1
10
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
1849
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.
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.
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
"First Love"
Subject
The topic of the resource
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
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria
Miss C. M. Sedgwick
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<em>Sartain's Union Magazine</em>, Volume IV, No. 2, 81-82.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1849
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
D. Gussman
Relation
A related resource
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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90713525d36f984c08777446dfc4aa6e
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
1849
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.
One of the brethren from a Shaker settlement in our neighborhood, called on us the other day. I was staying with a friend, in whose atmosphere there is a moral power, analogous to some chemical test, which elicits from every form of humanity whatever of sweet and genial is in it. Our visiter was an old acquaintance, and an old member of his order, having joined it more than forty years ago with his wife and two children. I have known marked individuals among these people, and yet it surprises me when I see an original stamp of character, surviving the extinguishing monotony of life, or rather suspended animation among them. What God has impressed man cannot efface. To a child's eye, each leaf of a tree is like the other; to a philosopher's each has its distinctive mark. Our friend W's individuality might have struck a careless observer. He has nothing of the angular, crusty, silent aspect of most of his yea and nay brethren, who have a perfect conviction that they have dived to the bottom of the well and found the pearl truth, while all the rest of the world look upon them as at the bottom of a well indeed; but without the pearl, and with only so much light as may come in through the little aperture that communicates with the outward world. Neither are quite right; the Shaker has no monopoly of truth or holiness, but we believe he has enough of both to light a dusky path to heaven. Friend W___ is a man of no pretension whatever; but content in conscious mediocrity. We were at dinner when he came in; but friend W is too childlike or too simple, to be disturbed by any observances of conventional politeness. He declined an invitation to dine, saying he had eaten and was not hungry, and seated himself in the corner, after depositing some apples on the table, of rare size and beauty. “I have brought some notions, too," he said, "for you, В___," and he took from his ample pocket his handkerchief in which he had tied up a parcel of sugar plums and peppermints. В____ accepted them most affably, and without any apparent recoiling, shifted them from the old man's handkerchief to an empty plate beside her. "Half of them," he said, "remember, В____ , are for ____ . You both played and sung to me last summer—I don't forget it. She is a likely woman, and makes the music sound almost as good as when I was young." This was enthusiasm in the old Shaker; but to us it sounded strangely, who knew that she who had so kindly condescended to call back brother W’s youth, had held crowds entranced by her genius. Brother W____ is a genial old man, and fifty years of abstinence from the world's pleasures has not made him forget or contemn them. He resembles the jolly friars in conventual life, who never resist, and are therefore allowed to go without bits or reins, and in a very easy harness. There is no galling in restraint where there is no desire for freedom. It is the "immortal longings" that make the friction in life. After dinner, B___ , at brother W's request, sate down to the piano, and played for him the various tunes that were the favorites in rustic inland life forty years ago. First the Highland reel, then "Money Musk." "I remember who I danced that with," he said, " Sophy Drury. The ball was held in the school room at Feeding fields. She is tight built, and cheeks as red as a rose, (past and present were confounded in brother W’s imagination.) I went home with Sophy—it was as light as day, and near upon day—them was pleasant times!" concluded the old man, but without one sigh of regret, and with a gleam of light from his twinkling grey eye. "There have been no such pleasant times since, brother W___, has there?" asked В____ with assumed or real sympathy. "I can't say that, В____ , it has been all along pleasant. I have had what others call crosses, but I don't look at them that way—what's the use, В___?" The old man's philosophy struck me. There was no record of a cross in his round jolly face. "Were you married," I asked, "when you joined the Shakers?" "Oh, yes; I married at twenty— it 's never too soon nor too late to do right, you know, and it was right for me to marry according to the light I had then. May be you think it was a cross to part from my wife—all men do n't take it so—but I own I should; I liked Eunice. She is a peaceable woman, and we lived in unity, but it was rather hard times, and we felt a call to join the brethren, and so we walked out of the world together, and took our two children with us. In the society she was the first woman handy in all cases. "And she is still with you?" "No. Our girl took a notion and went off, and got married, and my wife went after her—that's natural for mothers, you know. I went after Eunice, and tried to persuade her to come back, and she felt
[p. 338]
so; but its hard rooting out mother-love; it's planted deep, and spreads wide; so I left her to nature, and troubled myself no more about it, for what was the use? My son, too, took a liking to a young English girl that was one of our sisters—may be you have seen her?" We had all seen her and admired her fresh English beauty, and deplored her fate." Well, she was a picture, and speaking after the manner of men, as good as she was handsome. They went off together; I could not much blame them, and I took no steps after them—for what was the use? But come, B____ strike up again; play ' Haste to the wedding.' B____ obeyed, and our old friend sang or chanted a low accompaniment; in which the dancing tune, and the shaker nasal chant were ludicrously mingled. B____ played all his favorite airs, and then said, " You do love dancing, brother W___ ?" "Yes, to be sure—' praise him in the cymbals and dances!'"
"Oh, but I mean such dances as we have here. Would not you like, brother W___, to come over and see us dance?"
"Why, may be I should."
"And would not you like to dance with one of our pretty young ladies, brother W____?"
"May be I should;" the old man's face lit up joyously—but he smiled and shook his head, "they would not let me, B____ , they would not let me." Perhaps the old shaker's imagination wandered for a moment from the very straight path of the brotherhood, but it was but a moment. His face reverted to its placid passiveness, and he said," I am perfectly content. I have enough to eat and drink—every thing good after its kind, too— good clothes to wear, a warm bed to sleep in, and just as much work as I like, and no more." "All this and heaven too,"—of which the old man felt perfectly sure, was quite enough to fill the measure of a Shaker's desires.
"Now, B____ ," said he, " you think so much of your dances, I wish you could see one of our young sisters dance, when we go up to Mount Holy. She has the whirling gift; she will spin round like a top, on one foot, for half an hour, all the while seeing visions, and receiving revelations."
This whirling is a recent gift of the Shakers. The few "world's folk" who have been permitted to see its exhibition, compare its subjects to the whirling Dervishes.
"Have you any other new inspiration?” I asked. "Gifts, you mean? Oh, yes; we have visionists. It's a wonderful mystery to me. I never was much for looking into mysteries—they rather scare me!" Naturally enough, poor childlike old man: "What, brother W____ ," I asked," do you mean by a visionist?"
"I can't exactly explain," he replied. "They see things that the natural eye can't see, and hear, and touch, and taste, with inward senses. As for me, I never had any kind of gifts, but a contented mind, and submission to those in authority, and I do n't see at all into this new mystery. It makes me of a tremble when I think of it. I’ll tell you how it acts. Last summer I was among our brethren in York State, and when I was coming away, I went down into the garden to take leave of a young brother there. He asked me if I would carry something for him to Vesta. Vesta is a young sister, famous for her spiritual gifts, whirling, &c."—I could have added, for I had seen Vesta—for other less questionable gifts in the world's estimation—a light graceful figure, graceful even in the shaker straight jacket, and a face like a young Sybil's. "Well,'' continued brother W____, "he put his hand in his pocket, as if to take out something, and then stretching it to me, he said, 'I want you to give this white pear to Vesta.' I felt to take something, though I saw nothing, and a sort of a trickling heat ran through me; and even now, when I think of it, I have the same feeling, fainter, but the same. When I got home I asked Vesta if she knew that young brother. 'Yea,' she said. I put my hand in my pocket and took it out again, to all earthly seeming as empty as it went in, and stretched it out to her. 'Oh, a white pear!' she said. As I hope for salvation, every word that I tell you is true," concluded the old man. It was evident he believed every word of it to be true. The incredulous may imagine that there was some clandestine intercourse between the " young brother" and " young sister," and that simple old brother Wilcox was merely made the medium of a fact or sentiment, symbolised by the white pear. However that may be, it is certain that animal magnetism has penetrated into the cold and dark recesses of the Shakers.
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
"Magnetism Among the Shakers"
Subject
The topic of the resource
Shakers, spiritual practices, magnetism
Description
An account of the resource
A sketch in which the speaker relates a conversation between an older male Shaker and his sister about Shaker beliefs and practices.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss C. M. Sedgwick
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<em>Sartain’s Union Magazine</em>, Vol. IV: 337-38.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1849
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
D. Gussman
Relation
A related resource
Also collected in <em>The Literary Gem</em>, Philadelphia: Van Court, 1854, 69-70.
Reprinted in <em>Female Prose Writers of America, </em>[edited by John S. Hart], Philadelphia, E.H. Butler & Co., 1864, 1866.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
1849
brothers
magnetism
marriage
Sartain's Union Magazine
Shakers
whirling
-
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2eb4747c0f824047c88bda15a9386674
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
1850
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories published in 1850.
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.
Miss C.M. Sedgwick
“Might versus Right”
"There is no wealth but the labour of man" -- or woman.
ANNE CLEVELAND was the daughter of a wealthy farmer. She had a good New England school education, and was well bred and well taught at home in the virtues and manners that constitute domestic social life. Her father died a year before her marriage. He left a will dividing his property equally between his son and daughter, giving to the son the homestead with all its accumulated rural riches and to the daughter the largest share of the personal property, amounting to six or seven thousand dollars. This little fortune, the earnings of a life of labour and frugality, became at Anne's marriage the property of her husband. She had no longer any right to control it; to keep, or expend it. It would seem, to the perceptions of common sense and common justice, that the property of a woman received from her father should be hers, and should be so appropriated as to secure her independence, and to maintain and educate her children. But the laws of a barbarous age decided otherwise, and it is found very hard to right a wrong deeply fixed in the usages of society, and long-transmitted habit.* [i] Anne Cleveland married John Warren. He was the youngest child, daintily bred by his parents, and let off from all heavy work and difficult tasks, by his good-natured elder brothers. Anne's judgment was perhaps warped by his agreeableness, and an exterior with a little less of the rustic, and a little more of the gentleman than belonged to her other admirers; for many admirers had Anne Cleveland attracted by her charming countenance, her virtues, her sweet manners, to say nothing of the "plenty that feeds the lover's fire."
This plenty, obtained with Anne's hand, was soon vested in a stock of goods, and Warren opened a dry-goods shop in a small town in the vicinity of Boston. He had not thought of his qualifications for merchandise, but only of escaping from distasteful farming, and frugal life. He went on tolerably for five or six years, living genteelly and recklessly; expecting that next year's gains would bring round the excess of this year's expenses.
When sixteen years of their married life had passed, they were living in a single room in the most crowded street of Roxbury, Massachusetts. Mrs. Warren's inheritance had long been gone from them, every penny of it. The lives of three children had been sacrificed to unhealthy locations, and to the overtasked and wasted strength of their mother. Three survived—a girl fifteen years old, whom the mother by incredible exertions was educating to be a teacher, a boy of twelve, who was still living at home, and a delicate, pale, little struggler for life, Jessie, a girl of three years. Mrs. Warren was much changed in these sixteen years. Her round, blooming cheek was pale and sunken. Her dark, abundant chestnut hair had become thin and gray. Her sweet, dovelike eye, overtaxed by use and watching, was faded, and her whole person shrunken. Yet she had gained the great victory. The buoyancy of youth had given place to a most gentle submission and resignation, and the light of hope to a most sweet patience.
This blessed patience, and even a certain degree of cheerfulness was visible, as she sat one July evening, sewing by the light of a single lamp, while her boy was getting his Latin lesson beside her, and at intervals threading her needle.
"Dear mother," he said, "I will always thread your needles if you will not wear those horrid spectacles; they make you look a hundred years old, besides hiding your sweet eyes."
"Ah, George, all children hate their mother's spectacles, I believe. They do not like to see those they love getting old; but you must make up your mind to it. I cannot leave off work, and I cannot see in the evening without them."
George picked up the lamp-wick and then said, “There is no use—the oil is bad. I wish we had some of the lights that are burning away for nothing in rich men's houses."
"Covet not your neighbour's goods, my son."
"Covet! I don't covet, mother, I only wish. It makes me feel so, mother, to see you working your eyes out. Why do you work so late, mother? You work later and later, and that shoe-binding, you say, is so trying to your eyes."
"I have good reason for doing extra work now, George; I have kept up without debt, and
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have now fifty-five dollars due to me at Mr. Doyle's."
"Then you have a good right to stop your work, mother," said George, affectionately, taking the shoe from her, "and if you won't, I shall make you."
"No; give it to me, George. I must have sixty dollars, and then I shall treat myself to rest and recreation too. Anne must have some new clothes, or she cannot remain in the Rev. Mr. Howe's family, and you know what privileges she has there, and what a struggle I had to get the place for her. In one year more, Mr. Howe says she will be qualified to be head teacher in a school, or governess in a private family. By-and-by, George, my children will take off my spectacles indeed, and give my eyes and heart too rest."
"I hope so, mother, I hope so," and resolves and joyous visions for a moment checked George's utterance. But he returned to the subject. "Sixty dollars, mother! Anne surely can't want sixty dollars!"
"Oh no, I can make her quite comfortable with fifteen, or twenty at the utmost, and the rest I want to take poor little Jessie to the shore; the doctor has advised me to make some change for her. Last week he said if anything would do her good it was sea-bathing."
“If anything, mother!—Is Jessie so ill?"
"She is very ill, George. She seems to be going just in the way my other little girls went. Have you not observed that every day she gets weaker and paler?"
"No, mother, but now I remember that she fell down twice to-day, when I was walking up the street just a little way with her, and I brought her home in my arms." George went to the crib where the child was sleeping unquietly, kissed her, stroked her attenuated arms, and kissed over and over again her almost transparent little hands, and bending over her, whispered, "Pettest of pets!"—then returning to his mother's side, his eyes brimming with tears, he said, "Oh, mother, Jessie must not die!—Do not wait to make up the sixty dollars. I will give up my school, and go into the cord and tassel factory. They give boys high wages there."
"No, my son, we must pursue a steady plan. All that is gained will be lost if you are interrupted now; no, at the end of the week I shall have made up the sum, and then, without the fear of running in debt, I shall set out with my light little burden, and return with it heavier I trust,—but much less a burden."
"Oh! dear mother, if you only had some of that money that father says he lost in business." George paused thoughtfully for a few moments, and then added, "How did my father ever get any money, mother?—Was his father rich?"
"No, my son, but my father was—at least what is called very rich,—for a farmer."
"Then it was yours after all. Surely my father would not take it from you; he is not such a man—at least he was not always," added the boy, blushing with a painful consciousness.
"Your father took it, used it, and lost it, my son; but you must not blame him,—the money was his according to law."
"What! your money his?—I don't understand that, mother. I don't see how money can belong to a person that does not earn it, nor inherit it, nor have it given to him. Oh, I suppose you did give it to him, mother?"
"No; the law gave it to him."
"It's a mean, dishonest law, then,—a law fit to have been made by pickpockets. Who made such a law ?—when was it made, mother?"
"Oh! a long while ago."
"Why don't they alter it, now they know better?"
"They probably think it is better as it is. Men are bound to support their families, and they are supposed to be more capable of earning property than women, and of taking care of it."
"Well, I suppose some men are much more capable of earning and keeping property than some other men, but for that, all the property is not given to them. And certainly some women are every way more capable than some men. What would we have done, mother, but for what you have earned and saved? And if you had kept your own property how comfortable and happy you might have been, instead of having half your heart in the grave of my poor little sister, and the other half contriving how to take care of the rest of us."
"I have but done my duty, dear, and you must look on the best side, George;" and the mother was proceeding to show that best side, when she was interrupted by the entrance of her husband, whose loud voice and thickened utterance indicated that he was in his usual state of partial inebriation. He was accompanied by a Mr. Hutton, one of his early friends, who, for the sake of Mrs. Warren, still endured her husband's society. George's colour rose at the sight of his father, and a mist came before his eyes. His mother perceived this, and saying "Good-night, my son," she pushed an unlighted lamp towards him. He lighted it, and after pausing a moment at Jessie's crib, and drawing a deep sigh, he withdrew to an adjoining closet bed-room.
"Well, Madam Warren," said her husband, in a loud, husky voice, "have not you a bit of pie, or crumb of cake to give us?—Hutton and
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I have walked out from Boston, and are sharp set."
"I am sorry then I have nothing to offer you."
"Oh! women always say there is nothing: I guess I can find something!" said Warren, setting open her cupboard-doors, but discovering nothing but very clean shelves, and a few cups, plates, etc.
After muttering his disappointment, he perceived in a corner a black bottle, and taking out the cork, "By Jove!" he said, "here's a bottle of wine!—this is luck!— We've no wine-glasses, but we'll drink Mrs. Warren's health in the tumblers!—they'll do! —Pleasant provisions you keep, Mrs. Warren! A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband —hey, Hutton?"
"Oh, put up the wine, Warren," said Hutton, "I shan't taste a drop of it!"
"I shall, then. Here's a health to you, wife and friend!" and he tossed off a glass of it.
Mrs. Warren rose, and putting her hand on the bottle, said mildly, "You must not drink this, John. The doctor ordered wine-whey for Jessie, and I have bought it for that."
"Never mind;" and wresting the bottle from her hand, Warren set it down violently on the table, and lighting a cigar sat down beside it. Mrs. Warren was so accustomed to his coarseness and selfish indulgence, that this caused little sensation, and she returned quietly to her sewing.
Hutton did not so easily digest the matter. He sat down by the table, and after biting his nails for a few moments, he said, "Warren, why do you go to that Roger Smith's? —If you must haunt a grocery, go elsewhere;—he is a rascal!"
"A rascal!—I find him a very liberal fellow."
"Liberal! yes,—running up accounts with the husband for the wife to pay. Did you hear how he served poor Mrs. Farren, the best wife —always excepting yours—in Roxbury?"
"No:—you know I hate gossip."
"Well, this is too true and too sad a story to be called gossip. That poor woman had laid up a pretty little sum of money. She was obliged to hide it to keep it from her good-for-nothing husband. He got wind of it some way or other, and turned over her trunks and drawers till he found it. He then carried it to Roger Smith and paid his drinking account with it, and then, boasting how he got the money, began a new score! Hear me out. The next day poor Mrs. Farren went penniless to Smith's to buy a loaf of bread for her children's breakfast. The scoundrel refused it!"*[ii]
"That was rather tough, I own,—but then what business had she to hide the money? She knew it was his, not hers, by the law of the land."
"By the law of the land it may be, but not by the law of God; and there is neither truth, honour, nor manhood in a husband who will avail himself of such a law, to take away the rightful property of his wife."
"Tut-tut! what nonsense you talk, Hutton! A married woman can't have any rightful property. Her husband is bound to protect and support her, and that is quite enough for her."
"And if he does not?"
"Why he is compelled to—the law compels him." At this moment the door of the little bed-room to which George had gone was set ajar.
"The law abounds in fictions," rejoined Hutton. "Does the law compel him ?—You and I know some wives who have supported their families—including their lordly husbands—for years"—-Warren filled another bumper of wine and drank it off—"and yet the money they earn is not their own, and is at all times subject to the husband's rapacity. There is no end to the wrong done by men who fancy that old and barbarous laws give them rights that no human authority can give. I knew a gentleman, so called, who married a charming woman; she had a fortune of forty thousand dollars; he, not a penny. He was rather a good fellow, but idle. He lived on his wife's fortune, never earned or acquired in any way a shilling, and when he died he bequeathed his wife's property to her while she remained unmarried, but he made some other disposition of it if she married again!* [iii] This was strictly legal, Warren,—good old Norman law for it, no doubt; but I call it as impudent a piece of projected robbery as ever was done on a highway."
"Nonsense! when he married, the property, if it was personal, and passed into his hands, became his of course. There may be a hard case now and then, but women don't know how to take care of property, and it's best they shouldn't have it."
"I deny that. They take better care of property than men. They do not expose it to so many hazards. They rarely jeopard their children's happiness by a foolish second marriage, as men continually do. I have heard a man, older and wiser than either you or I, say that he has never known a woman left a widow who, if she had but a roof over her head, did not support her children. No, Warren, it does not become us to talk about women not being trusted with property because they don't know how to take care of it. At any rate, it is rather an Irish way of teaching them to deprive them of it. 'My girls are all boys,' as they say, Warren. When they marry, if their wives have property, it shall be secured to them, or I'll no longer own them for sons of mine."
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"But, Hutton, would you have a division of interests in a family?—You must, if you have a division of property."
"I know no division so bad as that which gives all the rights to one side, and all the wrongs to the other. This argument of yours, that women are not qualified to take care of property, is a very common and a specious one. But cannot women with large fortunes pay for wise counsel and faithful agency? It is that large class of poor women who work for small wages, whose wants demand the rectification of the laws. When they are permitted to control their earnings, their management is, for the most part, discreet and efficient. If common justice should be done to women, and the laws be repealed that annul their right to their own property, it would soon become a part of their education to learn to take care of it. Why, in France, where married women possess and control their own property, they conduct a vast amount of mercantile business. They are principals and book-keepers in large commercial establishments. In Germany, a woman is regarded as an equal partner with her husband, it being there admitted that she does half the business of the partnership in performing those duties that naturally fall to her sex. She is the possessor of half the property he acquires; that half he cannot dispose of, nor can he apply it to the payment of his debts: it is absolutely hers. And it is acknowledged, that in no country are there more domestic, devoted, and care-taking wives, than in Germany."
"Fol-de-rol, Hutton! don't talk to me of German wives and French women. I should like to know where there are finer women, and better wives than here in our own Yankee-land, where, according to your doctrine, they are so oppressed and defrauded—Mrs. Warren for example."
"And it is because we have such women as Mrs. Warren, that I think it fitting we should prove our appreciation of them by restoring to them their rights; making them as independent as we ourselves are."
"Not quite, Hutton, not quite: it does not do to have two commanders to the ship."
"No, but I have heard seamen say, that if the mate is the better man the command is very apt, when a storm rises, to fall into his hands; and in the storms of life women show how capable they are. When I see how strong they are in their calmness and patience, my blood boils that they should be so shackled and made the victims of the vices, the follies, or the misfortunes of their husbands."
Hutton paused. Warren was becoming sobered under the influence of arguments that came home to him. He made no reply, but thrummed vehemently with his fingers on the table. "Matters, however," resumed Hutton, "are righting. Little Rhode Island was, I believe, the first champion among the states against this Goliath of old abuses.* [iv] I read the debates of their legislature at the time; they were full of sense and wit, with some touches of the pathetic," he added, turning to Mrs. Warren; who ever and anon, by a smile, or a nod, or a gentle "I think you are right, Mr. Hutton," had manifested her attention to the conversation. "I remember," continued Mr. Hutton, "a lawyer describing the ruthless seizure, for the husband's debts, of silver teaspoons cherished as a wedding-gift, and the gold beads transmitted through a long maternal line. And there was a funny story told of an Irish woman, to illustrate a wife's voluntary devotion: a woman who turned out a pig to save her husband from jail, saying, 'A poor husband is better than none; he's a hand, if no head; he can draw the water and lug the wood!' Indeed, some of us, Warren, are only fit to be hewers of wood and drawers of water to our good wives."
"Speak for yourself, Hutton, speak for yourself."
"I have acted for myself," replied Hutton, with perfect good temper. "I secured before my marriage, to my wife's separate use, her own property, and I have since made over to her half of what I have acquired. I do not say this boastingly; the first act was simply honest, and if some-grains of generosity entered into the second, it was but a small testimony to the excellent woman who has made my home happy; a wife and mother, Mrs. Warren, can make a home a sort of Paradise regained."
The sense of what, in spite of his excellent wife, he had made his home, stung Warren through all the indurations of long years of wrong-doing. He arose, thrust back his chair, clasped his hands over his bald head, and groaned aloud.
"His conscience is awakened," thought Hutton; "now is the time;" and rising, he laid his hand gently on Warren's shoulder. "My friend," he said, "look at your wife. See how, without intermission, she toils for you. For years, Warren, she has earned the bread for your family—she educates your children. You see what can be done even by a woman's unproductive labour. Doyle told me yesterday, he owed your wife more than fifty dollars on account; and all for this stitching early and late. Be a man, Warren,—put your shoulder to the wheel. Her strength is failing. For-
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swear drinking—take the pledge. In God's name do anything that will help you in the course of duty to your family. Life is short, my friend.—God help you, good night!"
Warren felt humbled by his friend's admonition. But it takes far more virtue than he possessed to endure humiliation, and turn it to account; so instead of cherishing the holy monitor that had entered his bosom, he rushed out of the house, and did not return to it till he could scarcely find his way to the bed he dishonoured by his brutal intoxication.
During the rest of the week he was more surly and more uncomfortable than usual. He, two or three times, hinted to his wife that he was in pressing need of a small sum of money—that forty or fifty dollars would relieve him—that he could do nothing till he was relieved—that if he were, and his mind at ease, he would turn over a new leaf. On Friday morning he suddenly came into the house, and said that he had an employment he liked offered to him, that if he could have his mind at ease he would accept it. But he owed one fifty dollars, for which he was dunned every time he went up the street. His wife understood perfectly in what direction this discourse pointed. She had understood his hints before as an indirect demand for the fifty dollars due from Mr. Doyle. But she had devoted this fifty dollars to the prosperity of one child, and the life of another. "I am perfectly sure that if I could get rid of this one little debt I should be a new man," he continued. "But I can't undertake any business with this constant torment hanging over me. Hutton told me I must decide to-day. He got the offer of the place for me."
"Then, John, ask the loan of fifty dollars from him. I know he will lend it to you."
"Ah! you hear me, do you? I thought you were deaf. No, I can't demean myself to Hutton. I won't—that's flat. If my wife can't lend me—yes, I say lend—I give in to Hutton's notions, though I don't believe a word in them, so far as to say lend—if you can't lend me, madam, your fifty dollars, I won't humble myself to strangers for it."
"John," said his wife calmly, "I have fifty dollars and more; to-morrow it will be sixty dollars, due to me. I have, as you know, worked early and late to earn it—I have, in my mind, devoted it to the good of our children. Hear now poor little Jessie moaning. See, she can hardly sit in her chair. Her life—the doctor says so—depends upon a change of air, and this money from Mr. Doyle is to pay the expense of our journey to my brother's. You have the right to it—but I am sure, John, you will not take it—and I cannot give it to you."
Warren said nothing, and his wife ventured to ask "Who is this hard creditor?"
"Roger Smith—curse him!"
"I thought so—he cares not how many families he ruins, how many hearts he breaks, if he can make a little money by it! As fast as I can earn the money I will pay it, John, if you will have no more accounts with this man. Go and tell him so—and oh, John—for your own salvation, for my sake, for your children's, for God's sake, go no more near that bad man. Enter on this new path that is open to you."
"I will, Anne—I will, if I can get the fifty dollars—I can do nothing without it." And without waiting for further expostulation, or answer of any kind, Warren rushed out of the house.
His wife was left in perplexity—in the saddest of all perplexities,—uncertainty as to her duty. If her husband had told the truth, this might be a turning point in his life. Mr. Hutton had offered him a place on certain conditions, which he professed himself ready to accept. Warren might be restored to temperance and industry—if he had told the truth!
"But my child! my child!" cried the poor mother, taking little Jessie into her lap and giving way to an unwonted burst of tears. "And yet have I a right to put her life against his salvation? possible salvation? Oh heavenly Father enlighten—direct me!"
After awhile she became quite calm, the little girl fell asleep stroking away her mother's tears, and Mrs. Warren laid her in her crib, and then bent over and kissed her, saying, "It will be all gain and not loss to you, Jessie—it's a hard life— very hard!" Mrs. Warren had come to the conclusion to give the money to her husband, helped to this, as good people often are, by the very difficulty and bitterness of the duty turning the scale.
One thing remained to be done. Mortifying as it was to impart to any one her distrust of her husband, she determined to ascertain the truth of his statement before she voluntarily parted with her precious little sum of money. She accordingly went herself to Mr. Hutton's.
"My good friend," he said, "your husband has deceived you. I did tell him, last week, that if he would remain sober for one month, I would find a place for him. You know what a beginning he has made this week. Not a day of it but I have seen him at Roger Smith's. But, take courage, my friend—you have good children. God spare them to reward you for your devotion to them." Mrs. Warren turned away, I believe, with a lightened heart, for her husband had worn out her affection for him, and she now saw her way clear to pursue her project for little Jessie.
She did not see her husband till late
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that night, and then he was in his customary condition.
The next morning, at breakfast, he launched forth in invectives against Hutton, and his newfangled notions, on which he freely bestowed his favourite epithets. When he went out, banging the door after him, "It is too bad!" said George. "If I get into the legislature when I am a man, I'll do what I can to give these old laws a smoking."
"Oh hush, my son," said his mother; "I trust they will be righted long before that time; till they are, we must suffer and do as best we can. I feel as if I could bear anything just now,—I am all ready for our start; we are to be at the boat at one, and I am going now to settle accounts with Mr. Doyle. Write a letter to Anne while I am gone to the shop, and tell her I enclose twenty dollars in it. The doctor says Jessie is a little better to-day. Providence smiles on us, my son,—the weather is lovely."
The world without and within was all smiling to the happy mother. She went with a light step and light heart to Mr. Doyle's. He was alone in his counting-room, where he received her kindly, for Mr. Doyle is one of the few men who put a heart of humanity into all his business relations.
"You are always punctual, Mrs. Warren," he said; "you have finished your last lot of shoes."
"Yes, sir, and if convenient, I should like to settle my account with you."
"Certainly, there is a small balance due to you."
"Small, Mr. Doyle! to me it seems very large. You who have to do with hundreds and thousands can scarcely conceive what fifty is to me, nor what good I expect it to do me." Mr. Doyle's countenance clouded, but Mrs. Warren not perceiving this went on. "My youngest child has been sick all summer, and nothing, the doctor says so, and I am sure of it, could do her any good while she is in the bad air in ____ Street. But I shall have her on the sea-shore by Tuesday morning; and owing to the captain's goodness, who gives George a free passage, he is going down to his uncle's with me. But excuse me, Mr. Doyle; I am so happy, I know you will feel with me."
"I do with you, and for you, Mrs. Warren, and it grieves me to tell you that your husband came here last night and asked for your dues, and I not suspecting that he came unknown to you, paid him fifty-five dollars, so that there is but five dollars coming to you."
The sudden change from light to darkness was too much for poor Mrs. Warren. The flush of sweet hopes vanished from her face. She became fearfully pale, and sank back into a chair. She did not faint, she did not weep, she did not speak.
