bend the tree, does not change its nature. In any classification of the human family, the mother and daughter belong to different orders; but this will, if I mistake not, be manifest in the circumstances I am about to relate.
I found them at one of the fashionable boardinghouses at the lower end of Broadway. Mrs. Orme received me with her usual gentle courtesy, Augusta with her usual animation. My first enquiries were as to their accommodations, fellow-boarders, &c.
‘Accommodations!’ replied Mrs. Orme, shrugging her shoulders, ‘we do as well as we can — you know, of course, that I am obliged to dispense with a private drawing-room.’
‘Yes,’ said Augusta, ‘but then we have such a delightful room — see what a nice place for my piano.’
[p. 214]
‘A nice place enough,’ said the mother in a sad tone, ‘but what is the use, Augusta, when there is no one to hear you?’
‘Nobody, mama!’ she replied, laughing, and rattling her fingers over the keys,’ when I have you and myself— where else should I find such admiring, patient listeners?’
‘Dear child!’ said her mother, ‘I believe she would be content in a prison.’
‘Your sound reasons for such faith, mama?’
Mrs. Orme turned to me, slightly blushing, as if she feared I might think she had overpraised her child. ‘I am sure,’ she said, ‘if you knew how well she bears her trials, you would not think I speak with a mother's partiality.’
‘Trials! mama,’ echoed Augusta.
‘Yes, my love — it certainly is a trial to be obliged to shut ourselves in our own room, or be liable to mix with any one who chooses to share the common drawing-room with us.’
‘A trial, mama!’
‘You may call it what you please, Augusta — I call it a trial.’
‘Well, I never once thought of it being disagreeable even.’
‘Then,’ continued the mother, still addressing me, ‘it is so very inconvenient not to have a servant of your own.’
‘It seems so to mama, because she has been accustomed to having so many; but the servants of the house, though somewhat resembling those spirits who 'will not come when you do call them,’ yet, when they do come, they are very civil and kind.’
[p. 215]
‘But they do not belong to me,’ urged Mrs Orme.
‘But do I not belong to you, mama?’ replied Augusta, and am I not always ready
‘To answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly,
To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride
On the curled clouds,’’ -----
‘Thou art a dainty spirit,’ thought I, as I looked on her bright face, sun-lit from the soul; and then to turn my friends’ thoughts from the evident discomforts of a boarding house, I asked if they had any agreeable inmates?
A list of them followed, by which it appeared they had the average fortune of persons so domiciliated. There were gentlemen and their wives, who had private drawing rooms — very kind they were to Augusta; but Mrs. Orme did not like to accept civilities which she could not return on equal terms. Then there were two or three pairs who were very much inclined to be sociable; but they were those sort of persons that one does not care to be intimate with.
‘Very good, kind persons, for all,’ interrupted Augusta.
‘There were some young merchants, very civil, --- but ---’
‘But merchants,’ said Augusta archly, ‘mama cannot divest herself of her southern prepossessions against all persons engaged in trade.’
‘That is not strange, Augusta, our prejudices are the last infirmities we get rid of.’
‘Just what Mr. Rayson said yesterday, and because, he said, not having any real foundation, you could not oppose truth to them.’
[p. 218]
‘There is a widow here,’ continued Mrs Orme, ‘a convenient sort of chronicler, who knows all the world, in all places and in all their affairs.’
‘And what she does not know,’ said Augusta, ‘she invents. Mamma, did you not overhear Mr. Rayson say to his next neighbour yesterday, when Mrs Wilson finished her long story about that poor man — I forget his name —that committed suicide, but she related every particular of the deed — not only the circumstances that preceded it, but the motives that led to it, and all that his wife said, and his father said, and his friends said, did you not hear Mr. Rayson whisper ‘founded on fact?’
‘Yes, I heard that, but I think there is no love lost between Mrs Wilson and Mr. Rayson.’
‘No, he can't like her, and of course she wont like him.’
‘There may have been some reason for her dislike — he is very satirical.’
‘I like such satire,’ said Augusta, ‘it only falls where it is provoked and deserved, for instance, this morning when those Englishmen were finding fault with every thing here, and blustering about every thing in that pattern little island of theirs, how aptly he quoted, from their own poet too — no, not theirs, ours — the world's,
‘Hath Britain all the sun that shines? Day, night,
Are they not but in Britain— Pr'ythee, think
there's livers out of Britain.’
‘Who is this Mr. Rayson, Augusta, that seems such a prodigious favorite,’ I asked, and added to my friend Mrs Orme, ‘you must look out — these boarding-house likings are dangerous.’
[p. 217]
Augusta laughed, as is her wont on all occasions, and then said, ‘Even Mamma will not be alarmed at that danger — why dear lady, Mr. Rayson is an old bachelor.’
‘How old, Augusta?’
‘Oh, old as the hills —full thirty.’
I know that 'full thirty' seems to eighteen almost the extreme limit of human life, but I had known too, stranger things happen than the approach of these distant points; and so I told my young friend.
Augusta laughed again, and said unless Mr. Clement Rayson was an illustration of the old syllogism ‘I move or I do not move; I do not move, therefore I move,’ she did not see how they were to become acquainted; for he was the only person in the house, that had not, directly or indirectly, sought an introduction to them.
This was true. Clement Rayson, though not soured to the world, (he had no acidulating tendencies in his character,) was shy of it, and particularly distrustful of the fashionable world. He had his reasons, as our chronicling widow had told the Ormes, in a long spun out fiction that had, as is usual in such romances, a substratum of truth. This short and simple truth was, that at the all-believing age he had loved, and had plighted his troth to a beautiful girl who had deserted him for a man full fifty years old, but who was rich and fashionable, neither of which, at that period, was Clement Rayson. He had since acquired a moderate fortune. His lacerated affections were much longer than is usual in such cases, in the process of healing.
