CHAPTER II.
In Great Stockington there lived a race of paupers. From the year of the 42d of Elizabeth, or 1601, down to the present generation, this race maintained an uninterrupted descent. They were a steady and unbroken line of paupers, as the parish books testify. From generation to generation their demands on the parish funds stand recorded. There were no lacunæ in their career; there never failed an heir to these families; fed on the bread of idleness and legal provision, these people flourished, increased and multiplied. Sometimes compelled to work for the weekly dole which they received, they never acquired a taste for labor, or lost the taste for the bread for which they did not labor. These paupers regarded this maintenance by no means as a disgrace. They claimed it as a right,—as their patrimony. They contended that one-third of the property of the Church had been given by benevolent individuals for the support of the poor, and that what the Reformation wrongfully deprived them of, the great enactment of Elizabeth rightfully—and only rightfully—restored.
Those who imagine that all paupers merely claimed parish relief because the law ordained it, commit a great error. There were numbers who were hereditary paupers, and that on a tradition carefully handed down, that they were only manfully claiming their own. They traced their claims from the most ancient feudal times, when the lord was as much bound to maintain his villein in gross, as the villein was to work for the lord. These paupers were, in fact, or claimed to be, the original adscripti glebæ, and to have as much a claim to parish support as the landed proprietor had to his land. For this reason, in the old Catholic times, after they had escaped from villenage by running away and remaining absent from their hundred for a year and a day, dwelling for that period in a walled town, these people were amongst the most diligent attendants at the Abbey doors, and when the Abbeys were dissolved, were, no doubt, amongst the most daring of these thieves, vagabonds, and sturdy rogues, who, after the Robin Hood fashion, beset the highways and solitary farms of England, and claimed their black mail in a very unceremonious style. It was out of this class that Henry VIII. hanged his seventy-two thousand during his reign, and, as it is said, without appearing materially to diminish their number.
That they continued to "increase, multiply, and replenish the earth," overflowing all bounds, overpowering by mere populousness all the severe laws against them of whipping, burning in the hand, in the forehead or in the breast, and hanging, and filling the whole country with alarm, is evident by the very act itself of Elizabeth.
Amongst these hereditary paupers who, as we have said, were found in Stockington, there was a family of the name of Deg. This family had never failed to demand and enjoy what it held to be its share of its ancient inheritance. It appeared from the parish records, that they had practiced in different periods the crafts of shoemaking, tailoring, and chimney-sweeping; but since the invention of the stocking-frame, they had, one and all of them, followed the profession of stocking weavers, or as they were there called, stockingers. This was a trade which required no extreme exertion of the physical or intellectual powers. To sit in a frame, and throw the arms to and fro, was a thing that might either be carried to a degree of extreme diligence, or be let down into a mere apology for idleness. An "idle stockinger" was there no very uncommon phrase, and the Degs were always classed under that head. Nothing could be more admirably adapted than this trade for building a plan of parish relief upon. The Degs did not pretend to be absolutely without work, or the parish authorities would soon have set them to some real labor,—a thing that they particularly recoiled from, having a very old adage in the family, that "hard work was enough to kill a man." The Degs were seldom, therefore out of work, but they did not get enough to meet and tie. They had but little work if the times were bad, and if they were good, they had large families, and sickly wives or children. Be times what they would, therefore, the Degs were due and successful attendants at the parish pay-table. Nay, so much was this a matter of course, that they came at length not even trouble themselves to receive their pay, but sent their young children for it; and it was duly paid. Did any parish officer, indeed, turn restive, and decline to pay a Deg, he soon found himself summoned before a magistrate, and such pleas of sickness, want of work, and poor earnings brought up, that he most likely got a sharp rebuke from the benevolent but uninquiring magistrate, and acquired a character for hard-heartedness that stuck to him.
So parish overseers learnt to let the Degs alone; and their children regularly brought up to receive the parish money for their parents, were impatient as they grew up to receive it for themselves. Marriages in the Deg family were consequently very early, and there were plenty of instances of married Degs claiming parish relief under the age of twenty, on the plea of being the parent of two children. One such precocious individual being asked by a rather verdant officer why he had married before he was able to maintain a family, replied, in much astonishment, that he had married in order to maintain himself by parish assistance. That he never had been able to maintain himself by his labor, nor ever expected to do it; his only hope, therefore, lay in marrying, and becoming the father of two children, to which patriarchal rank he had now attained, and demanded his "pay."
Thus had lived and flourished the Degs on their ancient patrimony, the parish, for upward of two hundred years. Nay, we have no doubt whatever that, if it could have been traced, they had enjoyed an ancestry of paupers as long as the pedigree of Sir Roger Rockville himself. In the days of the most perfect villenage, they had, doubtless, eaten the bread of idleness, and claimed it as a right. They were numerous, improvident, ragged in dress, and fond of an alehouse and of gossip. Like the blood of Sir Roger, their blood had become peculiar through a long persistence of the same circumstances. It was become pure pauper blood. The Degs married, if not entirely among Degs, yet amongst the same class. None but a pauper would dream of marrying a Deg. The Degs, therefore, were in constitution, in mind, in habit, and in inclination, paupers. But a pure and unmixed class of this kind does not die out like an aristocratic stereotype. It increases and multiplies. The lower the grade, the more prolific, as is sometimes seen on a large and even national scale. The Degs threatened, therefore, to become a most formidable clan in the lower purlieus of Stockington, but luckily there is so much virtue even in evils, that one, not rarely, cures another. War, the great evil, cleared the town of Degs.
Fond of idleness, of indulgence, of money easily got, and as easily spent, the Degs were rapidly drained off by recruiting parties during the last war. The young men enlisted, and were marched away; the young women married soldiers that were quartered in the town from time to time, and marched away with them. There were, eventually, none of the once numerous Degs left except a few old people, whom death was sure to draft off at no distant period with his regiment of the line which has no end. Parish overseers, magistrates, and master manufacturers, felicitated themselves at this unhoped-for deliverance from the ancient family of the Degs.
But one cold, clear, winter evening, the east wind piping its sharp sibilant ditty in the bare shorn hedges, and poking its sharp fingers into the sides of well broad-clothed men by the way of passing jest, Mr. Spires, a great manufacturer of Stockington, driving in his gig some seven miles from the town, passed a poor woman with a stout child on her back. The large ruddy-looking man in the prime of life, and in the great coat and thick worsted gloves of a wealthy traveler, cast a glance at the wretched creature trudging heavily on, expecting a pitiful appeal to his sensibilities, and thinking it a bore to have to pull off a glove and dive into his pocket for a copper; but to his surprise there was no demand, only a low courtesy, and the glimpse of a face of singular honesty of expression, and of excessive weariness.
Spires was a man of warm feelings; he looked earnestly at the woman, and Thought he had never seen such a picture of fatigue in his life. He pulled up and said,
"You seem very tired, my good woman."
"Awfully tired, sir."
"And are you going far to-night?"
"To Great Stockington, sir, if God give me strength."
"To Stockington!" exclaimed Mr. Spires. "Why, you seem ready to drop.
You'll never reach it. You'd better stop at the next village."
"Ay, sir, it's easy stopping, for those that have money."
"And you've none, eh?"
"As God lives, sir, I've a sixpence, and that's all."
Mr. Spires put his hand in his pocket, and held out to her, the next instant, half-a-crown.
"There stop, poor thing—make yourself comfortable—it's quite out of the question to reach Stockington. But stay—are your friends living in Stockington—what are you?"
"A poor soldier's widow, sir. And may God Almighty bless you!" said the poor woman, taking the money, the tears standing in her large brown eyes as she courtesied very low.
"A soldier's widow!" said Mr. Spires. She had touched the softest place in the manufacturer's heart, for he was a very loyal man, and vehement champion of his country's honor in the war. "So young," said he, "how did you lose your husband?"
"He fell, sir," said the poor woman; but she could get no further; she suddenly caught up the corner of her gray cloak, covered her face with it, and burst into an excess of grief.
The manufacturer felt as if he had hit the woman a blow by his careless
question; he sat watching her for a moment in silence, and then said,
"Come, get into the gig, my poor woman; come, I must see you to
Stockington."
The poor woman dried her tears, and heavily climbed into the gig, expressing her gratitude in a very touching and modest manner. Spires buttoned the apron over her, and taking a look at the child, said in a cheerful tone to comfort her, "Bless me, but that is a fine thumping fellow, though. I don't wonder that you are tired, carrying such a load."
The poor woman pressed the stout child, apparently two years old, to her breast, as if she felt it a great blessing and no load: the gig drove rapidly on.
Presently Mr. Spires resumed his conversation.
"So you are from Stockington?"
"No, sir, my husband was."
"So: what was his name?"
"John Deg, sir."
"Deg?" said Mr. Spires. "Deg, did you say?"
"Yes, sir."
The manufacturer seemed to hitch himself off toward his own side of the gig, gave another look at her, and was silent. The poor woman was somewhat astonished at his look and movement, and was silent too.
After awhile Mr. Spires said again, "And do you hope to find friends in
Stockington? Had you none where you came from?"
"None, sir, none in the world!" said the poor woman, and again her feelings seemed too strong for her. At length she added, "I was in service, sir, at Poole, in Dorsetshire, when I married; my mother only was living, and while I was away with my husband, she died. When-when the news came from abroad—that when I was a widow, sir, I went back to my native place, and the parish officers said I must go to my husband's parish lest I and my child should become troublesome."
"You asked relief of them?"
"Never; Oh, God knows, no, never! My family have never asked a penny of a parish. They would die first, and so would I, sir; but they said I might do it, and I had better go to my husband's parish at once—and they offered me money to go."
"And you took it, of course?"
"No, sir; I had a little money, which I had earned by washing and laundering, and I sold most of my things, as I could not carry them, and came off. I felt hurt, sir; my heart rose against the treatment of the parish, and I thought I should be better amongst my friends—and my child would, if anything happened to me; I had no friends of my own."
Mr. Spires looked at the woman in silence. "Did your husband tell you anything of his friends? What sort of a man was he?"
"Oh, he was a gay young fellow, rather, sir; but not bad to me. He always said his friends were well off in Stockington."
"He did!" said the manufacturer, with a great stare, and as if bolting the words from his heart in a large gust of wonder.
The poor woman again looked at him with a strange look. The manufacturer Whistled to himself, and giving his horse a smart cut with the whip, drove on faster than ever. The night was fast settling down; it was numbing cold; a gray fog rose from the river as they thundered over the old bridge; and tall engine chimneys, and black smoky houses loomed through the dusk before them. They were at Stockington.
As they slackened their pace up a hill at the entrance of the town, Mr.
Spires again opened his mouth.
"I should be sorry to hurt your feelings, Mrs. Deg," he said, "but I have my fears that you are coming to this place with false expectations. I fear your husband did not give you the truest possible account of his family here."
"Oh, sir! what—what is it?" exclaimed the poor woman; "in God's name, tell me!"
"Why, nothing more than this," said the manufacturer, "that there are very few of the Degs left here. They are old, and on the parish, and can do nothing for you."
The poor woman gave a deep sigh, and was silent.
"But don't be cast down," said Mr. Spires. He would not tell her what a pauper family really was, for he saw that she was a very feeling woman, and he thought she would learn that soon enough. He felt that her husband had from vanity given her a false account of his connections; and he was really sorry for her.
"Don't be cast down," he went on; "you can wash and iron, you say; you are young and strong: those are your friends. Depend on them, and they'll be better friends to you than any other."
The poor woman was silent, leaning her head down on her slumbering child, and crying to herself; and thus they drove on, through many long and narrow streets, with gas flaring from the shops, but with few people in the streets, and these hurrying shivering along the pavement, so intense was the cold. Anon they stopped at a large pair of gates; the manufacturer rung a bell, which he could reach from his gig, and the gates presently were flung open, and they drove into a spacious yard, with a large handsome house, having a bright lamp burning before it, on one side of the yard, and tall warehouses on the other.
"Show this poor woman and her child to Mrs. Craddock's, James," said Mr. Spires, "and tell Mrs. Craddock to make them very comfortable; and if you will come to my warehouse to-morrow," added he, addressing the poor woman, "perhaps I can be of some use to you."
The poor woman poured out her heartfelt thanks, and following the old man-servant, soon disappeared, hobbling over the pebbly pavement with her living load, stiffened almost to stone by her fatigue and her cold ride.
We must not pursue too minutely our narrative Mrs. Deg was engaged to do the washing and getting up of Mr. Spires' linen, and the manner in which she executed her task insured her recommendations to all their friends. Mrs. Deg was at once in full employ. She occupied a neat house in a yard near the meadows below the town, and in those meadows she might be seen spreading out her clothes to whiten on the grass, attended by her stout little boy. In the same yard lived a shoemaker, who had two or three children of about the same age as Mrs. Deg's child. The children, as time went on, became playfellows. Little Simon might be said to have the free run of the shoemaker's house, and he was the more attracted thither by the shoemaker's birds, and by his flute, on which he often played after his work was done.
Mrs. Deg took a great friendship for this shoemaker; and he and his wife, a quiet, kind-hearted woman, were almost all the acquaintances that she cultivated. She had found out her husband's parents, but they were not of a description that at all pleased her. They were old and infirm, but they were of the true pauper breed, a sort of person whom Mrs. Deg had been taught to avoid and to despise. They looked on her as a sort of second parish, and insisted that she should come and live with them, and help to maintain them out of her earnings. But Mrs. Deg would rather her little boy had died than have been familiarized with the spirit and habits of those old people. Despise them she struggled hard not to do, and she agreed to allow them sufficient to maintain them on condition that they desisted from any further application to the parish. It would be a long and disgusting story to recount all the troubles, annoyance, and querulous complaints, and even bitter accusations that she received from these connections, whom she could never satisfy; but she considered it one of the crosses in her life, and patiently bore it, seeing that they suffered no real want, so long as they lived, which was for years; but she would never allow her little Simon to be with them alone.
The shoemaker neighbor was a stout protection to her against the greedy demands of these old people, and of others of the old Degs, and also against another class of inconvenient visitors, namely, suitors, who saw in Mrs. Deg a neat and comely young woman, with a flourishing business and a neat and soon well-furnished house, a very desirable acquisition. But Mrs. Deg had resolved never again to marry, but to live for her boy, and she kept her resolve in firmness and gentleness.
The shoemaker often took walks in the extensive town meadows, to gather groundsell and plantain for his canaries and gorse-linnets, and little Simon Deg delighted to accompany him with his own children. There William Watson, the shoemaker, used to point out to the children the beauty of the flowers, the insects, and other objects of nature; and while he sat on a style and read in a little old book of poetry, as he often used to do, the children sat on the summer grass, and enjoyed themselves in a variety of plays.
The effect of these walks and the shoemaker's conversation on little Simon Deg was such as never wore out of him through his whole life, and soon led him to astonish the shoemaker by his extraordinary conduct. He manifested the utmost uneasiness at their treading on the flowers in the grass; he would burst with tears if they persisted in it; and when asked why, he said they were so beautiful, that they must enjoy the sunshine, and be very unhappy to die. The shoemaker was amazed, but indulged the lad's fancy. One day he thought to give him a great treat, and when they were out in the meadows, he drew from under his coat a bow and arrow, and shot the arrow high up in the air. He expected to see him in an ecstasy of delight: his own children clapped their hands in transport, but Simon stood silent, and as if awe-struck.
"Shall I send up another?" asked the shoemaker.
"No, no," exclaimed the child, imploringly. "You say God lives up there, and he mayn't like it."
The shoemaker laughed, but presently he said, as if to himself, "There is too much imagination there. There will be a poet, if we don't take care."
The shoemaker offered to teach Simon to read, and to solidify his mind, as he termed it, by arithmetic, and then to teach him to work at his trade. His mother was very glad, and thought shoemaking would be a good trade for the boy; and that with Mr. Watson she should have him always near her. He was growing now a great lad, and was especially strong, and of a frank and daring habit. He was especially indignant at any act of oppression of the weak by the strong, and not seldom got into trouble by his championship of the injured in such cases among the boys of the neighborhood.
He was now about twelve years of age; when, going one day with a basket of clothes on his head to Mr. Spires's for his mother, he was noticed by Mr. Spires himself from his counting-house window. The great war was raging; there was much distress among the manufacturers; and the people were suffering and exasperated against their masters. Mr. Spires, as a staunch tory, and supporter of the war, was particularly obnoxious to the workpeople, who uttered violent threats against him. For this reason his premises were strictly guarded, and at the entrance of his yard, just within the gates, was chained a huge and fierce mastiff, his chain allowing him to approach near enough to intimidate any stranger, though not to reach him. The dog knew the people who came regularly about, and seemed not to notice them, but on the entrance of a stranger, he rose up, barked fiercely, and came to the length of his chain. This always drew the attention of the porter, if he were away from his box, and few persons dared to pass till he came.
Simon Deg was advancing with the basket of clean linen on his head, when the dog rushed out, and barking loudly, came exactly opposite to him, within a few feet. The boy, a good deal startled at first, reared himself with his back against the wall, but at a glance perceiving that the dog was at the length of his tether, he seemed to enjoy his situation, and stood smiling at the furious animal, and lifting his basket with both hands above his head, nodded to him, as if to say, "Well, old boy, you'd like to eat me, wouldn't you?"
Mr. Spires, who sat near his counting-house window at his books, was struck with the bold and handsome bearing of the boy, and said to a clerk:
"What boy is that?"
"It is Jenny Deg's," was the answer.
"Ha! that boy! Zounds! how boys do grow! Why that's the child that Jenny Deg was carrying when she came to Stockington: and what a strong, handsome, bright-looking fellow he is now!"
As the boy was returning, Mr. Spires called him to the counting-house door, and put some questions to him as to what he was doing and learning, and so on.
Simon, taking off his cap with much respect, answered in such a clear and Modest way, and with a voice that had so much feeling and natural music in it, that the worthy manufacturer was greatly taken with him.
"That's no Deg," said he, when he again entered the counting-house, "not a bit of it. He's all Goodrick, or whatever his mother's name was, every inch of him."
The consequence of that interview was, that Simon Deg was very soon after Perched on a stool in Mr. Spires's counting-house, where he continued till he was twenty-two. Mr. Spires had no son, only a single daughter; and such were Simon Deg's talents, attention to business, and genial disposition, that at that age Mr. Spires gave him a share in the concern. He was himself now getting less fond of exertion than he had been, and placed the most implicit reliance on Simon's judgment and general management. Yet no two men could be more unlike in their opinions beyond the circle of trade. Mr. Spires was a staunch tory of the staunch old school. He was for Church and King, and for things remaining forever as they had been. Simon, on the other hand, had liberal and reforming notions. He was for the improvement of the people, and their admission to many privileges. Mr. Spires was therefore liked by the leading men of the place, and disliked by the people. Simon's estimation was precisely in the opposite direction. But this did not disturb their friendship; it required another disturbing cause—and that came.
Simon Deg and the daughter of Mr. Spires grew attached to each other; and as the father had thought Simon worthy of becoming a partner in the business, neither of the young people deemed that he would object to a partnership of a more domestic description. But here they made a tremendous mistake. No sooner was such a proposal hinted at, than Mr. Spires burst forth with the fury of all the winds from the bag of Ulysses.
"What! a Deg aspire to the hand of the sole heiress of the enormously opulent Spires?"
The very thought almost cut the proud manufacturer off with an apoplexy. The hosts of a thousand paupers rose up before him, and he was black in the face. It was only by a prompt and bold application of leeches and lancet that the life of the great man was saved. But there was an end of all further friendship between himself and the expectant Simon. He insisted that he should withdraw from the concern, and it was done. Simon, who felt his own dignity deeply wounded too, for dignity he had, though the last of a long line of paupers—his own dignity, not his ancestors'—took silently, yet not unrespectfully, his share—a good, round sum, and entered another house of business.