Tears gushed from Mr. Doyle's eyes. He thrust his hand into his money-drawer, and eagerly counting out sixty dollars, he put the money into Mrs. Warren's hand. She looked up, scarcely comprehending what he was doing. "It is yours, ma'am," he said; "accept it—no, take it as your due. It is your due. I could not swallow down the kind words you spoke, when you said you knew I would feel for you, if I did not do this. A plague on the laws that give a husband the right to take his wife's earnings, I say. No, no! don't thank me— don't say a word—you have no time to lose; get to the boat with your children as quick as you can, and I will take your thanks out in pleasant thoughts of all you are enjoying."
Mrs. Warren did not speak—she could not; but the tears now flowed plentifully, and they were like the rain in sunshine, when every drop is bright as a jewel.
N. B. We have simply recorded a recent fact in the life of a tradesman. Whether his name be Doyle, or whether he is a shoemaker, does not matter. If in the odd chances of life this page should meet his eye, his modesty will pardon the publicity given to his beneficence, in consideration of the value of so rare an example.
While human nature is vilified in such fictions as Vanity Fair, we are anxious to present the antidote of real goodness which comes within our knowledge by personal observation, or unquestionable report.
___________________________________
Sedgwick’s notes:
* [i]Much has been said and is saying about the rights of women. If the right to their own property, by inheritance, or by their own labour (the first of social rights), and the right of the mother to the custody of her children (the first of nature's rights), were secured to them, the rest might be left to the accidents of character and conduct.
* [ii] Fact
* [iii] Fact
* [iv] Missouri, Louisiana, Tennessee, and now New York, have repaired the law in relation to the property of married women. We devoutly hope that Massachusetts will not much longer suffer the blot of this old abuse to remain on her escutcheon.
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
"Might Versus Right"
Subject
The topic of the resource
Married women's property rights; temperance.
Description
An account of the resource
A young woman from a wealthy family marries and her husband legally gains rights to all of her property. The husband's poor business management and drinking cause him to lose the money, and the wife must work to support the family. When the husband claims his wife's wages without her knowledge, a sympathetic employer makes a kind gesture.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss C. M. Sedgwick
Source
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Sartain’s Union Magazine [edited by Caroline M. Kirkland], Vol. VI., 75-80.
Publisher
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Philadelphia: John Sartain & Co.
Date
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January - June 1850
Contributor
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J. Robinson; D. Gussman
Language
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English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
Louisiana
marriage
married women's property acts
Massachusetts
Missouri
Motherhood
New York
New York Married Women's Property Act 1848
Sartain's Union Magazine
temperance
temperance pledge
Tennessee
women's rights
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d081a5a0ae4a2185d059030b940d23be
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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1846
Subject
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Stories published in 1846.
Document
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Text
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“The Patch-Work Quilt”
BY MISS C.M. SEDGWICK
THE Germans are the best economists in all the small details of life. They have the true husbandry of social means. Their faculties as well as their outer world are under the dominion of a wise economy. They carry it into the work of their imaginations. An every-day household circumstance, a piece of relic furniture or a common domestic event will supply them warp and woof for a complicated fabric, which they adorn with quaint or, it may be, brilliant fancies. In their illustrations of homely domestic life, they have the great advantage of awakening general sympathy and appealing to universal experience. Rare events and great deeds are for the few, while all share in the family history—the daily bread of life. The furniture and utensils of our childhood's home are idealized by affection and consecrated in after life. Poetry may chance to be written about them, but if it be not, they are poetry to us. They have life and a living agency. In the German fable "needles and pins come out of the tailor's shed and lose themselves in the dark, and the shovel and the broom stand upon the step and quarrel and fight." Our fancies are more subdued, but still old household things are instinct with our early lives. They embody hopes and memories long ago faded; laughs that rang out in merrier days, forgotten like the thrush's song, or the Summer's rose. What woman but can recall some bundle-drawer, or piece-bag, into which, as a girl, she was permitted to dive when a new doll was to be dressed, to explore its rolls of chintz and silk, and to gather up bits of fringe and fragments of lace, muslin and embroidery: and in long after years when the chapter of life is nearly read out, when the eye is dim and the hand tremulous, a fragment of these stuffs, made to perish in the using, which, nevertheless, have survived the frames fearfully and wonderfully made, meets the eye and unseals the fountains of emotion. A piece of puttied china will recall the family gathering and the festive dinner, and the whole array of the pantry to which the hungry school-child was admitted for the bit of pudding that thoughtful kindness had set aside.
I went, a few mornings since, to see an old family servant who had passed her childhood and youth in the service of my parents. M__, 'Little Lil' as she was called, and is even now, though a bulky old woman, was not born to serve, but to enjoy. She is the very incarnation of hilarity. She has floated down the current of life without dread, anxiety, or regret. Not 'sans reproche,' for Lilly lives in a strict community, and her morals are not of the sternest, but feeling no responsibility (that she evidently looks upon as the exclusive privilege of "white folks") she has escaped anxiety and remorse. She is the most vivacious of that race whom God seems to have endowed with cheerfulness, as a divine armor against the evils of man's infliction. Lil, at three score and ten, has a face as smiling as a child's— not a mark of time or sorrow upon it. One of the boasted Saxon race, one of our New England matrons, who had met with a tithe of the dark events of Lilly's life would never smile again. She lives in a wretched hut where food and clothing seem to come to her by happy chances. She is the survivor of nearly all her cotemporaries; she has buried parents, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and has lost some half dozen husbands, by death or desertion, yet, I doubt not, she would dance like a girl of eighteen to a merry measure. She is as earnest and indefatigable as she ever was in all good natured gossiping, and if, by any chance, she sheds a tear, it is like the rain when the sun shines—a smile chases it. She loves her old friends, but when they drop off she turns to new ones. Like most of the colored people she is fond of merry-making and all social cheerfulness—all gatherings of human beings together, except in churches or at funerals. Solemnity is night and darkness to Lilly. She likes the excitement of a camp-meeting, but she likes it not for its religious purposes, but for any little chance crum of folly or absurdity that may be dropped there. She can even tolerate a funeral if there is a gleam of fun upon it. I once saw her at one where her side glances and stolen gesticulations were subjects for Wilkie, or Mount, the true painter of our home humorous scenes. The chief mourner, being of our Saxon race, Lilly pointed out to me as the white widow. The ceremony was marshaled by a servant of a militia colonel, and the procession of wretched one-horse vehicles, equestrians mounted on broken-down hacks, and pedestrians scrambling after, ranged with as much show of ceremony as a
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Roman ovation. Our master of ceremonies—being mounted on a black steed of " the colonel's"—calling out, as if he were commanding forces at a battle of Waterloo, now " to the right! " and now " to the left!" and now " close your ranks, gentlemen and ladies ! "—himself, sometimes a hundred yards in advance of the procession, and then curveting and galloping among the old women and children to their infinite dismay. "It is as good as 'lection-day,'" said Lilly, aside, to me.
Though Lilly is a precious element in our country contentments, I rarely visit her. She saves her friends the trouble of looking after her, by dropping in once or twice a week, with an ample basket on her arm, which goes much heavier than it comes, for Lilly is in good fellowship with the servants, and she pays the heads of the house in sunshine (the best of coins) for all she gets. She is to the kitchen what the newspaper is to the parlor, and better, inasmuch as the spoken is better than the written word.
I met Lilly outside her door, and without her wonted smile, and on my asking her why she had been absent for a week, she answered:
"Why, Miss__, don't you know Hector is dying!" Hector was a' fiddler by profession, and was dying, as most of our colored people do, of a galloping consumption. After adding a few particulars of his illness, Lilly led the way in and I followed. Her little room, its rafters blackened with smoke, was darker than usual, being filled with men, women and little children of her own color. Any occasion, it matters not much what, calls these social people together. A mess was boiling over the fire for their future cheer, the only future they look to, and the dying man was very gently sinking away. He was bolstered with pillows on a chair, and he kindly nodded to me as his friends, with their customary civility, fell back to give me a view of him. He beckoned to Lilly and said something to her, but so faintly that I did not hear him. She gave me a significant glance, and going to the other side of the room took Hector's fiddle from the case in which it was hanging and brought it to him. He dimly smiled and took the bow—he could not hold the fiddle—Lilly held it for him. He essayed a last tune, and, the ruling passion strong in death, attempted a lively one, but he was too far gone: the notes were few and solemn—the bow fell from his hand and he breathed his last. There was one moment of death-stillness, then Lilly taking up the instrument as reverently as if it contained a living spirit, replaced it in its case and, brushing away a tear, said:
"I wish you all to take notice that Hector said to me last night, ' Lilly,' says he,' do you keep my violin as long as you live'—and I will, and let the select men and Deacon Bates talk!"
She then went into her bed-room, beckoning to me to follow her. She selected in a hurried and troubled manner the articles necessary to the last offices for Hector, and having given them to his friends in the next room, she said to me:
"This is the worst of taking boarders, having them die, and seeing to things. It’s a chore I don't like, but then I ought not to complain, for Hector was lively as long as he lived. It’s only a week ago he played for our folks to dance, and come what would, there was always a pleasant tone in Hector's fiddle! We shall be lonesome now. He's gone—he drew company as the sun draws water, and shone on them when they came. It was always bright where Hector was!"
"Has he saved anything," I asked her," to pay the expenses of his sickness?"
"Saved, Miss! Fiddlers never save—they enjoy themselves—and what's the use of saving? What would he be the better for it now if he had gold in his trunk and two full suits? He was welcome every where, and the best was set before him. Nobody grudged Hector, and why should they? He paid in fiddling; he was the best fiddler that ever walked the country, and if he had laid up clothes, as some foolish folks do, what good would they do him now! A very little serves now, you see, and while he wanted it he had enough. Major Smith gave him that military coat he died in. The collar was silk velvet and the old epaulette kept bright to the last. That red and yellow plaid handkerchief round his neck was given to him by a New York lady at the Pittsfield Hotel. Old Aunt Esther wanted me to take them off from him this morning. She said they did not seem suitable for a dying man to die in. ' Pooh!' says I, ' what's that to Hector? He likes to look lively as long as he lives.' 'Lilly,' she whined out, ' it will be a solemn change to his winding-sheet!' ' Never mind, Aunt Esther,' says I,' he won't see that, and you can enjoy it as much as you please.' You are thinking I am wicked, Miss, but white folks does enjoy such things! I heard old Aunt Esther say to Miss Babcock the other day:— 'Sally,' says she, 'you and I have enjoyed a great many sicknesses and a great many deaths together,' says she."
The difference in the spirit of the two races as elucidated by Lilly is certainly striking. Those who look farthest back and forward may be most exalted in the intellectual scale, but there is a blessed compensation for a lower graduation, in the buoyant, cheerful, enjoying spirit, that gilds the dark cloud, makes pleasant waters to spring from rocks, and plucks away flowers from thorns.
It was evident that Lilly was ingeniously prolonging our conversation to escape from the solemnities of death in the next room, and I smiled at
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the eagerness she betrayed when having, as I fancied, listened, to the last thing she could have to say, she cut short my leave-taking by "Oh ! Miss, don't you want to see that quilt I
told you about, that's made of pieces of all our folks' gowns ?" "Our folks" is, you know, Lilly's designation for my own family, of which she was a member for the first thirty years of her life. I did wish to see the quilt. It was one of those memorials that in a German household would have been held a sacred history. Lilly produced it from among a store of quilts which she has been her whole life amassing, not as property—no saint or hermit was ever freer from the desire of accumulation than Lilly. Diogenes himself had not a truer contempt for it. Her instincts are limited to the present. She has not the power of forecast. She is grateful to any one who will give her a present pleasurable sensation, but she would not thank her best friend for an ample annuity to become due a year hence. The quilts are not in her eye property. They are not the means of warmth and comfort—they are never used as such—they are story-books—family legends—illustrated traditions. Lilly reverses the French maxim," I'l n'ya a run de beau que utile;" with her there is nothing useful but the beauty that touches the spring of her imagination. The Italians have a saying that a transplanted tree will not take root till it has been danced around. The merry gathering that forms the quilt perpetuates its pleasant associations to Lilly. The quilt in question is what is called a beggar's patch-work, formed of hexagonal bits of calico and silk. Being originally made of unwashed materials and wisely kept for show, it has preserved its original gloss. Yes, these base, perishable materials have remained unchanged, when those of whose garments they were the fragments, have long ago, played out their parts in life, and are now clothed in the white robes of the saints. In these little bits of silk and cotton is stored the memory of many a tear or smile.
"There, Miss__," said Lilly, "there is a bit of your mother's wedding-gown, worn long before you were born, of course, or I either, as to that matter; but 1 have heard my mother say there was not such another this side of Boston.
"Woman, or gown, Lilly!"
"Either, Miss__, either, but I mean gown. Gowns was gowns then, that could stand alone. It was a merry time they had, ma'am." Thus, Lilly, always calls her beloved mistress. "Ma'am's grandmother, old as the hills, she came over from Hampshire, came to the wedding—riding all the way on a pillion behind her grandson—a deal pleasanter that, than railway-ing. That is a bit of the old lady's chintz. Mother has told me how straight she stood in it, and how she curtsied to show your mother and Miss Susan—Kin—Ken— Kemp—Oh, I forget her name. The young folks learned manners in her day. The old lady did not live to mount her pillion again. She died soon after the wedding and was buried here, and her tombstone is one of the oldest in the burying ground. It does not stand as straight as the old lady did. Is not that square pretty? pink shot on white. That was a bit of Miss Susan's dress. She came all the way from New York to be your mother's bride's-maid. She was the beauty of the city, and gay as a bird, or butterfly. She sang, and danced and frolicked, but for all that, she gained the old lady's heart and her son's too. Your uncle, he was a young minister then—a missionary to the Stockbridge Indians. They were here yet, and he had them all dressed up in the fine scarlet and purple broadcloths Queen Anne sent them, to show off to Miss Susan. But the old lady was the master hand, she did the courting, and one bright day she had two horses brought for them to ride together. She had given him a hint to tell his love-tale, as they rode up the hill and through the woods by the green pond. But when the horses came, the one for the minister was prancing and gay, and when he would have mounted he could not or dared not. So Miss Susan, a little fear-naught she was, ordered the saddles changed, and rode away laughing and cheering, and he, poor creature, after her. But they were not to hitch their horses together, for us often as he began to hem and ha, and stammer and so on, Miss Susan's horse would get the deuce into him, and off he would go, and at last it got through poor Mr. John's hair, that for love of his kin, she did not want to say him no and she could not say yes. Now, Miss__, can't you see her in that silk square! so rosy and so lively! "
I wiped away a tear that Lilly's bright vision had called forth. I saw this "Miss Susan" a few weeks since, now, herself, a granddame past ninety and blind! But that precious oil of a glad disposition that burned SO brightly in her youth still burns cheerily on; and though the fire of her earlier days be somewhat diminished, she is still the central light of her home circle.
"That's a piece of ma'am's dressing-gown," resumed Lilly, "that your father brought her from Philadelphia. It was handsome enough to wear to meeting, but ma'am always took most pains to look well at home. Your father's eyes was her looking-glass. She had it on when the little girl you were named for died. I can see her now as she bent down over the dead child, and I heard her soft voice saying 'The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be his name.' I had heard the minister preach from that text a thousand times, but it seemed to me then that I heard those words for the first time, as they rose
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out of her heart. She was bending over—that was the way she always took trouble—rising up against it only makes the blow the harder you know. They named you after her, but I minded it was long and long before ma'am called your name. It was Russy, or Rosy, or any thing but that name. "All the children had frocks like that," she continued, pointing to a pink and green plaid; "I can see them all now. One running out to feed the chickens, another bringing in eggs, one dressing dolls, and little Harley telling how many lions and tigers he had killed. Oh, dear, dear! Miss__, can it be they have all grown up, men and women, and are dead, gone forever! But that," she added, turning instinctively from these sad thoughts, "that is a bit of the gown your cousin Olive wore when the French Doctor came to court her, and slipped into the saddle-room to put on his nankins. Ben, unknowingly locked the door, and when the poor little fellow was let out he was as blue as indigo, and his teeth chattered so that Miss Olive could not tell whether he talked French or English."
"He got his answer in the shortest of all English words, did he not, Lilly?"
"Why, yes, he was French," reason enough, Lilly would have thought, had he issued from a Parisian dressing-room instead of a country saddle-house. " Miss Olive was odd," continued Lilly. "She kept 'on saying, no, no, to every one that came. I used to say, it’s just like winding a tangled skein, Miss Olive; if you begin with putting through your thread, so you will do to the 'end. But that Miss Olive did not mean, for she vowed if she lived to turn the old maid's corner she would kill herself. She did for all go fairly round it, and married a widower at last, who was looking out, as he said, for a permanent housekeeper. Even ma'am could not help smiling when she heard that. There's a season for all things," wisely added Lilly, though she had herself, tried the conjugal experiment at all seasons. Lilly now came down to the epoch of my own memories, and visions of the past crowded upon me. My school days, our breakfasts and dinners, our meetings and partings at the old home, our merry-makings and our tragedies, my school-mates, the partners of my life, the partners of my hoped-for immortality, all were brought forth into actual presence and glowing life by these little talismans! My blinding tears fell thick and heavy over them. Lilly dashed off the great drops that came in spite of her, and rolling up the quilt thrust it back into the old cupboard, muttering something about there being no use in crying. We parted without exchanging another word.
As I retraced my way to the village I marked the changes since this patchwork history was constructed. The Indians that figured in Queen Anne's broadcloths have been driven from their loved homes here farther and farther into the shadowy West and are melted away. The wooded sides of our mountains have been cleared to feed yonder smoking furnace. Those huge fabrics for our friend H.'s chemical experiments indicate discoveries in science that have changed the aspect of the world. The whistle reached my ear from the engine plying over the very track where our good old granddame found but a bridle-path. The meadows enriched by the overflowings of the river, and ploughed by the sun-beams remain, much as they were, when the Indians planted their corn here; but the white man has let the sun in upon the hill-side, has made his plantations and his drainings. Churches have been built and decayed and built again. The Bishop visits his Diocesan where 'Miss Susan's' missionary lover preached in an Indian dialect, and Puritanism holds kindly fellowship with the church. Houses have decayed and new ones have been built over the old hearthstone. New friends almost as good as the old have come among us. Families have multiplied, and sent forth members to join the grand procession towards the Oregon, and at this very moment the bell is ringing for a meeting of the town to extend the limits of our burying-ground, it being full!
All these changes, and the patch-work-quilt remains in its first gloss!
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 Patch-Work Quilt"
Subject
The topic of the resource
Servants and family history
Description
An account of the resource
An elderly Black woman's story of a patchwork quilt that was sewn during the thirty years she worked in the home of a White family.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss C. M. Sedgwick
Source
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The Columbian Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine [edited by John Inman and Robert A. West] p. 123-26.
Publisher
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Columbian Magazine
Date
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March 1846
Contributor
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J. Robinson
Relation
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Also collected in:
Sedgwick, Catharine M. "The Patch Work Quilt." Love of Quilts: A Treasury of Classic Quilting Stories. Ed. Margaret Aldrich. Minneapolis: Voyageur, 2004. 24-33. Google Books. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.
Language
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English
Type
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Document
1846
Columbian Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine
Consumption
Death
Germans
God
Indians
marriage
missionaries
Patch-work
quilts
Race
Relics
Saxon
servant
Stockbridge
Waterloo
West
-
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Title
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1850
Subject
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Stories published in 1850.
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Text
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"He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it"
There are incidents and combinations of circumstances in domestic life which, if faithfully recorded when they occur, would give to a succeeding age a more definite idea, a more lively impression of the spirit of bygone days than can be got from volumes of subsequent history. History, of necessity, deals mainly with public events and marked characters, exceptional from the mass of their contemporaries. We may compare its records to a map of Switzerland which gives you its stupendous mountains, its lakes, and rivers in dots and lines; while the domestic story is like a picture of Lauterbrunnen, with its characteristic narrow valley, its wonderful fall of the Staubach, its overhanging and converging cliffs, its Jungfrau in the background, and a single cottage, with its appurtenances of domestic utensils and commodities, telling the story of family life.
It is the conviction of the worth of such records that induces me to write the following story, some hints of which are taken from the archives of a Congregational church, which archives consist of a faithful record kept by its excellent minister for the space of fifty years. Some particulars are gathered from the generation that preceded me, persons not related by ties of blood to the parties, but connected with them by the vivid sympathies of village life. Other aid has been received from more apocryphal sources.
The names, alas! are now only on the rudely sculptured monuments of the burying-ground. We shall not take the liberty of using them. We shall for once designate the lower valley of the Housatonic by its euphonious Indian name Owasonook, instead of that given to it by the first Puritan settlers, who, in their designation, branded the virgin valley with a memorial of the "bank-note world," the old world of stocks and brokers.
This village of Owasonook has been favoured from the beginning. Missionaries were sent from Scotland to its aboriginal people. There, on the ample green where a village church now stands, and where generations are now laid in holy rest, Brainard expounded his doctrines, and there the excellent Sergeant ministered to his Indian congregation in their goodly show of broadcloth mantles, the gift of Queen Anne.
At the date of our humble story, Brainard had passed on to wilder tribes, Sergeant was gathered to his fathers, and a young man by the name of Stephen West, sound and zealous in doctrine, of good parts, and most gracious heart, was ordained over the small congregation of all the white people who then dwelt in the valley. There were then no dissenters from the established doctrine and independent government of the Puritan Church. The Baptists were unknown in New England. Methodism had not begun. Catholicism was held to be that faith over which the woman who sat on the seven hills reigned, and Episcopacy was in little better odour. The fathers of those days had no prophetic vision of the infinite diversity of shades of colour into which their religion was to be distributed among their descendants, from the deep dye of Papistry, to the faint outside shade, the evanescent and almost imperceptible hue of transcendentalism.
"Belief, not practice, was then prized at highest rate." Among the sturdiest in belief, the least scrupulous in practice, was Deacon Nathan Bay. I remember him well in his old age; that tall brawny figure, with broad and stooping shoulders, and short neck; that high intellectual brow, all written over with lines of calculation and craft; the cold gray eye, with bushy black brows that overhung them like thatch. His eyebrows were then still untouched by time. His hair was sabled and combed on each side of his face with a Pharisaical sleekness, that did not harmonize with his general air of cherished and allowed potentiality. His skin was as dark as a Spaniard's, his cheeks ploughed in deep furrows, his nose aquiline and rather handsome, his mouth sharklike. I believe he thus vividly lives in my imagination because, in my timid childhood, I have many a time felt my eyes spellbound to him, while he appeared to me the impersonation of the Schedoni of Mrs. Radcliffe's most terrible novel. I recoiled from him then—I have since had a sterner horror of him.
There was a little ewe-lamb dwelt under the rooftree of Deacon Bay, a fur-off orphan relative of his wife, who having a sufficient inheritance to indemnify the Deacon for all expenses on her account, he complied with his wife's wishes, and became her guardian and nominal protector. Jessie Blair was the child of godly parents; and the Deacon said he should have done the same by Jessie if she had been poor, for 'professora' should see to it, and fulfil the prophecy, that the seed of the righteous should never be seen begging their bread. The Deacon was scriptural in another point; no one harboured under his roof ever ate the bread of idleness. Jessie, who came there a petted (not spoiled) child, had her playful spirit soon sobered by the uniform routine of domestic toil. There is nothing duller, more soulless, than the daily recurrence and satisfaction of the lowest wants of our being. The pleasant lights of rural life were excluded from the Deacon's household, or rather converted to a dreary shadow, by the medium through which they passed. If he did not, like one of his contemporaries, marshal his children on Monday morning, and do up the week's whipping by an exactly equal and thorough application of the birch,* he kept down the spirit of his household more effectually by its mournful monotony. The Deacon's helpmate was a wife after the feudal pattern, of unquestioning conformity, and serflike obedience. The only indication that she was not merged in her husband—a drop of water lost in his ocean,—was a phraseology indicative of his distinct existence; as "the Deacon judges," and "the Deacon concludes." If her opinion were asked in divinity or ethics, her common reply was, "I don't know the Deacon's opinion, but I think as he thinks." This exemplary subject had one son of a former marriage, Isaac Remington. Isaac was a harmless young man of two or three and twenty. As far as quiet subserviency to the Deacon was concerned, he never escaped from his minority. He lives in tradition only as a still, steady, sleek youth, with a nose like the tower of Lebanon. Thus associated, the only fitting sustenance of poor Jessie's childhood was companionship with the chickens she fed, and the kittens that played in spite of the Deacon; and an occasional romp in the playtime at the village school.
Time went on, and in its progress unfolded manifold charms and graces in Jessie, so that when she reached the age of fifteen, when the half-open flower discloses its possible beauty, every eye turned admiringly and kindly on her.
There occurred about this time in the church, a revival of religion. Jessie, naturally enough, recoiled from religion as exhibited in the Deacon's family. Its cold formulas froze her spirit, but it as naturally melted in an atmosphere where she felt the influence of sympathy. Her gentle pastor received her confessions of her past opposition to the divine character with a joyful recognition of her perceptions of truth, and received her profession of submission and faith with tears of joy. Alas for poor Jessie! this faith and submission, so surely rewarded by their divine object, were destined to be cruelly tested by human tyranny.
Isaac was a subject of the same ' awakening" that brought Jessie into the fold, though there was never a term that seemed less applicable than this to Isaac. There was no vitality in the man—nothing to kindle, nothing to rouse, nothing to 'awake.' He passed through the examination to which young converts are subjected, he answered as others did, and was received to the communion of the church.
Not long after this there was a sort of curtain conversation between the Deacon and his wife to the following effect.
"Beauty is a temptation," observed the Deacon. This was a self-evident truth, and seemed a very inconsequential remark, but the good dame apparently did not think so. She looked up from her knitting with more expression than usual; there was meaning in her face; perhaps she anticipated something in the nature of a confession, for a hypocrite is not nearly so much a saint to his wife as a man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre. "It is best to clip the chicken's wings," continued the Deacon, "if you mean to keep the hen within bounds."
"Ah, ah, indeed!" said his wife with a tone of pleased comprehension, " the speckled hen's last brood got into the garden, and picked the seeds out of Jessie's flower-bed."
There was the dimmest smile at the corners of the Deacon's mouth. He proceeded: "It was a remarkable Providence that bound Jessie up in the same bundle with Isaac."
"There's many others in the same bundle," replied his literal wife; "there is scarce a lad in town that has not come in."
"True, it was a goodly harvest. But some stout shocks were not gathered in. There's Archy Henry among the reprobate—just such a spark as is like to catch a young girl's eye— a handsome build, and well-favoured, ruddy— plenty of brown hair — curling. I marked him at Colonel Davis's funeral singing out of the same psalm-book with Jessie. They both held on to the book, hands close together, and cheeks too near neighbours."
"Deacon, Jessie is but a child."
"In her sixteenth, wife—fast coming out of childhood. Notions grow apace at that age. 'Fast bind, fast find.' Would not you like Jessie for a daughter-in-law?"
"Why, if everything is suitable, and Isaac is of a coming disposition towards her—and she is willing—one of these days maybe I should."
The Deacon was of a temper to decree events, and let suitabilities take care of themselves.
"Willing!" he exclaimed, "what has a girl of fifteen to do but obey the will of her elders? I rather think you will find it 'suitable,' when I tell you that after deducting a reasonable sum for the cost of Jessie's board and education," (the actual outlay for her education had been two pounds, one shilling, and threepence) "she has one hundred pounds at interest."
"Dear me! a pretty fortune, Deacon!"
"Well, it is personal property, and will become Isaac's on the day they are married. Wait for Isaac's coming disposition!—Isaac is a dolt—saving your presence, ma'am. He says he 'never so much as thought on't,' the ninny !' But he won't object if father, mother, and Jessie consent.'"
To the astonishment of the congregation, a publishment of" intention of marriage between Isaac Remington and Jessie Blair," appeared on the church-door the next Sabbath. The tears that poor Jessie shed and the reluctance she felt were hidden in the secrecy of her own bosom and the privacy of her dreary home. She never doubted the duty of implicit obedience—she had no friend to authorize the rebellion of her own instincts. She did not suspect that her kind pastor had remonstrated with the Deacon on his consenting to the marriage of a child, too young to know her own mind; and in three weeks she received from him the marriage charge and benediction.
The union proved like many others, not unhappy, but a total waste. The seeds of virtue, of happiness, of progress in Jessie's character were like the seeds in the bosom of the earth, there to lie undeveloped and inactive to an unknown future—in this world it might be—it might be in another.
After six years of wedded life Isaac Remington died, and left Jessie a widow, just past her majority, with a boy five years old, with, as she believed, a property that, to her modest wants, was independence, and with the rational expectation of her son's succession to the Deacon's property. It was not then so much the custom as now for persons to endow charitable societies, and as the Deacon had no near relatives of his own, it was believed that he would transmit his hoarded gains to the heir of his wife.
The beautiful little widow naturally became at Isaac's death an object of close observation. The Deacon hardly waited for the funeral offices to be over, when he proposed that, as it was difficult for a young widow to be a widow indeed, Jessie should relinquish her independent home, and return to his watch and care. This she declined doing. She lived on a small farm on the borders of a lovely lake a little north of the village of Owasonook. Without probably being able to define why, she enjoyed the companionship of Nature, and grew to love as friends—as vital friends the forms of beauty around her. She declined the Deacon's proposition ;—he urged; she was resolute, and, to her amazement, he was gentle to her. He persisted, but with mildness. He often visited her. He always found it convenient, whenever he was in her neighbourhood, to drop in and ask how she was getting on, and often, to her astonishment, he brought her roses from the bushes she had planted at his door, or bunches of pinks from her bed in his garden, such pears as his crabbed trees bore, and early apples for her little Raphe.
"It's something new, your liking flowers, is it not, sir?" said Jessie to him, as she extended her hand to receive a nosegay he had brought to her. "Maybe so," he replied, detaining her hand for a moment, and pressing it, "but I love everything you love, Jessie." "Tones of voice express the affections," says Swedenborg. True, and bad as well as good ones. There was something in the tone, the manner, the look of Deacon Bay that was like a flash of lightning to a traveller in a dark night. To Jessie they revealed a danger and a terror that she had never dreamed of. The sagacious man read her face; he changed his manners, resumed his sanctimonious aspect and conversation, but still continued to urge Mrs. Remington's removal from the farm.