In the mean time he withdrew from society, and having no family ties in the city to counteract his disposition to solitude, it grew upon him. He appeared to have
[p. 218]
the peculiarities incident to the single condition — appeared—but never was there a spirit less exclusive, and more unselfish. One class, and one alone, was excluded from his sympathies — the fashionable. He thought them all heartless fainéants, ‘unproductive consumers,’ cumberers of the ground. He knew that Mrs Orme belonged to this class, and he perceived that to her the world had but two phases — the one enlightened, the other unenlightened; the fashionable, and the unfashionable. Of course, his orbit could never cross hers. But with this undeniable infirmity, Mrs Orme had so much gentleness, such feminine softness, so much of the spirit, as well as of the letter of politeness, that it was difficult to sustain a sturdy dislike towards her. At first, Augusta did not impress him agreeably. He admired her Hebe freshness, her well-turned features, and the good humour and animation that almost made her beautiful, but he thought she wanted the timidity and reserve that so becomes a young creature on the threshold of an unknown world, a world veiled in shadow, and beset with danger. But he misjudged my young friend. Her boldness arose from what some philosophers, of the German school, have called the ‘unconscious.’ She did not, if we may use the expression, feel herself, nor was she looking in others' faces to see her own image reflected there. The present was to her for action and enjoyment, and if the future brought dangers, (she apprehended none,) she had resolution and strength to overcome them. Her most happy temperament seemed a sort of charm, an amulet against the principle of evil, in all its proteus shapes. ‘Miss Orme is not troubled with bashfulness,’ whispered
[p. 220]
Mrs. Wilson to Clement Rayson, as Augusta, at a first request, sat down to the piano, and played with great expression, a Spanish national air.
A similar criticism had clouded the clearer atmosphere of Rayson's mind; but there are some persons whose touch always produces discord, and Mrs. Wilson was eminently one of these. ‘Miss Orme is not bashful,’ he replied somewhat testily, ‘but bashfulness as often springs from vanity, and a craving for admiration, as from delicacy and self-distrust.’
‘Bless me! I thought you did not admire Miss Orme.’
‘I do not know her.’
‘Of course you would if you admired her. She is not of the thistle order. Every one in the house has observed your distant manner to the Ormes.’
Clement Rayson was, as we have said, reserved: he liked no intruding observers within his own little world of feelings — of likings and dislikings; and towards Mrs. Wilson he had an antipathy, resembling that which is often cherished for the feline race, to which she seemed to him to belong. He was annoyed by her remark, but he did not choose to enter into a defence, or explanation, and therefore he remained silent. The shield of silence is the most effectual defence against a thorough gossip; and if generally resorted to, their offensive weapons would rest for want of use.
‘Of all people on earth,’ said Mrs Wilson, crossing the room and seating herself next Augusta Orme, who had already forgotten her musical triumph, and was absorbed in a book she had taken from the table, ‘of all people on earth, I detest your close-mouthed ones.'
‘Do you, Mrs. Wilson?— thought we were apt to like our opposites.’
[p. 220]
‘No inuendo, I trust, Miss Orme?’
‘Certainly not, I merely meant that you were communicative.’
This was so much more flattering a term than that suggested by the lady's conscience, that she took it as a compliment, and replied that she was naturally frank, and added that she thought Miss Orme and herself much alike.
‘Heaven forefend!’ thought Augusta, and laughed, a laugh that could not have stirred a feather on the ‘fretful porcupine,’ and therefore it did not ruffle the widow Wilson's plumes. On the contrary, she gave a proof of her graciousness by whispering —‘ How strange it is that Clement Rayson is so prejudiced against you!’
‘Is he? I am sorry for it.’
‘You do not look much disturbed.’ There was something almost provoking to our touchy lady in the serenity she could not cloud.
‘Why should I, Mrs. Wilson? I have done nothing that I am conscious of to create the prejudice, and therefore can do nothing to remove it. But I do sincerely wish the good man would get rid of it, for prejudices must be uncomfortable burdens, and Mr. Rayson seems a very clever and a very agreeable person to those he likes.’
Mrs. Wilson, finding the daughter impracticable, transferred her efforts to the mother, who, as she found, was more facile. It was no difficult achievement to make Mrs. Orme uncomfortable on any given subject, and the next time I saw her, I found her very much puzzled in solving the riddle of ‘that Mr. Clement Rayson's dislike to her and Augusta.’ Her consolation
[p. 221]
was, that he knew nobody that they knew, and therefore she did not see how it could very well do them any injury; but still it was dangerous to have an enemy, especially for a young lady just ‘coming out.’
All this fabric of Mrs. Wilson's mischievous brain would have been harmless, but that it augmented Mrs. Orme's horror of the society of boarding houses; infused a double quantity of coldness into her deportment towards Mr. Rayson; heightened the barriers between herself and the cleverest and best person in the family; confirmed our friend's prejudices against all fashionable people; and finally gratified widow Wilson's petty malignity against him. How true it is, that the lesser as well as the greater evils of life, are of our own creation!
In the mean while, Clement Rayson's eye (doubtless without the consent of his will) often turned towards Augusta's face, so bright with health and happiness. There is a peculiar charm in this sunny character, to men who have passed the zenith of youth. This may account for the devotion of sexagenarian bachelors to the youngest girls in company. We do not mean to implicate Rayson in any such foible; for, if guilty of the count in the indictment — if ‘full thirty,’ he was not much more. Regarding himself as a fixture in this aforesaid boarding house, he had surrounded himself with those rare comforts in this city, where persons rather alight than abide, provisions for permanence. He had his dressing-room, his sleeping apartments, and his library. [1]* This library adjoined the room occupied by
[p. 222]
Mrs. Orme and her daughter, and here, secure from observation, Clement Rayson would lay aside his book, to listen from beginning to end, to songs that he had often wished, with a certain licensed churl, ‘were impossible as well as difficult.’ He even began to entertain a secret fondness for Italian music, which he had deemed all monotonous, and like a certain friend of ours, had affected to believe, and dared to say, there was but one Italian song. Augusta had a collection of fine old English ballads. These she occasionally sung, and he heard them, every word, for her piano was placed against the wall that separated the two rooms. Of course her face was towards him, and often did he wish that this wall, like him who enacted ‘lime and and roughcast,’ in Pyramus and Thisbe,
‘----- having thus its part discharged so,
And being done, this wall away would go.’
that he might have a glimpse of the bright face behind. ‘That face,’ he said to himself, ‘that is like a gleam of sunshine to every thing it looks upon.’