For several years there appeared to be a feud and a bitterness between the former friends; yet it showed itself in no other manner than by a careful avoidance of each other. The continental war came to an end; the manufacturing distress increased exceedingly. There came troublous times, and a fierce warfare of politics. Great Stockington was torn asunder by rival parties. On one side stood preeminent, Mr. Spires; on the other towered conspicuously, Simon Deg. Simon was grown rich, and extremely popular. He was on all occasions the advocate of the people. He said that he had sprung from, and was one of them. He had bought a large tract of land on one side of the town; and intensely fond of the country and flowers himself, he had divided this into gardens, built little summer-houses in them, and let them to the artisans. In his factory he had introduced order, cleanliness, and ventilation. He had set up a school for the children in the evenings, with a reading-room and conversation-room for the work-people, and encouraged them to bring their families there, and enjoy music, books, and lectures. Accordingly, he was the idol of the people, and the horror of the old school of manufacturers.
"A pretty upstart and demagogue I've nurtured," said Mr. Spires often, to his wife and daughter, who only sighed, and were silent.
Then came a furious election. The town, for a fortnight, more resembled the worst corner of Tartarus than a Christian borough. Drunkenness, riot, pumping on one another, spencering one another, all sorts of violence and abuse ruled and raged till the blood of all Stockington was at boiling heat. In the midst of the tempest were everywhere seen, ranged on the opposite sides, Mr. Spires, now old and immensely corpulent, and Simon Deg, active, buoyant, zealous, and popular beyond measure. But popular though he was, the other and old tory side still triumphed. The people were exasperated to madness; and when the chairing of the successful candidate commenced, there was a terrific attack made on the procession by the defeated party. Down went the chair, and the new member, glad to escape into an inn, saw his friends mercilessly assailed by the populace. There was a tremendous tempest of sticks, brickbats, paving-stones, and rotten eggs. In the midst of all this, Simon Deg and a number of his friends, standing at the upper window of an hotel, saw Mr. Spires knocked down and trampled on by the crowd. In an instant, and before his friends had missed him from amongst them, Simon Deg was seen darting through the raging mass, cleaving his way with a surprising vigor, and gesticulating, and no doubt shouting vehemently to the rioters, though his voice was lost in the din. In the next moment his hat was knocked off, and himself appeared in imminent danger: but, another moment, and there was a pause, and a group of people were bearing somebody from the frantic mob into a neighboring shop. It was Simon Deg, assisting in the rescue of his old friend and benefactor, Mr. Spires.
Mr. Spires was a good deal bruised, and wonderfully confounded and bewildered by his fall. His clothes were one mass of mud, and his face was bleeding copiously; but when he had had a good draught of water, and his face washed, and had time to recover himself, it was found that he had received no serious injury.
"They had like to have done for me, though," said he.
"Yes, and who saved you?" asked a gentleman.
"Ay, who was it? who was it?" asked the really warm-hearted manufacturer; "let me know? I owe him my life."
"There he is!" said several gentlemen, at the same instant, pushing forward Simon Deg.
"What, Simon!" said Mr. Spires, starting to his feet. "Was it thee, my boy?" He did more, he stretched out his hand; the young man clasped it eagerly, and the two stood silent, and with a heart-felt emotion, which blended all the past into forgetfulness, and the future into a union more sacred than esteem.
A week hence, and Simon Deg was the son-in-law of Mr. Spires. Though Mr. Spires had misunderstood Simon, and Simon had borne the aspect of opposition to his old friend, in defense of conscientious principle, the wife and daughter of the manufacturer had always understood him, and secretly looked forward to some day of recognition and reunion.
Simon Deg was now the richest man in Stockington. His mother was still living to enjoy his elevation. She had been his excellent and wise housekeeper, and she continued to occupy that post still.
Twenty-five years afterward, when the worthy old Spires was dead, and Simon Deg had himself two sons attained to manhood; when he had five times been mayor of Stockington, and had been knighted on the presentation of a loyal address; still his mother was living to see it; and William Watson, the shoemaker, was acting as a sort of orderly at Sir Simon's chief manufactory. He occupied the lodge, and walked about, and saw that all was safe, and moving on as it should do.
It was amazing how the most plebeian name of Simon Deg had slid, under the hands of the heralds, into the really aristocratical one of Sir Simon Degge. They had traced him up a collateral kinship, spite of his own consciousness, to a baronet of the same name of the county of Stafford, and had given him a coat of arms that was really astonishing.
It was some years before this, that Sir Roger Rockville had breathed his last. His title and estate had fallen into litigation. Owing to two generations having passed without any issue of the Rockville family except the one son and heir, the claims, though numerous, were so mingled with obscuring circumstance, and so equally balanced, that the lawyers raised quibbles and difficulties enough to keep the property in Chancery, till they had not only consumed all the ready money and rental, but had made frightful inroads into the estate itself. To save the remnant, the contending parties came to a compromise. A neighboring squire, whose grandfather had married a Rockville, was allowed to secure the title, on condition that the rest carried off the residuum of the estate. The woods and lands of Rockville were announced for sale!
It was at this juncture that old William Watson reminded Sir Simon Degge of a conversation in the great grove of Rockville, which they had held at the time that Sir Roger was endeavoring to drive the people thence.
"What a divine pleasure might this man enjoy," said Simon Deg to his humble friend, "if he had a heart capable of letting others enjoy themselves."
"But we talk without the estate," said William Watson; "what might we do if we were tried with it?"
Sir Simon was silent for a moment; then observed that there was sound philosophy in William Watson's remark. He said no more, but went away; and the next day announced to the astonished old man that he had purchased the groves and the whole ancient estate of Rockville!
Sir Simon Degge, the last of a long line of paupers, was become the possessor of the noble estate of Sir Roger Rockville, of Rockville, the last of a long line of aristocrats!
The following summer, when the hay was lying in fragrant cocks in the great meadows of Rockville, and on the little islands in the river, Sir Simon Degge, Baronet, of Rockville—for such was now his title-through the suggestion of a great lawyer, formerly Recorder of the Borough of Stockington, to the crown—held a grand fête on the occasion of his coming to reside at Rockville Hall, henceforth the family seat of the Degges. His house and gardens had all been restored to the most consummate order. For years Sir Simon had been a great purchaser of works of art and literature, paintings, statuary, books, and articles of antiquity, including rich armor and precious works in ivory and gold.
First and foremost he gave a great banquet to his wealthy friends, and no man with a million and a half is without them—and in abundance. In the second place, he gave a substantial dinner to all his tenantry, from the wealthy farmer of five hundred acres to the tenant of a cottage. On this occasion he said, "Game is a subject of great heart-burning and of great injustice to the country. It was the bane of my predecessors: let us take care it is not ours. Let every man kill the game on the land that he rents—then he will not destroy it utterly, nor allow it to grow into a nuisance. I am fond of a gun myself, but I trust to find enough for my propensity to the chase in my own fields and woods—if I occasionally extend my pursuit across the lands of my tenants, it shall not be to carry off the first fruits of their feeding, and I shall still hold the enjoyment as a favor."
We need not say that this speech was applauded most vociferously. Thirdly, and lastly, he gave a grand entertainment to all his work people, both of the town and the country. His house and gardens were thrown open to the inspection of the whole assembled company. The delighted crowd admired immensely the pictures and the pleasant gardens. On the lawn, lying between the great grove and the hall, an enormous tent was pitched, or rather a vast canvas canopy erected, open on all sides, in which was laid a charming banquet; a military band from Stockington barracks playing during the time. Here Sir Simon made a speech as rapturously received as that to the farmers. It was to the effect, that all the old privileges of wandering in the grove, and angling, and boating on the river were restored. The inn was already rebuilt in a handsome Elizabethan style, larger than before, and to prevent it ever becoming a fane of intemperance, he had there posted as landlord, he hoped for many years to come, his old friend and benefactor, William Watson. William Watson should protect the inn from riot, and they themselves the groves and river banks from injury.
Long and loud were the applauses which this announcement occasioned. The young people turned out upon the green for a dance, and in the evening, after an excellent tea, the whole company descended the river to Stockington in boats and barges decorated with boughs and flowers, and singing a song made by William Watson for the occasion, called "The Health of Sir Simon, last and first of his Line!"
Years have rolled on. The groves and river banks and islands of Rockville are still greatly frequented, but are never known to be injured: poachers are never known there, for four reasons. First, nobody would like to annoy the good Sir Simon; secondly, game is not very numerous there; thirdly, there is no fun in killing it, where there is no resistance; and fourthly, it is vastly more abundant in other proprietors' demesnes, and it is fun to kill it there, where it is jealously watched, and there is a chance of a good spree with the keepers.
And with what different feelings does the good Sir Simon look down from his lofty eyrie, over the princely expanse of meadows, and over the glittering river, and over the stately woods to where Great Stockington still stretches farther and farther its red brick walls, its red-tiled roofs, and its tall smoke-vomiting chimneys. There he sees no haunts of crowded enemies to himself or any man. No upstarts, nor envious opponents, but a past family of human beings, all toiling for the good of their families and their country. All advancing, some faster, some slower, to a better education, a better social condition, a better conception of the principles of art and commerce, and a clearer recognition of their rights and duties, and a more cheering faith in the upward tendency of humanity.
Looking on this interesting scene from his distant and quiet home, Sir Simon sees what blessings flow—and how deeply he feels them in his own case—from a free circulation, not only of trade, but of human relations. How this corrects the mischiefs, moral and physical, of false systems and rusty prejudices;—and he ponders on schemes of no ordinary beauty and beneficence yet to reach his beloved town through them. He sees lecture halls and academies, means of sanitary purification, and delicious recreation, in which baths, wash-houses, and airy homes figure largely; while public walks extend all round the great industrial hive, including wood, hills, meadow and river in their circuit of many miles. There he lived and labored; there live and labor his sons; and there he trusts his family will continue to live and labor to all future generations: never retiring to the fatal indolence of wealth, but aiding onward its active and ever-expanding beneficence.
Long may the good Sir Simon live and labor to realize these views. But already in a green corner of the pleasant churchyard of Rockville may be read this inscription on a marble headstone:—"Sacred to the memory of Jane Deg, the mother of Sir Simon Degge, Bart., of Rockville. This stone is erected in honor of the best of Mothers by the most grateful of sons."
* * * * *
[From Fraser's Magazine.]
THE SPOTTED BOWER-BIRD.
FROM LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST.
Elegant and ingenious as are the structures and collections of the satin bower-bird, the species of the allied genus Chlamydera display still greater architectural abilities, and more extensive, collective, and decorative powers.
The spotted bower-bird[A] is an inhabitant of the interior. Its probable range, in Mr. Gould's opinion, is widely extended over the central portions of the Australian continent; but the only parts in which he observed it, or from which he procured specimens, were the districts immediately to the north of the colony of New South Wales. During his journey into the interior he saw it in tolerable abundance at Brezi, on the river Mokai, to the northward of the Liverpool plains; and it was also equally numerous in all the low scrubby ranges in the neighborhood of the Namoi, as well as in the open brushes that intersect the plains on its borders. Mr. Gould is gifted with the eye of an observer; but from the extreme shyness of its disposition, it generally escapes the attention of ordinary travelers, and it seldom allows itself to be approached near enough for the spectator to discern its colors. Its 'harsh, grating, scolding note,' betrays its haunts to the intruder; but, when disturbed, it seeks the tops of the highest trees, and, generally, flies off to another locality.
[Footnote A: Chlamydera maculala.—GOULD.]
Mr. Gould obtained his specimens most readily by watching at the water-holes where they come to drink; and on one occasion, near the termination of a long drought, he was guided by a native to a deep basin in a rock where water, the produce of many antecedent months, still remained. Numbers of the spotted bower-birds, honeysuckers, and parrots, sought this welcome reservoir, which had seldom, if ever before, reflected a white face. Mr. Gould's presence was regarded with suspicion by the winged frequenters of this attractive spot; but while he remained lying on the ground perfectly motionless, though close to the water, their wants overpowered their misgivings, and they would dash down past him and eagerly take their fill, although an enormous black snake was lying coiled upon a piece of wood near the edge of the pool. At this interesting post Mr. Gould remained for three days. The spotted bower-birds were the most numerous of the thirsty assemblage there congregated, and the most shy, and yet he had the satisfaction of frequently seeing six or eight of them displaying their beautiful necks as they were perched within a few feet of him. He states that the scanty supply of water remaining in the cavity must soon have been exhausted by the thousands of birds that daily resorted to it, if the rains which had so long been suspended had not descended in torrents.
Mr. Gould discovered several of the bowers of this species during his journey to the interior, the tiniest of which, now in the National Museum, he brought to England. He found the situations of these runs or bowers to be much varied. Sometimes he discovered them on the plains studded with Myalls (Acacia pendula,) and sometimes in the brushes with which the lower hills were clothed. He describes them as considerably longer, and more avenue-like, than those of the satin bower-bird, extending in many instances to three feet in length. Outwardly they were built with twigs, and beautifully lined with tall grasses, so disposed that their upper ends nearly met. The decorations were very profuse, consisting of bivalve shells, skulls of small animals, and other bones.
Evident and beautiful indications of design (continues Mr. Gould) are manifest throughout the whole of the bower and decorations formed by this species, particularly in the manner in which the stones are placed within the bower, apparently to keep the grasses with which it is lined fixed firmly in their places, these stones diverge from the mouth of the run on each side so as to form little paths, while the immense collection of decorative materials, bones, shells, &c., are placed in a heap before the entrance of the avenue, this arrangement being the same at both ends. In some of the larger bowers, which had evidently been resorted to for many years, I have seen nearly half a bushel of bones, shells, &c., at each of the entrances. In some instances, small bowers, composed almost entirely of grasses, apparently the commencement of a new place of rendezvous, were observable. I frequently found these structures at a considerable distance from the rivers, from the borders of which they could alone have procured the shells, and small, round pebbly stones; their collection and transportation must, therefore, be a task of great labor and difficulty. As these birds feed almost entirely upon seeds and fruits, the shells and bones cannot have been collected for any other purpose than ornament; besides, it is only those which have been bleached perfectly white in the sun, or such as have been roasted by the natives, and by this means whitened, that attract their attention. I fully ascertained that these runs, like those of the satin bower-bird, formed the rendezvous of many individuals; for, after secreting myself for a short space of time near one of them, I killed two males which I had previously seen running through the avenue.
The plumage of this species is remarkable. A rich brown pervades the crown of the head, the ear-coverts and the throat, each feather being bordered by a narrow black line; and, on the crown, the feathers are small and tipped with silver gray. The back of the neck is crossed by a beautiful, broad, light, rosy pink band of elongated feathers, so as to form a sort of occipital crest. The wings, tail, and upper surface, are deep brown, every feather of the back, rump, scapularies, and secondaries, having a large round spot of full buff at the tip. Primaries slightly tipped with white. All the tail-feathers with buffy white terminations. Under parts grayish white. Flank-feathers zigzagged with faint transverse light brown lines. Bill and feet dusky brown. At the corner of the mouth the bare, thick, fleshy, prominent skin, is of a pinky flesh colour, and the irides are dark brown.
The rosy frill adorns the adults of both sexes: but the young male and female of the years have it not.
Another species, the great bower-bird,[B] was probably the architect of the bowers found by Captain Grey during his Australian rambles, and which interested him greatly in consequence of the doubts entertained by him whether they were the works of a bird or of a quadruped,—the inclination of his mind being that their construction was due to the four-footed animal. They were formed of dead grass and parts of bushes, sunk a slight depth into two parallel furrows, in sandy soil, and were nicely arched above; they were always full of broken sea-shells, large heaps of which also protruded from the extremity of the bower. In one of these bowers, the most remote from the sea of those discovered by Captain Grey, was a heap of the stones of some fruit that evidently had been rolled therein. He never saw any animal in or near these bowers; but the abundant droppings of a small species of kangaroo close to them, induced him to suppose them to be the work of some quadruped.
[Footnote B: Chlamydora nuchalis.]
Here, then, we have a race of birds whose ingenuity is not merely directed to the usual; ends of existence, self-preservation, and the continuation of the species, but to the elegancies and amusements of life. Their bowers are their ball and assembly rooms; and we are very much mistaken if they are not, like places of meeting,
For whispering lovers made.
The male satin bower-bird, in the garden at the Regent's Park, is indefatigable in his assiduity toward the female; and his winning ways to coax her into the bower conjure up the notion that the soul of some Damon in the course of his transmigration, has found its way into his elegant form. He picks up a brilliant feather, flits about with it before her, and when he has caught her eye adds it to the decorations.
Haste, my Nanette, my lovely maid,
Haste to the bower thy swain has made.
No enchanted prince could act the deferential lover with more delicate or graceful attention. Poor fellow, the pert, intruding sparrows plague him abominably; and really it becomes almost an affair of police that some measures should be adopted for their exclusion. He is subject to fits, too, and suddenly, without the least apparent warning, falls senseless, like an epileptic patient; but presently recovers, and busies himself about the bower. When he has induced the female to enter it, he seems greatly pleased; alters the disposition of a feather or a shell, as if hoping that the change may meet her approbation; and looks at her as she sits coyly under the overarching twigs, and then at the little arrangement which he has made, and then at her again, till one could almost fancy that one hears him breathe a sigh. He is still in his transition dress, and has not yet donned his full Venetian suit of black.
In their natural state, the satin bower-birds associate in autumn in small parties; and Mr. Gould states that they may then often be seen on the ground near the sides of rivers, particularly where the brush feathers the descending bank down to the water's edge. The male has a loud liquid call; and both sexes frequently utter a harsh, gutteral note, expressive of surprise and displeasure.
Geffrey Chaucer, in his argument to The Assemblie of Foules, relates that, "All foules are gathered before Nature on St. Valentine's day, to chose their makes. A formell egle beyng beloved of three tercels, requireth a yeeres respite to make her choise: upon this triall, Qui bien aime tard oublie-'He that loveth well is slow to forget.'" The female satin-bower bird in the Regent's Park seems to have taken a leaf out of the 'formell egle's' book: for I cannot discover that her humble and most obsequious swain has been rewarded for his attentions though they have been continued through so many weary months; but we shall never be able entirely to solve these mysteries till we become possessed of the rare ring sent to the King of Sarra by the King of Arable, 'by the vertue whereof' his daughter understood 'the language of all foules,' unless we can
Call up him that left untold
The story of Cambuscan bold,
Of Camball and of Algersife,
And who had Canace to wife,
That own'd the virtuous ring and glass,
And of the wondrous horse of brass,
On which the Tartar king did ride.
Edmund Spenser, with due reverence for
Dan Chauser (well of English undefiled),
has indeed done his best to supply the defect,[C] and has told us that
Cambello's sister was fair Canacee,
That was the learnedst lady in her days,
Well seem in every science that mote be,
And every secret work of nature's ways,
In witty riddles, and in wise soothsays,
In power of herbs and tunes of beasts and birds:
but we learn from him no more of the ring than 'Dan Chaucer' tells us:—
The vertue of this ring, if ye woll here,
Is this, that if she list it for to were
Upon her thombe, or in her purse it bere,
There is no foule that fleeth under heven
That she no shall understand his steven,[D]
And know his meaning openly and plaine,
And answer him in his language againe:
as Canace does in her conversation with the falcon in The Squires Tale. Nor is the 'vertue' of the ring confined to bird-intelligence, for the knight who came on the 'steed of brasse,' adds,—
And every grasse that groweth upon root
She shall well know to whom it will do boot,
And be his wounds never so deep and wide.
But we must return from these realms of fancy to a country hardly less wonderful; for Australia presents, in the realities of its quadrupedal forms, a scene that might well pass for one of enchantment.