Jessie had been a widow rather more than a year and a day, when the Deacon, on entering the pathway that led to her dwelling, saw her with her little boy and Archy Henry going down the declivity behind her house to the lake. The just risen full moon lit up the western shore, so that the wave that rippled on the brink was like a silver rim to the lake. Bay followed the happy little company stealthily, like an unclean beast (as he was), watching his prey, and creeping behind a clump of young hemlocks, be continued to watch them there, as full of evil purpose as the evil spirit in Paradise. A paradise of beauty and innocence it was to this happy young pair.
The boat was so placed that it could not be reached dryshod. Henry swung the boy upon his shoulder and carried him to it; and after a little playful resistance on Jessie's part, he caught her in his arms, and placed her beside her boy. He then took off his overcoat, and put it under and around her feet, with perhaps not quite the grace of Raleigh, but with as respectful chivalry as the young courtier manifested to his royal mistress. The little boat was then pushed from its mooring, and was so gently rowed away, that it was long before the voices from it, in tones of tenderness and happiness, passed beyond Bay's hearing. His senses seemed endowed with preternatural acuteness to torment him. He went away brooding on ripening plans of mischief.
The next day he came again to the farm to remonstrate with Mrs. Remington on the bad economy of remaining there, when she might live free of cost in his house.
"I never did, sir, live in that way with you," she said, with a spirit that provoked the Deacon to reply.
"You have some one to back you, Jessie, or you would not dare to speak to me in this wise, and to hold out against the will of your elder, and your spiritual father as it were."
She blushed slightly, but she replied undaunted. "I am not alone, sir. I have that dear child, who will one day be a man—and, I trust, a staff for his mother to lean on."
"Well done! well done! But you had best consider what you are to lean on in the mean time." And then softening his tone to affected kindness, he added, "Perhaps you don't know that this place was bought with my partner's money, which might have been her son Isaac's, if he had survived her. You understand, Jessie? The deed was made out to me. The property is legally mine; she, you understand, being nobody—dead as it were—in the eye of the law; and though I mean it shall come into your boy's hands one day or other, in the mean time, and, following the golden rule, I shall take care of it, as if it were to all intents mine. I might make a pretty penny now, if I would," he added, with an indescribable expression of triumph and cupidity proper to his face. "This orchard and upland pasture, together with the joining tillage land, would make a master farm."
"What joining tillage land?" asked Jessie Remington eagerly.
"Why Archy Henry's farm," he answered, fixing his freezing eyes upon her; "I thought everybody knew that farm was mortgaged to me for more than it is worth—perhaps you did not?"
Poor Jessie! a fly caught in a spider's web was a faint type of her conscious misery and helplessness—the spider a fainter symbol of the gloating tyrant who now enjoyed his triumph over her. She sickened and turned away. But in another minute thoughts rose that overcame the fear of poverty, and she said courageously, "You can take possession here, sir, as soon as you please. I shall go at once."
"And come to my house, dearie?"
"No—no sir, never!"
"But you will, sweetheart," he said coaxingly, and drew her to him (she was standing near him), and would have kissed her, but instinctively she struck him on Ms face, and sprang from him, and her brave little boy catching his mother's feeling, without understanding it, hurled the wooden stool on which he had been sitting at the Deacon's head. The blow blinded and confused him for a moment. But when he rallied, he turned on mother and child such a look of black vengeance, that both instinctively shrank from him, and the mother, dragging the boy with her, escaped to an inner room, and bolted the door.
Wrath mastered every other passion in Bay's breast for the time.
"Unbolt your door," he cried. There was no reply. The poor mother and child were cowering together like frightened doves. "Hear me, you must," he continued. "You cannot help yourself—a pretty widow you—a hopeful professor! I have found out your plans—I have mine too, and we will see which is the strongest. Marry Archy Henry, and you will be ruined in this world—ruined in the next. Look for excommunication now, and poverty for ever. I saw you, you that could not so much as let me touch the ends of your dainty fingers, I saw you in Archy Henry's arms! Good-bye, Widow Remington"—he walked to the outer door, then returned, and added, "If you blab of what has taken place here to-day, no one will believe you—no one—and for every word you speak, I'll take revenge on Archy Henry— remember that! remember that!"
As the sound of his footsteps died away, Jessie Remington yielded to a burst of grief and despair. "Oh, don't cry, mother, dear mother," said her little boy, clasping his arms round her neck, "he is a bad man—I hate him —I always did hate him. When he first came in to-day, when you were up stairs, he asked me if Archy Henry was here last Saturday night. I would not tell him. I wish Archy would come every Saturday night, and every other night, and he, never—never!"
The mother fondly kissed the child, and I doubt not breathed a fervent Amen! Amen!
She revolved her miserable case. She now understood why Archy, who, she well knew had loved her from her childhood, long before that time when the Deacon had marked his I holding her hymn-book, had not yet since her freedom said one word of marriage, or by words declared his love to her. It needed no declaration. The current of his life, through all her married days, had flowed on without one beam of joy or hope. From the day of Remington's departure he had been a changed man; the cloud had passed from his brow, the gravity from his lips, and he had manifested, in every fitting way but by words, his reverence and tenderness for her.
"Matters have come to a crisis," was the result of her long reflection; "we must clearly understand each other, the sooner, the better."
The following evening Raphe's wish was fulfilled as it was most like to be, and Archy Henry came in, merely to bring a glass in which Jessie had sent some jelly to his invalid sister. "Why do you look so sad?" he asked Jessie, struck with her paleness and dejection.
"I have heard ill news," she replied, "and you, Archy, must tell me if it be wholly true. Is your farm mortgaged to Deacon Bay?"
"Yes."
"Should I be the last to know it, Archy?"
There was an undisguised tenderness in her voice and lovely face which overcame the resolution Henry had maintained, and mutual confessions and disclosures followed. They were like travellers on a perilous road, on whom the day dawns and the sun rises. The road may be more obstructed and perilous before than behind, but their hearts are strong and at peace. What obstructions, what perils can , appeal the spirits of young lovers in the first moments of avowed mutual love? A spell of enchantment is over their world—a spell of faith, hope, and joy.
When they descended from these sunny heights to the discussion of temporal affairs, it appeared that Archy's father, embarrassed by sickness and other misfortunes, had left his farm to his son encumbered by a mortgage to Deacon Bay—that the son had supported his aged mother, and met the many wants of a bedridden sister, and year after year paid the interest of the mortgage.
"More," he said, "till the last year I did not care to do, but since—since Raphe lost his father, I have been a stronger man—I have done two days' work in one, and now I see through the woods, and if I am but reasonably blessed for the three coming years, I shall be independent of the world and the Deacon, please God."
"Archy!"
"I do not speak profanely, Jessie—my heart is dancing, and I can't stand for p's and q's. As to this farm belonging to the Bays, I don't believe a word on't, nor do I care one stiver about it. I prefer that you should give me nothing that ever had any connexion with Bay or his household, but the name you bear, and the sooner you give that up to me the better. Oh, excuse me, I forgot little Raphe. You know I love him—I see nothing but you in him." Jessie did not resent this. She had no affectation of any sort, and certainly no pretension to sensitiveness on the score of her late husband; but Jessie was considerate in her love, and she meant not to increase Archy's heavy burdens, but patiently to wait till he had cleared off the mortgage. The point, however, was no farther mooted that evening. Our lovers were not "gravelled for lack of matter."
Mrs. Remington did not communicate the Deacon's injuries or threats. She had the grace of discretion, which all women (or all men) have not, and she had a certain feeling of obligation to him as deacon and church member, of which even his unworthiness had not divested her.
She addressed a letter to him, asking what property her late husband left, and how it was conditioned.
The following is a copy of his answer.
"WIDOW REMINGTON:—Received yours duly. In reply. Your husband held no property in his own name, his father having willed his whole estate, real and personal, to his worthy wife, now my companion. With the personal I purchased the farm on which you live. The deed, as you are apprised, stands in my name. The property will probably go to your son at my decease. You were possessed of one hundred pounds at the time of your marriage; sixty thereof was expended in apparel and in household furniture—twenty drawn by the late Isaac for housekeeping, and spent as you best know how—the remaining twenty I have paid out for the doctor's bill, Isaac's coffin, shroud, and grave-digging. My accounts are ready for exhibition to the Probate Court when called for.
"Yours to command.
"NATHAN BAY."
Enclosed in this paper was a document of a very different complexion, almost too base to be presented to our readers It concluded with "burn this."
"Burn it 1 indeed I will!" exclaimed Jessie, and, her face and neck mantling with indignation, she threw it into the fire. She kept the indignity to herself, and communicated to Henry only the business letter.
He was indignant at its style; believed there had been fraud, but he perceived it was covered up by legal forms, and he let the whole thing go—he was too happy to care. "I see the man's drift," he said. "He means to bring you back to his own house a dependent. He thinks if he can get possession of your child, j he holds you by the heartstrings. The boy J will have his spirit broken as your—his father j had—you will be oppressed—I shall be tortured —it is not right—it is no way suitable—there is but one course—thank God!" "Dear Archy!"
"Why should not I thank God, Jessie? You must consent to the publishment going up next Sunday."
"Not till I have consulted some one—remember, Archy, I am a church member—you are not. Let me speak to Mr. West."
"No—no—no. He is scrupulous. I am not a member—on your account I wish I were."
"Oh! on your own account, Archy!"
Archy assented. But when he learned that Mrs. Remington thought it more than probable that when the church were apprised of her intention of marrying out of their pale, she should be subjected to discipline, and delay would ensue, he proposed that they should forego the publication, and take advantage of their proximity to the state of New York, where the ceremony could be legally performed without the embarrassing prelude of a publication. This proposition she resisted. She felt in all simplicity of heart a reverence for the authorities of the church. To her it was the type of God's power and justice, and she trembled at the thought of incurring its displeasure. But her lover pleaded, her heart urged, and above all, the horror of being again brought into proximity to Bay terrified her, and she at last consented. The next day she, her little boy, and Archy Henry, drove over to a magistrate's on the border of New York, and the marriage ceremony was there duly performed. Thus the lamb was secured into the fold at the moment the wolf was sure of his prey. The Deacon's rage had none of the ordinary manifestations. To his good, unsuspecting pastor and to the church, he appeared the disappointed father, sorrowing after a godly sort.
A meeting of the church was immediately called. But before they met the pastor visited the offending member. He tried in vain to assume the tone of stern rebuke. His gentle heart failed him. Tears actually' streamed from his eyes as he told poor Jessie that her violation of the laws of God and the known rules of the church, to which she had promised submission when she took the solemn vows of membership, rendered her liable to the censure of the church, and excommunication from it.
She made no excuse—she offered no palliation—she said she was conscious she had done wrong.
"Would she," he asked, "confess in the middle aisle of the meeting-house, before the congregation of the people, that she had sinned, and gone in opposition to God's law, and the law of his holy church, in marrying an unsanctified man, one who lived in daily violation of God's law?"
"Oh no, sir, I cannot say that—that is not my view of my husband—he is not a member —that I am sure I grieve for, but he is better, sir, than some that are."
"That is not to the purpose, child; will you make the confession?"
"I cannot say, sir, that I am sorry to have Archy Henry for my partner for life; but for the manner of my marriage I am sorry, and I am willing humbly to confess it."
"That is not enough ;—solemn charges are before the church."
"What are they, sir?"
"That you received visits from your spark on Saturday nights."
"I did, sir, and I am not ashamed to own it."
"But, surely you know that Saturday night is held to be, and undoubtedly is, holy time."*
"Yes, sir, I know that Saturday night is a portion of the Sabbath, when we should not think our own thoughts. But, sir, I can truly say there was nothing dishonourable in the sight of man, or unholy in the sight of the Lord, that passed between Archy and me. Is this all?"
"No: it is said your husband habitually breaks the third commandment."
"But not blasphemously; thoughtlessly he does, but he knows it grieves me, and I think he will not again."
The good Doctor said there were other charges which had been confided to him, but as he trusted they would not be presented at the church meeting, he should not trouble her with them. He notified her that a meeting was appointed on a certain day near at hand, and he told her that she was expected to be present.
Poor Jessie! Her soul was disquieted—she reproached herself with not having walked worthy of her profession. The displeasure of the church was to her the sure sign of the displeasure of her Divine Master, and not all the arguments, the soothing, and the love of her husband could comfort her. She had two powerful reasons for making no disclosures in relation to the Deacon. She feared exciting the indignation of her husband, which once thoroughly provoked against the man he already doubted and disliked, could not be allayed; and she felt a religious reluctance to throw on the church the scandal of the Deacon's gross conduct. She would not involve the good in the scoffs the bad deserved.
The church met according to appointment. Mrs. Henry was present. Her youth and her docility conciliated many kind hearts in her favour. Her beauty, perhaps, told with some, —a beauty so softened and shaded by modesty, that not the oldest and most rigid thought it a duty to rebuke their instincts in its favour. Deacon Bay was present. He affected to take small part in the case, but he now and then craftily threw in an evil word that he meant to be lead in a wavering scale.
The meeting was divided. Some were for restoring her to full communion on her making the partial public profession she proffered. To this merciful party the pastor inclined. Deacon Bay and his few adherents were for immediate excommunication. Unanimity being unattainable, the meeting adjourned. While the clouds thus darkened over poor Mrs. Henry, she received a notice from Deacon Bay that she must remove from her present dwelling-house, and Henry was warned that the mortgage on his farm was about to be foreclosed, and that he must prepare to surrender it.
Temporal and spiritual ruin were raining down on the young couple, and to poor Mrs. Henry's susceptible conscience and excited imagination they came in the form of judgments for the violation of her church covenant. At this day. when old prestiges have melted away, it is as difficult to sympathize with Mrs. Henry as it would be to feel any serious concern for a child terrified at a shadow on his nursery wall. To her the trouble was a terrible reality. She was certainly more remarkable for tenderness of conscience than strength of mind. The austerest judgment of her brethren of the church was ratified by her own convictions. She seems, in concealing the wrongs of old Bay, to have forgotten the palliation they afforded her. She dared not take counsel or consolation from her husband. He was not a church-member, and therefore not qualified to give it. Still, as her truth was inflexible, she could not say she repented her marriage, and that she could not, to her diseased mind, was a sign of her reprobate state. Her health failed; she sunk into deep dejection; and when Deacon Bay came to notify her of another church meeting on her account, and said to her with a malignity worthy an inquisitor racking his victim, "God has put forth his hand against you"—" He has —he has!" she said,—hypocrisy had achieved its triumph over a pure and susceptible nature.
The pastor seems to have felt the deepest tenderness for the poor bewildered lamb of his flock. He sent his wife to bring her in his own chaise to the church-meeting.
Just before she entered Mrs. Henry's gate, she saw Archy Henry driving out of it with a load of furniture. Deacon Bay was at the moment passing in his wagon. Henry, irritated and confused, did not drive accurately, and his heavy wagon hit the Deacon's in a manner just gently to tip it over, and give the Deacon a somerset. They were both moving slowly at the time, and no great harm was done. The Deacon was exasperated, and no doubt secretly vowed vengeance, and thought with diabolical satisfaction that when Henry arrived at his home with his wife's chattels, he would find a lawyer taking possession of the premises in his, the Deacon's, name.
There was a full meeting of the church—not a member absent. Intimation of the pastor's state of mind were given in the opening prayer. He prayed that though their erring sister passed through the fire, it might not consume her, and through deep waters, they might not overwhelm her.
In the conclusion of his prefatory address to the meeting he said, "It was safer to imitate the Divine Being in mercy than in judgment."
"Who shall presume to stay his judgments?" said the lugubrious Deacon; "' whom the Lord smiteth is smitten.'"
And poor little Mrs. Henry seemed to verify his words.
Attenuated, pale, and trembling, she sat beside the dignified and erect figure of the pastor's wife, looking like a condemned and self-condemned culprit, who would fain call upon the rocks and mountains to hide her.
As a minister of the everlasting Gospel, and a member of the Congregational Church of New England, Stephen West, our revered pastor, had the most unqualified reverence for its institutions, and no monk of the thirteenth century was more unquestionably submissive to the rules and requirements of his order. But within this stern, artificial form beat a heart as true to the instincts and offices of love as is the needle to its pole.
"Brethren and sisters," resumed the pastor, "it is known to you that there has not been that unanimity in the case before you that usually attends our deliberations. The division has been perhaps more in feeling than opinion. It is natural," he said, his voice trembling, and the tears of his ever-ready sympathy flowing down his checks, "to feel for one in evident and deep distress of mind, and who, though as far as yet appeareth, she hath not sufficient grace to make the required concessions, hath not resisted the rebukes of conscience. And as her fault has not been of an aggravated nature, but such as one still young was greatly liable to, we may consider how far, without sacrificing duty, we may concede to our distressed sister. She is not, as you see, in a state of bodily health to be much questioned. I have had repeated interviews with her, and her request to me this morning was to state to you that she remains at the same point where you last left her,—she humbly asks the pardon of the ohurch for her violation of her church covenant, in having married in a manner contrary to their known rules. But truth obliges her to say that she does not and cannot repent of the choice she has made. The case is wholly before you. Any of the brethren who have remarks to make will please make them now, and will, I trust, feel called on to deal kindly as well as truly with our much-afflicted sister."
There was a murmuring of voices among the women, voices touched with sympathy; the pastor's wife was seen to pass her arm around Mrs. Henry, and draw her closer to her, and the hardest countenances of the brethren were softened. Bay looked around him, and beginning to feel that he had been playing a losing game, he made a bold and desperate move.
He rose, and after some stammering and hemming, he said," That as this was like to be the final discussion of the case of the backslidden member, he felt himself called on to state some aggravating circumstances which ho had withheld as long as there was any hope of bringing said member to a full confession of her wrongdoing. He felt it to be duty to tell the brethren and the sisters that said offender had not rushed upon the 'thick bosses' without warning, advice, and offer of needful help and support in her widowhood."
Till this moment Mrs. Henry's eyes had been downcast and her cheek blanched. Suddenly her colour rose, and an unwonted fire lit up her mild hazel eye, as she raised and fixed it on the Deacon. This was noticed by her friends, and it was also observed that his eye did not meet hers.
"My relation to her first husband," he continued, " made me her suitable guardian; I knew that her youth, widowhood, and comeliness exposed her to many temptations; I felt for her temporal necessities, and I offered her and her fatherless child a home in my house. This she rejected in a manner to make me surmise there was some covered sin, and when, after ascertaining the same, I went to deal with her as directed in Matthew, 18th chapter, 15th verse, and on, she, urged by her bad conscience, and doubtless tempted and incited thereto by Satan, struck me on the face."
"Deacon Bay!" exclaimed Mrs. Henry, involuntarily rising.
"Sit down, my child," said the Moderator, but in a tone too gentle for reproof, and she sat down overwhelmed with confusion. "Her child," continued the Deacon, "prompted, and seemingly justified by evil example, took up the three-legged oaken stool on which he was seated, and threw it at my head with such force, that I verily believe he was aided by the Evil One—ever ready to serve bad ends. So forceful was the blow, which, but for a just Providence, might have ended my life,—that I still carry the scar," he concluded, lifting the long sleek black locks from his swarthy brow, and showing a deep scar frightfully near to his temple. All eyes turned from him to Mrs. Henry, who was still steadily looking in her accuser's face.
At this moment there was a loud knocking at the door, and before it could be answered Archy Henry entered, his cheek and eye glowing with angry fires. There was a general sensation and movement through the assembly. Without heeding it, he strode to his wife's side. She laid her hand on his arm, and cast an imploring look on him.
"Don't be scared—don't be anxious," he whispered; "I know what I am about."
"This is an intrusion—very unsuitable, Mr. Archibald Henry," said the Moderator; "quite contrary to the rules of our church-meetings."
"I know it, sir," he answered, making a half and hurried reverence to the pastor, "but when a man's house is on fire he can't mind rules and regulations. I have promised to cherish and protect this woman, and I will, so help me God!"
"Is there no force here to put out this profane fellow?" asked Deacon Bay.
"No, none," replied Henry, "I'll trouble no one to answer that question but myself. I am nailed here, and you are nailed there, till my business is done. Do you know this handwriting ?" he continued, taking from his pocket a crumpled and weather-stained paper, and holding up the written side to the Deacon.
The Deacon was driven by surprise and dismay from every subterfuge. His bile rose, and his colour darkened to a mahogany hue. He made no answer.
"Do you know it?" reiterated Henry.
No reply.
"Perhaps you do, sir," he continued, approaching the desk, and holding it before the pastor, who at once bowed assent, "and you, sir, and you?" he added, showing it to the associate deacons. "Let me say one word, and then I will trouble you to hear me read it. I found this paper on removing a hencoop which had protected it from the weather. How it came there I know not, but I leave it to any member of this meeting to say if it has not been providentially preserved."
The paper in Henry's hand was that note from Bay to Jessie, which was taken by the draught up the chimney, when Mrs. Henry believed she had committed it to the flames. After whirling in the air it fell in an angle of the fence. A hencoop was accidentally set upon it. There it was destined to lie, as safely as if it were filed away in a pigeon-hole, till, in the general upturning of the moving, it came into the right hands. That this was really providential, it takes no great amount of faith to believe.
"This note," continued Henry, "was written by that man who stands there—that Deacon Nathan Bay. With permission, I will read it. It appears to have been enclosed in a business letter and begins thus:—
"This note is for more interesting matters. You were harsh yesterday, Jessie, but if you will come home, I will forgive and forget. It was not well to return a blow for a kiss—when one smiteth on the right cheek—you understand."
At this startling refutation of the Deacon's calumny, uttered not fifteen minutes before, a low sound arose more resembling a hiss than any ever before heard in a meeting of that solemn nature. Henry smiled bitterly, and proceeded.
"'You saw, Jessie, how bad example is followed. As crows the old, so crows the young. My head yet aches with the blow of that joint-stool. Your boy will be a limb, if he is not soon brought under nurture. Come back then, Jessie. The old woman is as good as nobody. You shall be true mistress of the house, possessor of heart and estate, and in due time, you and your boy heirs of all I possess. Isn't this better than marrying a penniless spark, beggaring your little chap, and drudging through your lifetime for a mother-in-law, and her bedridden gal? Burn this.'
"When this precious note was written," continued Henry, " Mrs. Remington was living on a farm which by some sort of legal huggermugger Nathan Bay claims as his. By like crafty measures he has spun his web round all the other property belonging to this little woman and her late husband. He threatened to turn her and her boy homeless and penniless upon the world. And when ho added insult to these injuries, she had no alternative but to marry a poor fellow whose father had been cheated out of house and home by this same Deacon Nathan Bay—church-member"—
"Stop, stop, Archy Henry!" cried the pastor, rising and striking his cane on the ground vehemently, "this is out of place—unseemly— it must go no farther"—
"Unseemly! Sir, should a villain be treated as one of the elect? Be patient with me one moment, sir—I do not—truly I do not mean any disrespect to you, or to any good person in this meeting; but, sir, is it not in place, and my bounden duty to rescue my wife, who has been driven to the edge of insanity by this wolf in sheep's clothing—Deacon Nathan Bay?" Henry paused for a moment. His indignation was felt to be righteous, and he was suffered to proceed. "For weeks that should have been the happiest of our lives, she has been bowed down, sorrowing and self-condemned— for what? for marrying me—not a church member to be sure—as Deacon Nathan Bay is —but an honest man, and one that hates a scoundrel—for marrying a poor fellow without a penny, with an afflicted mother and sister to be trusted to her care. If the manner seems to you hasty and indecorous, this document," he held up the Deacon's note, "informs you that she was driven by insult and fear to forego the usual forms and ceremonies. If she has violated the letter of your laws, who has better kept their spirit? Not by word or look has she betrayed, even to me, the insults and wrongs of this Deacon Nathan Bay. She has taken meekly, and as if she deserved them, reproof and exhortation—she has borne patiently the persecution, the malice, and the fiendish revenge of this man, who dares to hold up his head here as her accuser and judge. I don't know about your rules here, but I am sure she is, and will remain in good standing and full membership with the church above. I am sure there is not one of you, but in his own home and in his own heart thinks the better, and not the worse of her now under dealing, for the whole transaction on which you are deciding. Sir," he concluded, looking round, and marking, with evident satisfaction, the convinced and acquiescing expression on the faces of the church-members, "I do not now fear to leave our cause with you."
The church-meeting before separating passed a vote of oblivion and restoration to full membership in favour of Mrs. Jessie Henry.
The Deacon's case was deferred to future consideration. He subsequently passed through a course of discipline, professed and confessed all that could be required, and was restored to nominal membership, but stripped of the honours of his office, and deprived for ever, as hypocrites are, by the universal law of God, of the faith of all good men and true.
His ejection of Henry from his paternal property was prevented by a sagacious lawyer, who detected excessive charges in the Deacon's accounts, and fraudulent advantages taken by him. The Deacon, not daring to expose the facts to litigation, was glad to make concessions which rendered it easy for Henry to redeem the property. His little wife restored to tranquility, to self-esteem, and to her good standing in the church, realized a happiness rarely enjoyed in the married state.
Sedgwick's notes:
* The Doctor's own words—still on his records.
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
"Owasonook"
Subject
The topic of the resource
Deception, Marital Property
Description
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A widower is deceived by a Deacon into believing she has been left nothing. When she marries a man outside of the church she is threatened with excommunication.
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss Sedgwick
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Sartain’s Union Magazine [edited by Caroline M. Korkland] NY. Vol. VI: p. 399-407
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Sartain's Magazine
Date
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June 1850
Contributor
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J. Robinson
Language
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English
Type
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Document
Ann Radcliffe
bible
marriage
New York
Queen Anne
religion
Sartain's Union Magazine
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d1b3fcd22f7faa30a09169e8e7bdeebc
Dublin Core
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Title
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1830
Subject
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Stories published in 1830.
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Glory and gain the industrious tribe provoke.--Pope.
The little secluded and quiet village of H. lies at no great distance from our “literary emporium.” It was never remarked or remarkable for anything, save one mournful preeminence, to those who sojourned within its borders — it was duller even than common villages. The young men of the better class all emigrated. The most daring spirits adventured on the sea. Some went to Boston; some to the south; and some to the west; and left a community of women who lived like nuns, with the advantage of more liberty and fresh air, but without the consolation and excitement of a religious vow. Literally, there was not a single young gentleman in the village — nothing in manly shape to which these desperate circumstances could give the form and quality and use of a beau. Some dashing city blades, who once strayed from the turnpike to this sequestered spot, averred that the girls stared at them as if, like Miranda, they would have exclaimed —
“What 1st? a spirit?
Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir,
It carries a brave form: — But 'tis a spirit.”
A peculiar fatality hung over this devoted place. If death seized on either head of a family, he was sure to take the husband; every woman in H. was a widow or maiden; and it is a sad fact, that when the holiest office of the church was celebrated, they were compel led to borrow deacons from an adjacent village. But, incredible as it may be, there was no great diminution of happiness in consequence of the absence of the nobler sex. Mothers were occupied with their children and housewifery, and the young ladies read their books with as much interest as if they had lovers to discuss them with, and worked their frills and capes as diligently, and wore them as complacently, as if they were to be seen by manly eyes. Never were there pleasanter gatherings or parties (for that was the word even in their nomenclature) than those of the young girls of H. There was no mincing — no affectation — no hope of passing for what they were not — no envy of the pretty and fortunate — no insolent triumph over the plain and demure and neglected, — but all was good will and good humour. They were a pretty circle of girls — a garland of bright fresh flowers. Never were there more sparkling glances, — never sweeter smiles — nor more of them. Their present was all health and cheerfulness; and their future, not the gloomy perspective of dreary singleness, for somewhere in the passage of life they were sure to be mated. Most of the young men who had abandoned their native soil, as soon as they found themselves getting along, loyally returned to lay their fortunes at the feet of the companions of their childhood.
The girls made occasional visits to Boston, and occasional journeys to various parts of the country, for they were all enterprising and independent, and had the characteristic New England avidity for seizing a “privilege;” and in these various ways, to borrow a phrase of their good grandames, a door was opened for them, and in due time they fulfilled the destiny of women.
We spoke strictly, and a la lettre, when we said that in the village of H. there was not a single beau. But on the outskirts of the town, at a pleasant farm, embracing hill and valley, upland and meadow land ; in a neat house, looking to the south, with true economy of sunshine and comfort, and overlooking the prettiest winding stream that ever sent up its sparkling beauty to the eye, and flanked on the north by a rich maple grove, beautiful in spring and summer, and glorious in autumn, and the kindest defence in winter; — on this farm and in this house dwelt a youth, to fame unknown, but known and loved by every inhabitant of H., old and young, grave and gay, lively and severe. Ralph Hepburn was one of nature's favourites. He had a figure that would have adorned courts and cities; and a face that adorned human nature, for it was full of good humour, kindheartedness, spirit, and intelligence; and driving the plough or wielding the scythe, his cheek flushed with manly and profitable exercise, he looked as if he had been moulded in a poet's fancy — as farmers look in Georgics and Pastorals. His gifts were by no means all external. He wrote verses in every album in the village, and very pretty album verses they were, and numerous too — for the number of albums was equivalent to the whole “female” population. He was admirable at pencil sketches; and once with a little paint, the refuse of a house painting, he achieved an admirable portrait of his grandmother and her cat. There was, to be sure, a striking likeness between the two figures, but he was limited to the same colours for both; and besides, it was not out of nature, for the old lady and her cat had purred together in the chimney corner, till their physiognomies bore an obvious resemblance to each other. Ralph had a talent for music too. His voice was the sweetest of all the Sunday choir, and one would have fancied, from the bright eyes that were turned on him from the long line and double lines of treble and counter singers, that Ralph Hepburn was a note book, or that the girls listened with their eyes as well as their ears. Ralph did not restrict himself to psalmody. He had an ear so exquisitely susceptible to the “touches of sweet harmony,” that he discovered, by the stroke of his axe, the musical capacities of certain species of wood, and he made himself a violin of chestnut, and drew strains from it, that if they could not create a soul under the ribs of death, could make the prettiest feet and the lightest hearts dance, an achievement far more to Ralph's taste than the aforesaid miracle. In short, it seemed as if nature, in her love of compensation, had showered on Ralph all the gifts that are usually diffused through a community of beaux. Yet Ralph was no prodigy; none of his talents were in excess, but all in moderate degree. No genius was ever so good humoured, so useful, so practical; and though, in his small and modest way, a Crichton, he was not, like most universal geniuses, good for nothing for any particular office in life. His farm was not a pattern farm — a prize farm for an agricultural society, but in wonderful order considering — his miscellaneous pursuits. He was the delight of his grandfather for his sagacity in hunting bees — the old man's favourite, in truth his only pursuit. He was so skilled in woodcraft that the report of his gun was as certain a signal of death as the tolling of a church bell. The fish always caught at his bait. He manufactured half his farming utensils, improved upon old inventions, and struck out some new ones; tamed partridges — the most untameable of all the feathered tribe; domesticated squirrels; rivalled Scheherazade herself in telling stories, strange and long — the latter quality being essential at a country fireside; and, in short, Ralph made a perpetual holiday of a life of labour.