‘I must have my library removed — I can never read a word here,’ thought he, as he smiled in silent response, to the merry peals of laughter that ever and anon came from that apartment over which a ‘dancing star’ seemed to him to preside. And as he listened to the cheerful tones
[p. 223]
that responded to Mrs. Orme's low monotonous voice, ‘how can she’ thought he, ‘resist such an influence! but she will soon be exposed to worse and more potent influences: to the parrotry, frivolity, and heartlessness of the world, and there this enchanting buoyancy of spirit, the mere virtue, perchance after all, of health of constitution! will soon be dimmed and lost.’ Alas! Augusta's buoyancy was soon to be tried by a very different pressure from that he anticipated, and a far heavier.
The evening of the sixteenth of December I passed with Mrs. Ornie and Augusta. They were both in a state of pleasurable excitement. The floor was strewn with boxes, and the table, sofa, and chairs were covered with dresses, caps, artificial flowers, and curious decorations just sent home in time for the gay season. Invitations had been sent out and accepted to parties and balls. Under what circumstances of overwhelming distress these invitations were soon after recalled, will long be remembered in the brilliant circles of our metropolis, where the bridal array was changed for mourning weeds.
Mrs. Orme was in all the flutter of indecision as to the dress to be selected for the coming out evening. She preferred the blue embroidered Seraphine crape which a friend had selected in Paris; she was certain, absolutely certain that it was perfectly new. There is magic in that word which may not convey its true import to the ears of our rustic reader. It does not mean simply that it is unworn, but that it is fresh from the inventive loom of a Paris milliner around whose head ‘such light visions float.’ While I was examining and
[p. 224]
duly admiring the blue Seraphine, Augusta put her veto upon it. She would not come out in a dress that would make her so conspicuous. In vain her mother urged the importance of the first impression — the coup de théatre. Augusta laid the Seraphine crape aside, and was wavering between a silk that her mother pronounced ‘the loveliest pink,’ and a white muslin, when a servant entered with a Camelia Japonica directed to Miss Orme. One pure, stately white flower sat upon the stalk, between two buds, like a queen between her maids of honor. ‘This decides me,’ exclaimed Augusta ‘my white muslin, and this Camelia in my hair.’
‘Who sent it?’ asked the mother. The servant did not know, and all that we could ascertain was that it had been left at the door by a man who merely said it was ordered at their green-house, but whether that green-house was Thorburn's, Smith's, or Hogg's, was uncertain, and Mrs. Orme concluded her enquiries by saying she was glad on the whole not to know, for she preferred Augusta should come out unshackled by even so slight an obligation as the gift of a flower imposed.
Augusta's curiosity, as was natural, was more excited than ours, and before the Camelia was deposited in a glass of water, she had run over the list of her gentlemen acquaintance, and in turn guessed all but — the right one.
People who are well advanced in life are prone to look upon its events and circumstances in the light of a shell enclosing a kernel, for their picking, the moral of the tale. And this kernel, like the jewel found by a certain classic bird, is apt to prove sweet or bitter, valueless or priceless, according to the character of the
[p. 225]
finder. This tendency must excuse the moralizing humor I fell into, on seeing my young friend so much engrossed and fluttered by the approach of this grand era of her life — her coming out.
‘If Augusta,’ thought I ‘rational, well educated, with a mind so well balanced that all its motions are harmonious, is thus affected by her advent, what a perilous moment it must be to those who are neither fitted by nature nor education, for the sudden transit from obscurity to notoriety. Inexperienced and unreflecting, what views must they have of the social laws, of their nature, of the objects of society, of the purposes and responsibilities of existence.’
Man has been justly called an imitative animal. Here we are, a young nation, set apart from the families of the old world, with every incitement to, and facility for making a new experiment in the economy of human life, and like the Chinese, who made the new shoes slip-shod, after the pattern, we copy the forms of European society, bad enough where they exist, but as ill adapted to our use as the slip-shod shoes to the wearer — as fantastical for us as a fan for an Iceland belle.
For example, in this working country, where the gentlemen must be at their offices and counting-houses by nine o'clock — where the domestic machine must stop, or the springs be set in motion by the mistress of the family before that hour, — with the pressure of this necessity upon us, we assemble at our evening parties at ten and eleven, because forsooth the fainéants of Europe do so! And for the same sufficient reason, our young ladies must have their comings out!
But what is to be done? How are their school-days and society compatible? The processes of nature are to be imitated. The dawn preludes the day: the bud slowly unfolds to the sun, gathering strength with every expanding leaf to bear its rays.
We are aware that there are no Quixotes more extravagant than those who preach revolutions in manners and customs; but where, as in our case, they are not the natural result of the condition of the people, may we not hope for modifications and ameliorations? for the dawn of a millennium on our social world, when the drawing-room shall no longer be an arena, where there is a short contest for a single prize, (what are the modes of that contest, and what the prize so obtained ? ) but shall become the social ground where men and women shall be players, as well as spectators, — where rational christian people may meet without a sacrifice of health or duty; and where young people and children shall come for the formation of their social character, and where all may enjoy on equal terms the very highest pleasure of our gregarious natures ? — But we beg pardon, our tale is becoming a homily.