[Footnote C: Fairy Queen, book iv. cant. 2, et seq.]
[Footnote D: Sound.]
* * * * *
The French Society of Geography have just given their grand gold medal to two brothers, Antoine and Arnaud d'Abadie, for the progress which geography has received from their travels in Abyssinia, which were begun in 1837 and finished in 1848. This period they spent in exploring together, not only Abyssinia, but the whole eastern part of Africa. Their enterprise was wholly at their own expense, and was undertaken from the love of science and adventure.
* * * * *
The French Government are now publishing at Algiers the History of the Berbers, by Ibn Chaldun, the greatest of Arabian historians. It is printed in quarto form, with the types of the National Printing Establishment, sent from Paris for the purpose. The French translation will appear as soon as the second volume of the original, which is now in press, is completed.
* * * * *
[From Fraser's Magazine.]
MADAME DE POMPADOUR.
In the gallery of the Louvre at Paris there is, or was some few years ago, a crayon drawing by La Tour, which represents Madame de Pompadour in all the pride and luster of her early beauty. The marchioness is seated near a table covered with books and papers, among which may be distinguished Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws and the Encyclopædia, two of the remarkable works which appeared during her reign of favor. An open album shows an engraving of Gay, chiseling some portrait of Louis XV., or his mistress. The marchioness is represented with her hair slightly powdered; she is clad in an open, flowered brocade robe, and wears red-heeled shoes, of a delicacy, as regards size, worthy of an Oriental foot. In this portrait there is much to admire: the neck, which is slender and well-shaped, springs most gracefully from the shoulders; the head, which is also admirably proportioned, is a model of feminine beauty; the brow is lofty and severe; the lips, slightly compressed, express at the same time decision and irony; the eyes are of a most vivid brilliancy, and the nose is perfection itself: in short, there reigns throughout every lineament of this most striking countenance an air of nobility, and even of dignity, which qualifies in some measure the accounts left us by history of the share she bore in the petits soupers of Versailles, the masked balls of the Hôtel de Ville, and the thousand other orgies got up for the entertainment of the most dissolute monarch of (at that period) one of the most dissolute courts of Europe.
The history of Madame de Pompadour is not generally known in all its particulars, though much has been written of her by persons of every shade of opinion. Some have exalted her virtues, while others have multiplied her crimes. Both parties are right, and both wrong. A courtier, and a man seeking to be revenged, are not historians when they write. With a little patience, and by a careful study of the writers of the eighteenth century, we are enabled to seize here and there a faithful trait of this extraordinary, yet most fascinating woman, and by diligently sifting conflicting opinions arrive at something approaching the truth. That Madame de Pompadour was a woman endowed with great talents, many virtues, and as many vices, is not to be denied; that she employed those talents in general for her country's good we think is equally true, though many writers have unjustly contended that all the defeats and reverses of France are to be traced to the influence exercised by her over the mind of Louis XV. Beyond a doubt the ruling passion of her heart was ambition, and yet even this passion, which according to many writers of her day was boundless, she kept so skillfully concealed from all her intimates, that not one of the many courtiers, philosophers, and men of letters, who thronged her antechambers—with the exception, perhaps, of the Abbé de Bernis, of whom more anon—was ever enabled to discover the secrets of that heart, which, in the words of a writer of the time, "she ever kept closely hidden beneath an eternal smile."
Madame de Pompadour was born in Paris in the year 1720. She herself always said, in 1722. We are told that Poisson, her father, at least her mother's husband, was employed in the commissariat department of the French army: some historians affirm that her father was a butcher of the Invalides, who was condemned to be hung; according to Voltaire she was the daughter of a farmer of the Ferté-sous-Jouarre. But this is of slight consequence, as her true father was the Fermier-général, Lenorman de Tourneheim. This individual having taken a fancy to Poisson's daughter when she was quite an infant, took her to his house, and brought her up as his own child. Having from her earliest years displayed quite passion for music and drawing, the first masters of the day were engaged by Lenorman de Tourneheim for his adopted child. Under a diligent course of study the little Jeanne Antoinette made rapid strides toward perfection in the arts she loved, and her intellectual acquirements were vaunted by all who knew her. Fontenelle, Voltaire, Duclos, and Crebillon, who, in their character of beaux esprits, had the entrée of the house, spread everywhere abroad throughout the fashionable world the praises of her beauty, her grace, and her talents.
Madame de Pompadour offered in her person the model of a woman, at the same time beautiful in the strict acceptation of the word, and simply pretty. The lines of her features possessed all the purity of one of Raphael's creations, but there it must be said the resemblance ceased; the spirit which animated these features was of the world, worldly: in short, it was the true spirit of a Parisian woman. All that gives brilliancy, charm, and play to the physiognomy she possessed in the happiest degree. Not a single court lady could at that period boast an air at the same time so noble and yet so coquettish, features so imposing and yet so delicate and playful, or a figure at once so elegant and yet so supple and undulating: her mother used always to say that a king alone was worthy of her daughter. Jeanne, it is said, had at in early age what might be called the presentiment of the throne, at first on account of this frequently-expressed opinion of her mother's, and afterward because she fancied she loved the king. "She owned to me," says Voltaire, in his Memoirs, "that she had a s[*illegible] presentiment that she would be loved by [*illegible] king, and that she had herself a violent inclination for him." There are certain [*illegible] in life in which destiny permits itself for a moment, as it were, to be divined. [* illegible] those who have succeeded in climbing [*illegible] rugged mountain of human vanities [*illegible ] that from their earliest youth certain visions and presentiments have ever warned them of their future glory.
But how was she to attain to this throne of France, the object of her ambition? This was a difficult question to solve. In the meanwhile she familiarized herself with what might be considered the life of a queen, a part which, it must be allowed, she could play to admiration. Beautiful, witty, intellectual, ever admired and ever listened to, she soon beheld at her feet all the courtiers of her father's fortune; she gathered around her, consequently, a brilliant crowd of poets, artists, and philosophers, over whom she reigned with all the dignity of majesty.
The Fermier-général had a nephew named Lenorman d'Etioles, a young man of Amiable character, and with the feelings and habits of a gentleman. This was the reputed heir of the immense wealth of the old Fermier-général, according to the established laws, though Jeanne had on her side also some claims to a share of the property. A very simple means was however devised to prevent all after litigation, namely, by arranging a marriage between the two young people. Jeanne, as we have already seen, loved the king, and she married d'Etioles without her feelings in this respect undergoing any change. Versailles was her horizon, the goal to which she aspired. D'Etioles, it is said, became deeply enamored of his young bride; but this passion, which amounted almost to fanaticism, never touched her heart. To use her own words, she "accepted him with resignation, as a misfortune which was not to last long."
The hôtel of the new-married couple was organized upon a lordly footing; the best society in Paris was there to be found, for all those whose company was worth having deserted the salons of the fashionable world for those of Madame d'Etioles. Never until then had such a lavish display of luxury been seen. The young bride hoped by these means to make a noise at court, and thus pique the curiosity of the king. The days passed in fêtes and entertainments of every kind. The celebrated comedians of the day, the popular poets, artists, foreigners of distinction, all had ready access to the splendid mansion of Lenorman d'Etioles, of which the mistress was the life and ornament; every one visited there, in short, except the king.
Ever since the celebrated réunions of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, there have always been in France a succession of circles of beaux esprits, presided over by some queen of fashion. Louis XIV. hated these réunions, saying that the court was spread abroad into all [*illegible] hôtels of Paris. In fact, for many, the [*illegible ] of the Duchesse de Main or of the [*illegible ]ise de Lambert, of Madame de Tencin [*illegible] Madame Géoffrin, possessed far greater [*illegible ]ons than the already superannuated [*illegible ] of Versailles. The French Revolution [*illegible ] its rise in these very circles, for in them they laughed a little at the great powers of the earth, and there philosophy and liberty were allowed elbow-room. Thus, at Madame d'Etioles' might be seen old Fontenelle, who believed in nothing, not even in his own heart; Voltaire, still young, and armed with the keen weapons of his ready wit, prepared to make war upon those whose reign was of this world, above all upon the Jesuits; Montesquieu and Maupertuis, born skeptics and mockers; along with many others of a kindred spirit who had beheld the decline of royalty and religion, when Louis XIV., in the latter years of his reign, had permitted Scarron's widow to make religion fashionable, by cloaking France with the mask of hypocritical piety—a mask soon, however, to be torn aside by Philippe of Orleans in the wild saturnalia of the Regency. The Abbé de Bernis was also a constant visitor at the house of Madame d'Etioles; he was, in the parlance of the time, the Abbé de la Maison—it is true he had no other benefice—but little thought then, either the abbé of the house or the mistress of the house, that within ten years from that time they would reign over France as absolute ministers. There was one other individual of this brilliant circle worthy of a passing notice, and this was an amiable and simple-minded poet, of good appearance and the best temper in the world, named Gentil Bernard.[A] Madame d'Etioles used to pet him like a spoiled child. Some said he was her lover. However that may be, Madame de Pompadour, who, whether she had or had not a secret penchant for the poet, never forgot her old friends, procured for him, as soon as she came into power, the appointment of librarian to the king at the château de Choisy, where she built him, at her own expense, a little cottage ornée, named by the poets of the time, the Parnassus of the French Anacreon. This appointment was a complete sinecure, for we know that the king never opened a book, and we are equally assured that Bernard never put his foot inside the library.
[Footnote A: Pierre Bernard, nicknamed Gentil Bernard by Voltaire[1] was born at Grenoble about the same time as Louis XV. "It is strange," said Madame de Pompadour later, "that two lovers should be born for me during the same season—a king and a poet." Bernard ever refused all favors, and was singularly devoid of ambition. "What can I do for you, my dear poet?" Madame de Pompadour is reported to have said on her coming into Power. Bernard contented himself with kissing the hand of the marchioness. "Go to," returned she, "you will never get on in the world."
[Footnote 1: This nickname was given in a poetical invitation to
a supper-party at Madame Duchatelet's, sent by Voltaire to the poet:
"Au nom du Pinde et de Cythère
Gentil Bernard est averti,
Que l'Art d'Aimer doit Samedi
Venir souper chez l'Art de Plaire.">[]
We have already named the Abbé, afterward Cardinal, de Bernis; and as he was the only individual who ever succeeded in being admitted into the entire confidence of the royal favorite, a brief notice of his birth, and rise and fall at court, may not be altogether out of place, so closely linked for many years were his fortunes with those of Madame de Pompadour.
Joachim de Pierres, abbé de Bernis, was born at Saint-Marcel, near Narbonne, in the month of May, 1715. His family, which was of the most ancient noblesse, was allied to the king through the house of Rohan; a circumstance, however, which did not prevent it being one of the poorest in the kingdom. As his relatives had nothing to give Joachim, they made him an abbé. Like Bernard, he came when very young to Paris, confiding in his lucky planet, smiling on every one, and reaping a plentiful harvest of smiles in return. He was then a handsome young man, with a bright eye and an animated mouth. In figure he was herculean, and here we find, in contradiction of Buffon's saying, that the style was not the man, no more than it was with Bernard, who was also of large stature.
Joachim passed the winter at Saint-Sulpice, but, like Boufflers a little later, far from singing the Canticles, he employed his time in the more mundane occupation of scribbling love-songs. At the end of the winter he was appointed vicar in a little town of his native department. "Vicar!" said Joachim; "I'll not disturb myself for such a trifle." Shortly afterward he was nominated Abbé de Bernis; but not a step would he budge from the capital. In Paris then he remained, penniless it is true, but without a care or thought for the future, and full of confidence in his lucky planet—a confidence which, it must be said, was not misplaced. His acquaintance with Madame d'Etioles began through an intrigue which he had with a certain marchande des modes, who worked for the future favorite. Having perceived the young girl one night at the theater in company with her lover, Madame d'Etioles summoned her the following morning to her house, and in the course of conversation inquired if that handsome young man she had with her at the theater was her cousin.
"No, madame," replied the milliner; "he is my lover."
"Ah, indeed! he is your lover is he? And what does he do?"
"No great things, madame; he makes verses."
"A maker of verses!" said Madame d'Etioles; "that is amusing. Do not forget my cap, and tell your young poet to come and see me."
In consequence of this invitation Bernis called on Madame d'Etioles, who
Received him with all the graces in the world, and from that hour
commenced a friendship which lasted for many years, and was the origin of
De Bernis' future advancement in the world.
Despite his great acquaintances, our abbé was none the richer; but he laughed gaily at his poverty, and waited for better times. According to all accounts the garret which he inhabited was in a wretchedly dilapidated condition; his furniture consisted of a "bad bed covered with some mules' saddle-cloths, which M. de Ferriol had brought from Constantinople, a rickety table covered with books and papers and faded bouquets, and an old worm-eaten arm-chair." Our abbé's purse was no better garnished than his lodgings; and so well-known was this fact in the world, that Senac de Meilhan tells us, that "when the Abbé de Bernis supped out some one of the party always gave him a crown to pay his coach-hire. At first this gift had been invented as a pleasantry, on the abbé invariably refusing to stay to supper, alleging as an excuse that he had no carriage; but it was a pleasantry which continued for some time."
In society, however, De Bernis was a general favorite, and was everywhere
Welcomed with open arms. They doated on Bernard, and they doated also on
on Bernis. Voltaire wrote in verse to both, Duclos spoke of their wit,
Helvetius gave them suppers, and the women did their best to spoil them.
From Cardinal de Fleury, however, our abbé received a rebuff. Having, in order to humor his relative the Princess de Rohan, who had lately taken him by the hand, applied to the minster for a convent, the latter sternly replied,—
"Monsieur l'Abbé, your debaucheries render you unworthy of the favors of the church. As long as I remain in power you shall obtain nothing."
"Well, Monseigneur," replied De Bernis, "I'll wait."
This repartee was an event; it was repeated and applauded everywhere until it reached the ears of royalty itself.
On Madame de Pompadour coming to power, the Princess de Rohan deigned to write to her in behalf of her dear abbé. "Madame la Marquis," she wrote, "you have not forgotten M. l'Abbé de Bernis; you will deign, I trust, to do something for him, he is worthy of your favors." Apropos of this letter, Madame de Pompadour wrote the following to some minister of the day: "I forgot, my dear Nigaud, to ask you what you have done for the Abbé de Bernis; write me word, I beg of you, as I shall see him on Sunday." Like Voltaire, Madame de Pompadour had the mania of nicknaming her friends and acquaintances; even the king himself figured more than once in her grotesque vocabulary.[B]
[Footnote B: She always called De Bernis her pigeon pattu (splay-footedpigeon—on account of his large feet and his love-songs). Voltaire had previously nicknamed him Babet le bouquetiére, at first because the abbé always introduced flowers into his poetry; afterward, on account of the resemblance he bore to a flower girl who used to sell bouquets at the doors of the Opera.]
Madame de Pompadour presented her dear poet to the king, with a smile which so charmed Louis XV. that he offered De Bernis, in the first instance, an apartment in the Tuileries, and a pension of 1500 livres a year; and so cleverly did the future cardinal play his cards, by insinuating himself into the good graces of both the king and his mistress, that, after a sojourn of two years at the château, he was appointed ambassador from the court of France at Venice.
But it would appear that the Queen of the Adriatic did not suit the inclinations of our abbé; he sighed for Versailles, and the petits soupers of Louis XV. After a very short sojourn in Venice he demanded his recall from Madame de Pompadour, and on his return composed an epistle to his fair protectress, the opening lines of which we give as a fair specimen of his powers of versification:—
On avait dit que l'enfant do Cythère
Prés du Lignon avait perdu le jour;
Mais je l'ai vu dans le bois solitaire
Où va rever la jeune Pompadour.
Il etait seul; le flambeau qui l'éclair
Ne brillait plus; mais les près d'alentour
L'onde, les bois, tout annonçait l'amour.
For the space of ten years the Abbé de Bernis was the shadow of Madame de Pompadour; he followed her everywhere, sometimes even too far. Louis XV. would meet him in all parts of the palace, in the private as well as the state apartments, which would make him say sometimes,—"Where are you going, Monsieur l'Abbé?" Our abbé would bow and smile, but say nothing. True to his character of abbé, he would listen at all the doors, saying that the chateau of the Tuileries was for him but one huge confessional. He ended, however, by knowing all things, and by sitting in council with the king and his mistress; and a precious trio it must be owned they made.
But evil times were coming on our abbé. In the ministry he was assailed by showers of chansons and epigrams. The Count de Tressan, above all, overwhelmed him with a violent satire. He could no longer hold his ground. Every one began to grow tired of him, even the fair president of the council; this was the coup de grace. The Duc de Choiseul, after replacing him in the good graces of Madame de Pompadour, succeeded also to his portfolio as minister. As some compensation, however, they gave him the cardinal's hat; a circumstance which elicited from some wit of the day the following couplet:—
On dirait que Son Eminence
N'eut le chapeau de cardinal
Que pour tirer sa révérence.
Shortly afterward he was appointed Archbishop of Alby; but, according to custom, he never appeared in his diocese. In 1769 he departed for Rome, being nominated ambassador at the conclave for the nomination of Clement XIV., that priest so gay, so gentle, and so witty, who has written that sad people are like shrubs which never flower. Pope and cardinal understood each other admirably well. Our cardinal never returned to France; he had found in Rome a second fatherland, as sweet to his old ago as France had been to his youth. He inhabited a magnificent palace, which was for a length of time the hospitable refuge for all French travelers. All had ready welcome, from the humble priest and poor artist to the Princes and princesses of the blood royal. To use his own words,—"He kept an auberge of France in a square of Europe." He died in 1794, faithful to his God and to his king, and bitterly denouncing the French Revolution, which had despoiled him of his half million of francs per annum, and had swept disdainfully away all the pretty artificial flowers of his most artificial poetry. He died solitary and poor,—a strong contrast to the style in which he had lived. But to return.
Madame d'Etioles passed in the eyes of the world as a perfect model of a virtuous wife. She swore eternal fidelity to her husband, unless Louis XV. should fall in love with her,—a reservation her husband was the first to laugh at. At first this strange condition was spoken of as an excellent joke in the house; from thence it spread abroad, and finally reached Versailles. But the king, wishing to joke in return, contented himself by saving,—"I should like very much to see this husband."
M. d'Etioles possessed an abandoned château in the forest of Senart; Madame d'Etioles having learned that the king frequently hunted in the forest, persuaded her husband to have the chateau newly furnished, and put into a habitable state, alleging that the physicians had recommended a change of air for her vapors. The husband, suspecting nothing, had the château re-furnished an decorated in the most superb style. Once installed in her new abode, Madame d'Etioles gave orders for the building of three or four carriages of a most fairy-like lightness and elegance of form, in which she might drive away her vapors. According to her expectations, she frequently met the king in the forest; at first Louis XV. passed her by without bestowing the slightest attention, either on her or her equipage: afterward he remarked her or her equipage; afterward he remarked her horses,—"What a pretty phaeton!" said he, on meeting her for the third time. At length he remarked the lady herself, but it was merely to bestow a passing remark upon her beauty.
Madame d'Etioles, however, was not to be repelled; she continued to pass before the eyes of the royal sportsman: "sometimes as a goddess from Olympus, sometimes as an earthly queen; at one time she would appear in an azure robe seated in a rose-colored phaeton, at another in a robe of rose color in a phaeton of pale blue."[C]
[Footnote C: Soulavie, Mèmoires Historiques de la Cour de France pendant le faveur de Madame de Pompadour.]
In after days, Madame de Pompadour recalling to mind all these follies—serious though for her—said to the Prince de Soubise—"I can imagine myself reading a strange book; my life is an impossible romance, I cannot believe in it."