Every girl in the village street knew when Ralph's wagon or sleigh traversed it; indeed, there was scarcely a house to which the horses did not, as if by instinct, turn up while their master greeted its fair tenants. This state of affairs had continued for two winters and two summers since Ralph came to his majority and, by the death of his father, to the sole proprietorship of the “Hepburn farm,” — the name his patrimonial acres had obtained from the singular circumstance (in our moving country) of their having remained in the same family for four generations. Never was the matrimonial destiny of a young lord, or heir just come to his estate, more thoroughly canvassed than young Hepburn's by mothers, aunts, daughters, and nieces. But Ralph, perhaps from sheer good heartedness, seemed reluctant to give to one the heart that diffused rays of sunshine through the whole village.
With all decent people he eschewed the doctrines of a certain erratic female lecturer on the odious monopoly of marriage, yet Ralph, like a tender hearted judge, hesitated to place on a single brow the crown matrimonial which so many deserved, and which, though Ralph was far enough from a coxcomb, he could not but see so many coveted.
Whether our hero perceived that his mind was becoming elated or distracted with this general favour, or that he observed a dawning of rivalry among the fair competitors, or whatever was the cause, the fact was, that he by degrees circumscribed his visits, and finally concentrated them in the family of his Aunt Courland.
Mrs. Courland was a widow, and Ralph was the kindest of nephews to her, and the kindest of cousins to her children. To their mother he seemed their guardian angel. That the five lawless, daring little urchins did not drown themselves when they were swimming, nor shoot themselves when they were shooting, was, in her eyes, Ralph's merit; and then he was so attentive to Alice, her only daughter — a brother could not be kinder. But who would not be kind to Alice? she was a sweet girl of seventeen, not beautiful, not handsome perhaps, — but pretty enough — with soft hazel eyes, a profusion of light brown hair, always in the neatest trim, and a mouth that could not but be lovely and loveable, for all kind and tender affections were playing about it. Though Alice was the only daughter of a doting mother, the only sister of five loving boys, the only niece of three single, fond aunts, and, last and greatest, the only cousin of our only beau, Ralph Hepburn, no girl of seventeen was ever more disinterested, unassuming, unostentatious, and unspoiled. Ralph and Alice had always lived on terms of cousinly affection — an affection of a neutral tint that they never thought of being shaded into the deep dye of a more tender passion. Ralph rendered her all cousinly offices. If he had twenty damsels to escort, not an uncommon case, he never forgot Alice. When he returned from any little excursion, he always brought some graceful offering to Alice.
He had lately paid a visit to Boston. It was at the season of the periodical inundation of annuals. He brought two of the prettiest to Alice. Ah! little did she think they were to prove Pandora's box to her. Poor simple girl! she sat down to read them, as if an annual were meant to be read, and she was honestly interested and charmed. Her mother observed her delight. "What have you there, Alice?" she asked, "Oh the prettiest story, mamma! — two such tried faithful lovers, and married at last ! It ends beautifully: I hate love stories that don't end in marriage."
"And so do I, Alice," exclaimed Ralph, who entered at the moment, and for the first time Alice felt her cheeks tingle at his approach. He had brought a basket, containing a choice plant he had obtained for her, and she laid down the annual and went with him to the garden to see it set by his own hand.
Mrs. Courland seized upon the annual with avidity. She had imbibed a literary taste in Boston, where the best and happiest years of her life were passed. She had some literary ambition too. She read the North American Review from beginning to end, and she fancied no conversation could be sensible or improving that was not about books. But she had been effectually prevented, by the necessities of a narrow income, and by the unceasing wants of five teasing boys, from indulging her literary inclinations; for Mrs. Courland, like all New England women, had been taught to consider domestic duties as the first temporal duties of her sex. She had recently seen some of the native productions with which the press is daily teeming, and which certainly have a tendency to dispel our early illusions about the craft of authorship. She had even felt some obscure intimations, within her secret soul, that she might herself become an author. The annual was destined to fix her fate. She opened it — the publisher had written the names of the authors of the anonymous pieces against their productions. Among them the found some of the familiar friends of her childhood and youth.
If, by a sudden gift of second sight, she had seen them enthroned as kings and queens, she would not have been more astonished. She turned to their pieces, and read them, as perchance no one else ever did, from beginning to end — faithfully. Not a sentence — a sentence! not a word was skipped. She paused to consider commas, colons, and dashes. All the art and magic of authorship were made level to her comprehension, and when she closed the book, she felt a call to become an author, and before she retired to bed she obeyed the call, as if it had been, in truth, a divinity stirring within her. In the morning she presented an article to her public, consisting of her own family and a few select friends. All applauded, and every voice, save one, was unanimous for publication — that one was Alice. She was a modest, prudent girl; she feared failure, and feared notoriety still more. Her mother laughed at her childish scruples. The piece was sent off, and in due time graced the pages of an annual. Mrs. Courland's fate was now decided. She had, to use her own phrase, started in the career of letters, and she was no Atalanta to be seduced from her straight onward way. She was a social, sympathetic, good hearted creature too, and she could not bear to go forth in the golden field to reap alone.
She was, besides, a prudent woman, as most of her countrywomen are, and the little pecuniary equivalent for this delightful exercise of talents was not over looked. Mrs. Courland, as we have somewhere said, had three single sisters — worthy women they were — but nobody ever dreamed of their taking to authorship. She, however, held them all in sisterly estimation. Their talents were magnified as the talents of persons who live in a circumscribed sphere are apt to be, particularly if seen through the dilating medium of affection.
Miss Anne, the oldest, was fond of flowers, a successful cultivator, and a diligent student of the science of botany. All this taste and knowledge, Mrs. Courland thought, might be turned to excellent account; and she persuaded Miss Anne to write a little book entitled “Familiar Dialogues on Botany.” The second sister, Miss Ruth, had a turn for education (“bachelor's wives and maid's children are always well taught”), and Miss Ruth undertook a popular treatise on that subject. Miss Sally, the youngest, was the saint of the family, and she doubted about the propriety of a literary occupation, till her scruples were overcome by the fortunate suggestion that her coup d'essai should be a Saturday night book entitled “Solemn Hours,” — and solemn hours they were to their unhappy readers. Mrs. Courland next besieged her old mother. "You know, mamma," she said, "you have such a precious fund of anecdotes of the revolution and the French war, and you talk just like the “Annals of the Parish,” and I am certain you can write a book fully as good."
"My child, you are distracted! I write a dreadful poor hand, and I never learned to spell — no girls did in my time."
"Spell! that is not of the least consequence — the printers correct the spelling."
But the honest old lady would not be tempted on the crusade, and her daughter consoled herself with the reflection that if she would not write, she was an admirable subject to be written about, and her diligent fingers worked off three distinct stories in which the old lady figured.
Mrs. Courland's ambition, of course, embraced within its widening circle her favourite nephew Ralph. She had always thought him a genius, and genius in her estimation was the philosopher's stone. In his youth she had laboured to persuade his father to send him to Cambridge, but the old man uniformly replied that Ralph was a smart lad on the farm, and steady, and by that he knew he was no genius. As Ralph's character was developed, and talent after talent broke forth, his aunt renewed her lamentations over his ignoble destiny. That Ralph was useful, good, and happy — the most difficult and rare results achieved in life — was nothing, so long as he was but a farmer in H. Once she did half persuade him to turn painter, but his good sense and filial duty triumphed over her eloquence, and suppressed the hankerings after distinction that are innate in every human breast, from the little ragged chimneysweep that hopes to be a boss, to the political aspirant whose bright goal is the presidential chair.
Now Mrs. Courland fancied Ralph might climb the steep of fame without quitting his farm; occasional authorship was compatible with his vocation. But alas! she could not persuade Ralph to pluck the laurels that she saw ready grown to his hand. She was not offended, for she was the best natured woman in the world, but she heartily pitied him, and seldom mentioned his name without repeating that stanza of Gray's, inspired for the consolation of hopeless obscurity. :
“Full many a gem of purest ray serene,”
Poor Alice's sorrows we have reserved to the last, for they were heaviest. “Alice,” her mother said, “was gifted; she was well educated, well informed; she was everything necessary to be an author.” But Alice resisted; and, though the gentlest, most complying of all good daughters, she would have resisted to the death — she would as soon have stood in a pillory as appeared in print. Her mother, Mrs. Courland, was not an obstinate woman, and gave up in despair. But still our poor heroine was destined to be the victim of this cacoethes scribendi; for Mrs. Courland divided the world into two classes, or rather parts — authors and subjects for authors; the one active, the other passive. At first blush one would have, thought the village of H. rather a barren field for such a reaper as Mrs. Courland, but her zeal and indefatigableness worked wonders. She converted the stern scholastic divine of H. into as much of a La Roche as she could describe; a tall wrinkled bony old woman, who reminded her of Meg Merrilies, sat for a witch; the school master for an Ichabod Crane; a poor half wilted boy was made to utter as much pathos and sentiment and wit as she could put into his lips; and a crazy vagrant was a God-send to her. Then every “wide spreading elm,” “blasted pine,” or “gnarled oak,” flourished on her pages. The village church and school house stood there according to their actual dimensions. One old pilgrim house was as prolific as haunted tower or ruined abbey. It was surveyed outside, ransacked inside, and again made habitable for the reimbodied spirits of its founders.
The most kind hearted of women, Mrs. Courland's interests came to be so at variance with the prosperity of the little community of H., that a sudden calamity, a death, a funeral, were fortunate events to her. To do her justice she felt them in a twofold capacity. She wept as a woman, and exulted as an author. The days of the calamities of authors have passed by. We have all wept over Otway and shivered at the thought of Tasso. But times are changed. The lean sheaf is devouring the full one. A new class of sufferers has arisen, and there is nothing more touching in all the memoirs Mr. D'Israeli has collected, than the trials of poor Alice, tragi-comic though they were. Mrs. Courland's new passion ran most naturally in the worn channel of maternal affection. Her boys were too purely boys for her art — but Alice, her sweet Alice, was preeminently lovely in the new light in which she now placed every object. Not an incident of her life but was inscribed on her mother's memory, and thence transferred to her pages, by way of precept, or example, or pathetic or ludicrous circumstance. She regretted now, for the first time, that Alice had no lover whom she might introduce among her dramatis personse. Once her thoughts did glance on Ralph, but she had not quite merged the woman in the author; she knew instinctively that Alice would be particularly offended at being thus paired with Ralph. But Alice's public life was not limited to her mother's productions. She was the darling niece of her three aunts. She had studied botany with the eldest, and Miss Anne had recorded in her private diary all her favourite's clever remarks during their progress in the science. This diary was now a mine of gold to her, and faithfully worked up for a circulating medium. But, most trying of all to poor Alice, was the attitude in which she appeared in her aunt Sally's “solemn hours.” Every aspiration of piety to which her young lips had given utterance was there printed. She felt as if she were condemned to say her prayers in the market place. Every act of kindness, every deed of charity, she had ever performed, were produced to the public. Alice would have been consoled if she had known how small that public was; but, as it was, she felt like a modest country girl when she first enters an apartment hung on every side with mirrors, when, shrinking from observation, she sees in every direction her image multiplied and often distorted; for, notwithstanding Alice's dutiful respect for her good aunts, and her consciousness of their affectionate intentions, she could not but perceive that they were unskilled painters. She grew afraid to speak or to act, and from being the most artless, frank, and, at home, social little creature in the world, she became as silent and as stiff as a statue. And, in the circle of her young associates, her natural gaiety was constantly checked by their winks and smiles, and broader allusions to her multiplied portraits; for they had instantly recognized them through the thin veil of feigned names of persons and places. They called her a blue stocking too; for they had the vulgar notion that everybody must be tinged that lived under the same roof with an author. Our poor victim was afraid to speak of a book — worse than that, she was afraid to touch one, and the last Waverley novel actually lay in the house a month before she opened it. She avoided wearing even a blue ribbon, as fearfully as a forsaken damsel shuns the colour of green.
It was during the height of this literary fever in the Courland family, that Ralph Hepburn, as has been mentioned, concentrated all his visiting there. He was of a compassionate disposition, and he knew Alice was, unless relieved by him, in solitary possession of their once social parlour, while her mother and aunts were driving their quills in their several apartments.
“Oh! what a changed place was that parlour! Not the tower of Babel, after the builders had forsaken it, exhibited a sadder reverse; not a Lancaster school, when the boys have left it, a more striking contrast. Mrs. Courland and her sisters were all “talking women,” and too generous to encroach on one another's rights and happiness. They had acquired the power to hear and speak simultaneously. Their parlour was the general gathering place, a sort of village exchange, where all the innocent gossips, old and young, met together. “There are tongues in trees,” and surely there seemed to be tongues in the very walls of that vocal parlour. Everything there had a social aspect. There was something agreeable and conversable in the litter of netting and knitting work, of sewing implements, and all the signs and shows of happy female occupation.
Now, all was as orderly as a town drawing room in company hours. Not a sound was heard there save Ralph's and Alice's voices, mingling in soft and sup pressed murmurs, as if afraid of breaking the chain of their aunt's ideas, or, perchance, of too rudely jarring a tenderer chain. One evening, after tea, Mrs. Courland remained with her daughter, instead of retiring, as usual, to her writing desk. — "Alice, my dear," said the good mother, "I have noticed for a few days past that you look out of spirits. You will listen to nothing I say on that subject; but if you would try it, my dear, if you would only try it, you would find there is nothing so tranquillizing as the occupation of writing."
"I shall never try it, mamma."
"You are afraid of being called a blue stocking. Ah! Ralph, how are you?" — Ralph entered at this moment. — "Ralph, tell me honestly, do you not think it a weakness in Alice to be so afraid of blue stockings?"
"It would be a pity, aunt, to put blue stockings on such pretty feet as Alice's."
Alice blushed and smiled, and her mother said — "Nonsense, Ralph; you should bear in mind the celebrated saying of the Edinburgh wit — “no matter how blue the stockings are, if the petticoats are long enough to hide them."
"Hide Alice's feet! Oh aunt, worse and worse!"
"Better hide her feet, Ralph, than her talents— that is a sin for which both she and you will have to answer. Oh! you and Alice need not exchange such significant glances! You are doing yourselves and the public injustice, and you have no idea how easy writing is."
"Easy writing, but hard reading, aunt."
"That's false modesty, Ralph. If I had but your opportunities to collect materials" — Mrs. Courland did not know that in literature, as in some species of manufacture, the most exquisite productions are wrought from the smallest quantity of raw material — " There's your journey to New York, Ralph," she continued, "you might have made three capital articles out of that. The revolutionary officer would have worked up for the “Legendary;” the mysterious lady for the “Token;” and the man in black for the “Remember Me;” — all founded on fact, all romantic and pathetic."
"But mamma," said Alice, expressing in words what Ralph's arch smile expressed almost as plainly, "you know the officer drank too much; and the mysterious lady turned out to be a runaway milliner; and the man in black — oh! what a theme for a pathetic story! — the man in black was a widower, on his way to Newhaven, where he was to select his third wife from three re commended candidates."
"Pshaw! Alice: do you suppose it is necessary to tell things precisely as they are?"
"Alice is wrong, aunt, and you are right; and if she will open her writing desk for me, I will sit down this moment, and write a story — a true story — true from beginning to end; and if it moves you, my dear aunt, if it meets your approbation, my destiny is decided."
Mrs. Courland was delighted; she had slain the giant, and she saw fame and fortune smiling on her favourite. She arranged the desk for him herself; she prepared a folio sheet of paper, folded the ominous margins; and was so absorbed in her bright visions, that she did not hear a little by-talk between Ralph and Alice, nor see the tell-tale flush on their cheeks, nor notice the perturbation with which Alice walked first to one window and then to another, and finally settled herself to that best of all sedatives — hemming a ruffle. Ralph chewed off the end of his quill, mended his pen twice, though his aunt assured him “printers did not mind the penmanship,” and had achieved a single line when Mrs. Courland's vigilant eye was averted by the entrance of her servant girl, who put a packet into her hands. She looked at the direction, cut the string, broke the seals, and took out a periodical fresh from the publisher. She opened at the first article — a strangely mingled current of maternal pride and literary triumph rushed through her heart and brightened her face. She whispered to the servant a summons to all her sisters to the parlour, and an intimation, sufficiently intelligible to them, of her joyful reason for interrupting them.
Our readers will sympathize with her, and with Alice too, when we disclose to them the secret of her joy. The article in question was a clever composition written by our devoted Alice when she was at school. One of her fond aunts had preserved it; and aunts and mother had combined in the pious fraud of giving it to the public, unknown to Alice. They were perfectly aware of her determination never to be an author. But they fancied it was the mere timidity of an unfledged bird; and that when, by their innocent artifice, she found that her opinions could soar in a literary atmosphere, she would realize the sweet fluttering sensations they had experienced at their first flight. The good souls all hurried to the parlour, eager to witness the coup de theatre. Miss Sally's pen stood emblematically erect in her turban; Miss Ruth, in her haste, had overset her inkstand, and the drops were trickling down her white dressing, or, as she now called it, writing gown; and Miss Anne had a wild flower in her hand, as she hoped, of an undescribed species, which, in her joyful agitation, she most unluckily picked to pieces. All bit their lips to keep impatient congratulation from bursting forth. Ralph was so intent on his writing, and Alice on her hemming, that neither noticed the irruption; and Mrs. Courland was obliged twice to speak to her daughter before she could draw her attention.
"Alice, look here — Alice, my dear."
"What is it, mamma? something new of yours?”
"No; guess again, Alice."
"Of one of my aunts, of course?"
"Neither, dear, neither. Come and look for yourself, and see if you can then tell whose it is."
Alice dutifully laid aside her work, approached and took the book. The moment her eye glanced on the fatal page, all her apathy vanished — deep crimson overspread her cheeks, brow, and neck. She burst into tears of irrepressible vexation, and threw the book into the blazing fire.
The gentle Alice! Never had she been guilty of such an ebullition of temper. Her poor dismayed aunts retreated; her mother looked at her in mute astonishment; and Ralph, struck with her emotion, started from the desk, and would have asked an explanation, but Alice exclaimed — "Don't say anything about it, mamma — I cannot bear it now."
Mrs. Courland knew instinctively that Ralph would sympathize entirely with Alice, and quite willing to avoid an explanation, she said — "Some other time, Ralph, I'll tell you the whole. Show me now what you have written. How have you begun?"
Ralph handed her the paper with a novice's trembling hand.
"Oh! how very little! and so scratched and interlined! but never mind — “c'est le premier pas qui coute.”
"While making these general observations, the good mother was getting out and fixing her spectacles, and Alice and Ralph had retreated behind her. Alice rested her head on his shoulder, and Ralph's lips were not far from her ear. Whether he was soothing her ruffled spirit, or what he was doing, is not recorded. Mrs. Courland read and re-read the sentence. She dropped a tear on it. She forgot her literary aspirations for Ralph and Alice — forgot she was herself an author — forgot everything but the mother; and rising, embraced them both as her dear children, and expressed, in her raised and moistened eye, consent to their union, which Ralph had dutifully and prettily asked in that short and true story of his love for his sweet cousin Alice.
In due time the village of H. was animated with the celebration of Alice's nuptials: and when her mother and aunts saw her the happy mistress of the Hepburn farm, and the happiest of wives, they relinquished, without a sigh, the hope of ever seeing her an AUTHOR.
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
"Cacoethes Scribendi"
Subject
The topic of the resource
Women writers, love and marriage, village life.
Description
An account of the resource
A young woman is embarrassed when her writing is published by her family without her knowledge.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss Sedgwick
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<em>The Atlantic Souvenir</em>. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Lea, 17-38.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1830
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
J. Robinson
D. Gussman
Relation
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Also collected in: <em>Stories of American Life</em>, vol. 3, Ed. Mary Russell Mitford (London, 1830), pp. 162-186.<br /><em>Tales and Sketches</em>. By Miss Sedgwick. (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1835), pp. 165-181.<br /><em>Provisions: A Reader from 19th-Century American Women</em>. Ed. Judith Fetterley. Bloomington, (Indiana UP, 1985) pp. 49-59. <br /><em>The Norton Anthology of American Literature</em>, Vol. I, Ed. Nina Baym. (New York: Norton, 1998) pp.1007-1017.
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https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/26296e72eac821b8bd9ce1c06a832d89.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=DmP8VDeM5a2fBrIvu6sYulBBg4a1oL1eIc478jA6v9q8bwr6AeSjo1yV1t9HpgG%7E6zfwA-3DvhxNp9l-LHDVnwuMNAzy3N3hjFA7MyrTNmXHMOydbjEq7LtWDyQKRc40GGE4E6DHbLc1QU3P3hlz-O5GeNQ-OVnk6JJU7JilppMsFOBV%7EJ-ZnCqKFVqaMokiFxrfJKkbFyGfPXFJvmHrSB6eqcPBJUfBUxQzUCMPGjjIuS-gh58nSkRi4khX9diTNW4J-Ub%7E5jcaR-umhYvVHGcR72RjsQXVjGuAgM3SG%7EEseQuWkF7S0en7ewmCZmqpgKKJpTxM7-872pw-NJ8bLg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
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1834
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Old Maids.
"To be the mistress of some honest man's house, and the means of making neighbours happy, the poor easy, and relieving strangers, is the most creditable lot a young woman can look to, and I heartily wish it to all here." — PIRATE.
"Mrs. Seton, Emily Dayton is engaged to William Moreland!"
"To William Moreland. Well, why should she not be engaged to William Moreland?"
"Why should she, rather?"
"I know not Emily Dayton's ' why, ' but ladies' reasons for marrying are as ' thick as blackberries.' A common motive with girls under twenty is the eclat of an engagement — the pleasure of being the heroine of bridal festivities — of receiving presents — of being called by that name so enchanting to the imagination of a miss in her teens — ' the bride.'"
"But Emily Dayton, you know, is past twenty."
"There is one circumstance that takes place of all reason — perhaps she is in love."
"In love with William Moreland! No, no, Mrs.
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Seton — there are no 'merry wanderers of the night' in these times to do Cupid's errands, and make us dote on that which we should hate."
"Perhaps then, as she is at a rational age, three or four and twenty, she may be satisfied to get a kind sensible protector."
"Kind and sensible, truly! He is the most testy, frumpish, stupid man you can imagine."
"Does she not marry for an establishment?"
"Oh no! She is perfectly independent, mistress of everything at her father's. No, I believe her only motive is that which actuates half the girls — the fear of being an old maid. This may be her last chance. Despair, they say, makes men mad — and I believe it does women too.
"It is a fearful fate."
"An old maid's? Yes, most horrible."
"Pardon me, Anne, I did not mean that ; but such a fate as you anticipate for Emily Moreland — to be yoked in the most intimate relation of life, and for life, to a person to whom you have clung to save you from shipwreck, but whom you would not select to pass an evening with. To such a misery there can be no ' end, measure, limit, bound.'"
"But, my dear Mrs. Seton, what are we to do? — all women cannot be so fortunate as you are."
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"Perhaps not. But so kind is the system of compensation in this life — such the thirst for happiness, and so great the power of adaptation in the human mind, that the conjugal state is far more tolerable than we should expect when we see the mismated parties cross its threshold. Still there can be no doubt that its possible happiness is often missed, and such is my respect for my sex, and so high my estimate of the capabilities of married life, that I cannot endure to see a woman, from the fear of being an old maid, driven into it, thereby forfeiting its highest blessings."
"You must nevertheless confess, Mrs. Seton, that there are terrors in the name."
"Yes, I know there are; and women are daily scared by them into unequal and wretched connexions. They have believed they could not retain their identity after five and twenty. That unless their individual existence was merged in that of the superior animal, every gift and grace with which God has endowed them would exhale and leave a 'spectral appearance' — a sort of slough of woman — an Aunt Grizzel, or Miss Lucretia McTab. I have lived, my dear Anne, to see many of the mists of old superstitions melting away in the light of a better day. Ghost is no longer a word to conjure with —
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witches have settled down into harmless and unharmed old women; and I do not despair of living to see the time when it shall be said of no woman breathing, as I have heard it said of such and such a lady, who escaped from the wreck at the eleventh hour, that she 'married to die a Mrs.'"
"I hate, too, to hear such things said, but tell me honestly, Mrs. Seton, now when no male ears are within hearing, whether you do not, in your secret soul, think there is something particularly unlovely, repelling, and frightful, in the name of an old maid."
"In the name, certainly; but it is because it does not designate a condition but a species. It calls up the idea of a faded, bony, wrinkled, skinny, jaundiced personage, whose mind has dwindled to a point — who has outlived her natural affections — survived every love but love of self, and self-guarded by that Cerberus suspicion — in whom the follies of youth are fresh when all its charms are gone — who has retained, in all their force, the silliest passions of the silliest women — love of dress, of pleasure, of admiration; who, in short, is in the condition of the spirits in the ancients' Tartarus, an impalpable essence tormented with the desires of humanity. Now turn, my dear Anne, from this hideous picture to
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some of our acquaintance who certainly have missed the happiest destiny of woman, but who dwell in light, the emanation of their own goodness. I shall refer you to actual living examples — no fictions."
"No fictions, indeed, for then you must return to the McTabs and Grizzles. Whatever your philanthropy may hope for that most neglected portion of our sex, no author has ventured so far from nature as to portray an attractive old maid. Even Mackenzie, with a spirit as gentle as my Uncle Toby's, and as tender as that of his own 'Man of Feeling,' has written an essay in ridicule of 'old maids.'"
"And you are not perhaps aware, Anne, that he has written a poem called the ' Recantation,' and dedicated it to his single daughter, a most lovely woman, who was the staff and blessing of his old age. In your wide range of reading cannot you think of a single exception to the McTabs and Grizzles?"
"Miss Farrer's 'Becca Duguid,' but she is scarcely above contempt, trampled on by the children, and the tool of their selfish and lazy mammas."
"There is one author, Anne, the most beloved, and the most lamented of all authors, who has not ventured to depart from nature, but has escaped prejudice, and prejudice in some of its most prevailing
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forms. He has dared to exhibit the Paynim Saladin as superior to the Christian crusader. He has dispelled the thick clouds that enveloped the ' poor Israelite,' the most inveterate of all prejudices, transmitted from age to age, and authorised by the fancied sanctions of religion. I said the clouds were dispelled, but do they not rather hang around the glorious Rebecca, the unsullied image of her Maker, as the clouds that have broken away from the full moon encircled her, and are converted by her radiance to a bright halo?"
"Mrs. Seton! Mrs. Seton! you are, or I am getting lost in all this mist and fog. What have Paynims and Jews to do with old maids? I do not remember an old maid in all Sir Walter's novels, excepting, indeed, Alison — Martha Trapbois — Meg Dods — one of Monkbarns' womankind, and Miss Yellowley, a true all-saving, fidgeting, pestering old maid, and the rest of them are entertaining but certainly not very exalting members of any sisterhood."
"But these are not my examples, Anne. I confess that they are fair examples of follies and virtues that, if not originated, are exaggerated and made conspicuous by single life. I confess too that for such foibles matrimony is often a kind and safe shelter.
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But to my examples. Sir Walter — and who is more poetically just than Sir Walter? — has abandoned to the desolate, tragic, and most abhorred fate of old maids, his three first female characters — first in all respects, in beauty, in mind, in goodness, first in our hearts. The accomplished Flora M'lvor — the peer less Rebecca, and the tender, beautiful Minna."
"Bless me! I never thought of this."
"No, nor has one in a thousand of the young ladies who have admired these heroines laid the moral of their story to heart. Perhaps not one of the fair young creatures who has dropped a tear over the beautiful sentence that closes the history of Minna,* has been conscious that she was offering involuntary homage to the angelic virtues of an old maid. The very term would have wrought a disenchanting spell."
"I confess, Mrs. Seton, I am in what is vulgarly called a ' blue maze.' My perceptions are as imperfect as the man's in scripture who was suddenly cured of blindness. Besides I was never particu--
* [Sedgwick's note] "Thus passed her life, enjoying, from all who approached her, an affection enhanced by reverence, insomuch that when her friends sorrowed for her death, which arrived at a late period of her existence, they were comforted by the fond reflection, that the humanity which she then laid down, was the only circumstance which had placed her, in the words of scripture, ' A little lower than the angels.'"
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larly skilful at puzzling out a moral; will you have the goodness to extract it for me?"
"Certainly, Anne, as I am the lecturer, this is my duty. First, I would have young ladies believe that all beautiful and loveable young women do not of course get married — that charms and virtues may exist, and find employment in single life — that a single woman, an old maid, (I will not eschew the name,) may love and be loved if she has not a husband, and children of her own. I would have her learn that if, like Flora M'lvor, she has been surrounded by circumstances that have caused her thoughts and affections to flow in some other channel than love, she need not wed a chance Waverly to escape single life; that if, like Rebecca, she is separated by an impassable gulf from him she loves, she need not wed one whom she does not love, but like the high souled Jewess she may transmute ' young Cupid's fiery shafts,' to chains that shall link her to all her species; and if like poor Minna she has thrown away her affections on a worthless object, she may live on singly, and so well that she will be deemed but ' little lower than the angels.'