Before the evening closed, I perceived, and with secret satisfaction, that Augusta manifested some weariness at her mother's endless anxieties upon the details of the coming evening, such as ‘whether they should go at ten or a quarter past ? — whether, in case Augusta were asked, she had best sing ? — whether there could be any objection to her waltzing, with her cousin ? — she waltzed so well! and sundry other momentous questions. When the field of vision is narrow, the objects are magnified. ‘Dear mamma,’ said Augusta, ‘pray leave these trifles to fate.’
[p. 227]
‘Life is made up of such trifles, my child.’
‘Mine shall not be,’ replied Augusta. Little did she think what a seal was soon to be set to this lightly uttered resolution.
The mercury was below zero, and as I walked briskly home I heard the first stroke of the bell that sounded the alarm of that fire which before morning laid so rich a portion of our city in ruins.
The bells rang at first, for the most part, unheeded, for as the Turk moves tranquilly amidst the plague, hardened by use, so we, familiarised to the every-day tocsin, pursue our usual avocations when it sounds throughout the city. But there were some who, on that memorable night, answered from the first with quickened pulses to the boding sound. They knew the firemen were exhausted by a severe labor of the preceding night, that their hose were frozen, and that there was no supply of water in the city. They reflected that the fire had broken out amidst packed warehouses, filled with combustibles; that the perfect dryness of the atmosphere and the extreme cold must accelerate its progress; but reason, fear, imagination, all fell far short in their anticipations of the horrid reality.
We have no intention to perpetrate such a presumption as an attempt to describe the scene would imply; we can only note the particulars — the spreading of the fire, quicker than thought, windward and leeward from house to house, and from street to street — the pillar of flame that shot up from the lofty dome of the Exchange — the crash of its falling — the calmness, though sublime courage of the men, who, with their casks of gunpowder proceeded through showers of sparks
[p. 228]
to the edifices marked for explosion — the momentary wavering of those edifices when the match was fired — the explosion — and at the very instant the stately pile was a prostrate mass of ruins — the consternation of the citizens— the firemen, the very men who had so often seemed the chartered masters of the devouring element, looking on, mute, paralyzed, impotent spectators — the piles and masses of merchandise moved twice and thrice, and finally consumed. Merchants hurrying from their up-town residences to the scene of action, and coaches bearing ladies to the spectacle!
The appearance to the more distant observer, to whom the flames looked like a solid wall against the clear blue sky, and the gems of Heaven, like celestial witnesses, calmly gazing on this mortal coil — all this will not be forgotten, and cannot be described. But there were instances of self-command, generosity, and heroism, the moral phœnixes which rose from the gross elemental fire that may be recorded by the humblest pen, and will at least live longer on the pages of an annual than in the columns of a forgotten newspaper.
One anecdote was given in the journals of the city, the day after the fire, which we have since heard from unquestionable witnesses, and which we shall repeat unvarnished. Who would try, by coloring, to add beauty or grace to such truth?
A gallant young man belonging to our navy, who a few days before, for some slight misdemeanor had been ejected from it, was busied with thousands in removing merchandise, when he heard piercing shrieks from a woman. He made his way to her. In the general distress she was little heeded. She seemed like a maniac.
[p. 229]
In answer to his demand of ‘what is the matter?’ she pointed to one of the burning houses and said, ‘my child is there!’ ‘In what part of the house?’ She was calmed by his interposition, and described the room in the third story. He darted towards the house. As he placed his foot on the threshold, the firemen adjured him to come back, and told him if he went on he could not return. They were attempting to force him back, but he sprang beyond their grasp, and unchecked by the flames that were crackling along the beams, he mounted to the apartment and entered it — the fire was glancing around the cornice of the room. — The child, a sturdy infant of some six or seven months, was awake, and holding up its hand before its eyes, and twining it around, delighted with the reflection of the flame, that in another moment would have reduced its little frame to ashes. His preserver caught the boy in his arms, and descended to the last landing place. The bannister was on fire. He hesitated—he had passed an open window — should he return and leap from that? — he might crush the child. So pressing against the wall, he rushed down uninjured, save the scorching of his coat — a scorch that will make it a precious relic.
Those who have never heard the spontaneous gushings from that holy fountain which is never quite dried in any heart, should have heard the shoutings and clappings of hands when the young man reappeared and placed the boy in his mother's arms — they should have seen how, for a moment, every other interest was suspended in admiration, and how the young hero, finishing his generous act with the only grace that could be added to
[p. 230]
it, modestly shrank from the tribute he had so well earned, and disappeared. [2 *]
The morning of the 17th found the city in indescribable anxiety, dismay, and bewilderment. No one could calculate the extent of the loss — the direct loss — no one dared to anticipate the loss from the bankruptcy of merchants, the failure of monied institutions, and the suspension of business and payments. All sympathy was directed to the merchants, for to few had it then occurred that the ruin would pass over the palace, and prostrate the cottage.
The first intimation I had of such a result was from a gentleman who said to me, ‘I fear your friend Mrs. Orme has lost every thing. I am told her agent Robert Smith invested all her property in fire insurance stock.’ I knew such ill news as this must have flown to her ears, and I determined immediately to go to her.
The streets were a wild exhibition of the horrible and the ludicrous — the strange motley that human affairs so often wear. Here were militiamen called out as guards, bustling along in all the mock importance of their brief authority, and there were firemen dragging themselves to their homes — looking like ghosts who had outstayed their time.
Here was timid, shivering poverty, stealing stealthily along, amid bales of blankets, and stacks of woolen goods, eyeing them wishfully from beneath the half lifted lid — and there, (a timely admonition!) were
[p. 231]
police-men dragging detected pilferers to justice. Here the merchant on whose face was written ‘sudden calamity has overtaken me,’ and beside him the bold beggar, her shoulders laden with piles of half consumed blankets, ends of shawls, and bits of silk that yesterday made a part of his countless wealth!