At Etioles, private theatricals were the fashion; Madame d'Etioles was the Clairon, the Camargo, and the Dangeville of the troop, which counted among its members some of the most illustrious personages of the day. Marshal de Richelieu, who was to be found wherever gallantry flourished, was an assiduous and constant spectator at these réunions. Madame d'Etioles, it is said, endeavored on more than one occasion to entice the king behind the scenes; but Louis, kept constantly in view by Madame de Chateauroux, never once left the royal box.
Two summers thus passed away without Madame d'Etioles obtaining aught from the king save a cold and distant glance, or a passing word or two; and this, for a woman of her ambition, was not sufficient. She returned to Paris at the close of the summer season, determined to change once more her plan of attack. A good opening was now before her, for Madame de Chateauroux was dead, the throne of the favorite vacant; not an hour was to be lost, for, with Louis XV. who could tell how soon a successor might be appointed?
The wished-for opportunity at length presented itself. In the month of December, 1744, a series of magnificent fêtes were given at the Hôtel de Ville; the women were masqued. In the course of the evening Madame d'Etioles succeeded in approaching the king,—
"Sire," she said, "you must explain to me, if you please, a strange dream. I dreamt that I was seated on a throne for an entire day; I do not affirm that this throne was the throne of France, yet I dare assert that it was a throne of purple, of gold, and of diamonds: this dream torments me—it is at once the joy and torment of my life. Sire, for mercy's sake, interpret it for me."
"The interpretation is very simple," replied the king; "but, in the first place it is absolutely necessary that that velvet masque should fall."
"You have seen me."
"Where?"
"In the forest of Senart."
"Then," said the king, "you can divine that we should like to see you again."
About a month or two after this interview, according to some biographers, Madame d'Etioles, being determined by a coup de main to attain her grand object, namely, the securing a permanent footing at Versailles, arrived one morning at the palace in a state of violent agitation, and demanded an audience of the king. One of the gentleman ushers, a certain M. de Bridge, who had been a guest at Etioles during the festivities of the preceding season, conducted her into the presence of Louis XV.
"Sire," she exclaimed, "I am lost; my husband knows my glory and my misfortune. I come to demand a refuge at your hands. If you shelter me not from his anger he will kill me."
From that hour she took up her residence at Versailles to quit it no more.
We know that Louis XV. passed his life in a state of constant lassitude and ennui, from which it was almost impossible to arouse him; indolence, indeed, may be said to have been the predominant trait in his character: he hated politics and political matters, and all allusions to state affairs were most irksome to him.
"Your people suffer, sire," said the Duke de Choiseul to him one day, after a long political harangue.
"Je m'ennuie!" replied the king.
By skillfully and constantly varying the amusements of her royal lover, with hunting-parties, promenades, fêtes, spectacles, and petits soupers, Madame d'Etioles was enabled to strengthen her empire over the heart of Louis XV., by making him feel how necessary she had become to his happiness. One striking advantage she had over her predecessors, and this was, the art she possessed of being able to metamorphose herself at all hours of the day. No one could better vary the play of her physiognomy than Madame de Pompadour. At one time she would appear languishing and sentimental as a madonna; at another, lively, gay, and coquettish, as a Spanish peasant girl. She possessed also, in a marvelous degree, the gift of tears: none knew better than she did when to weep, or how many tears it was necessary to shed. As a poet of the time has said, "She wept with so much art that she was enabled to give to her tears the value of pearls." Those who had seen her in the morning, superb, imperious, a queen in all the splendor of power, would find her in the evening, gay, whimsical, capricious, presiding over one of these petits soupers with all the exuberant and madcap gayety of an actress after the theater. The Abbé Soulavie, who saw her often, has left us a well-studied portrait of the favorite;—
"In addition to the charms of a beautiful and animated countenance, Madame de Pompadour possessed also, in an eminent degree, the art of transforming her features; and each new combination, equally beautiful, was another result of the deep study she had made of the affinity between her mind and her physiognomy. Without in the least altering her position, her countenance would become a perfect Proteus."
With intuitive tact, Madame de Pompadour very quickly perceived, that in order to amuse a king who took neither interest nor pleasure in arts and letters, other and more material enjoyments were necessary. She commenced, then, by transforming herself into an actress. The king was there like a wearied spectator of life; she felt, that in order to interest and enliven him, it was necessary to diversify frequently her character, and the spirit of her character. Twenty times a day would she change her dress, her appearance, and even her manner of walking and speaking; passing from gayety to gravity, from songs and smiles to love and sentiment. With syren-like voice, and a heart as light as the bird of the air, she would invent a thousand graceful blandishments for the amusement of her royal lover. Her beauty, which was marvelous, served her well in all these metamorphoses. She dressed, too, with exquisite art. Among the many costumes which she has invented, we may cite one which made quite a furore in its day, and this was the negligé a la Pompadour; a robe in the form of a Turkish vest, which designed with peculiar grace the contour of the figure. She would frequently pass entire mornings at her toilet in company with Louis XV., who would stand by giving his opinion and advice respecting the different costumes she adopted. The king, however, grew tired at length of having but one comedian. In vain would she disguise herself sometimes as a farm-girl, sometimes as a shepherdess; at one time as a peasant-girl, at another as a nun, in order to surprise him, or rather, to allow herself to be surprised by him in some one or other of the many turnings and windings of the park of Versailles. The king had at first been charmed by the novelty of the amusement, but by degrees he discovered that it was always one and the same woman under a thousand different disguises.
Perceiving that the king began to grow tired of this species of comedy, she had a theater constructed in the medal-room of the palace, she herself nominating the actors and actresses whom she considered worthy of performing with her on a stage which was to have but the king and a few favorite courtiers for audience. The Duc de Vallière was appointed stage-manager and director; for prompter they took an abbé, most probably the Abbé de Bernis; the company consisted of the Duc d'Orleans, the Duc d'Agen, the Duc de Nivernais, the Duc de Duras, the Comte de Maillebois, the Duc de Coigny, the Marquis d'Entraigues, the Duchesse de Brancas, the Comtesse d'Estrade, and Madame d'Angevilliers. The theater opened with a pièce de circonstance, by Dufresny the poet, entitled Le Mariage fait et rompu, in allusion to the marriage of Madame de Pompadour with M. d'Etioles. The little troupe commenced with comedy, but soon descended to opera and ballet. In song and dance, as well as in the representation of the passions, Madame de Pompadour was the only actress of real talent. In the characters of peasant-girls she was unsurpassed; but her chef d'oeuvre was the part of Collette in Rousseau's Devin de Village, which she played with a naïveté and tenderness that won all hearts.
Nothing was more difficult than to gain admission to this theater of dukes and duchesses, the tickets of admission for which were given by the king alone; and it must be said that Louis showed himself a much more rigorous janitor of his theater than he was of his palace: consequently it was no slight favor for Voltaire, who had for a length of time aspired to the pleasures of Versailles, to see his Enfant Prodigue played on the boards of the court theater. Voltaire had, like all men the weakness of wishing to govern the state; intoxicated with literary successes, he now aspired to political honors. He hoped to become minister or ambassador through the favor of Madame de Pompadour; and with a little more tact he might have become ambassador, minister, or even cardinal, had he wished it, but at the very moment when he fancied he had attained the object of his ambition, he lost it forever by writing the famous lines, commencing,—
Pompadour, vous embellisez
La cour, le Parnasse, et Cythère.
These verses, as we know, provoked a little remonstrance from the queen and her daughters: all was lost for Voltaire, despite the goodwill of Madame de Pompadour, who, for the rest, seeing that the cause was a bad one, cared not to risk her own favor by imprudent attempts. Voltaire never pardoned the marchioness her lukewarm intercession; and like a true poet, revenged himself by a succession of madrigals, chansons, and rhymes, without number,—all leveled, though in a playful way, at the head of the favorite.
Duclos and Rousseau were more severe. Duclos, fully impressed with the idea that he was a great historian, as impartial as he was passionless, judged her harshly. He feared passing for a courtier, and he was unjust, She bad attempted to attach Rousseau to herself; but the proud Genevese Republican wrote her a letter which cut short all further negotiations.[D] She always esteemed him, however, in a high degree. One day, when Marshal de Mirepoix, in the course of conversation, advised her not to trouble her head about that owl, she replied,—
"It is an owl, certainly, but it is Minerva's owl."
[Footnote D: Madame,—I had fancied for a moment that it was through error that your messenger had remitted me one hundred louis for copies which are charged but twelve francs. He has undeceived me. Permit me to undeceive you in my turn. My savings enable me at present to enjoy a revenue of about 540 livres, all deductions made. My work brings me in annually a sum almost equal to this amount; I have then a considerable superfluity; I employ it to the best of my power, though I scarcely give any alms. If, contrary to all appearances, age or infirmities should some day incapacitate me from following my usual occupations, I have a friend. J. J. ROUSSEAU PARIS, August 18, 1762.]
Madame de Pompadour, with the design of still further strengthening her power at court, conceived the idea of calling in the powers of the Church to her aid. The Prince de Soubise, who was one of her most devoted courtiers, took upon himself the task of procuring an indulgent Jesuit, who would consent to confess and absolve her from all the sins she had committed at court. Père de Sacy, the priest alluded to, had, though a Jesuit, preserved in some sort the habits and feelings of a man of the world; he could, when it suited his purpose, be of his century, and would occasionally laugh a little at the severities of his order. To him, then, the Prince do Soubise proceeded. At first he showed himself rather restive.
"Recollect," said the prince to him, "from the confessional of the marchioness to the confessional of the king there is but a step."
Père de Sacy could not resist the temptation of such an attractive position; he went to the marchioness. Madame de Pompadour, proud of having for a confessor a man who had been appointed Procureur-gènèral of the Missions, received him most graciously. She had other reasons also for seeking to conciliate the Jesuit—her principal one was this:—Up to this time the Jesuitical party that had risen against her at Versailles, the queen, the dauphin, Père Griffet, Cardinal de Luynes, the Bishop of Verdun, and M. de Nicolai, had hoped to drive her from court as a miscreant. Now, once declared worthy of heaven by a Jesuit of such high standing as Père de Sacy, would she not become in some sort inviolable and sacred? With these designs, then, she put in force all her arts of seduction against her confessor; never did she display more grace, wit, or beauty. Père de Sacy, who allowed himself to be taken captive unresistingly by the battery of charms thus brought to bear upon him, visited her seven or eight times to speak of confession, without, however, coming to any conclusion upon the subject. As the good city of Paris had not at the moment any matter of graver importance wherewith to occupy its attention, it began to grow witty on the subject of this confession; a thousand chansons were composed upon the father confessor and his fair penitent. Piron arrived one evening at the Cafè Procope, exclaiming that he had news from Versailles.
"Well," inquired some one, "has the marchioness confessed?"
"No," replied Piron; "Madame de Pompadour cannot agree with Père de Sacy as to the style of confession."
The following day there was a great uproar among the Jesuits; the procureur-général of the missions was summoned before their Council of Ten, and was obliged to confess himself. He received a severe reprimand from the superior of the order, and, as the price of his absolution, was commanded to refuse his counsels to the marchioness, and to excuse himself in the best manner he could for his previous delay.
Père de Sacy accordingly presented himself for the last time before
Madame de Pompadour, and the following conversation took place:—
"We cannot grant you, madame," began the holy father, "the absolution you desire; your sojourn at court far from your husband, the public scandal relative to the favor which it is alleged the king accords you, does not permit of your approaching the holy table. The priest who would sanction such a proceeding, in place of absolving you, would pronounce a double condemnation—yours and his own; whilst the public, accustomed to judge harshly the conduct of the great, would confirm the sentence beyond appeal. You have testified to me, madame, that you are desirous of fulfilling the duties of a good Christian; but example is the first of these duties, and in order to obtain and merit absolution, your first proceeding must be to return to M. d'Etioles, or at least quit the court and seek, by penitence and charity, to repair the sins you have committed against that society whose laws you have outraged, and which, declares itself scandalized at your separation, from your husband."
Madame de Pompadour heard these words with the calmness and immobility of a statue; but as soon as the priest had terminated she burst forth,—
"Père de Sacy," she exclaimed, violently, "you are a fool, an impostor, a true Jesuit. Do you understand me? You have sought to enjoy a triumph over me by witnessing the state of embarrassment in which you imagined I was placed; you would gladly, you and yours, see me far from the king: but, poor short-sighted mortals that you are! Know that I am here as powerful as you imagine me weak and tottering; and in spite of you, in spite of all the Jesuits in the world, I shall remain at court, whilst you and your pack will not only be banished from court, but driven ignominiously out of the kingdom."
From that hour the fall of the Jesuits was decreed. The holy fathers imagined that the marchioness, like Madame de Chateauroux, was but the queen of a day; but they were mistaken. To do them justice, it must be allowed they believed that nothing was to be feared from such an enemy; for it is very certain that had they seen the power of this woman, who had all the firmness and decision of character of a man, or rather of a revengeful woman, they would, beyond a doubt, have permitted her to approach the holy table, or even have canonized her had she been desirous of the honor.
Madame de Pompadour was born with noble instincts; her bitterest enemies have never denied that she possessed the most refined taste in all matters connected with the arts or letters. She sought to make of Louis XV. an artist-king; and it must be said to her praise that she ever strove to rouse him from his habitual indolence and lassitude by leading his inclinations into healthy channels. But, unfortunately, Louis XV., unlike his predecessor, could never understand that great monuments often make the glory of kings.
The petits soupers of Versailles would occasionally shed a ray of sunshine, or rather lamp light, over Louis the Fifteenth's habitual ennui. After supper, chansons, sallies, and repartee, would be the order of the night. Occasionally at these supper-parties some brilliant things would be said. One evening, when some one sang a complaint upon the misfortunes of our first father Adam, the king improvised the following couplet worthy of the best chansons of Collé:—
Il n'eut qu'une femme avec lui,
Encor c'etait la sienne;
Ici je vois celles d'autrui,
Et ne vois pas la mienne.
Louis XV. had, as we see, his moments of poetical inspiration. Anacreon could not have sung better than this.
Madame de Pompadour, born in the ranks of the people, and seating herself unceremoniously on the throne of Blanche of Castille—Madame de Pompadour, protecting philosophers and suppressing Jesuits, treating the great powers of the earth with the same sans façon as she did artists and men of letters,—was one of the thousand causes, petty and, trifling in themselves, which eventually accelerated the great French Revolution. Madame Dubarry but imitated her predecessor when she called a noble duke a sapajou (ape). The mot is pretty well known: "Annoncez le sapajou de Madame la Comtesse Dubarry," said a great lord of the court of Louis XV. one day. It would be a curious and most amusing task to enrich the French peerage with all the sobriquets bestowed by the mistresses of Louis XV. as titles of nobility upon the courtiers of Versailles. More than one illustrious name, which has been cited by France with pride, has lost its luster in the tainted atmosphere of Versailles.
"Not only," said Madame de Pompadour; one day to the Abbé de Bernis,—"not only have I all the nobility at my feet, but even my lap-dog is weary of their fawnings." In short, Madame de Pompadour reigned so imperiously, that once at Versailles, about the conclusion of dinner, an old man approached the king, and begged him to have the goodness to recommend him to Madame de Pompadour. All present laughed heartily at this conceit; except, however, the marchioness.
Madame de Maintenon had not more difficulty in amusing Louis XIV. when grown old and devout, than had Madame de Pompadour in diverting his successor, who, though still young, seemed like a man who had exhausted all the pleasures and enjoyments of life. About the time when the marchioness used to transform herself into milkmaids and peasant girls, she commenced building a very romantic hermitage in the park of Versailles, on the outskirts of the wood near the Saint Germain's road: viewed from without it seemed a true hermitage, worthy in all points of an anchorite's abode; but within it was a dwelling more suited to some old roué of the Regency. Vanloo, Boucher, and Latour had covered the walls and ceilings with all the images of pagan art. The garden was a chef d'oeuvre; it was a grove rather than a garden; a grove peopled with statues, intersected by a multitude of winding paths and alleys, and abounding with a number of arbors, recesses, and "shady blest retreats." In the middle of the garden there was a farm—a true model-farm—with its cattle, goats, and sheep, and all the paraphernalia of husbandry. The marchioness presided daily at the construction of this hermitage.
"Where are you going, marchioness?" Louis XV. would say on seeing her going out so frequently.
"Sire," she would reply, "I am building myself a hermitage for my old age. You know I am rather devout: I shall end my days in solitude."
"Yes," replied the king, "like all those who have loved deeply, or who have been loved deeply."
About the time when spring gives place to the first advances of summer; when the trees were in leaf, and the plants in flower; when the bright greensward, enameled with its countless flowrets, carpeted the alleys of the park, Madame de Pompadour one morning begged Louis XV. to come and breakfast with her at the hermitage.
The king was conducted thither by his valet. His surprise was great. At first, before entering, at the sight of the humble thatched roof, he imagined that he was about to breakfast like a true anchorite, and began to fear seriously that the marchioness had not displayed much taste in the adornment of her retreat. He entered the court and proceeded straight to the door of the hermitage. At this instant a young peasant girl advanced to meet him; as she was well made, delicate, and pretty looking, the king began to find the hermitage more to his taste. With deep reverence his guide begged of him to follow her to the farm.
As he approached the farm, another peasant girl, more delicate still than the former, advanced to meet him, and, with a thousand reverences, presented him with a bowl of milk. At the sight of this pretty milkmaid, with her little straw hat coquettishly disposed on one side of her head, her white corset and blue petticoat, the king was charmed. Before taking the milk from her hands, he gazed at her a second time from head to foot. Her arms, which were uncovered, were white as lilies; she wore suspended from her neck a little gold cross, which seemed to lose itself in a magnificent bouquet of flowers which she wore in her bosom; but what above all astonished the king were two little stockingless feet incased in a pair of the most rustic sabots. With a motion of innocent coquetry, the pretty milkmaid drew one of her feet out of its wooden prison and placed it on the sabot. All at once the king recognized the marchioness, and avowed to her that for the first time in his life he had felt the desire of kissing a pretty foot. Madame de Pompadour returned with her royal lover to the hermitage, where he could not sufficiently admire the refined taste which had been displayed by the fair architect in the planning and arrangement of the building and grounds. This was the origin of what was afterward known as the notorious Parc-aux-cerfs.
It would be a difficult matter to study the political system of Madame de Pompadour, if, indeed, she can be said to have acted on a system. It cannot be denied that she possessed ideas, but more frequently her mind was a perfect chaos of caprices. It is well known, however, that the Duc de Choiseul, who united in his own person the portfolios of three departments of the ministry, and who disposed of all power, followed to the letter the policy of Madame de Pompadour; namely, in reversing the system of Louis XIV., in allying himself to Austria, and in forming a league, or rather a family pact, between the Bourbons of France, Italy, and Spain. The policy of Madame de Pompadour it was which annexed Corsica to France, and, consequently, Bonaparte, who was born at the decease of the marchioness, owed to her his title of French citizen.
Women look not to the future; their reign is from day to day; women of genius, who have at various epochs sought to govern the world, have never contemplated the clouds which might be gathering in the distance; they have been able to see clearly enough within a narrow circle traced around them, but have never succeeded in piercing the shadows of futurity. "Après moi le déluge," was Madame de Pompadour's motto.
The eighteenth century was a century of striking contrasts. The prime minister after Cardinal de Fleury was Madame de Pompadour. With the cardinal a blind religion protected the throne against the parliament; with the rise of the marchioness's power we perceive the first dawnings of philosophy, tormenting in turns both the clergy and the parliament. Under Madame de Pompadour's direction the king, had he been only as bold and determined as his mistress, would have become a greater king than ever. The cardinal was miserly and avaricious, the marchioness liberal to prodigality; she always said, and justly too, that money ought to flow freely from the throne like a generous stream, fertilizing and humanizing the entire State. The cardinal had been hostile to Austria, and favorable to Prussia; the marchioness made war with Frederick to humor Marie-Thérèse. The battle of Rosbach certainly belied her policy, but, to use her own words, "Had she the privilege of making heroes?"