"After all it is not such high natures as these that need to be fortified by argument, or example. They are born equal to either fortune. But I would en--
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treat all my sex — those even who have the fewest and smallest gifts — to reverence themselves, to remember that it is not so much the mode of their brief and precarious existence that is important, as the careful use of those faculties that make existence a blessing here, and above all hereafter, where there is certainly 'no marrying, nor giving in marriage;' but I am growing serious, and of course, I fear, tiresome to young ears."
"Oh, no, no, Mrs. Seton. These are subjects on which girls are never tired of talking nor listening; besides, you know you promised me some examples — such as Miss Hamilton and Miss Edgeworth, I suppose."
"No, Anne, these belong to the great exceptions I have mentioned, 'equal to either fortune,' who, in any condition, would have made their 'owne renowne, and happie days.'"
I could adduce a few in our own country, known to both of us, who are the ornament of the high circles in which they move, but for obvious reasons I select humble persons — those who, like some little rivulet unknown to fame, bless obscure and sequestered places. There is Violet Flint — I always wondered how she came by so appropriate a name. That little
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flower is a fit emblem for her — smiling in earliest spring, and in latest fall — requiring no culture, and yet rewarding it — neglected and forgotten when the gay tribes of summer are caressed, and yet always looking from its humble station with the same cheerful face — bright and constant through the sudden reverses of autumn, and the adversity of the roughest winter. Such is the flower, and such is Violet Flint. But as I am now in realities, I must call her by the old maidenish appellation that, spoiling her pretty name, they have given to her, 'Miss Vily.' She lives, and has for the last twenty years lived, with her brother Sam. He married young, a poor invalid, who, according to Napoleon's scale of merit, is a great woman, having given to the commonwealth nine or ten — more or less — goodly sons and daughters. After the children were born, all care of them, and of their suffering mother, devolved on Violet. Without the instincts, the claims, the rights, or the honours of a mother, she has not only done all the duties of a mother, but done them on the sure and broad basis of love. She has toiled and saved, and made others comfortable and enjoying, while she performed the usually thankless task of ordering the economy of a very frugal household. She has made the happy happier, tended the sick,
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and solaced the miserable. She sheltered the weak, and if one of the children strayed she was the apologist and intercessor. With all this energy of goodness the cause is lost in the blessed effects — she never appears to claim applause or notice. She is not only second best; but when indulgence or pleasure is to be distributed, her share is last and least — that is, according to the usual selfish reckoning. But according to a truer and nobler scale, her amount is greatest, for she has her share in whatever happiness she sees in any living thing."
How many married dames are there who repeat every fifteen minutes, my husband, my children, my house, and glorify themselves in all these little personalities, who might lay down their crowns at the feet of Violet Flint ! — Miss Vily, the old maid.
"The second example that occurs to me, is Sarah Lee. Sarah has not, like Violet, escaped all the peculiarities that are supposed to characterise the 'Single-sides.' With the chartered rights of a married lady to fret, to be particular, and to have a way of her own, her temper would pass without observation; but being an old maid, she is called, and I must confess is, rather touchy. But what are these sparks, when the same fire that throws
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them off keeps warm an overflowing stream of benevolence? — look into her room."
"Oh, Mrs. Seton! I have seen it, and you must con fess it is a true 'Singleside' repository."
"Yes, I do confess it — nor will I shrink from the confession, for I wish to select for my examples, not any bright particular star, but persons of ordinary gifts, in the common walks of life. Had Sarah been married she would have been a thrifty wife, and pains taking mother, but she wore away her youth in devotion to the sick and old — and now her kindness, like the miraculous cruise, always imparting and never diminishing, is enjoyed by all within her little sphere. Experience has made her one of the best physicians I know. She keeps a variety of labelled medicines for the sick, plasters and salves of her own compounding, and materials with which she concocts food and beverages of every description, nutritious and diluent; in short, she has some remedy or solace for every ill that flesh is heir to. She has a marvelous knack of gathering up fragments, of most ingeniously turning to account what would be wasted in another's hands. She not only has comfortables for shivering old women, and well patched clothes for neglected children, but she has always some pretty favour for a bride — some kind
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token for a new-born baby. And then what a refuge is her apartment for the slip-shod members of the family who are in distress for scissors, penknife, thimble, needle, hook and eye, buttons, a needle-full of silk or worsted of any particular colour. How many broken hearts she has restored with her inexhaustible glue-pot — mending tops, doll's broken legs, and all the luckless furniture of the baby-house — to say nothing of a similar ministry to the 'minds dis eased' of the mammas. Sarah Lee's labours are not always in so humble a sphere — 'He who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before,' says a political economist, 'is a benefactor to his race.' If so, Sarah Lee takes high rank.
"Two blades of grass! Her strawberry beds produce treble the quantity of any other in the village. Her potatoes are the ' greatest yield' — her corn the earliest — her peas the richest — her squashes the sweetest — her celery the tenderest — her raspberries and currants the greatest bearers in the country. There is not a thimble-full of unoccupied earth in her garden. There are flowers of all hues, seasons, and climes. None die — none languish in her hands.
"My dear Anne, I will not ask you if an existence so happy to herself, so profitable to others,
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should be dreaded by herself, neglected or derided by others. Yet Sarah Lee is an old maid."
"You are, I confess, very happy in your instances, Mrs. Seton, but remember the old proverb, 'one swallow does not make a summer.'"
"I have not done yet — and you must remember that in our country, where the means of supporting a family are so easily attained, and when there are no entails to be kept up at the expense of half a dozen single sisters, the class of old maids is a very small one. Many enter the ranks, but they drop off in the natural way of matrimony. Few maintain the 'perseverance of saints.' Among those few is one, who, when she resigns the slight covering that invests her spirit, will lay down 'all she has of humanity' — our excellent friend, Lucy Ray.
"She is now gently drawing to the close of a long life, which I believe she will offer up without spot or blemish. She began life with the most fragile constitution. She has had to contend with' that nervous susceptibility of temperament that so naturally engenders selfishness and irascibility, and all the miseries and weaknesses of invalidism. Not gifted with any personal beauty, or grace, she was liable to envy her more fortunate cotemporaries. Without genius, talents, or accomplishments to at--
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tract or delight, she has often been slighted — and what is far worse, must have been always liable to the suspicion of slights. But suspicion, that creator and purveyor of misery, never darkened her serene mind. She has lived in others and for others, with such an entire forgetfulness of self that even the wants and weakness of her mortal part seem scarcely to have intruded on her thoughts. She has resided about in the families of her friends — a mode of life which certainly has a tendency to nourish jealousy, servility, and gossipping. But for what could Lucy Ray be jealous or servile? She craved'' nothing — she asked nothing, but, like an unseen, unmarked Providence, to do good ; and as to gossipping, she had no turn for the ridiculous, no belief of evil against any human being — and as to speaking evil, 'on her lips was the law of kindness.' You would hardly think, Anne, that a feeble, shrinking creature, such as I have described, and truly, Lucy Ray, could have been desired, as an inmate with gay young people, and noisy, turbulent children. She was always welcome, for, like her Divine Master, she came to minister — not to be ministered unto.
"Lucy, like the Man of Ross, is deemed passing rich by the children, and an unfailing resource to the poor in their exigencies, though her income
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amounts to rather less than one hundred dollars!!
"We sometimes admire the art of the Creator more in the exquisite mechanism of an insect than in the formation of a planet, and I have been more struck with the power of religion in the effect and exaltation it gave to the humble endowments of this meek woman, than by its splendid results in such a life as Howard's. Lucy Ray, by a faithful imitation of her master, by always aiding and never obstructing the principle of growth in her soul, has, through every discouragement and disability, reached a height but 'little lower than the angels;' and when her now flickering light disappears, she will be lamented almost as tenderly (alas! for that almost) as if she were a mother; and yet, Anne, Lucy Ray is an old maid."
"You half persuade me to be one too, Mrs. Seton."
"No, Anne, I would by no means persuade you or any woman to prefer single life. It is not the 'prim rose path.' Nothing less than a spirit of meekness, of self-renunciation, and of benevolence, can make a woman, who has once been first, happy in a subordinate and second best position. And this under ordinary circumstances is the highest place
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of a single woman. Depend upon it, my dear young friend, it is safer for most of us to secure all the helps to our virtues that attend a favourable position; besides, married life is the destiny Heaven has allotted to us, and therefore best fitted to awaken all our powers, to exercise all our virtues, and call forth all our sympathies. I would persuade you that you may give dignity and interest to single life, that you may be the cause of happiness to others, and of course happy yourself — for when was the fountain dry while the stream continued to flow? If single life, according to the worst view of it, is a moral desert, the faithful, in their passage through it, are refreshed with bread from Heaven and water from the rock.
"I shall conclude with a true story. The parties are not known to you. The incidents occurred long ago, and I shall take the liberty to assume names; for I would not, even at this late day, betray a secret once confided to me, though time may long since have outlawed it. My mother had a school-mate and friend whom I shall call Agnes Grey. Her father was a country clergyman with a small salary, and the blessing that usually attends it — a large family of children. Agnes was the eldest, and after her following a line of boys, as long as Ban--
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quo's. At least, some ten years after Agnes, long waited and prayed for, appeared a girl, who cost her mother her life.
"The entire care of the helpless little creature devolved on Agnes. She had craved the happiness of possessing a sister, and now, to a sister's love, she added the tenderness of a mother. Agnes' character was formed by the discipline of circumstances — the surest of all discipline. A host of turbulent boys, thoughtless and impetuous, but kind-hearted, bright, and loving, had called forth her exertions and affections, and no one can doubt, either as lures or goads, had helped her on the road to heaven. Nature had, happily, endowed her with a robust constitution, and its usual accompaniment, a sweet temper; so that what were mountains to others, were mole hills to Agnes. 'The baby,' of course, was the pet lamb of the fold. She was named, for her mother, Elizabeth; but, instead of that queenly appellation, she was always addressed by the endearing diminutive of Lizzy. Lizzy Gray was not only the pet of father, brothers, and sister at home — but the plaything of the village.
"The old women knit their brightest yarn into tippets and stockings for the ' minister's motherless little one' (oh, what an eloquent appeal was in
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those words!) the old men saved the ' red cheeked' apples for her — the boys drew her, hour after hour, in her little wagon, and the girls made her rag babies. Still she was not in any disagreeable sense an enfant gatee. She was like those flowers that thrive best in warm and continued sunshine. Her soft hazel eye, with its dark sentimental lashes, the clear brunette tint of her complexion, and her graceful flexible lips, truly ex pressed her tender, loving, and gentle spirit. She seemed formed to be sheltered and cherished — to love and be loved; and this destiny appeared to be secured to her by her devoted sister, who never counted any exertion or sacrifice that procured an advantage or pleasure for Lizzy. When Lizzy was about fourteen, a relative of the family, who kept a first rate boarding school in the city, offered to take her for two years, and give her all the advantages of her school, for the small consideration of fifty dollars per annum. Small as it was, it amounted to a tithe of the parson's income. It is well known, that, in certain parts of our country, everything (not always discreetly) is sacrificed to the hobby — education. Still the prudent father, who had already two sons at college, hesitated — did not consent till Agnes ascertained that by keeping a little school in the village she might obtain
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half the required sum. Her father, brothers, and friends all remonstrated. The toils of a school, in addition to the care and labour of her father's family, was, they urged, too much for her — but she laughed at them. 'What was labour to her if she could benefit Lizzy — dear Lizzy!' All ended, as might be expected, in Lizzy going to the grand boarding school. The parting was a great and trying event in the family. It was soon followed by a sadder. The father suddenly sickened and died — and nothing was left for his family hut his house and well kept little garden. What now was to be done?— - College and schools to be given up? — No such thing. In our country, if a youth is rich he ought to be educated; if he is poor he must be. The education is the capital whereby they are to live hereafter. It is obtained in that mysterious but unfailing way — ' by hook and by crook.'"
The elder Grays remained in college — Agnes enlarged her school — learned lessons in mathematics and Latin one day, and taught them the next ; took a poor, accomplished young lady from some broken down family in town into partnership, and received a few young misses as boarders into her family. Thus, she not only was able to pay ' dear Lizzy's' bills regularly, but to aid her younger brothers. Her
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energy and success set all her other attractions in a strong light, and she was admired and talked about, and became quite the queen of the village.
"I think it was about a year after her father's death, that a Mr. Henry Orne, a native of the village, who was engaged in a profitable business at the south, returned to pass some months at his early home. His frequent visits to the parsonage, and his attentions, on all occasions, to Agnes, soon became matter of very agreeable speculation to the gossips of the village. 'What a fine match he would be for Agnes! — such an engaging, well-informed young man, and so well off!' Agnes' heart was not steel; but though it had been exposed to many a flame she had kindled, in had never yet melted."
"Pardon me, Mrs. Seton, for interrupting you — was Agnes pretty?"
"Pretty? The word did not exactly suit her. At the time of which I am now speaking, she was at the mature age of five and twenty; which is called the perfection of womanhood. Prettiness is rather appropriate to the bud than the ripened fruit. Agnes, I have been told, had a fine person — symmetrical features, and so charming an expression that she was not far from beautiful, in the eyes of strangers, and quite a beauty to her friends and lovers.
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Whether it were beauty, manners, mind, or heart, I know not — one and all probably — but Henry Orne soon became her assiduous and professed admirer. Till now Agnes had lived satisfied and happy with subordinate affections. She had never seen anyone that she thought it possible she could love as well as she loved those to whom nature had allied her. But now the sun arose, and other lights became dim — not 'that she loved Caesar less, but she loved Rome more.' Their mutual faith was plighted, and both believed, as all real lovers do, that the world never contained so happy, so blessed a pair, as they were.
"Lizzy's second year at school was nearly ended, and one month after her return the marriage was to be solemnised. In the meantime Agnes was full of the cares of this world. The usual preparations for the greatest occasion in a woman's life are quite enough for any single pair of hands, but Agnes had to complete her school term, and the possibility of swerving from an engagement never occurred to her.
"Lizzy arrived, as lovely a creature as she had appeared in the dreams of her fond sister. In the freshness and untouched beauty of her young existence, just freed from the trammels of school, her
[39]
round cheek glowing with health, and her heart overflowing with happiness. 'Here is my own dear Lizzy,' said Agnes, as she presented her to Henry Orne, 'and if you do not love me for anything else, you must for giving you such a sister.'
"Henry Orne looked at Lizzy and thought, and said, ' the duty would be a very easy one.' 'For the next month,' continued Agnes, 'I shall be incessantly occupied, and you must entertain one another. Henry has bought a nice little pony for me, Lizzy, and he shall teach you to ride, and you shall go over all his scrambling walks with him — to Sky-cliff, Rose- glen, and Beech-cove — the place he says nature made for lovers; but my poor lover has had to accommodate himself to my working day life and woo me in beaten paths.'
"The next month was the most joyous of Lizzy's life; every day was a festival. To the perfection of animal existence in the country, in the month of June, was added the keen sense of all that physical nature conveys to the susceptible mind.
"Wherever she was, her sweet voice was heard ringing in laughter, or swelling in music that seemed the voice of irrepressible joy — the spontaneous breathing of her soul. To the lover approaching his marriage day Time is apt to drag along with
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leaden foot, but to Henry Orne he seemed rather to fly with Mercury's wings at his heels; and when Agnes found herself compelled by the accumulation of her affairs, to defer her wedding for another month, he submitted with a better grace than could have been expected. Not many days of this second term had elapsed, when Agnes, amidst all her cares, as watchful of Lizzy as a mother of an only child, observed a change stealing over her. Her stock of spirits seemed suddenly ex pended, her colour faded — her motions were languid, and each successive day she became more and more dejected. 'She wants rest,' said Agnes to Henry Orne; she has been unnaturally excited, and there is now a reaction. She must remain quietly at home for a time, on the sofa, in a darkened room, and you, Henry, I am sure, will, for my sake, give up your riding and walking for a few days, and stay within doors, and play on your flute, and read to her.' Agnes' suggestions were promptly obeyed, but without the happy effect she anticipated. Lizzy, who had never before had a cloud on her brow, seemed to have passed under a total eclipse. She became each day more sad and nervous. A tender word from Agnes — a look, even, would make her burst into tears.
"'I am miserable, Henry,' said Agnes, ' at this
[41]
unaccountable change in Lizzy — the doctor says she is perfectly free from disease — perhaps we have made too sudden a transition from excessive exercise to none at all. The evening is dry and fine, I wish you would induce her to take a walk with you. She is distressed at my anxiety, and I cannot propose any thing that does not move her to tears.'
"'It is very much the same with me,' replied Henry, sighing deeply, but if you wish it I will ask her.' He accordingly did so — she consented, and they went out together.
"Agnes retired to her own apartment, and there, throwing herself upon her knees, she entreated her Heavenly Father to withdraw this sudden infusion of bitterness from her brimming cup of happiness. 'Try me in any other way,' she cried, in the intensity of her feeling, and, for the first time in her life, forgetting that every petition should be in the spirit of ' Thy will be done,' 'try me in any other way, but show me the means of restoring my sister — my child to health and happiness!'
"She returned again to her little parlour. Lizzy had not come in, and she sat down on the sofa near an open window, and resigned herself to musings, the occupation, if occupation it may be called, of the idle, but rarely, and never of late, Agnes!
[42]
In a few moments Lizzy and Henry returned, and came into the porch, adjoining the parlour. They perceived the candles were not lighted, and concluding Agnes was not there, they sat down in the porch.'
"'Oh, I am too wretched!' said Lizzy. Her voice was low and broken, and she was evidently weeping. 'Is it possible,' thought Agnes, ' that she will express her feelings more freely to Henry than to me? I will listen. If she knows any cause for her dejection, I am sure I can remove it.'
"'Why, my beloved Lizzy,' replied Orne, in a scarcely audible voice, 'will you be so wretched — why will you make me so, and forever, when there is a remedy?'
"'Henry Orne!' she exclaimed, and there was resolution and indignation in her voice. 'If you name that to me again, I will never, so help me God, permit you to come into my presence without witnesses. No, there is no remedy, but in death. Would that it had come before you told me you loved me — before my lips confessed my sinful love for you — no, no — the secret shall be buried in my grave.;
"'Oh, Lizzy, you are mad — Agnes does not, cannot love as we do. Why sacrifice two to one? Let
[43]
me, before it is too late, tell her the whole, and cast myself on her generosity.'
'"Never, never — I now wish, when I am in her presence, that the earth at her feet would swallow me up; and how can you, for a moment, think I will ask to be made happy — that I could be made happy, at her expense ? No, I am willing to expiate with my life, my baseness to her — that I shall soon do so is my only comfort — and you will soon forget me — men can forget, they say —'
"'Never — on my knees, I swear never!' —
"'Stop, for mercy's sake, stop. You must not speak another such word to me — I will not hear it.' She rose to enter the house. Agnes slipped through a private passage to her own apartment.
"She heard Lizzy ascending the stairs. She heard Henry call after her, ' One word, Lizzy — for mercy's sake, one last word.' But Lizzy did not turn. Agnes heard her feebly drag herself into the little dressing- room adjoining their apartment, and after, there was no sound but the poor girl's suppressed, but still audible sobs.
"None but He who created the elements that compose the human heart, and who can penetrate its mysterious depths, can know which of the sisters was most wretched at that moment. To Agnes who
[44]
had loved deeply, confidingly without a shadow of fear or distrust, the reverse was total. To Lizzy who had enjoyed for a moment the bewildering fervours of a young love, only to feel its misery, that misery was embittered by a sense of wrong done to her sister. And yet it had not been a willing, but an involuntary and resisted, and most heartily repented wrong. She had recklessly rushed down a steep to a fearful precipice, and now felt that all access and passage to return was shut against her. Agnes without having had one dim fear — without any preparation, saw an abyss yawning at their feet — an abyss only to be closed by her self-immolation.
"She remained alone for many hours — she resolved — her spirit faltered — she re-resolved. She thought of all Lizzy had been to her, and of all she had been to Lizzy, and she wept as if her heart would break. She remembered the prayer that her impatient spirit had sent forth that evening. She prayed again, and a holy calm, never again to be disturbed, took possession of her soul.
"There is a power in goodness, pure self-renouncing goodness, that cannot be ' overcome, but overcometh all things.'
"Lizzy waited till all was quiet in her sister's room. She heard her get into bed, and then stole
[45]
softly to her. Agnes, as she had done from Lizzy's infancy, opened her arms to receive her, and Lizzy pillowed her aching head on Agnes' bosom, softly breathing, — 'My sister — mother !'
"'My own Lizzy — my child' answered Agnes. There was no tell-tale faltering of the voice. She felt a tear trickle from Lizzy's cold cheek on to her bosom, and not very long after both sisters were in a sleep that mortals might envy, and angels smile on.
"The rest you will anticipate, my dear Anne. The disclosure to the lovers of her discovery, was made by Agnes in the right way, and at the right time. Everything was done as it should be by this most admirable woman. She seemed, indeed, to feel as a guardian angel might, who, by some remission of his vigilance, had suffered the frail mortal in his care to be beguiled into evil. She never, by word, or even look, reproached Lizzy. She shielded her, as far as possible, from self-reproach, nor do I believe she ever felt more unmixed tenderness and love for her, than when, at the end of a few months, she saw her married to Henry Orne.
"My story has yet a sad supplement. Madame Cotin, I believe it is, advises a story teller to close the tale when he comes to a happy day; for, she says, it is not probable another will succeed it.
[46]
Poor Lizzy had experience of this sad mutability of human life. Hers was checquered with many sorrows.
"Lapses from virtue at eight and twenty, and at sixteen, afford very different indications of the character; you cannot expect much from a man, who, at eight and twenty, acted the part of Henry Orne. He was unfaithful in engagements with persons less merciful than Agnes Gray. He became inconstant in his pursuits — self-indulgent, and idle, and finally intemperate, in his habits. His wife — as wives will — loved him to the end.
"Agnes retained her school, which had become in her hands a profitable establishment. There she laboured, year after year, with a courageous heart, and serene countenance, and devoted the fruit of all her toils to Lizzy, and to the education of her children.
"I am telling no fiction, and I see you believe me, for the tears are trembling in your eyes — do not re press them, but permit them to embalm the memory of an old maid.”
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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"Old Maids"
Subject
The topic of the resource
Sacrifice, stigma towards unmarried women, alternatives to marriage.
Description
An account of the resource
Two women are discussing the negative views of old maids, and one gives the sad account of an old maid who gave up her true love for the happiness of her sister, and the unintended consequences of that sacrifice for all of the parties involved.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss Sedgwick
Source
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“Old Maids,” <em>The Offering, </em> 17-46, Philadelphia, Thomas T. Ash, 1834.
Date
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1834
Contributor
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J. Robinson; D. Gussman
Relation
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Annual reissued as <em>The Wreath of Friendship</em>, 1837.<br />Reprinted in <em>The Casket</em>, March 1834, 137-139 and<br /><em>Tales and Sketches </em>by Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and Blanchard, 1835: 97-116.<br />Collected in <em>Old Maids: Short Stories by Nineteenth-Century U.S. Women Writers</em>, ed. Susan Koppelman, Boston: Pandora Press, 1984: 11-26.
Language
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English
Type
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Document
"Madame Cotin" [Sophie Ristaud Cottin]
"Man of Ross" [John Kyrle]
boarding school
heaven
Jew
John MacKenzie
marriage
Napoleon
old maid
prayer
sacrifice
singlehood
Sir Walter Scott
sisters
teaching
tears
The Offering
The Pirate
virtue
Waverley
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/5c5798cec5431d7a21c50a83ccf5ab15.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=rXQv8fwCMOP08Ex-8swFSrQuWS76LRO%7EWO6Na-gSAMmhfWu-IhxchignxKH4wUsAYCFx7ZiVTCZcal9sr6Zw1lIRzcmW7Ikm3WhIGKyWzDZjbZLnyBeepu3CO4ZPHk8ip9Fch7iurh41hargM-32h4dxjgAzTecaqTKQy8u9FAjvH-jZ8R-YvHS8cn%7ErQC4a3ZB18aCw4S-dzCf8MVog72L%7ECx7DQtEnt6yQOhTWKrWXhoVxdJpqWVuGdJt-sg61FnIprdoDMO5ytwj7ezAUpeLk9IJi118ZcBH9tvOdesI7uEpMjZJQQM8qUS%7EuHmX743WB89ZwLcrMeyz9mbmKTQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
9e33898c5bb6e2ee33368a9c65a0f431
Dublin Core
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Title
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1846
Subject
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Stories published in 1846.
Document
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Text
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In the year 1273, and on as bright a day as ever shone, even on that bright land of Italy, two females issued from the bronze gate of the palace Lanbertazzi at Bologna. The one by her stature, her elastic step, rich dress, and close veiling, inspired the ideas of youth, beauty and rank. The other stood revealed, a sturdy serving-woman, who vigilantly watched and cared for the lady she attended. As they threaded their way, through one of the narrow passes which characterized those old fortress-like cities, to the grand square, the elder woman stretched her arm behind the younger as a sort of rampart to defend her from even the accidental touch of a passer-by.
Suddenly they heard the tramping of horses behind them, and the elder exclaimed, “Quick, my lady! Turn the corner; these precious gallants of our city, will think no more of trampling us under their horses’ hoofs, than if we were the grass made to be trodden on! There, now we are safe, for they cannot reach us here,” she added, following the young lady who sprang on the elevated pedestal of a cross. “Here how they come, by whether our people or old Orlando’s, who can tell?” At this moment, out poured from the narrow street, some fifty horsemen— horses and men so disguised by paint, caparison, dress and masks, that it would have seemed impossible for those who knew them best to recognize them.
It was market day in Bologna, and the square, though it was early morning, was already filled with peasantry. The crowd receded to the right and the left, but as the horsemen did not halt nor scarcely check the speed of their horses, it seemed inevitable that life would be sacrificed.
“Holy Virgin! Save the poor wretches!” cried the young lady, in a voice whose sweet tone was to her attendants like that of a lute to a brazen instrument.
To exclude the frightful peril from her sight, she put her hands before her eyes, just in time to save herself the torture of seeing a poor woman, who was walking forward with her back to the cavaliers, knocked down by one of them and ridden over by three others, whose horses, though they instinctively recoiled from the body, seemed to tread the life out of it. Loud exclamations burst out on every side. A cry of “Shame! Shame!” “Every bone in her body is broken!” “See the blood from her head!” “She is dead! “She is dead!” One of the cavaliers made a motion as if turning his horse’s head, but an urgent order from the leader of the troop checked this single movement of humanity, and turning out of the square into another narrow and devious passage, they rode unheeding on through the gates of the city in pursuit of some lawless adventure.
“Kneel not here, by dear lady Imelda,” said her attendant; “rise up and let us hasten to church and pray to Madonna for the soul so, without rush, sent out of this world.”
“Yes, yes, dear Nilla, but first,” she added, taking her purse from her pocket and giving it to her, “go in among these people, take this money and see what can be done for her body or soul. Oh, Nilla— Frederico was their leader. It is but half an hour ago that he came to me to tie that blood read band around his arm. I told him it was an evil omen.
“Was it Frederico? Then save thy money, for it will empty the coffers of the Lambertazzi to pay for the sins they brothers are heaping on their wild heads. Alas! That the young should think so long and judgment so far!”
“Nay, I tell thee go, Nilla, and offer aid!” said the young lady, with the air of one not to be disobeyed, even by a privileged nurse. “Money may buy bread and cataplasms, but it will not efface sin.” If it would, she thought as Nilla left her side, it were well that our nobles are rich; by precious. Oh, Frederico! My brother! God stay thy violent hand.
After a few moments, Nilla returned with the purse.
“There is no use,” she said, “in showing it there— she is not dead. She bids them carry her into Santa Maria, and lay her before the alter of Madonna. There where she has prayed all her life— there will she die.”
“We will follow her, Nilla.”
“Nay, my dear lady Imelda, we cannot. The alter is in the Giéréméi chapel, and I gathered from the words dropped, that this woman’s family are their followers.”
“Be it so. We have nought to do with their hates, Nilla; ours is a better part.”
“But if your father or your brothers hear you have been in that chapel, my lady?”
(Pg. 254)
“I care not— they pursue bloody work. We are vowed to our lady of mercy; follow me.”
The train bearing the body of the dying woman preceded them into the church of Santa Maria, and turning into the Giéréméi chapel they laid her on the floor before a richly decorated alter of the Virgin. A hundred wax lights were burning before it; a crucifix of silver and precious gems stood on it, surrounded by lamps, images and vases of the same precious metal. Over them hung a holy family fresh from the hands of Grotto, and below stood a sculptured sarcophagus containing a saint’s ashes; all bespoke the riches and devotion of the Giéréméi. Beside the alter was a sitting figure of the Madonna herself, with the infant Jesus in her arms, both sparking with jewels and surrounded with the votive offerings. To the pious Catholic the image of Madonna symbolizes all suffering, sympathy and love. From her sanctified heart radiates the whole circle of human affections. She is far enough above humanity for homage, and near enough for fellow-feeling and aid.
The priest officiating at the altar, continued his service without heeding the many feet that came clattering over the marble floor. Even the boy who waived the censer, gave not a swing the less for the spectacle of a violent death.
Imelda had thrown back her veil, and discovered a face resembling (if the traditionary portrait may be believed) the immortal Cenci of Guido. There was the same potency of purpose with the undimmed freshness of youth— the same ripeness for Heaven, with the intense susceptibility to human suffering. The crowd gave place to her, as if an angel were passing among them, and still closely attended by Nilla, she knelt beside the bleeding woman, and taking her veil off to staunch the wound, “Can nothing be done for you?” she asked.
The woman painfully strained open her failing eyelids, and a faint color returned to her ghastly cheek.
“No, no,” she answered, “I want nothing. Madonna has heard me— she smiles on me,” and she turned her eye lovingly to the compassionate face over the altar. “Day and night, lady, I have prayed that my weary life might end. This is joy to me, but wo to those by whom it cometh.”
Imelda shuddered.
“Perhaps,” she said, “You leave those behind you who can be served by such as are willing and able to serve them. Gold shall not be spared.”