‘Take physic, pomp,
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou may'st spare the superflux to them
And show the Heavens more just.’
I crossed a street, making my way through carts, wagons, and coaches laden with boxes and cases of the richest merchandise, and turned out of my course to a point of view where a group of amateur spectators were gazing at the ruins — not with tearless eyes. We all stood for a few moments in profound silence looking at the standing fragments of walls — the smouldering piles of brick that covered thousands (millions?) of unconsumed and inaccessible property — at the fire still burning unresisted, because irresistible, towards the water's edge — at the ashes of to-day — the millions of yesterday. ‘This’ said a gentleman next me, ‘is the levelling system with a vengeance!’
‘Yes, but it is a levelling to teach levellers,’ replied another, ‘those ignorant and corrupt persons who would construct barriers between the rich and poor, out of their evil passions, must now acknowledge their mutual dependence — the demonstrated identity of their interests. The working men will realise that the enterprise and industry of the wealthy merchant feeds the channels of their prosperity. Heaven grant they may not long feel it from a loss of the supply.’
[p. 232]
‘The rascals! it's a good lesson for them.’ This bitter exclamation was made by one of those who look upon themselves as having a chartered right to their accidental prosperity, and who, as far as they can oppose the laws of Providence, obstruct those supplies of Heaven-directed bounty to the poor.
I turned from the idlers and pursued my course, winding as well as I might, along the walks encumbered with the various merchandise that comes from every explored corner of our globe to this great commercial mart; bales of cotton, piles of domestic goods — hard ware and porcelain — English woolens and Dutch toys— French silks and stacks of German baskets, &c, &c.— a volume might be filled with the specifications indicated by these et cetéras, but I have already abused the curiosity of my readers, if perchance they have any, in the fate of my heroine.
I found my friend Mrs. Orme, as I had feared, plunged into the depths of despair. She was pacing up and down her room. As I entered, she clasped her hands, exclaiming, ‘ruined ! — totally ruined!’
‘But my dear friend, your property was not surely all invested in fire insurance stock?’
‘Yes, all. At least, I have no reason to doubt it. — Of course you know, being totally unacquainted with business myself, [3]* I leave my affairs entirely to the discretion of my agent, and Mrs Wilson says she heard him say only last week that he had vested my money — all of it — in six different companies, so that I should be quite safe. I remember, too, he asked me about fire stock, and I told him it would make me uncomfortable
[p. 233]
whenever the bell rung. But he said something about the companies always making good dividends; and I have not thought of it since, till Mrs. Wilson came into my room at two o'clock, to prepare my mind, as she said. Mrs. Wilson blames Mr. Smith, and so do I.’
‘I did not controvert this position, for I know it is the most common solace of undisciplined minds, to impute the blame to another. ‘Where,’ I asked, ‘was Augusta?’
Her mother did not know. She believed she had gone out —‘Strange that she could go out, and leave me, at such a moment. She is a dear child, but she has one defect — it is a natural one, and she can not cure it. I do not blame her, but I often feel it. She wants sensibility. I dont mean to complain of her, but think how I must have felt to see her go, just as usual, about her ordinary avocations this morning. She even, once or twice, while she was putting away the things you saw here last night, sang! I suppose it was involuntary — but it is so strange — so unlike me!’
Mrs. Orme is not the only person that measures the qualities of others by her own, as if that were an infallible standard. I ventured to intimate that it was very fortunate for Augusta if she could meet such a reverse with firmness.
‘Firmness — oh, yes! but then do you know she has been- trying to convince me that it is not a calamity to weep for? that, I think, as Mrs. Wilson says, is carrying firmness a little too far; but she is a dear child, and, except in this blemish, every thing I could wish. And this perhaps spares her a great deal of suffering.’
[p. 234]
‘Useless suffering,’ thought I, ‘suffering never designed by him who chasteneth because he loveth.’
‘But where,' continued the mother, ‘can Augusta stay! It is not considerate of her, as Mrs. Wilson says, to leave me this morning.’
Her perplexities were ended by Augusta's entrance. Her face was beaming. ‘Good news, mama! she cried, ‘the last ten thousand remitted from New Orleans, is safe.’ She kissed her mother, and wiped the tears that flowed afresh at this unexpected intelligence.
‘These shall be the last tears this business costs you, mama; then turning round, she saw me, apologized for having overlooked me, and instinctively sought a shelter for the undue grief she knew her mother must have exhibited to me.
‘This horrid fire,’ she said, ‘has kept mama up all night, and made her so nervous!’
‘But are you certain you are rightly informed, Augusta?’ asked the mother, ‘Mrs. Wilson was so sure!’
‘Oh, Mrs. Wilson! I was sure from the moment that trumpery woman said it, it could not be so. Her reports, like dreams, go by contraries. But I was afraid, mama, of inspiring any false hope, so I resolved to go at once to Mr. Smith.’
‘And that was what you went out for ? — Dear child!’
I ventured to say, for I could not help it, ‘there are other manifestations of sensibility than passiveness and tears.’
‘I went first,’ continued Augusta, ‘to Mr. Smith's house, but, as I ought to have foreseen, he was not at home.’
[p. 235]
‘But surely, my child, you did not go alone down Wall street.’
‘No; fortunately, just as I was turning into Wall street, and thinking what a piece of work I should have to make my way, I met Mr. Clement Rayson. He stopped, and asked me where I was going, and begged leave to attend me. It was very kind of him, and amusing too, after we had sat opposite for three weeks, without speaking. Well, I found Mr. Smith with a face as long as my arm; but he seemed quite relieved, when I told him it was so much better than we expected, and assured him, mama, you would not care for the loss, since we had enough left.’
‘Enough!’ sighed the mother, who already began to shift her unhappiness from the total loss of their finances to their reduction.