And after all, is the historian justified in accusing this woman of all the dishonors and defeats of the reign of Louis XV.? She attained to power just as the old legitimate royalty—the royalty, as the French would call it, par la grace de Dieu—was fast giving way before the royalty of opinion. There was nothing left to be done at Versailles, simply because in Paris the power was already in the hands of Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Diderot. And so well did Madame de Pompadour comprehend this future royalty, that far from seeking to arrest its progress, she, on the contrary, sought to meet it half way. For we do not find her openly protecting and encouraging the philosophers of the day; those very men who, by the mere force of ideas, were destined to overthrow that throne on which she herself was seated! Thus we find also the various painters of the time, in their several portraits of the favorite, never failing to represent her surrounded with all the more celebrated revolutionary books of the day, such as the Encyclopaedia, the Philosophical Dictionary, the Spirit of Laws, and the Social Contract.
Madame de Pompadour, woman-like, loved revenge; and this, it must be said, was her worst vice. For a word she sent Latude to the Bastille; for a couplet she exiled the minister Maurepas. Frederick of Prussia took it into his head one day, in a moment of gayety, to call her Cotillon II., instead of Madame la Marquise de Pompadour, and styled her reign of favor le régne de Cotillon; a witticism which so incensed her, that, according to some writers, we may trace to this petty cause the origin of the disastrous seven years' war.
The position of Madame de Pompadour at court as first favorite was, by all accounts, far from being an enviable one; as years rolled on she found herself necessitated to stoop to all kinds of meannesses, and to endure all sorts of humiliations, to preserve her already tottering empire. In order to make friends for herself in the parliament, she suppressed the Jesuits; and she afterward exiled the parliament in order to conciliate the clergy. Again, to prevent her royal, but most fickle minded lover, from choosing another mistress out of the ranks of the court ladies, she contrived that seraglio, the notorious Parc-aux-cerfs, "the pillow of Louis the Fifteenth's debaucheries," as Chateaubriand called it; at the last, hated and despised by all France, Madame de Pompadour said to Louis XV., "For mercy's sake, keep me near you: I protect you; I take upon myself all the hatred of France; evil times are come for kings; so soon as I am gone, all the insults which are now leveled at Madame de Pompadour will be addressed to the king."
Among the many desperate attempts which were made from time to time to dethrone her, the following is the most curious:—
M. d'Argenson and Madame d'Estrade had resolved upon raising to the throne of the favorite the young and beautiful Madame de Choiseul, wife of the court usher. The intrigue was conducted with so much art that the king granted an interview. At the hour fixed upon for the meeting a great agitation reigned in the cabinet of the minister. M. d'Argenson and Madame d'Estrade awaited the event with anxiety; Quesnai, physician to the king and to the favorite, was also present. All at once Madame de Choiseul rushed into the room; Madame d'Estrade ran to meet her with open arms.
"Well!" she exclaimed.
"Yes," replied Madame de Choiseul; "I am loved; she is going to be dismissed. He has given me his royal word on it."
A burst of joy resounded through the cabinet. Quesnai was, as we know, the friend of Madame de Pompadour; but he was at the same time the friend of Madame d'Estrade. M. d'Argenson imagined that in this revolution he would remain neuter at least, but he was mistaken.
"Doctor," said he, "nothing changes for you; we trust that you will remain with us."
"Monsieur le Comte," coldly replied Quesnai, rising from his seat, "I have been attached to Madame de Pompadour in her prosperity, and I shall remain so in her disgrace;" and so saying he left the room.
This Quesnai, of whom we have just made mention, was a man of uncouth and rustic manners, a true Danubian peasant. He inhabited a little entresol above the apartments of Madame de Pompadour at Versailles, where he would pass the whole of his time absorbed in schemes of political economy. Quesnai, however, did not want for friends, as he could boast of the esteem of all the most illustrious philosophers of the day. For those persons who did not go to court would come once a month to dine with the court physician. Marmontel, in his Memoirs, relates that he has dined there in company with Diderot, D'Alembert, Duclos, Helvetius, Turgot, and Buffon,—a goodly array of intellect. Thus on the ground floor they deliberated on peace and war, on the choice of ministers, the suppression of the Jesuits, the exile of the parliament, and the future destinies of France; while above stairs those who had not power, but who possessed ideas, labored unwittingly at the future destinies of the world. What was concocted in the rez-de-chaussée was demolished in the entresol. It would frequently happen, too, that Madame de Pompadour who could not receive the guests of Quesnai in her own apartments, would ascend to those of her physician to see and chat with them.
Every Sunday morning Madame de Pompadour received at her toilet all the artists, literary men, and great personages of the court, who had the entrée of her apartments. Marmontel relates that on the arrival of Duclos and De Bernis, who never missed a single Sunday, she would say to the first, with a light air, "Bon jour, Duclos;" to the second, with an air and voice more amiable, "Bon jour, abbé:" accompanying her words occasionally with a little tap on his cheek. Artists and men of letters were invariably better received than the titled courtiers of France; while many of the nobility were truly lords-in-waiting, the two Vanloos, De la Tour, Boucher, and Cochin, had never to remain in the antechamber. The account of her first and only interview with Crebillon is interesting. Some one had informed her that the old tragic poet was living in the Marais, surrounded by his cats and dogs, in a state of poverty and neglect. "What say you!" she exclaimed; "in poverty and neglect?" She ran to seek the king, and asked for a pension for the poet of one hundred louis a-year from her privy purse. When Crebillon came to Versailles to thank her, she was in bed. "Let him come in," she exclaimed, "that I may see the gray-headed genius." At the sight of the fine old man—Crebillon was then eighty years of age—so poor and yet so proud, she was affected to tears. She received him with so touching a grace that the old poet was deeply moved. As he leaned over the bed to kiss her hand, the king appeared. "Ah, madame," exclaimed Crebillon, "the king has surprised us! I am lost!" This sally amused Louis XV. vastly; Crebillon's success was decided.
Madame de Pompadour passed her last days in a state of deep dejection. As she was now in the decline both of her favor and of her reign, she no longer had friends; even the king himself, though still submitting to her guidance, loved her no more. The Jesuits, too, whom she had driven from court, overwhelmed her with letters, in which they strove to depict to her the terrors of everlasting punishment.[E] Every hour that struck seemed to toll for her the death-knell of all her hopes and joys. On her first appearance at court, proud of her youth, her beauty, and her brilliant complexion, she had proscribed rouge and patches, saying that life was not a masked ball. She had now reached that sad period of life when she would be compelled to choose between rouge or the first wrinkles of incipient old age. "I shall never survive it," she used to say, mournfully,
[Footnote E: The fear of losing her power, and of becoming once more a bourgeoise of Paris, perpetually tormented her. After she had succeeded in suppressing the Jesuits, she fancied she beheld in each monk of the order as assassin and a poisoner.—Mémoires historiques de la Cour de France.]
One night, during the year 1760, she was seized with a violent trembling, and sitting up in bed, called Madame du Hausset.
"I am sure," she said, "I am going to die. Madame de Vintimille and Madame de Chateauroux both died as young as myself: it is a species of fatality which strikes all those who have loved the king. What I regret least is life,—I am weary of flatteries and insults, of friendships and hatreds; but I own to you that I am terrified at the idea of being cast into some ditch or other, whether it be by the clergy, by Monseigneur the Dauphin, or by the people of Paris."
Madame du Hausset took her hands within her own, and assured her that if France had the misfortune to lose her, the king would not fail to give her a burial worthy of her rank and station.
"Alas!" rejoined Madame de Pompadour, "a burial worthy of me!—when we recollect that Madame de Mailly, repenting of having been his first mistress, desired to be interred in the cemetery of the Innocents; and not only that, but even under the common water-pipe."
She passed the night in tears. On the following morning, however, she resumed a little courage, and hastened to call to her aid all the resources of art to conceal the first ravages of time; but in vain did she seek to recover that adorable smile which twenty years before had made Louis XV. forget that he was King of France.
From this time forth she showed herself in Paris no more; and at court she would only appear by candle-light, and then in the apparel of a Queen of Golconda, crowned with diamonds, her arms covered with bracelets, and wearing a magnificent Indian robe, embroidered with gold and silver. She was always the beautiful Marchioness de Pompadour, but a closer inspection would show that the lovely face of former days was now but a made-up face, still charming, but like a restored painting, showing evident symptoms of having been here and there effaced and retouched. It was in the mouth that she first lost her beauty. She had in early life acquired the habit of biting her lips to conceal her emotions, and at thirty years of age her mouth had lost all its vivid brilliancy of color.
Some persons have stated that Madame de Pompadour died from the effects of poison, administered either by the Jesuits, who never ceased persecuting her with anonymous letters, or by her enemies at Versailles; but this story is not deserving of credit. Most persons are agreed that Madame de Pompadour died simply because she was five and forty years of age; and owing as she did all her power but to the charm of her beauty, its loss she was unable to survive. She suffered for a length of time in silence, hiding ever under a pallid smile the death she already felt in her heart. At length she took to her bed—that bed from which she was fated to rise no more. She was then at the Chateau of Choisy; neither the king nor his courtiers imagined that her disease was serious, but she herself well knew that her hour was come. She entreated the king to have her removed to Versailles; she wished to die upon the throne of her glory—to die as a queen in the royal palace, still issuing her orders to the troop of servile courtiers who were accustomed to wait humbly at her footstool.
Like Diana de Poitiers, Gabrielle d'Estrées, and Madame de Maintenon, she died in April. The curé of the Madeleine was present during her last moments. As the old man was preparing to retire, after giving her the benediction, she rallied for a moment, for she was then almost dead, and said to him, "Wait a bit, Monsieur le Curé, we will go together." These were her last words.
Up to this time the king had testified at least the semblance of friendship and gratitude toward Madame de Pompadour, but no sooner had she breathed her last than he began to consider how he could, in the speediest manner possible, get rid of her mortal remains. He gave immediate orders for the removal of the body to her house in Paris. As the conveyance was about to start, the king, who was standing at one of the windows of the Chateau, seeing a violent hailstorm breaking over Versailles, said, with a smile, half sad, half ironical, "The marchioness will have bad weather for her journey!"
That same day Madame de Pompadour's will was opened in his presence. Although she had long since been far from his heart, he could not restrain a tear at the reading of the document.
The marchioness, in her will, had forgotten none of her friends, nor any of her servants; the king himself was named. "I entreat the king," she wrote, "to accept the gift I make him of my hôtel in Paris, in order that it may become the palace of one of his children: it is my desire that it may become the residence of Monseigneur le Comte de Provence." This hotel of Madame de Pompadour has since then been inhabited by illustrious hosts, for it is better known at the present day under the designation of the Elysée Bourbon, or rather the Elysée National.
Madame de Pompadour had several residences: she had received from the king an hôtel at Paris and one at Fontainebleau; the estate of Crecy, the château of Aulnay, Brimborion sur Bellevue, the seigniories of Marigny and of Saint-Rémy; an hotel at Compiegne, and one at Versailles; without counting the millions of francs in money bestowed at various times in addition to her regular income, for they never counted francs at Verseilles then.[F] For all this, we find Louis XV. giving the Marquis de Marigny, her brother, an order for two hundred and thirty thousand francs, to assist him in paying the debts of the marchioness. (Journal of Louis XV., published at the trial of Louis XVI.)
[Footnote F: Except Louis XV., who, it is said, used to amuse himself by making a private treasury. When he lost at play, he used always to pay out of the royal treasury.]
The marchioness was interred in a vault of the church of the Capuchins; by dint of interest and money her family had obtained the privilege of having a funeral oration pronounced over her mortal remains. This oration was a chef d'oeuvre, which ought most certainly to have been preserved for the honor of the Church. Unfortunately, this curious and most remarkable piece of eloquence was never printed, and history has inscribed but a few lines in its annals. When the priest approached the bier, he sprinkled the holy water, made the sign of the cross, and commenced his discourse in the following terms:—"I receive the body of the most high and powerful lady, Madame le Marquise de Pompadour, maid of honour to the queen. She was in the school of all virtues," &c. The remainder of this most edifying discourse is lost in oblivion, but surely the force of humbug could no further go.
Montesquieu's prediction concerning two remarkable personages of the eighteenth century (Voltaire and Madame de Pompadour) is curious,—curious alike for its truth, and for the knowledge of the world displayed by it.
One day, while on a visit to Ferney, Montesquieu being alone in Voltaire's magnificent saloon, which opened on the Lake of Geneva, was surprised by Marshal Richelieu (who had come over from Lyons to see how Voltaire would play in the Orphan of China) standing in deep thought before a pair of portraits which hung upon the wall.
"Well, Monsieur le President," said he, "you are studying, I perceive,
Wit and Beauty."
"Wit and Beauty, Marshal!" replied Montesquieu; "you see before you the portraits of a man and a woman who will be the representatives of our century."
And has not this prediction of Montesquieu's been in some sort fulfilled?—Historians have styled the seventeenth century the century of Louis XIV. Could not the eighteenth be with more justice designated the century of Voltaire and Madame de Pompadour? For if these two characters be carefully studied, the entire spirit of the age will in them be found faithfully depicted.
But, O vanity of vanities! Madame de Pompadour, with all her wit, and grace, and beauty, after having strutted and fretted her little hour on life's fitful stage, has vanished from the theater of the world into utter oblivion, leaving, literally speaking, scarcely a trace behind. In the words of Diderot we may ask, "What now remains of this woman, the dispenser of millions, who overthrew the entire political system of Europe, and left her country dishonored, powerless, and impoverished, both in mind and resources? The Treaty of Versailles, which will last as long as it can; a statue by Bouchardon, which will be always admired; a few stones engraved by Gay, which will astonish a future generation of antiquarians; a pretty little picture by Vanloo; and a handful of ashes."
* * * * *
From Eliza Cook's Journal.
THE CHURCH OF THE VASA D'AGUA.
One very hot evening, in the year 1815, the curate of San Pedro, a village distant but a few leagues from Seville, returned very much fatigued to his poor home; his worthy housekeeper, Senora Margarita, about seventy years of age, awaited him. However much any one might have been accustomed to distress and privation among the Spanish peasantry, it was impossible not to be struck with the evidence of poverty in the house of the good priest. The nakedness of the walls, and scantiness of the furniture, were the more apparent, from a certain air about them of better days. Senora Margarita had just prepared for her master's supper an olla podrida, which notwithstanding the sauce, and high sounding name, was nothing more than the remains of his dinner, which she had disguised with the greatest skill. The curate, gratified at the odor of this savory dish, exclaimed,—
"Thank God, Margarita, for this dainty dish. By San Pedro, friend, you may well bless your stars to find such a supper in the house of your host."
At the word host, Margarita raised her eyes, and beheld a stranger who Accompanied her master. The face of the old dame assumed suddenly an expression of wrath and disappointment; her angry glances fell on the new comer, and again on her master, who looked down, and said with the timidity of a child who dreads the remonstrance of his parent:—
"Peace, Margarita, where there is enough, for two, there is always enough for three, and you would not have wished me to leave a Christian to starve? he has not eaten for three days."
"Santa Maria! he a Christian, he looks more like a robber," and muttering to herself, the housekeeper left the room. During this parley, the stranger remained motionless at the threshold of the door; he was tall, with long black hair, and flashing eyes, his clothes were in tatters, and the long rifle which he carried excited distrust rather than favor.
"Must I go away?" he inquired.
The curate replied, with an emphatic gesture, "never shall he, whom I shelter, be driven away, or made unwelcome: but sit down, put aside your gun, let us say grace, and to our repast."
"I never quit my weapon; as the proverb says, two friends are one, my rifle is my best friend; I shall keep it between my knees. Though you may not send me from your house till it suits me, there are others who would make me leave theirs against my will, and perhaps head-foremost. Now to your health, let us eat." The curate himself, although a man of good appetite, was amazed at the voracity of the stranger, who seemed to bolt rather than eat almost the whole of the dish, besides drinking the whole flask of wine, and leaving none for his host, or scarcely a morsel of the enormous loaf which occupied a corner of the table. Whilst he was eating so voraciously, he started at the slightest noise; if a gust of wind suddenly closed the door, he sprang up and leveling his rifle, seemed determined to repel intrusion; having recovered from his alarm, he again sat down, and went on with his repast. "Now," said he, speaking with his mouth full, "I must tax your kindness to the utmost. I am wounded in the thigh, and eight days have passed without its being dressed. Give me a few bits of linen, then you shall be rid of me."
"I do not wish to rid myself of you," replied the curate, interested in his guest in spite of his threatening demeanor, by his strange exciting conversation. "I am somewhat of a doctor; you will not have the awkwardness of a country barber, or dirty bandages to complain of, you shall see." so speaking, he drew forth, from a closet a bundle containing all things needed, and turning up his sleeves, prepared himself to discharge the duty of a surgeon.
The wound was deep, a ball had passed through the stranger's thigh, who, to be able to walk, must have exerted a strength and courage more than human. "You will not be able to proceed on your journey to-day," said the curate, probing the wound with the satisfaction of an amateur artist. "You must remain here to-night; good rest will restore your health and abate the inflammation, and the swelling will go down."
"I must depart to-day, at this very hour," replied the stranger, with a mournful sigh. "There are some who wait for me, others who seek me," he added with a ferocious smile. "Come, let us see, have you done your dressing? Good: here am I light and easy, as if I never had been wounded. Give me a loaf—take this piece of gold in payment for your hospitality, and farewell." The curate refused the tendered gold with emphasis. "As you please, pardon me—farewell." So saying, the stranger departed, taking with him the loaf which Margarita had so unwillingly brought at her master's order. Soon his tall figure disappeared in the foliage of the wood about the village.
An hour later, the report of fire-arms was heard. The stranger reappeared, bleeding, and wounded in the breast. He was ghastly, as if dying.
"Here," said he, presenting to the old priest some pieces of gold. "My children—in the ravine—in the wood—near the little brook."
He fell, just as half a dozen soldiers rushed in, arms in hand; they met with no resistance from the wounded man, whom they closely bound, and, after some time, allowed the priest to dress his wound; but in spite of all his remarks on the danger of moving a man so severely wounded, they placed him on a cart.
"Basta," said they, "he can but die. He is the great robber, Don Josè della Ribera." Josè thanked the good priest, by a motion of his head, then asked for a glass of water, and as the priest stooped to put it to his lips, he faintly said, "You remember."
The curate replied with a nod, and when the troop had departed, in spite of the remonstrances of Margarita, who represented to him the danger of going out in the night, and the inutility of such a step, he quickly crossed the wood toward the ravine, and there found the dead body of a woman, killed, no doubt, by some stray shot from the guards. A baby lay at her breast, by her side a little boy of about four years old, who was endeavoring to wake her, pulling her by the sleeve, thinking she had fallen asleep, and calling her mamma. One may judge of Margarita's surprise when the curate returned with two children on his arms.
"Santa Madre! What can this mean! What will you do in the night? We have not even sufficient food for ourselves, and yet you bring two children. I must go and beg from door to door, for them and ourselves. And who are these children? The sons of a bandit—a gipsy; and worse, perhaps. Have they ever been baptized?"
At this moment, the infant uttered a plaintive cry: "What will you do to feed this baby? we cannot afford a nurse; we must use the bottle, and you have no idea of the wretched nights we shall have with him."
"You will sleep in spite of all," replied the good curate.