“Gold! Oh! You cannot bring the dead to life if you filled their graves with gold— but stay, stay,” she added, and she clenched Imelda’s arm so that the blood trickled down her ermined glove; “I had two sons dearer to me than my life was even then when they made every minute of it glad; they were stabbed by the young Labertazzi on cold blood while they kept faithful ward and watch for old lord Boniface. Oh, they were good sons to me, but they were daring, hot blooded youths. Buy masses for their souls, lady— not for mine— not for mine. Madonna will take care of mine— it matters not for me.” Her voice sank away. “Pray for them, dear lady,” she added, in a whisper, “the prayers of saints are heard. Oh, bid the priest hasten to me!”
Imelda beckoned eagerly to the priest who had just finished the morning mass. He came, knelt on the other side, and performed the office for the dying. It was a rough sight for Imelda, that old woman struggling between life and death, her muscles stiffening and tremors and convulsions affecting her whole frame; but she did not shrink from it. She looked like an angel come to attend the parting spirit. Tresses of her bright hair disengaged by the removal of her veil had fallen over her cheek and neck on one side. Her cheek was deeply colored by her emotion, and her blue eyes glowed as she raised it with every amen ejaculated to the priest’s prayer.
“Is that angel or mortal!” said a young man, who had just risen from a brief prayer in a retired part of the chapel.
“Mortal, I trow, my lord,” replied the person addressed. “It is warm blood that colors that cheek, and that look of pity and sorrow is the common privilege of our humanity.”
“Whence comes she, Giovanni?” Surely we know all the beauties of Bologna, and I have seen those of Florence and Pisa, but never has my eye lighted on such as vision as this.”
“It is not, my lord, the pearl we have heard of, shit up in old Labertazzi’s oyster shell?”
“No, no, it cannot be.”
“Cannot! Your wish would say must not, my lord. But though kept like a nun in her cell, I have heard rumors of the young lady Imelda’s rare loveliness. Such a gem will sparkle through the cervices in the walls. They do say that her crafty father is plotting to match her with royalty.”
“But, Giovanni, this cannot be the lady Imelda. The Lambertazzi are dark me.”
“Nature has such freaks, my lord; the lily grows beside the night-shade.”
“My lord Boniface,” said an old man, advancing eagerly from the group, “Why stand ye here and poor Alexa dying? The mother of the boys who lost their lives for you at your palace gate.”
“Old Alexa!” God forgive me!” The thought that he had vowed to watch over and protect this most unfortunate woman, pierced his heart as he sprang toward her. She did not see him; her ears received no sound; a thick film was gathering over her eyes. She turned gasping toward Imelda and, nature rally for a last effort, she
(Pg. 255)
pressed her lips a small crucifix and giving it to Imelda, said, “Seek out my goof young lord Boniface; give him this sign of love and mercy— tell him to forgive the Lambertazzi. No revenge— no revenge for me!”
“I will— God so help me as I will.”
The agony passed from the dying woman’s face.
“She is dead,” exclaimed Nilla, “come away, my lady, quickly. I see the followers of the Giéréméi gathering. You are unveiled in their chapel!”
Imelda drew up her mantle close over her head and face and disappeared.
_______________
Bologna had long been harassed by the rival factions of the Labertazzi and the Giéréméi, its two most noble families. The Lambertazzi were at the head of the Ghibelines, their rivals commanded the Guelphs. Political, religious and domestic elements inflamed their feud. The spirit of democracy which then pervaded the Italian states governed Bologna. The nobles were still permitted to live within the same walls and sit in the same councils with the citizens, but they were subordinate to them and kept in check by them. The state was free, the factions still were governed by their respective chiefs. Gregory X had just dies, and the unhappy consequence of the removal of a pontiff, whose vigor and sanctity had bridled the hates and restrained the hostile tendencies of the times, was son obvious in new demonstrations of enmity between states and factions.
From this kindling of the fevered elements, came bright gold.
“In the height of the convulsions of its civil wars,” says the historian of the Italian republics, “Florence renewed architecture, sculpture and painting. It then produced the greatest poet Italy can yet boast; it restored philosophy to honor; it gave an impulse to science which spread through all the free states of Italy, and made the age of taste and the fine arts succeed to barbarism!”
“Whether these were the legitimate effects of contention may be questioned. Co-existence is sometimes mistaken for cause, and it is very difficult for human wisdom to solve the mysteries of human development. We know that after the thunderbolt the most delicate of flowers unfold, but is it not the simultaneous shower, and not the dissolving and destructive power, that brings them forth?
But these speculations are not for our narrow space. We know, from tradition, that the arts of the 14th century had touched the soul of Boniface Giéréméi to better issues than hatred and war; that though always ready and gallant defense, he was never forward to provoke a quarrel nor first to draw the sword. It is said he brought more painting with his father’s walls than battle trophies, and preferred the society of artists and learned men to the companionship of those whose exploits filled the mouths of the vulgar.
____________
“Dear Nilla,” said Imelda, “do not persuade me from my duty. I will do what I promised.”
“Yes, but can’t you see, my lady, that if you do it by my hand, it is the same as if your own dainty hand carried this crucifix to my lord Boniface? I will swear to you to do your bidding— to give this token it into the hand of the young lord; and to speak every word you shall tell me— not a syllable, not a letter more nor less.”
“But you are not me, Nilla.”
“No, my dear young lady, and the mischief is that the young lord knows the difference too well already. I shall never forget to my dying day how he looked at you were kneeling by old Alexa. He had better have been looking at her. Strange you did not see him, my lady.”
“Nilla!” Distrust not my word and obey me. Ask him to meet me in the upper cloister of San Georgio to-morrow morning when I come from confession after matins.”
Nilla well knew that her mistress’ gentleness was fortified by the characteristic energy of the Lambertazzi, and she obeyed; muttering to herself retrospective, the vainest of all, wishes. Oh if old Alexa had but dies in the street, or her young lady had but said her prayers at home! And where should she be if her lords, Frederico and Alberti, should know she had gone between their deadly enemy and their sister. They would think no more of poking cold steel into her than if she were a cat! Poor Nilla! It was a fatal embassy.
The next morning lord Boniface outwatched the stars, in the cloisters of San Georgio. Every minute seemed an hour and yet never were minutes so precious, for they were freighted with the most golden expectations of his life. He was to see again that face which seemed to him to vivify and make real the ideal beauty of art. He was to hear that voice which was the very concentration of music. He was to communicate, were it but for one brief moment, with a soul indicated by symbols. He was startled by every flutter of the breeze— his heart sank with every receding sound. The place of rendezvous was far retired within the intricate windings of San Georgio, and the day, which was pouring its full light on all Bologna, was still dim and shadowy in her cloisters.
At length a door, communicating with the interior of the church, opened and a form issued from it so wrapped in a full gray mantle that nothing but its stature and graceful movement could be perceived. But these were quite enough to assure Boniface that the lady Imelda was coming toward him. The agitation he could scarcely restrain contrasted with the assured step of the young lady who felt nothing but that she was performing a
(Pg. 256)
simple act of duty. She was conscious of a new interest in it when she was near enough to perceive for the first time the noble figure and soul lit countenance of the hereditary enemy of her house.
“Thanks, my lord,” she said “for granting a request that I was compelled to make by a promise to a dying woman.”
“Thanks from you, lady Imelda! Haven has my devoutest thanks that I am permitted this unhoped for meeting!”
“Nothing short of a sacred promise,” resumed Imelda, with a cold dignity that was meant to qualify the rapturous tone in which she was addressed, “would justify me in breaking through the observances of my sex and venturing to solicit a meeting with my hereditary enemy.”
“Enemy, lady Imelda! Love may come against our free will— enmity cannot.”
“That sacred promise,” continued Imelda, as if not hearing Boniface’s last words, “was given to Alexa, a client of your house. You, doubles, have heard the tragic circumstances of her death.”
“They could not long unknown to me, lady, where there are so many who live by feeding the feud between the Lambertazzi and my father’s house.”
“It is to avert the evil effect of these facts reaching you that I am here. Alexa’s last act,” she added, showing him the crucifix, “was to send you this symbol of our Lord and master’s submission to wrong and forgiveness of injuries, and by this token she prayed for you to forgive— not to revenge her death. We may not turn a deaf ear to the words of the dying; they stand on the threshold of the other world. Give good heed, I pray to you.”
“In aught else, lady, Alexa’s dying wish— your faintest word, should be law to me, but—”
“But you fear the reproach of your faction—or perhaps the scornful taunt of my brothers. These are vulgar fears, my lord. There is a nobler fear; fear above fear— a fear worthy of God’s creatures— a fear of violating his law. This takes the sting and reproach from every other fear.”
“Aye, lady, this is true; but truth fitter for these cloisters than the world we live in. He who should adopt it must exchange his good sword for the monk’s cowl.”
“Do you then reject this blessed sign?” said Imelda, once more extending to him Alexa’s crucifix.
“Nay, nay, sweet lady,” he relied, pressing his lips to it, and bringing them so nearly in contact with Imelda’s beautiful hand, that the spirituality of his devotion was somewhat questionable.
“I do not reject— I would fain accept it; but in doing so I should pledge myself to possible dishonor and disgrace. The death of Alexa pass as accidental till I am taunted with my forbearance, and then I must—”
“Must like other men— must come down to the level of their standard. Farewell, my lord. My errand is done.”
“One moment!” Listen to me, lady Imelda. Command me in aught I can do. I will go to the farthest verge of the world to serve you.”
“And yet for my prayer you will not do the duty that lies at your door.”
She turned to leave him; he followed her through the cloister. He entreated her to give him the crucifix on his promise to consecrate it to Madonna, and pray to her to enable him without loss of honor to obey Alexa’s last injunction.
What we have briefly summed up, Boniface contrived to dilate and involve, and Imelda found herself yielding, perhaps too willingly, to these little arts of delay, when she rejoined Nilla at the church door.
“Thanks to our lady!” she whispered; “You are come at last! Did you see him?”
“He was there before me.”
“So indeed he should be. Were you seen? Through all those long dark passages did no one see you? It were not well that you were seen alone there. Were you met? Are you struck deaf and dumb, my lady? Did you meet no one, I say?”
“No-yes-no-I think not.”
“The good Lord make me patient! You don’t hear a word I say. I have been a good hour on my knees praying to St. Ursula, and all the blessed saints that watch over young virgins, that no human eye, save that of lord Boniface, might fall on you; and, for aught you care, you may have met half Bologna. Call up your wits, dear my lady, and tell me what has happened in the last hour?”
“Hour, Nilla! It seems to me you may count on your fingers the minutes since we parted.”
“Humph!” ejaculated Nilla, as she thought that time had a different measure for an old woman waiting, and a young one talking with him of all Bologna’s youth most renowned for all manly graces. “Be it hours or minutes, my lady,” she added, “I care not which, but only if you were observed?”
“Only, I think, by father Jerome, whom I met as I returned from the cloister.”
“Father Jerome! Our lady forbid! All the gray mantles in Bologna would not hide you from father Jerome. He sees through stone walls. If he should have seen lord Boniface!”
Old Nilla was right. Father Jerome was, of all men, to be dreaded and shunned by Imelda. Born with strong passions and condemned by his priestly profession to a passionless life, he used the fuel which should have burned to ashes in the furnace of his holy order, to feed the fiery natures of
(Pg. 257)
the brothers Lambertazzi, and plied all his craftiness to stimulate their reckless pursuit of personal exaltation. It was their object to extinguish the only family that questioned their supremacy in Bologna. They were fitted for the stripes of barbaric times, natural “enemies of God, of pity and mercy.” Their rival was gifted with the qualities that belonged to the developments of civilized life. He was the friend of poets and philosophers, and the worshiper of art which had sprung forth in all her freshness and beauty from the conflicts of free Italy, like Venus from the tumultuous waves.
Imelda’s instinctive sympathy with him was most natural, perhaps inevitable. Her delicate nature had shrunk from the clang of her brothers’ armor and the clamor of their voices. She had devoted herself in the retirement of her own apartments to the study of science and poetry under the guidance of her father confessor, Silvio- a learned and holy man. Lord Boniface, already her ardent lover, had appeared to her as Ferdinand did to Miranda—
“A spirit—
A thing divine— for nothing natural
She ever saw so noble;”
and it was most certain that they had but met and parted when they felt that “both were in either’s power.” Love ripens fast in the land of the orange and the myrtle, and love in all lands is miraculously quick in device. The lovers contrived to meet going to confession or returning from mass. Few of these blissful meetings escaped the snaky eye of father Jerome. Did malice and envy stimulate his senses to preternatural acuteness? It seemed so when he overheard a whispering appointment they made to meet at a masked-ball. He communicated this appointment to the brothers.
“It is a safe opportunity,” he said.
“We can make out opportunity when we are ready to execute our vengeance,” replied the younger brother, Alberti.
“Yes, and expose yourself to expulsion from the city. Remember, my son, that the nobles no longer rule Bologna. That scum has risen to the top- the citizens above the noble.”
“Curse them! Yes,” muttered Frederico.
“Remember, too, that your sister’s lover is a favorite with our masters. He studies the courses of the stars with their sons and lavishes his gold on workers destined to their common use, and employment.”
“He earns their favor, then, methinks,” said Alberti.
“Yes, my son, their favor is no gratuity.”
“He shall pay another debt in another kind- at short reckoning,” growled Frederico.
“He who would steal your sister is a felon and deserves to pay this reckoning,” insinuated the priest, “but take heed, my son, if two to one you assault this gallant the blow will recoil on yourselves.”
“We need not two; my steel is sure, as you know, father,” said Alberti, glancing significantly at the priest. “I will follow him from the palace Ansiani. A felon merits a stab in the back.”
“But, Frederico, what does he merit who this stabs?” asked Alberti.
“My son,” interposed the priest, “the means are sanctified by the end. The executioner does God’s will when he takes the felon’s life.”
“Let Frederico then be the executioner- an open field and a fair fight for me. I’ll not meddle with this dark work,” and thus making his honest protest, Alberti left the priest and his less scrupulous brother to contrive their plan of assassination.
Father Jerome looked after Alberit with a drawing up of the brow and a drawing down of the mouth, expressive of contempt, and then said to Frederico, “I distinctly heard your sister’s”… he hesitated and added, “lover,” with an accent to indicate that a more offensive worked pressed on his lips, “say that he had a friend among the followers of the Ansiani, who would introduce him by a secret entrance which communicated with a passage from the court of the Eastern balcony; he could this enter the halls without a passport, and, once there, mingle unsuspected with the guests. You, forewarned that he is there, will easily identify him. His stature and grace are not common among out gallants of Bologna. While he is dallying with your sister you may glide into that passage and the slightest brush you can give him will be enough if- as I think you meant when you said your steel was ‘sure’ – you have it well anointed with the Saracen’s oil.”
“I have – all the posts of Heaven cannot save him from my extreme unction.”
“To night, then, as the bell of San Georgio tolls ten. But, my son, sport not, even in word, with the holy offices of the church.”
“No, father,” replied Frederico, with a loud laugh, that proved he had at least the merit of not flattering the priest by hypocrisy, “not while I have you to teach me reverence.”
Father Jerome had not yet quite reached the meridian of life. Under his priest’s cowl were hidden the worst passions of man. Before the vesper hour he had a private and long interview with Imelda. He told her plainly that her love was discovered, and that mortal danger threatened her lover; and then he darkly hinted at a means of escape. His hints she did not understand, for his foul thoughts passed over her pure mind like breath over the highest polished glass, leaving no stain, and when he came to state more plainly on what conditions he would save her lover’s life – she recoiled as if a venomous snake
(Pg. 258)
lay across her path. Her face, which had paled a moment before at thought of her lover’s peril, grew red with angry blood. Father Jerome quailed under her glance. She was silent till she could speak calmly.
“Go, priest,” she then said, “all life is in God’s hands— the most precious as the most worthless. My honor is in mine own trust. Leave my presence.”
Nilla found her mistress an hour after in an ague of terror. “Oh, why have you staid, Nilla?” she said. “Did you find him? What said he?”
“Why, firstly, I did not find him; a pretty chase my old legs have had of it over half Bologna.”
“Oh, Nilla, do not spend your breath talking of yourself.”
“Lord’s love! I have little breath to do any thing for myself.”
“What said he, Nilla!”
“Why, first, he said nothing.”
‘Nothing!”
“No, in truth. What should he say, till he had read your letter? But deal, my lady, why so red, and so white, and shaking as if you had a tertian ague on you?”
“Think not of me, Nilla? Say in a word is my lord coming?”
“Yes – is one word, he is coming?”
“Oh, then, Nilla, you must back to him; his life is threatened; he must not come ton-night.”
“Then, my sweet lady, he must escape the danger through some other mode then my croaking. He mounted his horse as I left him and bade me tell you he should ride till the time of meeting.”
“We are lost,,” cried Imelda, wringing her hands. “There is no help for us. They know he meets me ton-night. The Ansiani are his enemies – he will have no friends near him, and my brothers – my cruel brothers! That bad priest, Jerome, Nilla!”
“Set against him the good priest Silvio, my lady. The children of light should be a match for the children of darkness.”
“You are right, Nilla. Call father Silvio to me. If he be possible, truly he will find it.”
Silvio came, and listened pitifully to Imelda’s relation of her interview with Jerome. “God alone can help us, my child,” he said; “we know not how nor where the snare is spread, but He who delivereth the bird from the fowler can surely help if he seeth fit.”
“And is this all, father, that your wisdom can suggest to me?”
“For the present exigency, all, my poor child; but should you escape to-night, I will no longer oppose your lover’s prayer. Come to my cell at dawn to-morrow. I will perform the holy sacrament of marriage for you, and at the first suspicious moment you may escape and take refuge in Florence or Pisa. It is not fitting you should longer swell where the demons of hate – and worse than hate, beset you.”
“Is this your counsel, dear father Silvio?” exclaimed Imelda, while for a moment the sun seemed to break through the clouds and shine on her head, so radiant was she with hope. The light passed off as she flatteringly exclaimed, “But there is an abyss of danger, of despair to be overleaped before we reach this happiness. Go, dear, holy father, spend these fearful hours in prayer and vigil and penance for us. Here, take my purse; give all to the wretched, and here,” she added, stripping the brilliants from her fingers, “do what good you can with these; all I ask in place of them is my wedding ring.”
“God’s love is not bought with a price, dear daughter.”
“Oh, I know, I know – these jewels are but the earnest of what I will be and do if His protection be over us this night. Your blessing, dear father, and depart. I must dress and be first at the palace. They will not dare touch him in my presence.”
Alas! Poor Imelda knew not what bad men dare do!
While Imelda was kneeling before Madonna to fortify herself by prayer for the trials of the evening, Nilla was preparing for her toilet. “There, my lady,” she said, as Imelda came from her oratory, “there is your green robe embroidered with gold flowers, and buttoned from top to bottom with such diamonds as no family can boast in Bologna, save the Lambertazzi. You shake your head? Well, here is the azure silk knotted with the purest orient pearls. No, again? The silks are fresh from the riches looms of Florence. No married dame or maiden in Bologna has the like of them.”
“It matters not, Nilla. Give me a dress all of white – fitting for a bride or for the dead.”
“My dear lady!”
“Obey me, Nilla. Give me, too, my pearl collar, bracelets and head-gear.”
Nilla obeyed in silence and trembling, for she had had bad dreams the night before and her lady’s words seemed their interpretation. When Imelda was arrayed and surveyed herself in her Venetian glass, a blush of conscious beauty overspread her pale cheek. The luster of her white satin harmonized with the soft tints of her Italian complexion, and the dead white of pearls wreathed on her dark hair gave a look of life to the almost colorless hue of her white brow.
“Your eyes are dull to-night, my dear lady,” said Nilla, “but for that you would look a king’s bride.”
(Pg. 259)
“He who only shall make me a bride is a king by divine right, Nilla. Bring me my Persian veil; that will serve me at the altar or – for a winding sheet.”
___________
The festivities at the Ansiana palace had but begun when Imelda appeared there. As she entered leaning on the arm of her proud old father, every eye was curiously fixed on her. Her prolonged seclusion in her father’s palace and the rumor of her beauty had sharpened curiosity; but as she tenaciously kept the mask on her face attention was turned to other known beauties, and after a little while she escaped observation.
She soon found herself near a balcony toward which the dancers pressed for air and refreshment. She dropped her fan and a blue domino, who she had just noticed and eyed with intense interest, picked it up and restored it to her, saying, in a voice audible only to her, “The balcony will be empty when the dance begins – linger here till then.” She did so and in a few brief moments her plan was concerted with Lord Boniface, and their fate sealed.
The night wore on, the gayety increased, and the lovers again met, near the gallery by which Boniface had gained access to the palace, and by which he purposed to depart. Frederico was lurking there. There was a narrow passage from one saloon to another; out of this passage a door opened into the gallery. Imelda standing mid some ladies at the door of the saloon saw her lover approach his place of exit and saw that at the very bottom he raised his hand to open the door he was encountered by Alberti, in a black domino. “He who seeks a secret passage,” he said rudely in an undisguised voice, “is no friend to the house.”
“Who interferes with the liberty of the Ansiani guests is surely not their friend,” replied lord Boniface, in a voice that even Imelda would scarcely have recognized as his.”
“Then drop your mask, and verify your right to this liberty,” said Alberti, haughtily.
“Not at your bidding, most courteous gentleman, but since you guard this egress I will take any other that may be opened to the guests of our good old host,” and turning away, as if quite indifferent, he re-entered the saloon, encountered face to face, the old count Ansiani, and stopped, as if quite at east, to exchange courtesies with his host. His seeming coolness disconcerted and perplexed Alberti, who stood at a short distance behind him. Imelda with a fluttering heart watched every movement and heard every word. “Alberti, Alberti,” she said, eagerly, in a low voice, and pointing through the door to a lady in an adjourning apartment, “Pray, tell me, is not that the lady Julia!”
“By my faith, it is,” he replied, his attention completely diverted; “I have in vain sought her all the evening.”
“She has but just entered,” said Imelda, “or you would earlier have recognized her, for though her simple dress denies her princely rant her queenly bearing betrays it. I knew her only from your description, Alberti, or, perhaps, from the instinct of out coming relationship.”
“Bravo, Imelda!”
“Present me to her, Alberti. You promised it, and surely I deserve it.”
“You do – come with me.”
If Imelda had dared to look back, she would have seen that Boniface, profiting by the opportunity she had just procured for him, complied at the instant with the rule made by a jealous nobles of Bologna, that every guest, on taking leave of his host, should withdraw his mask. There being no eye on him but the old count’s, dulled with some seventy years wear, Boniface did this fearlessly, and walked slowly past Alberti and out to the grand stair-case. He had scarcely disappeared from the count’s sight when father Jerome whispered in his ear, “Does my lord suspect that the bold youth who but now took leave of him is the boasted Giéréméi?”
“Impossible!”
“My word – my oath for it.”
“Follow him. Give orders to my men to seize him; he shall pay dearly for this audacity.” He was followed, but perceiving this he had, after deliberately walking the stair-case, glided down to the light, passed the retainers of the Ansiani at the gate of their court, and, at the corner of the street, mounted a horse, which, with a trust servant, was awaiting him.”
At the dawn of the morning Imelda, closely muffled and attended only by Nilla, entered father Silvio’s cell. Her lover was awaiting her, and the good father performed the marriage rite. “My children,” he said, retaining in his their clasped hands, “these are such bonds as God’s priest may ratify – not accidental, imaginary or selfish, but wrought in the furnace of trial out of your hearts’ best affections; their temper is proof against all the shifting chances of life; death cannot dissolve them, and there, where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage, eternal shall be written on them.”
“Amen! Amen!” cried old Nilla. Father Silvio stood back, and Boniface clasping Imelda in his arms, whispered, “Courage, my love – my wife! One brief separation more, and then o earthly power shall divide us. Remain here one half hour, then father Silvio will meet me with you at the city gate. In Florence we shall find friends and safety, till the old wound that separates our families is healed.”
(Pg. 260)
“Go grant it!” she whispered, “but my heart bids me cling to you, with fearful prophecy.”
“Take courage, love,” he said, “it is but the shadow of past sorrow – we will soon get beyond it.” He left her, and in one half hour she followed with the good father and Nilla.
“Stop – stop, my lady,” said Nilla, who stumbled after her mistress’s fleet steps. “I saw the shadow of armed men behind the gate-way we just passed, and I am sure I saw father Jerome just slink behind that wall.”
Imelda, trembling, clung to Silvio’s arm.
“If it be they,” whispered father Silvio, “it is impossible to gain the gate – but we may evade them by artifice. Return, Nilla, as if you were seeking something dropped on the ground. Eye them closer, and if they be the brothers, still retrace your steps, and we will turn the next corner, gain the palace, and dispel their suspicions and be sage for the present.”
He then walked slowly on with Imelda, and before they reached the turn, the old woman had paused at the gate-way, and was receding beyond it.
“Patience, dear daughter,” said the priest, “you are baffled this time, but your husband’s vigilance will soon make another opportunity. If they follow lord Boniface to the gate he betrays nothing for he ill infer that you are intercepted, and he will only appear to them armed and equipped for a ride to the hills. We owe this to the diabolical malice and art of Jerome,” he thought as Imelda yielded to his counsel. “So, through life he has crossed and baffled me,” and his thoughts, like an electric flash, retraced the wrongs done him by the envious rival of his childhood – how he had closed against him the avenues of friendship, love and honorable fame, and driven him to seek refuge in the priest’s cell – the precinct of the tomb.
__________
One week passed away. The day was near its dawn, and Imelda was receiving the last embraces of her faithful nurse. “Dear Nilla,” she said, “take it not so hard; it is for present safety that we are separated – my lord says father Silvio urges too that we should be free, unembarrassed, in case of pursuit – you see,” she added with a faint smile, “that now I fear nothing. I have no foolish presentiment as before. When I put on my veil I thought it would prove my winding-sheet. If danger beset us, and Heaven please, a way of escape will be opened, and if not death since father Silvio assures me that there we cannot be separated. God’s love casts out all fear, dear Nilla.”
“It should – but –”
“Nay, nay, Nilla, not another word – time presses – the day is already dawning – you must not follow me one step. All depends on my passing unobserved and unheard through the long, dark galleries to the outer court; to that my lord has secured an entrance. Farewell, dear Nilla – to your prayers found us;” – and then hastily embracing her old friend, she left her in an agony of love and tears, (from which prayer exhales,) passed now swiftly, now slowly, along her perilous descent and gained the landing of the last stair-case – there she heard the ringing of a loud and hasty footstep mounting the winding stairs, and, in time, she darted into a broad niche in the wall, behind the pedestal of a statue. She caught a glimpse of the passing figure, and knew it to be Frederico. His appearance filled her with alarm and apprehension. She had believed her brothers were at Padua, and her flight had, in this belief, been fixed and hastily arranged. Could father Jerome, who seemed to have inscrutable power, have penetrated their secret plans? And was some fatal blow now preparing for them? Should she turn back and avoid the danger? No – for still her husband was in peril, and what was safety to her that did not include him! Her decision was made, and as the sound of the footsteps dies away, she sprang from her retreat, and hardly touching the stairs, passed down and turned to enter a narrow gallery that communicated with the private court. Frederico’s favorite dog, a fierce wolf-hound, was lying across the passage as if stealthily keeping it. He growled without moving. Poor Imelda had an unconquerable fear of dogs, and a particular terror of this brute of her brother’s, which had always seemed to her an impersonation of evil. She instinctively started back and remounted half the stairs before the instinct of fear yielded. Love – oh, how much stronger than fear – overcame. She retracted her steps, boldly stooped to the dog, spoke low and gently to him, looked him directly in the eye, stroked and patted him. There are strange and mysterious modes of communication between all intelligent beings. Our modern Mesmerite would probably sat the dog was magnetized. We cannot explain or name the cause – perhaps it is true that there is “un mystere de sympathie et d’affection entre touit ce qui respire sous le ciel.” Certain it it is, the animal became tractable, rose, stretched himself, “like an innocent beast and of a good conscience,” permitted Imelda to pass without molestation. She scarcely breathed again before she was in the court and in her husband’s arms where, for one instant, danger and fear, the past and future, were forgotten – the rapturous present filled brimmingly the whole of her life.
Such moments give us some notion of what may constitute the measurement of time in a more advanced condition of existence. Keenness of sensation, intensity of feeling takes place of duration – the point of time stretches backward and forward, with the velocity of light; and in the
(pg. 261)
retrospect, the rest of life is compacted into small space – a dark line of shadow along fields of light. We must be forgiven for pausing at this point – it was Imelda’s first and last of perfect human happiness.
A sound reached her ear that struck upon it like a death-knell. She uttered a piercing shriek and cried, “Fly – fly!” and at the same instant her brothers with their swords drawn rushed into the court.
“Stand back, Imelda!” shouted Frederico to his sister, who had planted herself steadfastly before her lord; “Stand back, I say, or through your body my sword shall pierce that villain – robber!”
“Imelda,” said her lover, gently putting her aside, “I can defend myself.”
Imelda sprang toward Alberti – “Oh, my brother,” she cried, putting both her hands upon his breast, “there is a drop of mercy in your hear – stand back. It is not manly two to one – get between them – he is no robber. He is my husband! My chosen lord!”
“Your husband, Imelda? Then let them have a fair fight. I’ll not make nor mar between them.”
The encounter was fierce and obstinate. Both parties were accomplished swordsmen, but Boniface, having but the single purpose of defending himself, armed with the righteous cause, was more adroit; an overmatch for his opponent maddened with conflicting passions. He defended himself at all points, till at the sight of his wife kneeling, her eyes raised and her arms outreached in an agony of supplication, his arm wavered and he failed to quite to parry a blow which aimed at his hear, grazed his shoulder, so that the blood followed.
“Enough! Enough!” cried Frederico, with a demonic howl, “you have poison in you for every drop of blood in your veins. You are welcome now to your husband!” he added to Imelda, driving his sword into its sheath. Her husband had already fallen fainting on the ground. “The work is done Alberti,” he concluded – “the day is breaking; we must be gone, or the city-guard on their last round will find us here.” He hastily disappeared.
“Cowardice and cruelty, are fit companions,” muttered Alberti, slowly following.
___________
The accomplished historian of Italian Republics this finishes his notice (which we have somewhat amplified) of this tragedy.
“The only mode of treatment which left any hope of curing the empoisoned wound, was sucking it while still bleeding. This, it is said, three years before Edward of England had been saved by the devoted Eleanor. Imelda undertook her sad ministry, and from the wound of her husband, she drew the poisoned blood which diffused through her own system the cause of sudden death. When her woman came to her they found her extended lifeless beside the dead body of the husband she had loved too well.”