Augusta did not hear her mother, or else, to turn the current of her thoughts, she said, ‘Oh, mama, Mr. Rayson has told me such a sad piece of news — quite enough to put the loss of property out of one's head. That beautiful, lovely woman, Mrs. Moreson, whom we saw at Dr. Hayward's, is dead. She died without a moment's warning, while her sister was dressing for her cousin's wedding.’
After the usual exclamations of sympathy and sorrow, Mrs. Orme said she supposed the parties, then, would be given up.
‘Yes, of course,’ replied Augusta, ‘and there is my beautiful Camelia must fade unseen.’
‘Your fit emblem, I fear, my child; for now, you cannot come out.’
‘But I can stay in, mama, without drooping. There
[p. 236]
are some hardy plants that do not need sunshine — I think I am one of those.’
And so it proved. A few days after, I was again with my friends, anxious to know what their arrangements were to be, for I was well aware that the income of ten thousand dollars could not maintain them in their present style of living — would not even pay their board. I found Mrs. Orme troubled and undecided — Augusta, strong and cheerful in her self-reliance.
‘You have come,’ she said, receiving me affectionately, ‘just in time to aid our deliberations. We find that we can live independently and pleasantly in the country on our present income.’
‘It comes very hard upon me, though,’ said Mrs. Orme, ‘for I have an antipathy to a country life.’
‘And therefore,’ continued Augusta, ‘I wish mama not to think of it. Her income is quite sufficient to secure her an agreeable town residence, and I should be ashamed of myself if I could not earn my own support. I have a double object in this. Mama has grown so nervous about losses, that she is afraid of being stripped of what remains; and I want to convince her, that even in that event we should do well enough.’
‘But how, my dear girl, can you earn your living?’
‘Oh, in twenty ways. I can turn governess.’
‘I utterly object to that,’ said the mother, ‘I have seen too many of them, and I know what dog's lives they lead.’
I ventured to suggest that I had seen some very happy ones.
‘I should have no fears on that score,’ said Augusta, ‘for I believe our own happiness is in our own hands;
[p. 237]
but then any employment that will separate me from mama, is objectionable. I can give music lessons; combine music and singing lessons, which would be very profitable.’
‘Dear child, dont use such words — they make me so nervous. I cannot consent to your giving music lessons, there is something so degrading in running from house to house, and selling your time to other people.’
‘This is what ninety-nine hundredths of the world do, mama, and I do not wish to be among the exempts. I would,’ she continued, addressing me, ‘open a school, but I am afraid I am too young to have children confided to my care.’
‘Pity you are not ‘full thirty,’ said I.
‘Ah,’ replied Augusta, ‘that reminds me of Clement Rayson. Last night I was speaking of that beautiful camelia, and I do suspect he knows where it came from, but he will not give me the least clew. He merely said it must be from some very young man, for they were addicted to such fooleries! That was a saying, was it not, that marked the sayer ‘full thirty ?’ — But what were we talking of— my occupation; it is not, like Othello's ‘gone’ — would that it were come!’
‘I have an excellent plan,’ interposed the mother, ‘if we can only persuade Augusta to adopt it. When summer comes, I shall be quite willing to make an experiment of country life. In the mean time, a very slight addition to our income would pay our expenses here without intrenching on our capital. Perhaps you do not know it, but Augusta excels in all sorts of ingenious, lady-like manufactures — worsted work in particu-
[p. 238]
lar. And she is so quick! she net the loveliest purse for Clement Rayson — all of it yesterday.’
‘I trust, Augusta,’ said I, ‘you marked it ‘full thirty,’ for ladies' favors are sometimes misinterpreted.’
‘Clement Rayson is past the danger of such coxcomberies,’ replied Augusta.
‘Now,’ resumed the mother, ‘Augusta could dispose of her work at the ‘Ladies' Depository,’ without the slightest exposure. The utmost delicacy is observed there, Mrs. Wilson tells me. By the way, Augusta, it just occurs to me that Mrs. Wilson must work for the Depository, how else could she afford to wear blond capes ? — but, as I was saying, she tells me that the names of those who deposite articles there, are religiously kept secret. Your orders are referred to numbers, not names.’
‘And why all this reserve?’ I innocently asked.
‘My dear friend, the institution is designed for ladies of reduced fortune, to enable them to dispose of their work without it ever being known that they work for their living.’ [4]*
I smiled, and Augusta said, ‘you think as I do, I am sure of it.’
‘And how is that, Augusta?’
‘Why, that these same reduced ladies might as well
[p. 239]
be ashamed of giving bread to their children, as of earning it for them; and that this very labor of which they are ashamed, is most creditable — perchance the most honorable act of their whole lives.’
‘Pity,’ I ventured to add, ‘it does not occur to them, that working for their living, places' them in the same category with the first in the land — the lawyer, the clergyman, the merchant, &c., — and rescues them from the helplessness and dependence into which misfortune usually casts females of their class.’
Those little understand the country they live in, who, by such an institution, virtually pronounce labor degrading, and virtually insult those of their sex, who professedly work for their living.’ [5]*
‘As you agree with me,’ resumed Augusta, ‘I hope you will persuade mama to let me do something more productive than lady-like work. I have three projects — pray dont laugh at me—if one fails, another may succeed, you know. When I was at school in Boston, I made some translations from the French and Spanish, for a work a friend of ours was publishing there. He paid me compliments on my success, which, making due allowance for his partiality, and gratitude, &c, allow me to aspire to the place of a hack translator to the Harpers, or some other publishing house here.’
I knew my young friend understood French and Spanish well, and wrote her own language with correctness and freedom. I gave my hearty concurrence to the plan.
[p. 240]
‘When I can't get work from a publisher, continued Augusta, ‘I can copy music — I can do that very rapidly. I have often copied songs for poor Stefani to sell to her scholars.’
‘Now for your third project, Augusta.’