"O! santa Maria, he cannot be more than six months old! Happily I have a little milk here, I must warm it," and forgetting her anger, Margarita took the infant from the priest, kissed it, and soothed it to rest. She knelt before the fire, stirred the embers to heat the milk quicker, and when this little one had had enough, she put him to sleep, and the other had his turn. Whilst Margarita gave him some supper, undressed him, and made him a bed for the night, of the priest's cloak, the good old man related to her how he had found the children; in what manner they had been bequeathed to him.
"O! that is fine and good," said Margarita, "but how can they and we be fed?"
The curate took the Bible, and read aloud—
"Whosoever shall give, even a cup of cold water, to one of the least, being a disciple; verily I say unto you, he shall not lose his reward."
"Amen," responded the housekeeper.
The next day, the good father ordered the burial of the poor woman, and he himself read the service over her grave.
Twelve years from this time, the curate of San-Pedro, then seventy years of age, was warming himself in the sun, in front of his house. It was winter, and there had been no sunshine for two days.
Beside him stood a boy, ten or twelve years old, reading aloud the daily prayers, and from time to time casting a look of envy on a youth of about sixteen, tall, handsome, and muscular, who labored in the garden adjoining that of the priest. Margarita, being now blind, was listening attentively, when the youngest boy exclaimed, "O! what a beautiful coach," as a splendid equipage drove up near the door.
A domestic, richly dressed, dismounted, and asked the old priest to give him a glass of water for his master.
"Carlos," said the priest to the younger boy, "give this nobleman a glass of water, and add to it a glass of wine, if he will accept it. Be quick!"
The gentleman alighted from the coach. He seemed about fifty.
"Are the children your nephews?" inquired he.
"Much better," said the priest, "they are mine by adoption, be it understood."
"How so?"
"I shall tell you, for I can refuse nothing to such a gentleman; for poor and inexperienced in the world as I am, I need good advice, how best to provide for these two boys."
"Make ensigns of them in the king's guards, and in order to keep up a suitable appearance, he must allow them a pension of six thousand ducats."
"I ask your advice, my lord, not mockery."
"Then you must have your church rebuilt, and by the side of it, a pretty parsonage house, with handsome iron railings to inclose the whole. When this work will be complete, it shall be called the church of the Vasa d'Agua, (Glass of Water.) Here is the plan of it, will it suit you?"
"What can this mean?"
"What vague remembrance is mine; these features—this voice mean that I am Don Josè della Ribera. Twelve years ago, I was the brigand Josè. I escaped from prison, and the times have changed; from the chief of robbers, I have become the chief of a party. You befriended me. You have been a father to my children. Let them come to embrace me—let them come," and he opened his arms to receive them. They fell on his bosom.
When he had long pressed them, and kissed them by turns, with tears, and half-uttered expressions of gratitude, he held out his hand to the old priest—
"Well, my father, will you not accept the church?"
The curate, greatly moved, turned to Margarita, and said: "Whosoever shall give even a cup of cold water unto one of the least, being my disciple; verily I say to you, he shall not lose his reward."
"Amen," responded the old dame, who wept for joy at the happiness of her master, and his children by adoption, at whose departure she also grieved.
Twelve months afterward, Don Josè della Ribera and his two sons attended at the consecration of the church of San Pedro, one of the prettiest churches in the environs of Seville.
* * * * *
SONG—BY MISS JEWSBURY.
There once was a brave cavalier,
Commanded by Cupid to bow;
And his mistress, though lovely, I hear
Had a very Sultana-like brow;
In battles and sieges he fought
With many a Saracen Nero,
Till back to his mistress he brought
The fame and the heart of a hero:
But when he presumed to demand
The hero's reward in all story,
His mistress, in accents most bland—
Desired him to gather more glory
Poor Camille!
So back went the young cavalier,
(Where dwells such obedience now?)
And he wove amid pennant and spear,
A wreath for that fair cruel brow;
How crimson the roses he sent,
But not with the summer sun's glow;
'Twas the crimson of battle—and lent
By a brave heart forever laid low!
Now if such a lover I knew,
And if I might be his adviser,
I would bid him be tender and true,
But certainly bid him be wiser.
Poor Camille!
* * * * *
FROM PETRARCH.
Weeping for all my long lost years, I go,
And for that love which to this world confined
A spirit whose strong flight, for heaven designed,
No mean example might one man bestow.
Thou, who didst view my wonderings and my woe,
Great King of heaven! unseen, immortal mind!
Succor this weary being, frail and blind;
And may thy grace o'er all my failings flow!
Then, though my life through warring tempests passed;
My death may tranquilly and slowly come;
And my calm soul may flee in peace at last:
While o'er that space which shuts me from the tomb,
And on my death-bed, be thy blessing cast—
From Thee, in trembling hope, I wait my doom.
* * * * *
[From Bentley's Miscellany]
THE FEMALE WRECKER; AND THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY.
A BRACE OF GHOST STORIES.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE EXPERIENCES OF A GAOL CHAPLAIN."
It was a glorious summer's evening in July. The sun, robed in a thousand hues of gorgeous brilliancy, was setting behind the noble hill which towers over the little hamlet of Shaldon; light pleasure-skiffs, with tiny sail, were dotted over the bay;[A] the ebb tide was gently laving the hissing strand; and at intervals, wafted by the breeze, came from some merry party afloat, a ringing, joyous laugh, or some slight snatch of song. It was an evening which breathed serenity and repose.
[Footnote A: Teignmouth, Devon.]
Seated on one of the benches which skirt that pleasant promenade[B] were two feeble-looking men, with whom the summer of life had apparently passed. They conversed slowly and at intervals. That the theme interested both was clear from the earnest tone of the one, and the attention rendered by the other. It was connected too in some way with the sea: for, from time to time, the speaker paused and eyed wistfully the slumbering monster at his feet; and more than once the ejaculation was audible—"the secret is buried there!"
[Footnote B: The Denne.]
"And you believe this?" said the listener, half incredulously, half respectfully, when his elderly companion ceased.
"I do—firmly."
The other smiled, and then continued in a lower tone—
"All delusion! the result of a heated fancy—all delusion from beginning to end!"
"What is delusion?" said a tall military-looking figure, striding up and joining the group. "We all have, at one period or other of our lives, to battle with delusion and succumb to it. Now. sir," turning to the elder gentleman (his name was Ancelôt) and making a courteous bow—"pray favor me with your case and symptoms."
The party addressed looked nettled, and replied—
"Mine was no delusion; it was a stern and solemn reality."
"Well, give it what name you please," returned his companion, "only let
Major Newburgh hear the tale as you narrated it to me."
"To be again discredited? Excuse me, Trevor, no."
"Oh! but," interposed the major, "I'm of a very confiding disposition. I believe everything and every body. The more extraordinary the narrative, the more faith am I inclined to place in it. Trevor, there, as we all know," added he, laughingly, "has a twist. He's a 'total abstinence' man—a homeopathic man—a Benthamite, and secretly favors Mesmerism. With such abounding faith upon some points, we will allow him to be somewhat skeptical upon others. Come, your narrative."
"At the sober age of two-and-forty, a period when the season of delusion is pretty well over," said Mr. Ancelôt, pointedly, "I found myself in charge of a notorious fishing-village on the coast of Lincolnshire. It was famous, or rather infamous, for the smuggling carried on in its creeks, and for the vigilant and relentless wreckers which it numbered in its hovels. 'Rough materials!' said the bishop, Dr. Prettyman, when I waited upon him to be licensed to the curacy—rough materials to work upon; but by care and diligence, Mr. Ancelôt, wondrous changes may be effected. Your predecessor, a feeble-minded man, gave but a sorry account of your flock; but under your auspices, I hope they will become a church-going and a church-loving people! Make them churchmen—you understand me? Make them churchmen!'… Heaven help me! They needed first to be made honest and temperate—to be humanized and Christianized! 'Church-loving and church-going!' The chaplaincy of Newgate is not, perhaps, a sinecure; that of the Model Prison at Pentonville has, probably, its hours of toil; and that attached to Horsemonger Lane is not entirely a bed of roses; but if you wish to wear a man's heart and soul out; to depress his spirits and prostrate his energies—if you would make him long to exchange his lot with the day-laborer who whistles at the plow,—station him as a curate, far apart from his fellows, in a village made up of prize-fighters, smugglers, and wreckers!" To my lonely cure, with a heavy heart, I went; and by a most reckless and rebellious crew I speedily found myself surrounded—a crew which defied control. Intoxicating liquors of all kinds abounded. The meanest hovel smelt of spirits. Nor was there any want of contraband tobacco. Foreign luxuries, in a word, were rife among them. And yet they were always in want—always craving from their clergyman temporal aid—in his spiritual capacity they were slow to trouble him; had ever on their lips the entreaty 'give'—'give;' and always protested that they 'were come to their furthest, and had not a shilling in the world to help themselves withal.'
"For recklessness, drunkenness, and midnight brawls, all England could not match that parish.
"To the general and prevailing aspect of poverty, there was one, and that a marked exception. It presented itself in the person of Abigail Lassiter—a widow—who was reputed to be wealthy, and with whose means, unscrupulously acquired, a tale of murder was strangely blended. Abigail's husband had been a smuggler, and she herself was a daring and keen-eyed wrecker. For a season both throve. He had escaped detection in many a heavy run of contraband goods; and she had come in for many a valuable 'waif and stray' which the receding waters left upon the slimy strand. It was, however, her last venture, which, in her neighbors' language, had made her. Made her, indeed, independent of her fellows, but a murderer before her God!… About day-break in a thick misty morning in April, a vessel, heavily laden, was seen to ground on 'The Jibber Sand;' and after striking heavily for some hours, suddenly to part asunder. The sea was so rough, and the wind so high, that no help could be rendered from the shore. Midday drew on—came—passed, and the villagers assembled on the heights (their eyes fixed the while on the devoted vessel like vultures watching for their prey) had at length the satisfaction of seeing the laboring bark yield to the war of the elements, and her timbers float, piecemeal, over the waters.
"But nothing of any consequence came ashore. A stray spar or two, a hen-coop, two or three empty barrels, a child's light straw hat, and a sailor's cap—these were all.
"The gale held: the wind blew off shore, and at nightfall the wrecking-party, hungry, weary, and out of humor, retired to their cabins. About an hour after midnight heavy rain fell; the wind shifted, and blew inshore. With the first appearance of dawn, Abigail's cottage door was seen slowly to unclose, and she herself to emerge from it, and stealthily creep down to the shore. Once there, a steep sea-wall—thrown up to protect the adjoining lowlands from inundation—screened her from observation. She was absent about an hour, returned apparently empty-handed, reentered her cottage, nor passed its threshold again during the remainder of the day.
"But that was a memorable day for the industrious. My villagers were early astir. Their muddy shore was strewed with fragments of the wreck; and when the tide went down, and the gale moderated, half imbedded in the Jibber Sand was found 'goodly spoil.' Packages of costly shawls, hampers of Dutch liqueurs, bales of linen, several kegs of brandy, and two small canvas-bags containing bullion, were a few of the 'waifs and strays' which keen eyes speedily detected, and stalwart arms as speedily appropriated.
"Later on in the afternoon a very bustling personage made his appearance, much blown and overheated, who announced himself as 'acting under authority from Lloyd's,' and 'representing the under-writers.' At his heels, uttering volleys of threats, and menacing every soul he met with hideous 'penalties according to act of parliament,' followed a very lady-like young gentleman, with a thin reedy voice, and light down upon his chin, 'charged with protecting the public revenue.' Well for him in a dark night if he could protect himself!
"Worthy souls! They might as well have spared their well-fed nags, and have remained at home snugly housed in their chimney-corner. ''Tis the early bird that gets the worm.' They had missed it by hours. The spoil was housed. It was buried in cottage gardens, and cabbages planted over it. It was secreted among the thatch, where even the best trained bird-nesting urchin would have missed it. It was stored away under more than one hollow hearth-stone, on which a cheerful wood-fire was crackling and blazing. When were the 'womenkind' in a wrecker's village at a loss for expedients?
"But a discovery was made that afternoon, which, for the moment, made the boisterous gentleman from Lloyd's falter in his denunciations, and hushed the menaces of the indignant and well-dressed personage who protected the revenue, and saddened the few hearts amongst us not entirely devoid of feeling.
"On a little knoll—called in memory of an unfortunate suicide, 'The Mad Maiden's Knoll,'—was found the body of a lady, youthful and fair, and by her side that of a little infant, a few weeks old. The babe, carefully swathed in countless warm wrappers, was lying in a rude cradle of wicker-work; this was firmly fastened to the lady's waist, who, on her part, had been securely lashed to a spar. 'Twas a piteous sight! But one's sympathies were called into still more painful exercise when it was found that the unfortunate lady's corpse had been rifled by some unprincipled marauder; that both ears had been torn, and two of her fingers had been crushed and broken in the attempt to plunder them of the rings with which they had been laden. Nor was this all. Every part of her dress had been carefully examined. Her stays had been ripped open, and a packet, assumed to be of value, had apparently been taken thence. What strengthened this surmise was the fact that a fragment of a purple morocco note-case still adhered to her dress. This fragment bore the words in gilt letters, 'Bank Notes;' below were the initials 'F.H.B.' The sight drew forth general expressions of pity: but pity gave place to indignation when the district surgeon joined the group, and after a careful examination of the body, said slowly, 'I suspect—I more than suspect—I am almost positive, that this lady reached the shore alive. The winds and waves have not destroyed her. She has perished by the hand of another. Look here,' and he pointed to a small dark rim round the neck, 'this is the effect of strangulation; and my belief is that the corpse before us is that of a murdered woman.'
"The coroner of the district was summoned, a jury empanneled, and the simple facts relative to the discovery of the bodies of the woman and infant were briefly placed on record. Few cared to speak openly. All had an interest in saying as little as possible. 'Return an open verdict, gentlemen; return an open verdict by all means,' suggested the wary official; 'that is the shortest course you can adopt; safe and perfectly legal; it decides nothing, contradicts nothing, concludes nothing.' No advice could be more palatable to the parties he addressed. 'Found dead,' was the ready response; 'but by what means, drowning or otherwise; there is no evidence to show.'
"The coroner was delighted.
"'Precisely so; quite sufficient. My gig, and a glass of brandy and water.'"
* * * * *
"No one claimed the bodies. Early interment was necessary; and a few hours after the inquest was concluded, mother and child were consigned to their parent earth.
"Six weeks afterward, an elderly man, with a most imperious manner and a foreign accent, came down to the village and asked countless questions relative to the shipwreck. The unhappy lady, he said, was his niece; and earnest were the inquiries he made touching a large sum of money, which, to his certain knowledge, she had about her when she went on shipboard. Of this money, as a matter of course, no satisfactory tidings were forthcoming. He then became violent; called the village a nest of pirates; cursed the inhabitants without mercy; hoped that heaven's lightnings would speedily fall, and raze the hamlet to the ground; and indulged in a variety of comments, some just, some foolish, and all angry.
"But with all his anxiety about his niece, and all his burning indignation against her plunderers, he never visited the unhappy lady's grave; never directed a stone to be placed over her; never deplored her fate; never uttered a remark about her infant, save and except an avowal of his unbounded satisfaction that it had perished with the mother-his ever-recurring subject of regret was, not that he had lost his niece, but that he had lost her money!
"Oh world! how base are thy calculations, how sordid thy conclusions! The young, the fair, the helpless, the innocent may perish, it matters not. Loss of relatives, of children, of country, of character, all may be borne with complacency but—loss of money!
"Meanwhile the party who was suspected to have benefited most largely by the shipwreck, went about her daily occupations with her usual subdued and poverty-stricken air. There was nothing in Abigail Lassiter's dress or manner to indicate the slightest improvement in her worldly circumstances. She toiled as earnestly, dressed as simply, and lived as sparingly as ever. But quietly and almost imperceptibly a vast change was wrought in the aspect of her dwelling. It was carefully repaired and considerably enlarged, a small piece of pasture land was bought, and then a handsome Alderney cow made her appearance. A garden of some extent, at the rear of the cottage, was next laid out, and stocked, and last of all a commodious spring cart and clever cob were seen on the little homestead. But comfort there was none. An invisible hand fought against its inmates. Their career of success was closed. A curse and not a blessing was henceforth to track them. On a sudden the husband, Mark Lassiter, was betrayed in one of his smuggling expeditions, encountered the coast-guard where he least expected them, was fired at, captured, and died in jail of his wounds. The eldest son—'Black Ben,' the pugilist—killed his man, was accused of foul play, and compelled to fly the country. Robin, second mate of a merchant vessel then lying in Hull Docks, still remained to her, and him she hastily summoned home for counsel. Vain precaution! A final separation had already taken place between them. While wondering at his tardy movements, a brief unfeeling letter apprised her that, 'returning to his ship at midnight decidedly the worse for liquor,' Robin Lassiter had missed his footing on the narrow plank connecting the vessel with the shore, fallen into deep water, and had sunk to rise no more.
"These successive bereavements paralyzed her. For the first time the idea seems to have presented itself, that it was possible adversity might overwhelm her. She confined herself rigidly to her home; said that the moan of the sea wearied and worried her, and blocked up every window which looked upon the ocean! For hours she would sit, abstractedly, in silence. Then, wringing her hands, would wake up with a wistful cry, and repeat—'Wrong never comes right! Wrong never comes right!'
"Much as I knew she hated religion, its ministers, its sanctuary, and every object which, by possibility, could remind her that there was a coming future, I yet felt it my duty to make another and a third attempt at an interview. She received me ungraciously enough, but not insolently. Her fair, soft, feminine features betrayed evident annoyance at my visit, but still there was an absence of that air of menace and hatred which characterized her in former days.
"'You visit me?' was her inquiry; 'why?'
"'To condole with you on the ravages which death has made in your family.'
"Her reply was instant and firmly uttered.
"'Yes; two are gone. Their part is played and over. I presume they are at rest.'
"A passing remark followed, in which a hope was expressed that I should see her at church.
"'Never, until I'm brought there. I shouldn't know myself in such a place, nor would those who assemble there know me.'
"While framing my reply she continued—
"'Your visit, sir, is wholly unexpected; I have never troubled the clergy, and I hope they will not trouble me; I have my sorrows, and I keep them to myself.'
"'They will overwhelm you unless aid be granted—'
"She interrupted me.
"'I seek it not, and therefore have no right to expect it. But why should I detain you sir,' said she, rising from her seat; 'there are others who may prize your presence more than I do.'
"One of Wilson's little volumes was in my hand. I proffered it with the remark—'You will perhaps read this in my absence?'
"She declined it with a gesture of impatience.
"'No! no! I seldom read, and my hourly endeavor now is not to think!
This way lies your road, sir. Farewell.'
"A more thoroughly unsatisfactory interview it is scarcely possible to imagine.
"Two years had rolled away, when, one morning, a message reached me that 'Dame Lassiter was ill,' and wished I would 'call in the course of the day.' Within the hour came another summons: 'Dame Lassiter was much worse,' and begged to 'see me without delay.' Before midday I was at the cottage. Her sole attendant,—a bold, saucy, harsh looking girl of eighteen,—awaited me at the threshold.
"'Right glad am I you're come,' was her greeting; 'the mistress, sir, has been asking for you ever since day-break.'
"'She is worse then?'
"She lowered her voice to a whisper, and continued:—
"'She's going! She'll not hold it long. The doctors have given her up, and there's no more medicine to be gone for. This last is a sure sign.'
"'Is she sensible?'
"The girl hesitated.
"'In times she be,' was her reply, rather doubtfully given! 'in times she be; but there's something about her I don't quite fancy; the plain fact is, she's rather quair, and I shall go up to the village. You'll not mind being alone, I dare say?'