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Title
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Imelda of Bologna
Subject
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Romance, Tragedy, Italy
Description
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In the Italian city of Bologna, a tragedy unites Imelda with her family’s enemy, the lord Boniface. The two fall in love, but are plotted against by Imelda’s brothers. While Imelda and Boniface plan their escape from danger, Imelda’s brothers plan his death.
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss Catharine M. Sedgwick
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Columbian Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine [edited by John Inman and Robert A. West] (May 1846): 253-61.
Date
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1846
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Shawn Riggins
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English
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Document
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Columbian Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine
Catholicism
Columbian Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine
Death
Faith
Italy
marriage
religion
Romance
Tragedy
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https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/1c5d13dd708e0664ba9e7afec6dbe5a4.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=WRKDOB1IKFaG%7Eskb1cQS80FJb1Fdsy9t2s7UcSuklmHI8C09abDOXQW8ltT285ZccpXIcv8ydGH7k6drgDkTP1P6-q5iY%7EqvhOVUGHoxWt5X1sz3b06MGnCmEz-zqr5-IjWGHtot9LylArfkkaVCJ3Ao0yCw6BEgBS1ifhG8lWmv7sHr7Se7UynD2tXtbVi2myRHSMXrccP9fBIjI9-98hqIaem%7E807CWRajH%7ERp16TMGy4t66Vpp9BnMnfb4DxyE61Mrnhn1gOu3NEtmckxK1t1Rq3fL2blac5VcHoxk9W5FXzcAnKsQFUbmIKjUk9BhI8VpXoL29JA2OEx%7EqQP-Q__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
af7499cb8850fa0b9be2b4453c2a99f5
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1847
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“Crescent Beach” By Miss Catharine M. Sedgwick [1847]
“Not upon us or ours the solemn angel
Hath evil wrought,
The funeral anthem is a glad evangel—
The good die not.” Whittier
In the summer of 183-, I passed a month at Crescent Beach. I find, on recurring to my note-book of that period, some passages that may now be published without offensive personality.
It was an unusually hot season, and the proximity of a delicious sea-shore to our great cities were never more enjoyed. Every day our citizens poured down from their streaming streets to bathe their wilted bodies and furrowed faces in the cool waves. There was a charming society that summer gathered at Crescent Beach—many an “immortal flower” among “human weeds.” There were beauties still pre-eminent, beauties returned unspoiled from the flatteries of foreign courts to fill the honored place of American matrons—their past a pleasant dream, their present a golden reality. There were the mothers and wives of statesmen holding the highest positions in the country, women whose intelligence, simplicity and kindly affability set in a bright aspect our democratic institutions. There were very pretty young women, content with the role of good mothers, surrounded by lovely children, bright wreaths of living flowers, chatting away the day good-humoredly over their worsted work and crochet needles. There were – and – who charmed away ennui with amateur music and heart-piercing ballads. There were, too, pretty young girls free from affection and coquetry, and intelligent young men, (Heaven be praised) exempt from conceit or coxcombry. There was the lawyer in his vacation—who can ever forget him! as he passed up and down the room, giving courteous, gentle word to old and young, and gladdening the evening social circle with wit and grace, in those silvery tones that have often made the “wonder mute” in our courts and halls of legislation. And there too was ----as bright and enjoying as he had been thirty years before, his merry laugh ringing on our ears and through our hearts like festal bells. God grant him more lustres, for to that soul of honor, that happy spirit which they will come crowned with “the respect that waits on age.”
There too was — bearing life’s burdens firmly and gracefully, while the freshness, sincerity and charm of youth were still upon her. Already she had bound up her golden sheaves of filial virtue, and, amidst the délassemens of a watering-place, was sowing seeds in young and loving hearts for future reapings.
There, too, were young mothers in retired rooms, keeping patient vigils over sick children, and sisters passing the live-long day in woodland paths and quiet walks along the sea-shore with their invalid brothers, having early waked from the “dream that life was beauty,” and found (without its casting a shadow over them) that “life is duty.”
There was chaff with the wheat. But, to all, the uses of this place seemed to be good. Dissipation and display were, by common consent, avoided. The beach walks in the glorious twilights, and the ocean, solemn as the presence of a divinity, had an elevating power over the lowest, the least susceptible.
I must proceed to relate a few circumstances that may not tend to prove this position, but rather to indicate that the inner rules the outer world.
The first day after my arrival, on going, in the evening, into the drawing-room,
“Who is that excessively pretty woman?” I inquired of an elderly gentleman.
“Which? all these young women are excessively pretty in my eyes!”
“She with a golden hue over her skin as if a sunbeam had lingered there.”
“Oh, that dark complexioned lively little French woman—Madame Joubert.”
“No, no, the one with the cap which the Graces seemed to have dropped on her head.”
“That little jewel? have you been here twelve hours without finding her out? That is Mrs. Louise Ryson, the subject of the curiosity, observation (inalveillance) and gossip of all the very good-natured ladies at Crescent Beach.”
“Mrs. Ryson,” I responded in a tone of some astonishment.
[213]
“Yes, Mrs. Ryson, married a second time, and the mother of that peerless child I saw you talking with as I came from the breakfast-room.”
“Is it possible? The child must be seven years old.”
“She is at least that, and wiser than her years. She has convinced me that Dickens’ little Nell is not an ideal, and that angel-spirits are sometimes invested with mortal mould, and sent to wander here for a little while on some heavenly mission. I expect on some bright morning to see Juliet unfold her wings and mount upward."
I looked at my friend, who was not addicted to romantic moods or sentimental notions. I saw he was earnest. “It was written on her forehead,” he continued, “as the Turkish fatalist would say. It is not only royal physiognomies, like Napoleon’s and Charles I.’s, that have a doom inscribed on them by nature; I have marked it on persons of obscure condition, and seen it realized. Sit down here by me and look attentively at that child. Is there not something over that most lovely face like a shadow on an opening flower?”
He drew me to the window, and we sat down by it. The lady had just entered the drawing-room and sunk on the sofa. She seemed looking for some expected person; when the child, who evidently was not that person, appeared at a farther door, looked round, and bounded towards her. “Dear mamma,” she said, “may I stay by you?” “Yes, Juliet, til I go out—I am going to drive.” “Can’t I go with you, mamma?” “No, Juliet, there’s no room.”
“There used always to be room, mamma.” A gentleman at this moment looked in at the door. My friend touched my arm. Mrs. Ryson’s face lighted. She half rose and sat down again as if afraid of attracting observation; the gentleman advanced towards her, they exchanged a few words in a low voice, he went up to the piazza, and she rose to go to her room. “Then I can’t go with you, mamma,” said the child in a saddened voice. “No, why do you tease me, Juliet! why can’t you go and amuse yourself as the other children do; you are so odd.”
“So I am,” said the child, dejectedly following her mother; “for there is nobody to mate with me.” The mother soon after came to the piazza in a very handsome hat and mantilla; was handed into the carriage by the gentleman who addressed her in the drawing-room, and drove off. In the meanwhile I had learned from my friend, who was an established lounger at Crescent Beach, all that he knew of Mrs. Ryson’s history.
She had been bred at one of our fashionable boarding schools, and had learned there just as much as might be expected, to prepare her for the serious duties and stern requisitions of life. She married at seventeen a man she loved, at eighteen she was a mother and a widow, and at twenty-two she was again married to a respectable prosperous merchant, a man of sound head and sound heart. Louis Ryson was attracted by her beauty and grace; but when he assumed the responsibility of her happiness and the support and protection of her unportioned child and herself through life, he believed she had sense enough to perform well a woman’s pat, that is to say, that she would be a credible, affectionate and domestic wife. As Mrs. Ryson and her companion drove off, Robert Liston, the friend whom I have quoted above, a man of shrewdness and experience, said to me, “there is an intrinsic difficulty in the case of our young married women. I mean those who have been fashionably educated and associated, and who have not (a few have) mind enough to lay their own course. They have accomplishments and tastes that belong to the class born to the dolce far niente life, or if you will allow me an illustration familiar to the ruder days of my youth, they have the ruffle without the shirt. Your sex has by nature more sensitiveness and more refinement than ours. This is developed by your education. You get glimpses into the world of art, you learn the caning about painting and sculpture, and the names of at least of the operas, composers and singers. Now, too, as your gods are unknown gods to us,—for the most part cotton and corn dealers, or importers of dry good, or if we chance to belong to the learned professions, still operatives,—delving all day, with no time to give to the mere embellishments of life,—so our young women are left to be amused by foreign men, who have, as I said, the ruffle without the shirt, or by those few idle men of fortune among us, who like Mrs. Ryson’s admirer, Rupert Reed, have time to acquire certain foreign graces, and time and leisure to practice foreign follies and vices, one of the worst of them being to profit by the coquetries of pretty, weak and very assailable young women, like poor Mrs. Louis Ryson.” Our conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the daily coaches. “There is the owner of the property we were speaking of,” continued my friend Liston, pointing to one of the gentlemen alighting from the coach, a man of some eight and twenty, with a fair open countenance, but remarkably destitute of that nicety and delicatȇsse to which ladies give the indefinable name of an ‘air.’
“Is that Mrs. Ryson’s husband?” I asked.
Liston smiled at my tone and replied, “That is, and a good honest fellow too; a man respected in his counting-house, and in Wall-street, and kind and affectionate in his own household; but he has no gift at making tableaux of life. You see the sort of person he is.” Little Juliet, who ever since her mother drove off had been standing listlessly by the railing, gazing in the direction her mother had gone, came forward at the arrival of the
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coaches, to receive her step-father. He kissed her and asked ‘where was her mother?’ “She has gone to take a drive,” replied the child, in the manner that indicated she would rather not have had that answer to give.
“I am glad of it, it is a charming afternoon, but why did she not take you with her, Juliet?”
“There was not room.” It was evident to me that Juliet gave this answer because she had no art to give another. A painful blush overspread her face as she spoke. Ryson misinterpreted it. “Never mind, my dear,” he said, “you shall have a drive to-morrow, and here is something for you in the mean time,” and from a multitude of parcels, fresh fruit, fresh books, etc. with which he had loaded himself for his wife and her daughter, he took a huge one of candies. “Oh, papa, how kind you always are! Let me take some of your things to your room. Oh, here are mamma’s worsteds!”
“Yes, I went back for them, I had forgotten them in my hurry. No, dear, I’ll take them all in.” He turned as he was entering the door, and said, “Tell your mother, Juliet, when she comes, that I shall be in directly. I have promised a gentleman to play a game of billiards with him before tea.” Again he turned back and said, “There is a parcel of burnt almonds inside yours, for your mother. Don’t open that, Juliet, you know she particularly likes burnt almonds.”
“There is something very kindly in his voice,” said I to my friend, as Ryson passed in, “and an air of simplicity, frankness, and unconventionalism that particularly pleases me.”
“And are you not rather struck with his being remarkably unexacting, unjealous—the poor man never even asked with whom his wife had gone; he thinks no evil, and therefore fears none.”
“And perhaps has none to fear,” I replied, “the rust in our society is a good element.”
“And therefore,” said my friend, “should never be abused. Of all the birds of prey who hover over society and live by devouring the weak, the libertine is the most atrocious and most detestable. I have known Rupert Reed from his childhood. The rich inheritance that awaited him, instead of stimulating his parents to fit him for the great responsibility of using and dispensing, procured for him exemption from restraint. He had from nature a quick perception and strong will, but he grew up as ignorant as a clown, with the exception of some accomplishment in music. He had some taste for it, and it was the grace in request among the people he consorted with. At seventeen he came into possession of his immense fortune, and for three or four years he abandoned himself to a life of pleasure, so called. His constitution was then exhausted, and he ‘brought up,’ as they term it. He changed his field of action, he married a beautiful woman, and neglected her after six months; he became haut-ton, was exclusive in his habits; in the world, but not of it, he bestows his favors on those only who are distinguished for fashion, or beauty, or talent, r a certain caste. Now it is a brilliant actress, opera singer, or ballet-dancer; now a debutante in high life, and now the pretty wife of some confiding, working city merchant, whom accident has made the belle of a season at a watering-place. like poor Mrs. Ryson. He like eclat, and therefore he always marks as his prey such as are sparkling in sunshine.”
“But I am astonished that decent women should permit the advances of a man whose libertinism is so notorious as Rupert Reed’s!”
“My dear, innocent friend! I beg your pardon, and your sex’s, but when was reputed libertinism a bar to a man’s acceptance in society, provided he has a very large fortune, has an ultra and rather refined coxcombry, studies foreign conventional refinements, and bears a name (that potent supreme charm in our democratic society!) that has belonged to a fashionable dynasty for two or three generations. Besides, there is, it must be acknowledged, some charm peculiar to the individual. I am inclined to think it has something to do with animal magnetism. There are certain men and certain women too, whose attractions are inexplicable. This very Rupert Reed broke the heart and overclouded the destiny of a gifted young creature as far above him as the stars are above us. The facts came to me mysteriously, and I cannot communicate them. God help her! I never see his bloodless cheek without thinking that the curse I heard her father utter is eating ‘his life away!’”
I hope my readers will not conclude that my friend and I are merely cold and curious observers, analyzing and depicting our fellow-creatures as coolly as a naturalist does a fish. It does not become me to speak of myself; but of him I must say he has far more humanity than curiosity, far more of sorrow and pity than anger for human folly, and that excepting in his confidential communications with me, he maintained an apparent ignorance of the gossip in active circulation at Crescent Beach, in relation to poor little Mrs. Ryson and the reptile into whose web she was falling. I would forewarn my readers, too, against the trouble of looking on the map for Crescent Beach. It is only a name we have given to one of the sea-shores to which our citizens go down in herds during the hot summer months to refresh soul and body. Why not call things by their right names! Simply because we wish to invest with a slight veil of fiction circumstances which, having transpired some few years since, are already forgotten.
As I parted from my friend, Mrs. Clinly joined me. Mrs. Clinly is a star of magnitude, though declining from the ascendant, she has been a beauty;
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was younger once—is now a grandmother—and very young and very handsome for a grandmother. She still hovers round the precincts of the world she once shone upon, and by no very violent imagination might be supposed to be a spirit condemned to note and publish the follies in which she indulged, till they forsook her. She is called a very good-natured person, and so she is as far as an easy, careless deportment goes—a readiness to introduce a fashionable stranger, to do an acceptable office for a prominent actor on this scene—to impart a new fashion, or teach a new stitch. She has a quick recognition, and what seems a spontaneous smile for every passer-by, but when they have passed, listen, if you will, to her annotations—her treasured budget of private anecdotes—“They are pretty girls! but what a pity the men are shy of them!”
“Shy of them! I have observed no such thing!”
“Oh, they are, I assure you, on account of that old story about their mother; it is very wrong they should suffer for it, poor girls!”
“Lovely dress of Mrs. —’s. My husband says, he had rather look at her dresses than pay for them. I suppose he could afford it as well as poor Mr. ----.”
“Just observe” (behind her fan) “Mrs. Rollins and Mrs. Smith when they meet,”—the parties pass us, —“they did not even bow. Mrs. Smith has mentioned some little thing Mrs. Rollins said about Mrs. John Buller. How are you to-day, Mrs. Rollins?” she continued to that lady, who now approached us, and who I thought had, en passant, looked very much askance at Mrs. Smith.
“It’s a lovely day; did you bathe, Mrs. Rollins?”
“No; I haven’t been in my room all day. I detest living in public and going in herds that your people are so fond of!”
“Not in feeling. No, I assure you, I have lived too long abroad to identify myself with them. One gets one’s tastes so changed, that one can never be at ease here, I think. They talk of spies abroad—Lord bless me!—it seems you are all spies here! there is no freedom. You must do as everybody else does, and say what everybody else says. If you express an opinion that differs from others, on character, religion, or what not, it is repeated and garbled! If this were done in society comme il faut in Europe, the repeater would be sacrificed. Depend on it, mesdames,” she concluded, shrugging her shoulders, and darting a glance along the piazza, at the offending Mrs. Smith; “this tittle-tattle belongs to demi-civilization. I made some chance remark about that poor little Mrs. Ryson’s flirtation with Rupert Reed. I am sure I think none the worse of her—il faut l’amuser; but repeated, I am made to appear—what, you may imagine;” and she writhed a mouth that had once been pretty, into an expression of bitter resentment. At this moment, little Juliet came on the piazza, her face lightened, holding in one hand a bunch of fresh pond lilies (the exquisite lotus). “O! Your Mamma has returned from her drive; has she, my dear?” said Mrs. Clinly, who, if she had been Mrs. Ryson’s recording angel, or accusing sprit, could not have kept a more exact watch over her movements. “No,” replied Juliet, the passing ray of sunshine vanishing from her face; “do you think anything can have happened to mama, Mrs. Clinly?”
“Oh, no, my dear,” replied Mrs. Clinly, with a sly smile that expressed more than one should have thought in the presence of that innocent child. “Mr. Rupert Reed is a very safe driver for your mother—in one sense,” she added in a lowered voice, to Mrs. Rollins, who merely shrugged her shoulders, as if the insinuation were a very light matter. At his moment, Mrs. Duncan passed along, dispersing at the right hand and the left all the lilies she had not given to little Juliet. I have nothing special to tell of Mrs. Duncan, and yet I pause, as my memory goes back to that period as if a good angel were passing by me. I wish I had the power to describe her, and to make others feel, as I did then, the influence of her character. Mrs. Duncan was somewhere on that stage of pilgrimage of life between thirty and forty, when most women, if not worse by the experience of life have lost the freshness of their interest in it. Not so with dear Mrs. Duncan; she was as frank, fresh, confiding, and affectionate as a girl of sixteen, just—not from boarding school; no, there for the most part, there is a forcing process of world-experience, but—from a happy home. Mrs. Duncan reversed that ingenious chemical analysis that extracts poison from every earthly substance, and contrived to distil good from everybody and everything. It seemed to me that her sunny face, by a mysterious and improved daguerreotype, marked on her heart every line of beauty and form of loveliness, and left the rest—refuse to her. On her heart—Mrs. Clinly was stamped the kind, all-admiring person she would fain be; Mrs. Duncan was too unconventional to stand high with the aspirants to high fashion, of Crescent Beach. They spoke of her as a person laboring under some disqualification, as ‘poor Mrs. Duncan.’ Poor! She was one of those rich ones whose treasures are every hour accumulating where the moth of worldliness and the rust of selfishness do not corrupt. But as I
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was saying, Mrs. Duncan came floating towards us. She was a woman whose specific gravity would not have promised a floating motion, but no sylph moved lighter; it was buoyancy of a cheerful, unburdened spirit. She had a curly-headed boy in her arms, and two children running after her. She looked the type of loving charity. “You are such a favorite with the children, Mrs. Duncan,” said Mrs. Clinly. “I believe you keep them all in sugar-plums.”
“Any how, she has not given us sugar-plums to-day,” said one of the children, bristling. “We should not love some people, if they gave us all the sugar-plums in the world; should we, Jem?” added the boy. The children at Crescent Beach were franker than their parents.
“There’s your tea-bell; away with you, boys,” said Mrs. Duncan, who perceived their words were not sugar-plums to Mrs. Clinly. “It’s natural to me to love children,” she added, kissing them and pushing them off; “their noise never troubles me; there is a great difference in people about that; some mind it.”
“Oh, it is an intolerable nuisance!” exclaimed Mrs. Rollins. “There is no country, I believe, in the world, but this, where children are permitted en scene. But here, it is not men and women, but children, that are the actors on the world’s theatre. The drawing-room is a menagerie, and these young animals (whelps I won’t call them) are careering up and down, while the men and women are thrust to the wall.”
This was an evil we all had suffered under at Crescent Beach, and I believe all of us, excepting dear Mrs. Duncan, were ready to take up arms against this sea of children. “I don’t know how it is,” she said, “in other countries. I have never been there. My husband means to go as soon as he can arrange, but he has so many orphans under his care. It is not everybody you know, that is willing to be a guardian; it is always to fall on Mr. Duncan. Not but that it’s very pleasant; there are three girls who dine with us every Sunday, not at all connected either, who seem like our own children. But I hope the time will come when we can go. I may feel differently when I have seen as much of the world as Mrs. Rollins has. Now children don’t disturb me, they are so happy here. It’s their vacation you know, and they must have a little range.”
“But, dear Mrs. Duncan, their mothers are so shockingly negligent of them,” urged Mrs. Rollins.
“Are they?” replied Mrs. Duncan, with the accent of one does not accede, and will not contradict. “I have not observed that. There are no dangers for them here to run into, and they come here for their health and diversion, and they are so happy. It’s healthy to be happy; don’t you think so, Mrs. Rollins?”
“That may be,” replied Mrs. Rollins, “but I have no notion that we are to be sacrificed to make these little brats happy, or that they are any the happier for it. I tell you, Mrs. Duncan, if you and your husband ever achieve that voyage to Europe, you will see the benefit of discipline and subordination.”
She walked off with the air of one who as uttered an undeniable truth.
“She is a very peculiar woman,” said Mrs. Duncan, “but very agreeable—how much she has seen of the world!”
“Rather too much,” said I.
“Yes, she is very ill-natured,” said Mrs. Clinly.
“Of course she has her own views,” said Mrs. Duncan, “but I must think she is a good woman. She sits alone in her own room a great deal, and I don’t believe that any one who is not good likes to be alone.”
Mrs. Clinly made no reply but walked to the end of the piazza, to explore (as I, perhaps unjustly, believed) the road by which Mrs. Ryson was to return. “Mrs. Clinly and Mrs. Rollins do not seem like one another,” said Mrs. Duncan; “but I dare say they will in a few days, when they come to know one another better. I am not much accustomed to these public resorts, but it appears to me that one of the uses of coming to them is to do away prejudices. Now there are people here of such different religions; and poor Mrs. Rollins,--some of the ladies think she has no religion at all, because somebody overheard her say, one day, that she ‘believed Mr. Horatio Smith had gone to ---- (you know where), if there were such a place.’ Now, she reads her Bible every day, and of course she must believe there is the place she alluded to—“
“They are coming!” exclaimed Mrs. Clinly, returning to us and interrupting Mrs. Duncan’s charitable speculations.
“Who is coming?” asked Mrs. Duncan.
“Mrs. Ryson and her—”
Mrs. Duncan filled the hiatus according to her own honest impressions, and called out to Juliet, “Run, Juliet, love! there’s your mamma and papa!”
Juliet did not run, but remained drooping, like the beautiful lily she was picking to pieces.
“Dear child, don’t spoil that lily,” said Mrs. Duncan, “you know I gave them to you for your mamma’s hair.”
“I put mamma’s in water,” replied Juliet, “and this I kept for myself,” and raising her eyes, which I thought were filled with tears, though a dim smile flitted over her lips, “I think,” she added, “it feels pretty much as I do.”
“Why you dear little thing!” exclaimed Mrs. Duncan, “are you not well? have you a head-
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ache? Perhaps you have eaten something that does not agree with you.”
Juliet slid away from the kind lady, without replying, and joining her mother, who had alighted at the end of the piazza, and, her arm in Rupert Reed’s, was walking across it to the entrance door. Juliet said something in a low voice to her as they passed me. I did not hear her, but I was struck by Mrs. Ryson’s mounting color. I fancied Juliet had announced her father. Mrs. Ryson hastily withdrew her arm, and went to her own apartment.
At tea she appeared with her husband. They sat opposite to me. Mrs. Clinly on my right hand. “Our vis-à-vis does not look quite as animated and excited as we sometimes see her,” she whispered; and added, aloud, to her husband, “do you find Mrs. Ryson improving?”
“Not as I expected,” replied Mr. Ryson, “I have been laughing at her for getting the blues at Crescent Beach. To me, this is such a delightful change from the city, that I am half intoxicated with spirits.” And so it appeared, for he went on talking in a loud voice with the gentlemen around him, about the city-news, the arrival of the steamer, the rise of corn, etc., etc., while his pretty wife sat by him, languid and listless.
But a change had come over her, when two hours after I saw her in the drawing-room. She had added some pretty decorations to her dress, her color was heightened, and I saw that her husband felt a pleasurable and natural vanity, as, when leading her into the room, he heard her pointed out to some new comers as the prettiest woman in Crescent Beach. He walked up and down the room, his wife on one side, and Juliet on the other, a proud and happy man. “How do you like it here, my child,” he said.
“Not half so well as at home, papa.”
“You don’t? You are the girl for my money! But why, in the name of reason, do you not like it, Juliet? it seems to me you children have it all your own way.”
“I do not have it at all my own way,” said Juliet. “Before we came to Crescent Beach I was always with mamma, and mamma loved me better than any one, and now—”
“Hush, Juliet,” said her mother; “what nonsense are you talking. It was high time we should leave home, you were getting so selfish as to think I must be wholly devoted to you—body and soul.”
“Oh, my dear Juliet, you must not be selfish; there is nothing so disagreeable as selfishness!” said the loving step-father. Soon after, in the shuffling up of the company, I found myself on the sofa with the Rysons. Robert Liston, who had been one of a circle of waltzers, took a chair beside me. “Young America!” he exclaimed, with a deep, inward laugh, peculiar to himself. “There is,” he added, “something either very naïve, or frank, or daring, in some of our young ladies. I just heard Miss Lupton say to Ned Bristol, after whirling around with him in what we old-fashioned people should call a very close embrace, ‘Now, Mr. Bristol, why can’t you waltz like Rupert Reed. You come too near me! and you put your arm too far round!’ Waltzing may sanctify such remonstrances, but I fancy if Miss Lupton were to make these elegant remarks to a gentleman sitting by her, her father might feel bound to call him out. Oh, Lord! ‘what we are we know, but not what we shall be.’ I once thought the freedom of our young women guaranteed their purity.”
“You think differently now?”
“I would not trust to freedom alone. Those must be well broken animals that require neither reins nor blinders. And reins, surely, are of no use where such a mother as Mrs. Lupton holds them.”
“Anne, my love,” she said, as Bristol left her daughter to seek another partner “you are quite right, Bristol does not waltz comme il faut. Mr. Reed,” she said, “I am half mind to ask you to waltz with Anne; entre nous, I infinitely prefer she should waltz only with married men; and you waltz so—so differently from people in general.” Reed bowed to the compliment, and took out Miss Anne; and the chary mother has the pleasure of seeing her waltz with the most fashionable man in the room. I think little Juliet, who had nestled close to me, had, without understanding the purport of my friend’s remarks, a sort of feeling of his meaning, or perhaps it was the instinct give to the weakest creatures, by which they detect the presence of an enemy; for, soon after, when Rupert Reed asked her mother to waltz, the child said, impulsively, “Oh, don’t, mamma—don’t!”
“Juliet!” said her mother, in a tone of deep displeasure, and then turning to her husband, she added, “Mr. Ryson does not dance, and he is so seldom here, that much as I love waltzing I shall not waltz to-night.” There was a false tone in the voice—poor lady! her path had become a devious one.
“Oh, Mary!” said the good-natured husband, “waltz with Mr. Reed, by all means, if you like it. Live and let live, Mr. Reed, that’s my rule. I will go on the piazza, in the meantime, and smoke a cigar.” He went, and escaped many a whisper that might have enlightened him, as his wife went the giddy round with a glowing cheek and downcast eye.
The next evening just before sunset, I saw little Juliet sitting pensive and alone on the piazza, as I was crossing it to go down to the beach for my usual evening walk. I asked her to come with
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me, and she expressed her acquiescence by taking my hand and kissing it with a grace and gentleness that marked all she did. “This is a beautiful vesper-service, Juliet,” I said as we paced along over the compacted sands, from which the waves had just retreated. “Vesper-service! what does that mean?” She asked. I explained. She was silent for a few moments, while her fine hazel eye turned to the horizon, along with the black clouds lay like gigantic structures, castle and tower. The sky kindled around the sun, and he seemed to sink down into a field of fire that lit up these black masses, so that they shone like the temples of Peru, with their golden friezes, and incrustations of amethysts, rubies and sapphires. The heavens were tinged to the very zenith with gold, and red shading off to the faintest rose color; and the ocean, as far as we could see it, reflected the ruddy light.
I felt the child’s delicate little fingers pressing my hand more closely, she instinctively paused and gazed on the lines of surf, as the green arches rose, careering on, one after another, and threw off their bright crests. Juliet stood, as if entranced, and then turned her eyes to me, and would have spoken, but her habitual timidity overcame her impulse.
“What is it, Juliet,” I asked, “you were going to say something to me?”
“Yes,” she said, re-assured by my manner. “After you spoke of the vesper-service, I remembered my mother took me once to a vesper-service, and I was thinking how much better was the ocean than the organ; and it seems to me,” she added, turning her eager gaze to the feathery clouds, “as if there were millions of angels standing there, where the sun went down, and I can bear—almost, I mean—soft, low music coming from them, like a response to those deep ocean sounds. I have had some such thoughts before, when I walked here alone, but your speaking of the vesper-service made me understand them better!”
I said nothing. I would not encourage the imaginations of this child of seven years—I dared not repress them. I felt then—I feel now—that she may have held communion with the angel that stood before her Father’s face. I never saw anything human so angelic! We had already walked beyond the usual limit of the strollers on the beach, we paused again and looked oceanward, as those are wont to do who feel its mysterious charm. Troops of the little beach-bird, were chasing their prey, as the last refluent wave left it on the sand, where there was scarcely water enough to wet their claws, and yet enough to reflect the brilliant dyes of the sky, so that it looked as if they were running over a pearly pavement, and as the crested wave met them they spread their wings and mounted over them—‘skill triumphing over might!’ I thought. My little companion had another thought. “My cousin died last spring,” she said. “My cousin Sally Vore. I loved Sally dearly—these birds make me think of her—so she rose over all the waves that came against her.” The child’s voice trembled as she added, “I have nobody now, Sally is gone!”
“Nobody, my dear Juliet! your Mamma?”
“Oh yes, indeed, Mamma; but since we came here, Mamma—” her voice faltered, and she paused.