‘You will think me a great braggart — but you know I must give an inventory of my commodities. When I was staying at Mr. Johnson's, he had an accumulation of law papers to be copied. Grace Johnson and I assisted him, and he gave me the credit of doing mine in right clerkly style. Mama herself taught me to write, and now, dear mama, I may pay you for the pains you took in forming my hand.’
‘It is the only thing, my child, I ever taught you.’
‘But, my dear Mrs. Orme, you have given her a firstrate education, and she is now going to prove to you that this is the safest investment of capital.’
My friend, propitiated by these agreeable truths, was evidently leaning our way, when a new difficulty occurred to her.
‘But how,’ she asked, ‘is Augusta to get this work? I had rather starve than she should go bustling about to book stores, music shops, and lawyers' offices.’
‘I have thought of all that, mama, and I mean to get Mr. Rayson to make inquiries for me. I shall ask the favor of him as freely as if he were my father.’
‘Your acquaintance, Augusta,’ said I, ‘with Clement Rayson, has made astonishing progress since the fire.’
‘Yes, our walk down Wall street, that morning, put us on a friendly footing at once, and ever since, he has been as kind to mama and me as possible. He has a very fine library, and he lends us his books, and obliges us in every possible way.’
[p. 241]
‘I knew,’ said I, ‘his library occupied the apartment next yours, and to tell you the truth, I was afraid your piano might annoy him — he is not fond of music.’
‘Oh pardon me ! indeed he is, for he has asked me again and again to play the songs I had unconsciously sung to him through the wall. I am sure you are wrong, no one seems to relish them as he does.’
I believed I was right, but I had the grace not to persist in saying so, while I admired the rare happiness of Augusta's mind, in being unsusceptible to small as well as great evils. Mrs. Orme, after a good deal of persuasion, more availing with her than reason, came into our plans, and I was deputed to engage Clement Rayson's friendly offices.
At my request, I was admitted to his library, where I unfolded my errand. I spoke of Augusta as I felt, and I am sure his heart responded, for never did I see his fine face so lit with animation, till I chanced to quote, as a sort of apology for the trouble we were giving him, the reason Augusta had assigned for the freedom she felt in applying to him. His countenance changed — he repeated my words with a vexed accent, ‘as soon as if I were her father! would she?’ At that moment, fortunately, Augusta commenced one of his favorite songs, and exorcised the evil spirit. He was all ear till she finished, and then reverting to our last words, ‘tell me,’ he asked, ‘honestly, do I look so desperately old?’
‘Oh no! two minutes ago, you might have passed for a gallant lover, who indited sonnets to his mistress' eye brow, and secretly sent her those orthodox love-tributes — bouquets!’ He blushed, and knocked down half a dozen books by a sudden movement of his arm. While
[p. 232]
he was replacing them, I added, ‘when my friends first came to this house, I confess you looked to me careworn— I might have taken you for full thirty.’
‘I am thirty-one precisely. That, however, is not quite old enough for Miss Augusta's father. However he added, wisely shifting the subject to a better point of view, ‘I am content to make any impression that affords me an opportunity of serving her. An admirable creature she is, and most fortunate!’
‘Admirable she certainly is, but I should not select this moment of her life to call her fortunate.’
‘Is she not plucked from the brink of fashionable life, and an opportunity afforded her of using her fine faculties to some purpose?’
Every man has his mania. I was aware of Clement Rayson's and forbore to oppose it.
Nothing could be more zealous, than was Rayson in procuring employment for Augusta. His zeal might have been stimulated by the certainty that if her earnings were intermitted, she and her mother must seek less expensive lodgings. So never a day passed over her head that she had not that prime blessing — plenty of work; and time to read, to sew, to walk, (how, in spite of the snow-storms, ice, slop, and avalanches of this worse than polar winter, has she daily achieved a two or three mile walk!) to play, and sing, and be agreeable; in short, to do every thing, even ‘lady-like work.’ Best of all was it, in her mother's opinion, that she found time to accept the civilities of certain fashionable people, whose attentions to her were no wise abated, by their knowledge of the fact that she worked for her living. Superior people are not superior to
[p. 243]
prejudices, but if truth can be fairly brought to bear upon them, it dissolves them as the direct rays of the sun melt away the ice. As a fashionable equipage that had brought visiters to the Ormes, drove away from the door, ‘there are exceptions to my rule,’ thought Clement Rayson. ‘I was wrong to involve a whole class in the opinion I had conceived of individuals of that class.’ For the first time it occurred to him, that the inconstancy of his early love might have been rather owing to some inherent defect in her, than to the influence of her fashionable associates. ‘After all,’ thus he concluded his mental reverie, ‘there is no character to be relied on but that which, instead of being subdued by circumstances, resists and controls them — a character like Augusta Orme's.’
When a man — be he full thirty — begins to make a young lady his standard of ideal perfection, the next act of his drama may be anticipated.
I knew my friends were getting on well, that Augusta was turning her industry to good account, often earning by mere copying three dollars a day, [6]* and that Mrs. Orme was enjoying the sense of independence and security naturally inspired by the exercise of her daughter's power, and satisfied they were happy, and being otherwise occupied, I had not seen them for more than a month when, one fine morning, a ring at the street door was followed by Augusta's appearance in my room. Her face was full of meaning. I could not guess what
[p. 244]
it meant. She was embarrassed too, the first time I had ever seen her so.
She untied and retied her bonnet, sat down, rose, and sat down again—then after a vain struggle burst into tears, the first I had ever seen flow from her bright eyes; and finally, throwing a letter into my lap exclaimed, ‘what a fool I am!’ and laughed.
‘That laugh at any rate, proves you are yourself,’ I said, ‘which I very much doubted.’
I read the letter. It was from Clement Rayson—the very ‘quotidian of love’ was upon him.
‘You find it hard to say no to so ardent a lover.’ No reply. ‘There is no evidence here,’ I continued, ‘that the climate of full thirty has chilled his heart.’