"And without waiting for a reply this careful and considerate attendant hurriedly opened the door; went out; and then locked it briskly and firmly on the outside. I was a prisoner, and my companion a dying woman! For the moment I felt startled; but a hollow moan of anguish, sadly and painfully reiterated in the chamber above, at once recalled me to my duties, and bade me seek the sufferer. In a room of fair dimensions lay, stricken and emaciated, the once active and dauntless Abigail. On entering I could with difficulty disguise my surprise at the variety of articles which it contained, and at the costliness and splendor of many of them. The curtains of the sick woman's bed were of figured silk damask; and though here and there a dark spot was visible where sea-water, or some other destructive agency, had penetrated, enough still remained to vindicate the richness of the fabric and the brilliancy of the color. The linen on the bed was of the finest texture, apparently the production of a Dutch loom, while the vessel which held her night-drink was an antique goblet, indisputably of foreign workmanship,—its materials silver and mother-of-pearl. Under the window, which commanded her flower garden, stood a small work-table of birds'-eye maple, which methought had once stood in the lady's cabin of some splendidly appointed steamer. Her wash-stand was of mahogany richly carved: on the shelf above it stood an ebony writing-desk, inlaid with silver; below was a lady's dressing case—ivory—and elaborately carved. Two cases of foreign birds of exquisite plumage completed the decoration of the apartment. It is true necessitous sailors and carousing smugglers might have contributed some of the costly articles I saw around me; but as I gazed on them the thought recurred, are not these the wages of iniquity? Have they not been rifled from the grasp of the helpless, the drowning, and the dying?
"I spoke. She was in full possession of her faculties; but manifestly near her end. I expressed my sorrow at finding her so feeble; told her that I had readily obeyed her summons; and asked her whether I should read to her.
"'Neither read to me,' was her distinct reply: 'nor pray with me; but listen to me. They tell me I have not many hours to live. If so, I have something to disclose; and some money which I should wish—I should wish'—she hesitated and became silent—'the point is, am I beyond recovery? If so I should desire that this money—'
"'Under any circumstances,' was my reply, 'confess all; restore all'
"She looked up quickly and said sharply; 'Why restore?'
"'To prove the sincerity of your regrets.'
"'Ah, well!' said she, thoughtfully, 'if I could only satisfy myself that recovery was impossible. I have much to leave behind me; and there are some circumstances—'
"She hesitated and was silent. A minute or two elapsed and I urged—
"'Be candid and be just,—make reparation while you possess the power.'
"'You advise well,' said she, faintly. 'I would fain relieve my mind. It is sorely oppressed, for with regard to my property—my—my savings—'
"As she spoke there arose, close to us, clear and painfully audible, a low, mocking laugh. It was not akin to mirth. There was no gladness in its tone. It betokened enmity, triumph, scorn. The dying woman heard it, and cowered beneath its influence. An expression of agonizing fear passed over her countenance. Some minutes elapsed before she could sufficiently command herself to speak or even listen.
"'Carry out forthwith,' said I, in a tone of resolution I could with difficulty command, 'carry out your present determination. Make restitution to the utmost of your power. Restore all; confess all.'
"'I will do so and now,' was her reply.
"Again that bitter, scornful, chilling laugh; and closer to us! To no ebullition of any earthly emotion can I compare it. It resembled none. It conveyed scorn, exultation, defiance, hatred. It seemed an uncontrollable burst of triumph over a parting and ruined soul. Again, I gazed steadfastly on the dying woman. A spasm convulsed her countenance. She pointed feebly to some unseen object—unseen at least by me—and clasped her hands with an imploring gesture. Another spasm came on-a second-a third—and all was silence. I was alone with the dead."
* * * * *
"And you are persuaded that these sounds were real and not fanciful, that imagination had nothing to do with the scene?" said the younger of the three when the aged speaker had concluded.
The reply was immediate.
"I state simply what I heard; that, and no more. No opportunity for trick existed. The cottage had one door, and but one. The dying woman and myself were the only parties within its walls. We were locked in from without: until the attendant returned and unclosed the door there was no possibility of either entering or quitting the dwelling. I was alone with the dead for upward of an hour—no enviable vigil—when it pleased her unfeeling and gossiping retainer to return and release me. Believe it, say you? I do believe it—and most firmly—as fact and not fancy."
"And what say you, Major?" pursued the questioner, turning to his military companion.
"I believe it also, and the more readily from recollecting what once occurred to myself. Soon after my awkward hit at Vittoria, where I received a bullet, which I carry about with me to this hour, I was ordered home on sick leave. Landing at Falmouth from a filthy transport, feeble, feverish, solitary and wretched, I was recognized by a former intimate, who followed me to my inn and insisted upon taking me down with him into ——shire. Rest and country air, he was sure, would recruit me. In vain I explained the wretched cripple I was. In vain I submitted that the 'hospital mates,' one and all, entertained the worst opinion of my injury. He would take no denial. It was a case, he contended, not for the knife or the doctor; but for beef-steaks and Barclay's stout. And this opinion he would make good, in my instance, against the whole hospital staff at home and abroad. Too weak to contest the point, I gave in; and promised that, if living, that day week should find me at —— House. The first part of my journey I made out with comparatively little suffering. The latter part, where I was obliged to have recourse to a hack chaise, neither wind nor weather tight—ill hung, and badly driven, was torture. At length, unable to endure longer agony, I got out; and bidding the postboy drive with my luggage to —— House, limped along across the fields under the pilotage of an old laborer—it was a work of time—to my destination.
"My gray-haired guide, who commiserated my situation, was very inquisitive about 'the war and Lord Wellington;' asked whether all the Spaniards lived on 'mules' flesh fried with onions,' as he 'had been told for truth;' inquired what 'our side' thought of 'Boney's covenant with the devil,' a covenant, (according to his reading,) to this effect, that 'the devil had given Boney a lease of luck for threescore and three years, and that when it was up he was to be shot by a Spanish maiden with a silver bullet.' Many folks, he said, believed all this to be true and sartain; but that he, for his part, 'did not hold with it: what did I think?' But however talkative about the war, my venerable pilot was reserved about —— House. I asked him if he knew it. 'These fifty years and more,' was his answer. 'The House of Mystery; good people live there now,—yes, good people, kind people,—a blessed change for all about and around the House of Mystery. More he would not utter. At length I reached the winning post, hobbled in, received a cordial welcome, and retired early to bed.
"None but those who have lain for weeks in a crowded military hospital, who have battled day by day with death, now flushed with fever, now racked with agonizing spasmodic action in every nerve, can conceive the effect of the quiet, the pure air, the bracing freshness of the country. The stillness which reigned around,—the peaceful landscape beneath my window,—the balmy fragrance of the flowers,—the hush of woods reposing in all the stillness of a summer's twilight,—the faint tinkling of the distant sheep-bell,—the musical murmur of the rill which gurgled gaily and gladly from beneath the base of the sun-dial,—the deer dotted over the park, and grazing lazily in groups beneath the branching oaks, made up a picture which soothed and calmed me. I went to bed satisfied that I should sleep. I did so without a single twinge till after midnight. Then I was roused by a grating sound at a distance. It drew nearer, became more and more distinct, and presently at a pelting pace, up drove a carriage and four. I say four, because a man used to horses all his life, can, by their tramp, judge, though blindfold, pretty accurately as to their numbers. I heard the easy roll of the carriage, the grating of the wheels on the gravel, the sharp pull-up at the main entrance, the impatient pawing of the animals on the hard and well-rolled road. All this I caught most distinctly. But though I listened keenly I heard no bell ring, no door unclose, no servant hasten to these new arrivals. I thought it odd. I struck my repeater. 'A quarter to one. Strange hour, surely, for visitors to arrive! However, no business of mine. I have not, happily, to rise and do the honors.' And, after a yawn or two, and a hurried, though I trust grateful acknowledgment for the comparative ease I was enjoying, I turned upon my side and dozed off. I had slept about two hours when a similar noise again aroused me. Up came another carriage at the same slapping pace. Pat, pat, pat, went the hoofs upon the hard avenue. The wheels rattled; the gravel grated on the ear; there was the same quick, sharp, knowing pull-up at the main door, and the same impatient stamp of high-fed steeds anxious to be off, and eager for the rest and feed of the stable. I became irritated and angry. 'A pretty house,' said I, 'for an invalid! Guests arriving at all hours! Moreover, a precious lot of fresh faces shall I have to encounter at the breakfast table. A nice figure I am! My walk particularly straight and lively! I shall be "the observed of all observers" with a vengeance. I wish with all my soul I had remained at Exeter. I had there my hospitable friends, the Greens, in "the Barn-field," to keep an eye to me, while here, carriages are driving up at a splitting pace from midnight to cock-crowing.' And fuming and fretting, chafed and annoyed, I lay feverish and discontented till daybreak.
"The next morning, having taken peculiar pains with my toilet, and having arrived at the inevitable conclusion that I hobbled worse than ever, and was as infirm as an old gentleman of eighty, I presented myself in the breakfast room.
"I expected to find it lined with fresh faces. I was mistaken. The party assembled was the same, without diminution or addition, which I had quitted the preceding evening. After an interchange of civilities I hazarded an inquiry:—
"'Where are the new arrivals?'
"'There are no new arrivals,' said my hostess; 'I hope you are not tired of us already?'
"'You allude to an utter impossibility,' was my rejoinder; 'but beyond all doubt two carriages drove up to the main entrance early this morning.'
"'You are our only guest,' observed my hostess with an air of peculiar gravity, and even perceptible annoyance in her manner.
"'You see us as we are, a quiet family party, Mr. Newburgh,' observed the youngest daughter hastily, and then adroitly changed the conversation.
"'Oh,' thought I, 'I'm on unsafe ground. Some disagreeable people, self-invited, and dismissed at all hazards. Very well. Moi c'est égal! What concern have I with the family arrangements of another?'
"The second night of my visit drew on. I slept well and soundly till about three in the morning, when my slumbers were suddenly broken by a rapid rush of horsemen across the lawn, directly under my dressing-room window. 'Hunting at three in the morning is a rank absurdity,' was my comment; 'but if I ever heard the sound of horses and horsemen I did then. The park gates must have been left open, and the farm horses have broken loose. Utter destruction to the lawn, and to the flower beds, and the glorious rhododendrons! What negligent menials.' And while murmuring my abhorrence of such atrocious carelessness, and my deep regret at its results, my eyes closed. The next morning I peeped with apprehension from my window, on what I presumed would prove a scene of devastation. All was fair and smiling, gaze where I would. Here was the trim and smoothly shaven lawn—there the blooming parterre—beyond the early flowering shrubs not a twig, not a leaf injured. I left my room in amazement.
"Below, the papers had arrived. They gave the details of another and decisive battle. That, and an expedition during the morning to a neighboring Roman encampment, banished the horsemen of the preceding night, nor did they recur till I found myself in my room, exhausted and bent down with pain, at eleven. The fact was I had played the fool and overwalked myself, and my avenger, the bullet, began to remind me of his presence in my system. For three mortal hours no poor wretch, save in his death struggle, endured greater agony than I did. At last, a 'compassion that never faileth,' bestowed on me an interval of ease, and I slept. Heavily, I imagine, since for some time a strange booming noise droned continuously in my ears before it waked me. At last I was roused. I listened. The sound was like nothing I had ever heard before. It seemed as if a heavy-sledge hammer, or huge wooden mallet, carefully muffled in wadding, was at work in the room below me. The stable clock struck four. 'No mason,' thought I, 'no mason would commence his day's work at four in the morning. Burglars, perhaps,' and I resolved to give alarm. The noise suddenly ceased, and some three minutes afterward as suddenly recommenced in the children's play-room immediately above me. 'Be they whom they may they shall be disturbed.' And I began to dress in the dark with all possible expedition. Some partial progress was made when the noise ceased in the upper room and descended forthwith to my own. An instant afterward it seemed to proceed from the library. In about twenty minutes it ceased altogether.
"'No mason, no burglar,' was my conclusion. 'This noise has nothing in common with either the one or the other. Did my old guide speak accurately when he called this "The House of Mystery?" Whether it be such or no, it is not the house for me. I can't sleep in it. I must flit; and I will do so with the morning's light.'
"But with the morning's light came bright and cheerful faces, kindly inquiries, and renewed hospitality, and with them an abandonment of my menaced departure. During the day an opportunity presented itself of mentioning to my young host the harassing disturbances of the night, and asking for an explanation.
"'I can give none,' was his reply: 'after many years residence in the house, and ceaseless endeavors to ascertain the cause of these annoyances, you are as much au fait of their origin as myself.'
"'Is their[*sic] no motive, adequate or inadequate,' I continued, 'which can be assigned for these nightly visitations?'
"'None beyond the tradition—apparently authentic—that an ancestor of ours, a man whose character will not bear investigation, met his death, unfairly, in an old house on the site of which this is built. He was a miser, and presumed to be extremely wealthy. He lived secluded from society; his factotum and agent being an Italian valet, who was perfectly aware of the ample means of his master. On a sudden my vicious kinsman disappeared, and shortly afterward the valet. But the story runs—tradition it must still be called—that the former was robbed, brutally beaten, and finally walled up in some recess by his desperate retainer. So immured he died of actual starvation; but according to the legend, much of the miser's wealth continued hidden about the mansion which the Italian's fears prevented his carrying off, and which still remains, snug and safe, in some dusty repository, ready to reward "a fortunate speculator." I only wish,' continued he merrily, 'I could light upon the hoard! Give me a clew, dear Newburgh, and I'll buy you a troop.'
"'At any rate,' said I, 'from the mirth with which you treat it, the visitation is not unpleasant.'
"'You are in error,' said my entertainer; 'the subject is unquestionably annoying, and one which my mother and the family studiously avoid. As for your bed-room—the porch-room—I am aware that parties occupying it have occasionally heard the strangest noises on the gravel-walk immediately below them. Your hostess was most averse to those quarters being assigned you; but I thought that the room being large and lofty, and the steps to it few, you would occupy it with comfort. I am grieved that my arrangement has proved disagreeable.' And then, finishing off with a hearty laugh, in which, for the life of me I couldn't join, my host added, 'if he be walled up, I am sure you will say, Newburgh, that he's a persevering old gentleman, and makes the most laudable efforts to get out of his cell.'"
"The levity of some persons," was the major's grave aside, "how inconceivable, how indescribable!"
"My visit," continued he, "lasted about a fortnight, during the whole of which period, at intervals, the rapping was audible in different parts of the house. It appeared to me however—I watched attentively—to come with the greatest frequency from the hall. Thence it sounded as if an immense mallet, muffled in feathers or cotton, was striking heavily on the floor. The noise was generally heard between twelve and two. The blows sometimes followed each other with great rapidity; at other times more slowly and leisurely. One singularity of the visitation was this—that in whatever part of the house you might be listening, the noise seemed to come from a remote direction. If you heard the blows in the drawing-room, they appeared to be given in the library. And if you heard them in the library, they seemed to be falling in the nursery. The invisible workman was busy always at a distance. Another feature was its locomotive powers. It moved with the most extraordinary rapidity. Nothing that I could think of—mice, rats, drains, currents of air, dropping of water—would explain it. If the noise had been caused by the agency of any one of these causes, it would have been heard in the day time. It never was. Night was the season, and the only season in which the ponderous, but invisible, mallet was wielded. Nothing could exceed the kindness with which I was treated. No words can do justice to the thoughtful and delicate hospitality which I received. But I declare to you this mysterious visitation was too much for me. It was impossible to listen to it at night without depression. Perhaps my nerves were unstrung. The tone of my system might be enfeebled. The fault, I dare say, was in myself. But to lie awake, as I often did, during long hours from pain, and to hear this muffled, hollow, droning, mysterious noise passing from room to room about the house—to listen to it now above me, now below me, now quite close to my chamber door, and in a couple of seconds rising up from the very center of the hall, and to be all the while utterly unable to account for it, fevered me. I curtailed my visit; but the nursing and kindness I received are graven in my memory. Bearing all these matters in remembrance," said the major firmly; "recollecting my own strange experience, how can I discredit Mr. Ancelôt's narrative? I firmly believe it. We are surrounded by mysteries. The invisible world enshrouds us. Spirits have their regards intently fixed on us, and a very slight vail divides us. Spurn the vulgar error," said the old veteran stoutly, "that a soldier must be a scoffer. I remember the holy record, and its thrilling declaration; 'We are a spectacle unto angels and unto men.'" A pause ensued, which neither of the listeners cared to terminate. At length he spoke again. "The dews are falling. The last pleasure-boat has landed its fair freight upon the Denne. The breeze from the sea blows keenly, and warns us elderlies to think of our night-possets and our pillows. Trevor, give me your arm. Happy dog! You have no bullet in your back! May you never know the agony of existence when even to move some dozen yards is torture!"
* * * * *
We should do our utmost to encourage the Beautiful, for the Useful encourages itself.—Goethe.
* * * * *
[From the Ladies' Companion.]
THE LADY LUCY'S SECRET.
BY MRS. NEWTON CROSLAND.
"With clamourous demands of debt, broken bonds,
And the detention of long due debts,
Against my honor."—TIMON OF ATHENS
"How in the turmoil of life can love stand,
Where there is not one heart, and one mouth, and one hand?"
LONGFELLOW
In a charming morning-room of a charming London house, neighboring Hyde-Park, there lounged over the breakfast-table a wedded pair,—the rich merchant Farrars, and his young wife, the Lady Lucy. Five years of married life had, in most respects, more than realized the brightest hopes which had been born and cherished in the dreaming days of courtship. Till the age of forty, the active mind of Walter Ferrars had been chiefly occupied by business,—not in mean shuffling, speculative dealings, but on the broad basis of large transactions and an almost chivalrous system of integrity.
Then, when a secured position and the privileges of wealth had introduced him to that inner circle of English society which not wealth alone can penetrate, but where wealth in some due proportion is an element necessary to hold fast a place, it was thought most natural and proper that he should choose a wife from the class which seems set apart from the rest of womankind like the choice flowers of a conservatory, on whom no rude breath must blow. The youthful, but nearly portionless, daughter of a poor Earl seemed the very bride decreed by some good angel for the merchant-prince.
But though the nuptials fulfilled nearly all the requirements of a mariage de convenance, there was in reality very much more of the ingredients in their hearts which amalgamate into very genuine "love," than always meet at the altar; though of course "the World" resolutely refused to believe anything of the sort—the World, which is capable of so much kindness, and goodness, and justice, among its individuals, taken "separately and singly," and yet is such a false, malignant, many-headed monster in its corporate body! Walter Ferrars had a warm heart, that yearned for affection, as well as a clear head; and, fascinated as he had been by the youthful grace and beauty, the high-bred repose of manner and cultivated talents of the Lady Lucy, he set himself resolutely to win and keep her girlish heart, not expecting that the man of forty was to obtain it without an effort. Thus, when he assumed a husband's name, he did not "drop the lover." His was still the watchful care, made up of the thousand little thoughtful kindnesses of daily life, neither relaxed in a tête-à-tête, nor increased in public. He was the pleased and ready escort for every occasion, save only when some imperative business claimed his time and presence; and these calls now were rare, for he had long since arrived at the position when efficient servants and assistants carry out the plans a superior has organized.
Is there wonder that the wife was grateful? Few—few women indeed are insensible to the power of continued kindness; they may have a heart of stone for the impetuous impulsive lover, but habitual tenderness-that seems so unselfish—touches the finest chords of their nature, and awakens affection that might have lain dormant through a long life, but for this one sweet influence. Thus it was that the wife of five years loved her husband with an almost adoring worship. She had felt her own mind expand in the intimate communion with his fine intellect; she had felt her own weaknesses grow less, as if she had absorbed some of his strength of character; and she had recognised the very dawn of principles and opinions which had been unknown to her in the days of her thoughtless, ignorant, inexperienced girlhood. And yet with all her love, with all her matured intelligence, she had never lost a certain awe of her husband, which his seniority had perhaps first implanted, and alas! one fatal circumstance had gone far to render morbid.