“Your Mamma is very much occupied here,” I said, “and so is every one. You will soon go home and then you will have your mamma all to yourself again; but it is time for us to turn, there is the evening star shining through that rosy haze—we are alone on the beach.” We turned around, and found we were not alone. Retracing our steps for a few moments we met Mrs. Ryson and Rupert Reed. They were neither of them habitual pedestrians, and were both evidently in that sort of absorption which makes one unmindful of time or space. Juliet sprang towards her mother. “Come home, mamma,” she said, “do come home, it’s late—come home with me.”
It was evident, that Mrs. Ryson felt a sudden revulsion in the tide of her feelings at the unexpected meeting with her child. She stood still for a half moment and looked around her like one that grasped the brink of a precipice, and then recovering herself she repulsed the little girl not ungently, and said, “Finish your walk with that lady, my dear; I shall finish up directly.” Juliet returned to my side, but she walked on silently and languidly, and often looking back. After a short time, she drew a long breath as if relieved from a pressure, and said, “Mamma has turned about—I do not like that Mr. Rupert Reed; do you?”
I answered heartily, “No, I do not.”
“And yet,” she resumed, “I should like him if it were not he—you are laughing at me—I mean if any one else did what he does I should like him. He has given mamma the loveliest case of perfumes, and a beautiful cross. I am sure it is he, for you know he is the only person mamma seems to know very well here; but perhaps I should not tell it—I have no one to talk to here, and I told you before I thought; and I am afraid mamma would not like it, for she has packed the things quite away at the bottom of her trunk!”
“O!” thought I, “are these things thrown into the scale with protestations and flatteries to buy a woman!—a wife!—a mother! My country-women! you have been marked for your purity, your conjugal virtue, your maternal devotion; you have been held worthy guardians of a holier temple than that kept by the ancient bestals—the temple of married love and purity. Be careful that you enter it with a full sense of its high
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duties, its inappreciable happiness, and infinite rewards. Keep your faith unsullied by a disloyal wish or thought, it will be the brightest jewel of your immortal crown. Let your virtues be as a circle of fire around you, that the serpent, in the form of a libertine, dare not approach. If he come adorned with foreign graces, accomplishments and refinements, he is still the reptile whose touch defiles. Do not admit him to your houses, nor tolerate him in your society! Resist the flood of foreign princesses and duchesses, who, when the glare of their position vanishes, are lower than the weak, tempted, and betrayed wretches of our streets, whom you would spurn from your thresholds.”
* * * * * *
A few days passed on; Mr. Ryson had gone to the South on business, and consequently his frequent runs to Crescent Beach were suspended. Mrs. Ryson seemed to lose all sense of observation of her absorption with her lover—as I am sorry to say Rupert Reed was called, by some of the ladies at Crescent Beach—who, if Mrs. Ryson had been on the brink of the grave with a fever, would not have spoken lightly of it; and yet the abyss yawning before her—and oh, how to be closed!—was infinitely worse, more hopeless than the grave. It was impossible to see her without feeling an interest in her fate. She was not yet five and twenty. Her face did not indicate strength of character, but had the positive beauty of perfect symmetry and coloring, and added to this a certain sweetness, affectionateness of innocence still hung about her, giving charm to the whole, like the fading light of the sinking sun. Besides, she was the mother of Juliet—this should have exorcised an evil spirit!
It was about ten o’clock Sunday morning, when I was walking with Mrs. Duncan on the piazza. Mrs. Duncan is the person in the world of whom if I had a favor to ask (without any claim but my want) I should have asked for it. So, I presume, thought Mrs. Ryson, for she came from her room and said, “I am obliged, Mrs. Duncan, to go suddenly to town to see a relative who is ill. I may be detained a day or two. Will you be kind enough to take charge of Juliet?”
“Oh, certainly, I shall be delighted, my husband and I both think she is the sweetest child we ever saw. I think it quite an honor to be entrusted with her. If I had had such a daughter, I should have been but a worshipper of idols; I could think of nothing else.”
Mrs. Ryson’s eyes were suddenly raised for the first time. They fell again, and a deadly paleness overspread her face. Mrs. Duncan did not seem to observe it. She was most unsuspicious of mortals. “How do you go to town,” she asked; “there is no coach on Sunday.”
“No, I am going in a private conveyance.”
“Alone! that’s not pleasant. Would you not like to have my husband go with you? He goes at any rate, to-morrow. I’ll run and speak to him.”
“No, no, don’t, I am not going alone. Mr. Reed—is—has offered to drive me—he is going to town on his way home.”
Mrs. Ryson turned away with a hasty farewell, and Mrs. Duncan called after her. “Where is Juliet, I want to tell the dear child how glad I am to have her for a little while.”
“She is bathing,” replied Mrs. Ryson, “She is not quite well; I thought she wanted it, and I persuaded her, much against her will.”
After she left us, “It’s a pity, it’s a pity she goes up with that man!” exclaimed Mrs. Duncan, in the voice of a sorrowing angel; “not that there is any real harm in it, but I fear some observations will be made. Everybody here is not charitable!” She touched my arm and pointed to the end of the piazza. There stood Rupert Reed’s equipage, his liveried servant, and Reed himself biting his nails with impatience.
I know not what I should have replied to Mrs. Duncan. Just at that moment our attention was attracted by an unusual noise at the beach. It was the bathing hour, and there were some commotion there—shrill screams mingled with the booming of the waves. In a moment the Beach-wagon, (the vehicle was so called that conveyed the bathers to and fro,) came driving up at most unusual speed, followed by people half dressed, or in bathing dresses. Something had happened, some cause of general consternation. The alarm spread, the people who were gathering in the drawing-room prepared for church, poured on to the piazza. At this moment, veiled, and shrinking from observation, Mrs. Ryson came through the front entrance. The wagon had reached the steps, and amidst exclamations of horror, the dead, drowned body of little Juliet was lifted out of it. The crowd parted, the mother saw her child, uttered a piercing shriek, and fainted on the floor!
Every measure was taken to restore life, but in vain. No one could tell how the accident had happened. Several ladies had seen Juliet go in; some had held her by the hand. The surf was not particularly strong, and no one had apprehended danger. No one had missed her til the man-bather saw her rising quite unconscious to the surface.
She had fulfilled her mission—she had saved her mother’s honor, and passed to immortality.
“O not when the death-prayer is said,
The life of life departs;
The body in the grave is laid,
Its beauty in our hearts.”
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
Crescent Beach
Subject
The topic of the resource
Adultery, Summer, Vacation, Beach
Description
An account of the resource
The narrator tells a story about her vacation on a beach, focusing on a little girl’s relationship with her young mother and the mother’s adultery.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss Catharine M. Sedgwick
Source
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Sartain's Union Magazine [edited
by Caroline M. Kirkland] (November 1847): 212-19.
Publisher
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Sartain's Union Magazine
Date
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1847
Contributor
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Lucinda Damon-Bach; D. Gussman
Language
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English
Type
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Document
Adultery
Beach
Charles Dickens
Charles I
children
Conjugal virtue
Death
drowning
Female education
Libertines
Libertinism
Little Nell
marriage
Napoleon
Peru
Ryson
Sartain's Union Magazine
Summer
swimming
Vacation
Vespers
Wall Street
waltzing
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/83e788cb3c5d39de5798cb9c0ee60cf1.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=tVlY%7Exfz2oLVC13rewidIundo62owWjQ0Xjrm63bKO-i4ZyDB4CY4KWOnKjapa%7EE98IEc5OQbWInU1HoT5WoAzkPWBOxbM1ALrreLMD7QKL75rfr7rgKHHkfCHLu-2lUS7R6SwfmAIyFjSeHdzOm%7ENCpnYznPZmI9O%7EOAtIhRkITQRNHMaMTSupkLdjoqgBOLp1P1omsZYLRjCiHTZGRxf8yGx8GL7UDBwMn4zUqMfa4TPa5lR5j0yBATpN15-9IntsUResjifxe7JSwuZucXa50eP9SbQd3WHIYy8JCKlaYizi7vIFY7ZKOSODz8PIzMU0Po26QwE8ri4qPp6FR8g__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
93d806ca3d019b9869b7eb19181cf95a
Dublin Core
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1845
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Text
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AN INCIDENT AT ROME
____________________________
BY MISS C. M. SEDGWICK
[104]
During a sojourn of some months at Rome, Lady C---- kindly offered to take me in her droski to Tusculum, a drive, as nearly as I can recall the distance, of some dozen miles. Accordingly, on one of those days, (of which we have often a counterpart in our autumnal months,) when the sky is of its deepest blue, and so serene that the eye seems to penetrate depths never before revealed, we passed the gate of St. John Lateran and entered on the Appian Way. Most
“Things by season seasoned are,
To their right praise and true perfection.”
But to the Roman campagna change of season brings no change. In the spring when, elsewhere, there is a general resurrection of vegetable life – a joyous beginning of the procession of the year – this unchanging aspect of the campagna is most solemn. When all the rest of Italy, as far as nature is concerned, has the beauty, gladness and promise of youth, is in truth a paradise regained, there are here no springing corn, no budding vine-stalks, no opening blossoms, scarcely a bird’s note. Nature, elsewhere so active, so plastic, so full of hope, is here monumental – a record of the inexorable past.
But though there be no look of cheerful habitancy, there is a solemn beauty. You can scarcely turn your eye without a strong emotion, without involuntarily uttering a name that is a charmed word. “There is Soracte!” “There is Tivoli!” “There is the country of the Sabines!” “There are the beautiful Alban Hills!” Behind you is Rome with its natural elevations, its splendid domes, towers and obelisks, its brooding pines, and sad cypresses – surely the most picturesque, the most suggestive of cities. The vast solitudes around you are filled with records of Rome and its magnificent life-time; broken aqueducts sometimes extending for a quarter of a mile, and then standing in fragments of three or four, or perhaps a single arch. On every side are monuments and tombs, by which the poor tenants hoped to perpetuate their names. The high sepulchral grass waves around them, the stones are a blank, or if the name be preserved – as in the still nearly perfect tomb of Cecilia Metella – it is but a name, all the rest is left to conjecture.
Lady C---- had resided several winters at Rome, and was perfectly familiar with its antiquities, and generous in her communications, and so delightfully did the time pass away that we hardly seemed to have emerged from the Porta San Giovanni when we drove into the little town of Frascati. The landlord appeared at the carriage door, with the usual smiles and potency of an Italian host, and answering the ready “Yes – yes – my lady!” to all Lady C’s demands, (the chief one being a parlor with a pleasant prospect,) he ushered us into the house and up a dirty stairway, and opened the door and windows of a little parlor, exclaiming, “Ecco, ecco, mi ladi, ecco una bella veduta!” We rushed to the window, expecting a beautiful view of the campagna, but instead of that we could see nothing but the villainous little piazza we had just left, with the usual accompaniments of an Italian place, beggars and an idle rabble. Lady C. smiled, and turning to me said, “The house affords nothing better, or he would have given it to us,” and bowing to our host as if she were quite satisfied, he took her orders and left us to ourselves.
“At what are you smiling?” she said to me.
“At your un-English way of proceeding, my dear Lady C.
Pardon my impertinence, but it would have seemed to me more nationally characteristic if you had broken out upon our host for attempting to impose this piazza on you for a beautiful prospect.”
“But it is to his eye. You are right, my friend. I have lived long enough abroad to get rid of a few prejudices, and some inconvenient and very unwise English habits. I do not now conclude that a thing is of course wrong because it is not in our Island fashion; and I am just learning to endure with good temper what I cannot cure, and to find out that every country, I might almost say every creature, has a bright side, at which we may look and thank God. Truly I am often ashamed of my snarling, barking, arrogant countrymen.”
I was charmed with the candor of Lady C’s concession, but being well aware that such a concession is much of the nature of a personal humiliation, I turned the subject by asking Lady C. if she had been frequently at Frascati?
“Often.” she said, and the last time she was there was rather memorable, and she proceeded to relate the following story, some part of which I had heard from our consul at Naples. Three years before, letters had been received at Rome, and in those Italian cities most frequented by the English, requesting inquiries to be set foot for a certain Murray Bathurst, a young Englishman, who had come to the Continent early in the preceding spring, intending to make the tour of Italy chiefly on foot. His mother, a widow, had received letters from him as late as October. He was then on his return from Naples to Rome, purposing to embark at Civita Vecchia for Marseilles. The mother’s letters expressed the misery of her suspense and anxiety so touchingly that many persons became interested in her behalf. Her letters were enforced by others from persons of note. I remember Lady C. mentioned Wordsworth or Southey’s name. This adventitious aid could scarcely have been necessary to stimulate benevo-
[105]
lence. No adventitious aid would ever be in requisition if there were more of the human race like a certain little woman in Boston, who hearing an alarm given of a child being run over, rushed forward to rescue it with such signs of distress that a passer by asked, “Is it your child?” “No,” she replied, “but it is somebody’s child.” Diligent inquiries were made of the police, and the books of our consuls at the different cities examined. The result was that Murray Bathurst was traced from Milan to Naples, back to Rome, and thence to Civita Vecchia. His entrance from Rome into that most forlorn of all travelers’ depots was duly registered, and there all clew was lost. In vain were the registers of all the steamers and of every craft that left the port examined – there was no trace of him. It must have been the same Murray Bathurst that was noted elsewhere; for his tall, slender, un-English person, his large dark melancholy eyes, his pale complexion, and tangled long dark hair, were all so notable as to be recorded in the reports of the police. Many letters were written to the mother giving this unsatisfactory information, and expressive of condolence and regret that no more could be learned of the lost young man. In a little time the topic became trite, then was forgotten, and mother and son sunk into the oblivion of past things.
A year ran away, when one morning, just as Lady C. was sitting down to her solitary breakfast in the ---- palace, Mrs. Bathurst was announced. The name and its association had passed from Lady C’s memory. Mrs. Bathurst presented a letter of introduction, and said – “My apology for troubling you is that you are the only person in Rome whom I have ever seen before, and of whose interest and sympathy I feel assured.”
Lady C. was perplexed, but on glancing at the letter she expressed, I have no doubt with the graceful courtesy that characterized her, her readiness to serve Mrs. Bathurst in any mode she would suggest –“But where and when,” she asked, “have I had the pleasure of meeting you?”
“It is quite as natural that you should forget as that I should remember it – the meeting was accidental, but the place may serve to recall it to you. Do you remember, seventeen years ago, meeting a young woman in the widow’s weeds with a little boy, whose beauty I believe first attracted you, wandering about the Druidical remains at Stonehenge?”
“Perfectly – perfectly – and now, though certainly somewhat changed by time – more probably by recent sorrow – I recall your countenance. And that lovely boy, I am quite sure I should know him again. I never have forgotten his extraordinary look of curiosity and investigation as he wandered about amidst those stupendous ruins, nor the intelligent wonder with which he listened to our speculations.”
“And do you remember the subsequent evening we passed together at the inn, when our conversation turned on the antiquities of Italy, and you gave us some account of your then recent visit to Rome, and showed us many drawings in your port-folio, and gave my poor boy a beautiful sketch of one to the temples of Pæstum?”
“Yes, oh yes! and I remember being exceedingly surprised, and pleased, with the child’s extraordinary acquaintance with subjects of which few children of his age had ever heard.”
“Ah, it was then my pride, my fatal pride to instruct him on these subjects, which had always interested myself, and which had occupied much of my poor husband’s life. I developed prematurely, and most unwisely, his taste, and so concentrated his mind on the study of antiquities, that it became a passion. I was gratified by the development of what appeared to me extraordinary genius. Thus I fed the flame that was to consume my poor boy. I found too late that it was impossible to restore his mind to the interests natural, and of course healthy, to youth. My fortune was narrow. I lived with the most rigid economy to supply him with the means of education. He went to Oxford, where he acquitted himself honorably in all the prescribed studies. These were mere task work, except so far as the classics related to his favorite pursuits. His task done, he wasted his health in midnight antiquarian research. At the close of his college career we went into Devonshire at the invitation of my brother-in-law, Sidney Bathurst, to pass the winter.” At this point of her story Mrs. Bathurst paused, reluctant to indulge in the egotism of going into particulars not immediately connected with her loss, though greatly aggravating the calamity; but Lady C., full of sympathy, and not without curiosity, begging her not to omit any particular, she proceeded. “Sydney Bathurst had repaired the fallen fortunes of his family by a long residence in India. His mind was thoroughly mercantilized. He had rather a contempt for all young men, and such a thorough conviction of the unproductiveness of all learning, that my son’s pursuits did not shock him so much as I had feared. His only child, Clara Bathurst, was after his own heart, practical, cheerful even to gayety, careless of the past and future, and reflecting the present brightly as a mirror does sunshine. I soon perceived that her father’s design in inviting us was to give the young people an opportunity of falling in love. He naturally wished to transmit his fortune to one of his own name and family, and I – I trust without a covetous spirit – conscious that my son had no talent for acquitting fortune, was delighted with the prospect of his obtaining, with an amiable wife, the means of indulging his taste. Nothing – I am convinced of it – nothing goes right where fortune is the basis of a matrimonial project. Marriage is the Lord’s temple – the money-changers may not enter it with impunity. I must do myself the justice to say that fortune was not my primary object. I watched the indications of the young people’s affections with intense interest. There were few points of sympathy between them. My son seemed hardly to notice his cousin; at times, indeed, gleams from her sunny spirit entered his heart, but as if through a crack – no light was diffused there. With Clara the case was quite different. Affection is a woman’s atmosphere. We are flexible and clinging in our natures, and we attach ourselves to the nearest object. We lived in retirement. My
[106]
son had no competitor. He was gentle in his manners, refined, graceful – handsome. He had the reputation of learning and talent.
“Clara became quiet and thoughtful. She took to reading, and, poor girl! at last came to poring over the huge old books in which my son buried himself. She seemed winding herself into a sort of chrysalis condition, in the hope of a transition to come.
“The winter passed away without change to Murray. One idea absorbed him. Early in the spring he asked a private audience of his uncle, and when Mr. Sydney Bathurst was prepared to hear a disclosure harmonizing with his favorite project, my son modestly imparted his desire to come to Italy, his longing to explore the Etruscan remains whose riches were just then developing. He perceived his uncle’s astonishment, disappointment and displeasure, and he intimated that though poor he was independent. His purpose was to travel on foot, and he had ascertained by inquiries and calculation that the half of his annual allowance would pay for his meat, drink, and lodging, which should be all of the simplest.
“‘And how’, his uncle asked contemptuously, ‘was his rummaging and groping about the dusty old underground ruins of Italy fit him for any manly career? When was he to set about getting his living?’
“My son replied that what others called a living was superfluity to him, that he would not exchange his favorite pursuits for all England’s wealth – for himself he had no favor to ask but to be let alone; but that it would be an inexpressible comfort if, during the six months of his absence, he might leave me in my present happy situation – in the society of his cousin, whom he was sure I loved next to himself.
“‘The only sensible thing he said,’ exclaimed my brother-in-law, when he repeated to me the conversation, ‘Such folly is incomprehensible. But there is no use in interfering. Let him go his own way and take the consequence. Bread and water regimen in perspective is well enough, but, my word for it, he will be tired of it and Italy and its rubbish before six months are past.’
‘I will not go into more particulars of our conversation. I naturally defended my poor son, but I felt that Mr. Bathurst’s objections were sound. It ended in my acquiescing in Murray’s carrying out the plan he had made, and encountering the hardships he contemned, in the hope they would prove the best medicine for his diseased mind. But I was to learn that a mental, like a physical, condition which has been cherished and fortified by education cannot be changed by medicine. My son left us. Poor Clara, like Undine, had found a soul in the development of her affections. Her gayety was gone. So long as my son continued to write to us she read every thing she could lay her hands upon connected with the scene of his travels and the researches that particularly interested him. Since then she had read nothing. For a time she fell into a deep melancholy. From this she was roused, in part by my earnest entreaties, but more by the force of her own conscience. She is now a sort of lay sister of charity to the neighborhood, and she finds, as the wretched have always done, the surest solace for her own misfortunes in softening the miseries of others.”
So far Lady C. had told me Mrs. Bathurst’s story as she recalled it in her own words. Six months had elapsed since young Bathurst had been seen at Civita Vecchia. Mrs. Bathurst had come to Italy in the hope that she might obtain some clew that had escaped the less interested search of strangers. Her brother-in-law had supplied her amply with the means of traveling, and she had resolved never to abandon the pursuit while the least ray of hope remained. The circumstances on which she mainly rested her belief that nothing fatal had happened to her son were, that as he was of the Roman Catholic faith – that as he spoke Italian like a native, and as his complexion and features were much more like the Italian than his own northern race, he might for years wander about the less frequented parts of Italy without incurring the suspicion that he was a foreigner. She conjectured that on arriving at Civita Vecchia he had yielded to an unconquerable reluctance to leaving Italy. She had no very definite idea of what had since been his fate. She alternated between hope and despair without any reason but the condition of feeling she happened to be in. The source whence young Bathurst had derived his antiquarian enthusiasm was soon quite obvious to Lady C. The only mode of drawing Mrs. Bathurst from her sorrowful maternal anxieties was to plunge her into some obscure, unintelligible ruin in Rome. She preferred the dim Thermæ of Titus, Caracalla’s baths, or Sallust’s garden, to St. Peter’s, and the fragments of the palaces of the Cæsars to all the glories of the Vatican. But there were times when she was so steeped in grief, so near despair, that she seemed on the verge of insanity: and it was one evening after trying in vain to rouse and soothe her that Lady C. proposed a drive to Tusculum the next day. They accordingly set forth the next morning, and the mother seemed to be drawn away from her personal sorrows on this monumental road, for who, it is natural to ask here, can escape the common destiny of man “made to mourn?”
They drove into the little town of Frascati, and stopped at this same inn where Lady C. and myself were now discussing our cold chicken. The piazza was as thronged and noisy then as now, as these places always are in Italy, and most noisy in the meanest, poorest, lowest-fallen towns. As the ladies alighted screaming guides and clamorous beggars thronged about them. Mrs. Bathurst hurried into the inn. Lady C., more accustomed to the disagreeable juxtaposition of fleas, dirt and importunity, quietly stopped to make her bargain with a guide, and give, as is her custom, a small sum to the landlord to be dispensed to the poorest poor. Her eye was attracted by a lean and miserable man who stood behind the crowd, and apart from it, and who, pale, emaciated and haggard, with a threadbare cloak closely drawn around him, and seeming most of all to need charity, was apparently unobservant and unconcerned.
“My friend,” said Lady C. to the landlord, and
[107]
pointing to the man who had attracted her eye, “see to that poor wretch getting the largest share of my charity, and here,” she added, again opening her ever willing purse, “here is something more – get him a warm under-garment – he is shivering at this moment.”
“Ah, madame,” replied mine host, “he is well cared for; his senses are a little astray, and of such, you know, the Holy Virgin has special care. He wanders about from morning till night, and when, at evening, he comes into Frascati, there is not a churl in the town that would not give him a bed and lodging, though he never asks for either. He is innocent and quiet enough, poor fellow!”
“Has he no family – no relatives among you?” asked Lady C – but she received no reply – another carriage had drawn up, and the landlord with the ready civility of his craft was opening its door.
“Come with me to the other side of the house,” said Lady C. to Mrs. Bathurst, whom she found in a little back parlor overlooking the court. “Come with me and see a pensioner of the Holy Virgin – as our host assures me he is – a creature steeped in poverty, but without suffering, and with an aspect that having once looked upon you never can forget.” Before she had finished her sentence Lady C. was at the window of “la belle veduta,” overlooking the piazza. The throng of beggars was at the heels of the newly arrived gentry, and Lady C. looked about, for some time in vain, for the subject of her compassion. “Ah, there he goes!” she said, espying him. “Is there not a careless, objectless desolation in his very movement?”
“I do not see that he differs from the other beggars, except that he stoops, and has a less noble air than many of them.”
“My dear Mrs. Bathurst! But you do not see his face, and therefore cannot judge – poor fellow, he is taking to the sunny steps of the church like the rest of them, and there is languidly laying himself down to his best repose.”
After cold chicken and a bottle of wine at Frascati, the ladies proceeded on foot to Tusculum, preferring to be discommoded by a walk, somewhat too long, to the perpetual annoyance of clamorous yelling donkey drivers. After having gone up the long hill to Tusculum, they turned into the Ruffuiella, Lucien Bonaparte’s villa, and finding little to attract them in its formal adornments, they soon left it. As they turned toward the gate Lady C. exclaimed, “There is my poor friend again! he has taken the road to Tusculum; I hope we may cross his path there, I want you to see his face, if I do not mistake, it has a story, and a sad one.”
“I am ashamed to confess to you,” replied Mrs. Bathurst, “how little curiosity I feel about him; how little I am touched by all the misery I see here. My whole sentient being is resolved into one distressful feeling. At times, indeed, I am roused from it, and the thought that I am in Italy, sends a thrill of pleasure though my frame. Even here, in Tusculum, at this highest point of excitement, where, under ordinary circumstances, the very stones would burn my feet, my sorrow comes back upon me like a thunder-bolt.”
“Drive it away now, if possible,” said Lady C. “It is worth your while, I assure you, to possess your mind in this place – here is a cicerone who will give a name, right or wrong, whenever we ask for it. He told me the other day, in good faith, that the ciceroni all take their name from Cicero, who, in his day, showed the marvelous fine things here to strangers! I asked the fellow who this Cicero was, and he answered, un gran maestro, who taught little boys all the languages in the world, besides reading, writing, and arithmetic! * [*See Rome in the 19th century] A fair specimen of the veritable information of these gentry.”
The ladies proceeded under the conduct of their guide, to survey the broken walls called “la Scuola di ciceroni,” as some learned expounders conjecture from the philosophical academy, the institution of which at his own house, in Tusculum, is mentioned in one of Cicero’s letters.
Mrs, Bathurst’s antiquarian enthusiasm began to kindle, her eye dilated, and her pale cheek glowed. In a happy oblivion, for the moment, of her personal anxieties, she left Lady C. seated on the broken fragment of a column almost overgrown by weeds and grass, and followed her talking guide, to look at the reticulated walls of a row of houses, at a disinterred Roman pavement, and among a mass of ruins at the gradus of an amphitheater. While she was thus occupied, the poor pensioner of the Virgin emerged from a tangled thicket near Lady C., bearing and bending over a large flat stone, which he had hardly strength to carry, and with his eye riveted to it as if he were perusing it, he sat down on the ground apparently without observing her, near Lady C’s feet. The hair, as he studiously bent over the stone, hung in tangled masses over his face, so as to hide all but its outline. At this moment Lady C. heard Mrs. Bathurst approaching from behind. She pointed to the man, and signified to her not to disturb him. The guide misinterpreting her action, said “Fear nothing, my lady, he’s an innocent madman, who passes his time wandering about these ruins, digging and groping – half the world are somewhat in his way – the Virgin muddles their brains and sends them here to spend their money in poor old Italy. By St. Peter!” he continued, going close to the antiquary and bending over him, “he has found something worth while this time. What is it, my good fellow?”
The crazed man, after scraping away the plaster and rubbish that adhered to the stone, had found what he sought, an inscription, defaced, and so far obliterated that no mortal could make it out, but this in no sort abated his joy – it was an inscription made by hands that had mouldered for centuries. Whether it now or ever signified any thing he cared not. He clapped his hands, and as if for the first time conscious of the presence of others, he shook back his hair, and turned his eyes toward the ladies for sympathy – sympathy, the first and last want of human nature. His eyes met theirs – met Mrs. Bathurst’s – his mother’s. He did not move, but from the gush of blood over the
[108]
deathlike paleness of his cheek, and a slight tremor that suddenly pervaded his whole frame, it was evident he recognized her, and that he felt at the same moment his changed and strange condition. The mother knew her son at a glance, and exclaiming, “Murray!” sprung to him and enclosed him in her arms. A shout burst from him so loud and so protracted, that it seemed as if it must shiver his frame – his mother recoiled and sunk fainting in Lady C’s arms.
The story of the unfortunate antiquarian has been already too long and too particular, and I shall only briefly add what remains to be told. A perfect stupor succeeded to Murray Bathurst’s recognition of his mother, and his first consciousness of his wretched condition. A fever ensued – medical attendants – tender nursing most remedial, the comforts from which he had long been estranged, nature and youth all combined to do the work of restoration. With the return of reason, came a horror of the passion that had led him astray, and he became as impatient as he had been reluctant to leave Italy. He remembered that after reaching Civita Vecchia, he felt like a lover tearing himself from the object of his passion. His feet seemed to grow to the rich dust of Italy. Day after day he delayed taking the passage. After wandering about late one night, he remembered awaking in the morning with a high fever, and from that time his memory became more and more obscure. He had dim recollections of being transported from one place to another, of missing, one after another, his articles of dress – of dreams of hunger and thirst – and of finding jugs of water and bread by his bedside – finally, all became a blank, till he awoke in his mother’s arms. Mrs. Bathurst, fearful of a relapse into his old habits of mind, lost no time in leaving Italy. She had since kept Lady C. informed of the progress of her son’s cure, which she now believed to be radical. He had the good sense to avoid all books related to his disastrous passion, and every thing associated with it. His uncle had received him with open arms, comforting himself with the verification of his prognostics for the past trials of his nephew, and saying somewhat coarsely, that to be sure the hair of the same dog would cure the bite, if you ate hide and all.
A more fitting mistress than Italy had taken possession of the young man’s imagination, and health and cheerfulness were in her train. The last letter communicated the marriage of the cousins – and now Mrs. Bathurst said they could look back with tranquil minds, to that “beautiful region” where
“A spirit hangs o’er towns and farms,
Statues and temples, and memorial tombs.”
Dublin Core
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Title
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An Incident at Rome
Subject
The topic of the resource
English travelers in Italy, antiquarianism.
Description
An account of the resource
The narrator, traveling in Italy, meets an English lady, who recounts the story of Mrs. Bathurst and her son Murray, a young antiquarian who goes mad while conducting research in Rome. He is eventually reunited with his mother and restored to sanity.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
C[atharine]. M[aria]. Sedgwick
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Graham's Magazine [edited by George R. Graham], March 1845: 104-8.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1845
Contributor
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Gabriela Siwiec
D. Gussman
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
1845
antiquarian
antiquities
beggars
Cicero
Frascati
Graham's Magazine
India
Italy
madness
marriage
merchants
Mothers
pride
Roman Catholic
Rome
sons
Southey
sympathy
Tusculum
Wordsworth