‘How can you always remind me of that foolish speech?’
‘Then you do not mean to say no?’
‘I mean to do just what you advise me—if ’ she added archly, and in her natural vein, ‘you advise me as I wish. Here is anothyer letter, and this it is that perplexes me.’ The second letter was brief, and like its precursor, unfit for quite sane readers. Therefore we copy it.
‘The enclosed I wrote two days ago, but had not the courage to send it to you. Necessity now makes me bold. Within the last hour I have received intelligence that obligers me to go to Europe—for two years! – perhaps longer—I must sail next week. I cast all on a single die—happiness or misery is before me. If I go alone, I go the most wretched outcast on earth.’
‘If you invest me with the right, I shall beg Mrs. Orme to go with us. Us! Am I not presumptuous?’
[p. 245]
My pencil was in my hand. 'Shall I cross out this us, Augusta?'
‘First tell me, do you not think it is quite too hasty?’
‘Why, let us see, your acquaintance began on the morning of the 17th of December. January, February, March — three months under the same roof, beginning with paternal protection on the one part, and filial confidence on the other—‘
‘Pray — if you love me, pray do not again advert to that, but tell me honestly, do you not think it is quite too short a time to have matured a sentiment to be relied on for life?’
‘Some fruits ripen wonderfully fast in some soils, and under certain influences.’
‘But you do think — I am sure of it from your repeated hints--’ now there was a tremulousness in her voice, as in the patient's when he discloses his worst symptom to his physician, ‘you do think the difference of age an objection?’
‘An inferior objection to thousands that are every day surmounted.’
Her face brightened. ‘And you think it possible perfectly to recover from a first love — from an attachment so strong as that which Clement confesses in his first foolish letter he long cherished for that jilt?’
‘Possible! every day's experience proves it to be very easy.’
‘There is no use’ she said, her pretty lips curling into their natural smile, ‘in urging any more objections, for you will certainly obviate them.’
‘Yes, Augusta, just as long as I see you urge them to be obviated. That decides the affair in my opinion.
[p. 246]
This affection which is the staple of life springs up and is matured under every variety of circumstances, character and condition. The only point to be settled, is that it exists in its purity and perfection. In this case, I am quite sure as to that point, so are you, my dear ; now run home and write a fit answer to this ‘foolish’ letter.’ She threw her arms around my neck. Love, like a fire kindled for a specific purpose, imparts its warmth to whatever approaches it. One propriety occurred to me that my young friend seemed to have overlooked. ‘Is mama propitious?’ I asked.
‘Not yet consulted, because I feared to tell her while there was the least uncertainty as to which way the scale would turn — Clement is such a prodigious favorite with her nowadays.’
‘Then all is well.’ A few days after, in obedience to a previous summons from Augusta, I joined a male friend, and we, with her mother, were the only witnesses of her marriage vows before the altar of Grace Church. She was dressed in the white muslin she had selected for her coming out, and a white camelia in her hair, so like the one presented to her for that occasion, that I at once came to the right conclusion — it was the gift of the same donor.
My friends had secured the best boon of human life, and therefore I resigned without a sigh the expectation that Augusta Orme would have gone on to illustrate my favorite theory — that a good education, and a well principled and happily balanced mind, will render a woman independent of the vicissitudes of fortune.
[*Notes]
[1]* Many persons suppose that a library is not a natural appurtenance for a merchant. This is a mistake. Our merchants constitute a cultivated class, and many among them indulge in the refined luxury of books, to an extent that would be incredible to those who have formed their opinion of the body from some of the impotent members. We happen to know that one of our merchants has a fine library at his house, and another, for his leisure moments at his counting house, where there are duplicates of books of reference — expensive editions of such works as Boyle's Dictionary. This is indeed the luxury of fortune — if that can be called luxury, which, as the political economists say, is reproduced by its consumption.
[2]* We have just heard that the President has fitly rewarded his heroism by a restoration to his place in the navy. An opportunity thus offered him, his promotion may be safely left in his own hands.
[3]* So are most women. Should they be so?
[4]* It is but justice to state that this institution, though originally set on foot for the purpose specified in the text, is no longer limited to that. With the exception of this one very objectionable feature, viz: the facility afforded for the indulgence of a false pride, and sickly sensibility, it is a most creditable institution, and, from the character of the ladies who manage it, we may hope that this imperfection will not long be permitted in deference to prejudices that should be exploded.
[5]* I once heard a young lady say of a gentleman, — a teacher of the learned languages — that he was ‘a charming person, but not in society.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Oh, he works for his living, you know.’ ‘Straws show,’&c.
[6]* Lest the example of our favorite should be impotent for want of credibility, we inform our young lady readers that we have known this amount of labour performed in six hours out of the twenty four , day after day, by a girl minus fifteen.
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
Full Thirty
Subject
The topic of the resource
The Great Fire of 1835, women and work, May-December romance.
Description
An account of the resource
A young woman and her mother find themselves in reduced circumstances after a fire that devastates New York City. The daughter is supported in her efforts to earn a living by an older female friend of the family, who narrates the story, and a mature bachelor who develops romantic feelings for the young woman.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The Token and Atlantic Souvenir, [edited by Samuel G. Goodrich], pp. 214-246.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Boston: Charles Bowen
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1837 [pub. 1836]
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
D. Gussman
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
1836
As You Like It
bachelors
boarding house
camelias
class
coming out
Cymbeline
fashion
Female education
fire insurance stock
Grace Church
Harpers
heroism
King Lear
Ladies' Depository
marriage
May-December romance
Much Ado About Nothing
New York City
Pyramus and Thisbe
self reliance
Shakespeare
society
The 1835 Great Fire of New York
The Tempest
The Token and Atlantic Souvenir
the unconscious
Wall Street
women and work
-
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9318956458123efb124f4d2a4096f467
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
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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
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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
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
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/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