They sat at breakfast. It was early spring, and though the sunshine streamed through the windows, and from one of them there crept the odors of the conservatory, a bright fire gleamed and crackled in the grate; and shed a charm of cheerfulness through the room. Mr. Ferrars had a newspaper in his hand, but not yet had he perused a line, for his son and heir, a brave boy of three years old, a very model of patrician beauty, was climbing his large chair, playing antics of many sorts, and even affecting to pull his father's still rich and curling hair, so little awe had the young Walter of the head of the house—while Mr. Farrars' parental glee was like a deep bass to the child's crowing laugh. Lady Lucy smiled too, but she shook her head, and said more than once, "Naughty papa is spoiling Watty." It was a pretty scene; the room was redolent of elegance, and the young mother, in her exquisitely simple but tasteful morning dress, was one of its chief ornaments. Who would think that beneath all this sweetness of life there was still a serpent!
A post was just in, and a servant entered with several letters; among those delivered to Lady Lucy were two or three large unsightly, ill-shaped epistles, that seemed strange company for the others. An observing stranger might have noticed that Lady Lucy's cheek paled, and then flushed; that she crushed up her letters together, without immediately opening them, and that presently she slid the ugly ones into the pocket of her satin apron. Mr. Ferrars read his almost with a glance—for they were masculine letters, laconic, and to the point, conveying necessary information, in three lines and a half—and he smiled, as after a while he observed his wife apparently intent on a truly feminine epistle—four sides of delicate paper closely crossed—and exclaimed gaily:
"My dear Lucy, there's an hour's reading for you, at least; so I shall ring and send Watty to the nursery, and settle steadily to the Times."
But though Lady Lucy really perused the letter, her mind refused to retain the pleasant chit-chat gossip it contained. Her thoughst[*sic] were far away, and had she narrowly examined her motives she would have known that she bent over the friendly sheet chiefly as an excuse for silence, and to conceal her passing emotions. Meanwhile the newspaper crackled in her husband's hand as he moved its broad leaves.
Presently Mr. Ferrars started with an exclamation of grief and astonishment that completely roused his absent wife.
"My dear Walter, what has happened?" she asked, with great anxiety.
"A man a bankrupt, whom I thought as safe as the Bank of England. Though it is true people talked about him months ago—spoke suspiciously of his personal extravagance, and, above all, said that his wife was ruining him."
"His wife!"
"Yes;—but I cannot understand that sort of thing. A few hundreds a year more or less could be of little moment to a man like Beaufort, and I don't suppose she spent more than you do, my darling. At any rate she was never better dressed. Yet I believe the truth was, that she got frightfully into debt unknown to him; and debt is a sort of thing that multiplies itself in a most astonishing manner, and sows by the wayside the seeds of all sorts of misery. Then people say that when pay-day came at last, bickerings ensued, their domestic happiness was broken up. Beaufort grew reckless, and plunged into the excitement of the maddest speculations."
"How dreadful!" murmured Lady Lucy.
"Dreadful, indeed! I don't know what I should do with such a wife."
"Would not you forgive her if you loved her very much?" asked Lady Lucy, and she spoke in the singularly calm tone of suppressed emotion.
"Once, perhaps, once; and if her fault were the fault of youthful inexperience,—but so much falseness, mean deception, and mental deterioration must have accompanied such transactions, that—in short, I thank Heaven that I have never been put to the trial."
As he spoke, the eyes of Mr. Farrars were fixed on the leading article of the Times, not on his wife. Presently Lady Lucy glided from the room, without her absence being at the moment observed. Once in her dressing-room she turned the key, and sinking into a low chair, gave vent to her grief in some of the bitterest tears she had ever shed. She, too, was in debt; "frightfully," her husband had used the right word; "hopelessly," so far as satisfying her creditors even out of the large allowance Mr. Farrars made her; and still she had not the courage voluntarily to tell the truth, which yet she knew must burst upon him ere long. From what small beginnings had this Upas shadow come upon her! And what "falseness, mean deception, and mental deterioration" had truly been hers!
Even the fancied relief of weeping was a luxury denied to her, for she feared to show the evidence of tears; thus after a little while she strove to drive them back, and by bathing her face before the glass, and drawing the braids of her soft hair a little nearer her eyes, she was tolerably successful in hiding their trace. Never, when dressing for court or gala, had she consulted her mirror so closely; and now, though the tears were dried; she was shocked at the lines of anguish—those delvers of the wrinkles of age—which marked her countenance. She sat before her looking-glass, one hand supporting her head, the other clutching the hidden letters which she had not yet the courage to open. There was a light tap at the door.
"Who is there?" inquired Lady Lucy.
"It is I, my lady," replied Harris, her faithful maid. "Madame Dalmas is here."
Lady Lucy unlocked her door and gave orders that the visitor should be shown up. With the name had come a flush of hope that some trifling temporary help would be hers. Madame Dalmas called herself a French-woman, and signed herself "Antoinette," but she was really an English Jewess of low extraction, whose true name was Sarah Solomons. Her "profession" was to purchase—and sell—the cast-off apparel of ladies of fashion; and few of the sisterhood have carried the art of double cheating to so great a proficiency. With always a roll of bank notes in her old leathern pocket-book, and always a dirty canvas bag full of bright sovereigns in her pocket, she had ever the subtle temptation for her victims ready.
Madame Dalmas—for she must be called according to the name engraved on her card—was a little meanly-dressed woman of about forty, with bright eyes and a hooked nose, a restless shuffling manner, and an ill-pitched voice. Her jargon was a mixture of bad French and worse English.
"Bon jour, miladi Lucy," she exclaimed, as she entered Lady Lucy's sanctum, "need not inquire of health, you look si charmante. Oh, si belle!—that make you wear old clothes so longer dan oder ladies, and have so leetel for me to buy. Milady Lucy Ferrars know she look well in anything, but yet she should not wear old clothes: no right—for example—for de trade, and de hoosband always like de wife well dressed—ha—ha!"
Poor Lady Lucy! Too sick at heart to have any relish for Madame Dalmas' nauseous compliments, and more than half aware of her cheats and falsehoods, she yet tolerated the creature from her own dire necessities.
"Sit down, Madame Dalmas," she said, "I am dreadfully in want of money; but I really don't know what I have for you."
"De green velvet, which you not let me have before Easter, I still give you four pounds for it, though perhaps you worn it very much since then."
"Only twice—only seven times in all—and it cost me twenty guineas," sighed Lady Lucy.
"Ah, but so old-fashioned—I do believe I not see my money for it.
Voyez-vous, de Lady Lucy is one petite lady—si jolie mais très petite.
If she were de tall grand lady, you see de great dresses could fit small
lady, but de leetle dresses fit but ver few."
"If I sell the green velvet I must have another next winter," murmured
Lady Lucy.
"Ah! vous avez raison—when de season nouveautés come in. I tell you what—you let me have also de white lace robe you show me once, the same time I bought from you one little old pearl brooch."
"My wedding-dress? Oh no, I cannot sell my wedding-dress!" exclaimed poor
Lady Lucy, pressing her hands convulsively together.
"What for not?—you not want to marry over again—I give you twenty-two pounds for it."
"Twenty-two pounds!—why it is Brussels point, and cost a hundred and twenty."
"Ah, I know—but you forget I perhaps keep it ten years and not sell—and besides you buy dear; great lady often buy ver dear!" and Madame Dalmas shook her head with the solemnity of a sage.
"No, no; I cannot sell my wedding-dress," again murmured the wife. And be it recorded, the temptress, for once, was baffled; but at the expiration of an hour, Madame Dalmas left the house, with a huge bundle under her arm, and a quiet satisfaction revealed in her countenance, had any one thought it worth while to study the expression of her disagreeable face.
Again Lady Lucy locked her door; and placing a bank-note and some sovereigns on the table, she sank into a low chair, and while a few large silent tears flowed down her cheeks, she at last found courage to open the three letters which had hitherto remained unread in her apron pocket. The first—the second, seemed to contain nothing to surprise her, however much there might be to annoy—but it was different with that last: here was a gross overcharge, and perhaps it was not with quite a disagreeable feeling that Lady Lucy found something of which she could justly complain. She rose hurriedly and unlocked a small writing-desk, which had long been used as a receptacle for old letters and accounts.
To tell the truth, the interior of the desk did not present a very orderly arrangement. Cards of address, bills paid and unpaid, copies of verses, and papers of many descriptions, were huddled together, and it was not by any means surprising that Lady Lucy failed in her search for the original account, by which to rectify the error in her shoemaker's bill. In the hurry and nervous trepidation which had latterly become almost a constitutional ailment with her, she turned out the contents of the writing-desk into an easy chair, and then kneeling before it, she set herself to the task of carefully examining the papers. Soon she came to one letter which had been little expected in that place, and which still bore the marks of a rose, whose withered leaves also remained, that had been put away in its folds. The rose Walter Ferrars had given her on the eve of their marriage, and the letter was in his handwriting, and bore but a few days earlier date. With quickened pulses she opened the envelope; and though a mist rose before her eyes, it seemed to form into a mirror in which she saw the by-gone hours. And so she read—and read.
It is the fashion to laugh at love-letters, perhaps because only the silly ones come to light. With the noblest of both sexes such effusions are sacred, and would be profaned by the perusal of a third person: but when a warm and true heart is joined to a manly intellect; when reason sanctions and constancy maintains the choice which has been made, there is little doubt but much of simple, truthful, touching eloquence is often to be found in a "lover's" letter. That which the wife now perused with strange and mingled feelings was evidently a reply to some girlish depreciation of herself, and contained these words:—
"You tell me that in the scanty years of your past life, you already look back on a hundred follies, and that you have unnumbered faults of character at which I do not even guess. Making some allowance for a figurative expression, I will answer 'it may be so.' What then? I have never called you an angel, and never desired you to be perfect. The weaknesses which cling, tendril-like, to a fine nature, not unfrequently bind us to it by ties we do not seek to sever. I know you for a true-hearted girl, but with the bitter lessons of life still unlearned; let it be my part to shield you from their sad knowledge,—yet whatever sorrow or evil falls upon you, I must or ought to share. Let us have no secrets; and while the Truth which gives its purest luster to your eye, and its richest rose to your cheek, still reigns in your soul, I cannot dream of a fault grave enough to deserve harsher rebuke than the kiss of forgiveness."
What lines to read at such a moment! No wonder their meaning reached her mind far differently than it had done when they were first received. Then she could have little heeded it; witness how carelessly the letter had been put away—how forgotten had been its contents.
Her tears had flowed in torrents, but Lucy Ferrars no longer strove to check them. And yet there gleamed through them a brighter smile than had visited her countenance for many a month. A resolve approved by all her better nature was growing firm within her heart; and that which an hour before would have seemed too dreadful to contemplate was losing half its terrors. How often an ascent, which looks in the distance a bare precipice, shows us, when we approach its face, the notches by which we may climb!—and not a few of the difficulties of life yield to our will when we bravely encounter them.
"Why did I fear him so much?" murmured Lady Lucy to herself. "I ought not to have needed such an assurance as this to throw myself at his feet, and bear even scorn and rebuke, rather than prolong the reign of falsehood and deceit. Yes—yes," and gathering a heap of papers in her hand with the "love-letter" beneath, she descended the stairs.
There is no denying that Lady Lucy paused at the library door—no denying that her heart beat quickly, and her breath seemed well-nigh spent; but she was right to act on the good impulse, and not wait until the new-born courage should sink.
Mr. Ferrars had finished the newspaper, and was writing an unimportant note; his back was to the door, and hearing the rustle of his wife's dress, and knowing her step, he did not turn his head sufficiently to observe her countenance, but he said, good-humoredly,
"At last! What have you been about? I thought we were to go out before luncheon to look at the bracelet I mentioned to you."
"No, Walter—no bracelet—you must never give me any jewels again;" and as Lady Lucy spoke she leaned against a chair for support. At such words her husband turned quickly round, started up, and exclaimed.
"Lucy, my love!—in tears—what has happened?" and, finding that even when he wound his arm around her she was still mute, he continued, "Speak—this silence breaks my heart—what have I done to lose your confidence?"
"Not you—I—" gasped the wife. "Your words at breakfast—this letter—have rolled the stone from my heart—I must confess—the truth—I am like Mrs. Beaufort—in debt—frightfully in debt." And with a gesture, as if she would crush herself into the earth, she slipped from his arms and sank literally on the floor.
Whatever pang Mr. Ferrars felt at the knowledge of her fault, it seemed Overpowered by the sense of her present anguish—an anguish that proved how bitter had been the expiation; and he lifted his wife to the sofa, bent over her with fondness, called her by all the dear pet names to which her ear was accustomed, and nearer twenty times than once gave her the "kiss of forgiveness."
"And it is of you I have been frightened!" cried Lady Lucy, clinging to his hand. "You who I thought would never make any excuses for faults you yourself could not have committed!"
"I have never been tempted."
"Have I? I dare not say so."
"Tell me how it all came about," said Mr. Farrars, drawing her to him; "tell me from the beginning."
But his gentleness unnerved her—she felt choking—loosened the collar of her dress for breathing space-and gave him the knowledge he asked in broken exclamations.
"Before I was married—it—began. They persuaded me so many—oh, so many—unnecessary things—were—needed. Then they would not send the bills—and I—for a long time—never knew—what I owed—and then—and then—I thought I should have the power—but—"
"Your allowance was not sufficient?" asked Mr. Ferrars, pressing her hand as he spoke.
"Oh, yes, yes, yes! most generous, and yet it was always forestalled to pay old bills: and then—and then my wants were so many. I was so weak. Madame Dalmas has had dresses I could have worn when I had new ones on credit instead, and—and Harris has had double wages to compensate for what a lady's maid thinks her perquisites; even articles I might have given to poor gentlewomen I have been mean enough to sell. Oh, Walter! I have been very wrong; but I have been miserable for at least three years. I felt as if an iron cage were rising around me,—from which you only could free me—and yet, till to-day, I think I could have died rather than confess to you."
"My poor girl! Why should you have feared me? Have I ever been harsh?"
"Oh, no!—no—but you are so just—so strict in all these things—"
"I hope I am; and yet not the less do I understand how all this has come about. Now, Lucy,—now that you have ceased to fear me—tell me the amount."
She strove to speak, but could not.
"Three figures or four? tell me."
"I am afraid—yes, I am afraid four," murmured Lady Lucy, and hiding her face from his view; "yes, four figures, and my quarter received last week gone every penny."
"Lucy, every bill shall be paid this day; but you must reward me by being happy."
"Generous! dearest! But, Walter, if you had been a poor man, what then?"
"Ah, Lucy, that would have been a very different and an infinitely sadder story. Instead of the relinquishment of some indulgence hardly to be missed, there might have been ruin, and poverty, and disgrace. You have one excuse,—at least you knew that I could pay at last."
"Ah, but at what a price! The price of your love and confidence."
"No, Lucy—for your confession has been voluntary; and I will not ask myself what I should have felt had the knowledge come from another. After all, you have fallen to a temptation which besets the wives of the rich far more than those of poor or struggling gentlemen. Tradespeople are shrewd enough in one respect—they do not press their commodities and long credit in quarters where ultimate payment seems doubtful—though—"
"They care not what domestic misery they create among the rich."
"Stay: there are faults on both sides, not the least of them being that girls in your station are too rarely taught the value of money, or that integrity in money matters should be to them a point of honor second only to one other. Now listen, my darling, before we dismiss this painful subject forever. You have the greatest confidence in your maid, and entre nous she must be a good deal in the secret. We shall bribe her to discretion, however, by dismissing Madame Dalmas at once and forever. As soon as you can spare Harris, I will send her to change a check at Coutts', and then, for expedition and security, she shall take on the brougham and make a round to these tradespeople. Meanwhile, I will drive you in the phaeton to look at the bracelet."
"Oh, no-no, dear Walter, not the bracelet."
"Yes—yes—I say yes. Though not a quarrel, this is a sorrow which has come between us, and there must be a peace-offering. Besides I would not have you think that you had reached the limits of my will, and of my means to gratify you."
"To think that I could have doubted—that I could have feared you!" sobbed Lady Lucy, as tears of joy coursed down her cheeks. "But, Walter, it is not every husband who would have shown such generosity."
"I think there are few husbands, Lucy, who do not estimate truth and candor as among the chief of conjugal virtues:—ah, had you confided in me when first you felt the bondage of debt, how much anguish would have been spared you!"
* * * * *
JONES ON CHANTREY.[A]
[Footnote A: Sir Francis Chantrey, R. A.; Recollections of his Life,
Practice and Opinions. By George Jones, R. A. London, Moxon, 1849.]
The criticisms of Literature in the London Times are as clever in their way as the other articles of that famous journal. It keeps a critic of the Poe school for pretenders, and the following review of a recent life of Chantrey the sculptor is in his vein. It embodies a just estimate of the artist.
A good life of Chantrey would be a welcome and a serviceable contribution to the general store. Chantrey was a national sculptor in the sense that Burns was a national poet. His genius, of the highest order, indicated throughout his career the nature of the soil in which it had been cherished. As man and artist he was essentially British. By his own unassisted strength he rose from the ranks, and achieved the highest eminence by the simplest and most legitimate means. His triumph is at once a proof of his power, and an answer to all who, instead of putting shoulder to the wheel, console their mediocrity by railing against the cold exclusiveness of aristocratic institutions.
Chantrey began life in a workshop. A friend, toward the close of the artist's life, passing through his studio, was struck by a head of Milton's Satan lying in a corner. "That head," said Chantrey to his visitor, "was the very first thing that I did after I came to London. I worked at it in a garret, with a paper cap on my head, and, as I could then afford only one candle, I stuck that one in my cap that it might move along with me, and give me light whichever way I turned." A still severer school of discipline had, previously to his appearance in the London garret, given his mind the practical turn chiefly characteristic of his life and works. He was born in 1782, at Norton, in Derbyshire, and when eight years old lost his father. His mother married again, and in 1798 proposed to apprentice him to a solicitor in Sheffield. Whilst walking through that town the boy saw some wood carving in a shop window. His good angel was with him at the moment, and stood his friend. Chantrey begged to be made a carver, and he was accordingly apprenticed to a Mr. Ramsay, a wood carver in Sheffield.
At the house of his master the apprentice often met Mr. Raphael Smith, known for his admirable crayon drawings. The acquaintance led to a more refined appreciation of art, and excited in the youth so strong a desire to cultivate it in a higher sphere, that at the age of 21 he gave to his master the whole of his wealth, amounting to £50, to cancel his indentures. Had he waited patiently for six months longer, his liberty would have been his own, unbought. Leaving the carver's shop Chantrey began to study in earnest. He painted a few portraits, which brought him in a little money, and, with a little more borrowed from his friends, he started for London. Here, guided by common sense, he sought employment as an assistant carver. He might have starved had he started as a professional painter.
Whilst laboring for subsistence Chantrey still used his brush, and also laid the foundation of his coming success by making models in clay of the human figure. He would hang, says his present biographer, pieces of drapery on these models, "that he might get a perfect knowledge of the way, and the best way, that it should be represented. In this manner he was accustomed to work, and when he had completed one figure or mass of drapery he pulled it down and began to model another from drapery differently arranged; for at that time he never did anything without nature or the material being before him." In 1808 Chantrey's first imaginative work was exhibited. We have already mentioned it. It was the head of Satan produced in the garret.
For eight years, according to Chantrey himself, he did not gain £5 by his modeling. A fortunate commission, however—the bust of Horne Tooke—finally obtained for him other commissions, amounting altogether To £12,000. In 1811 "he married his cousin Miss Wale; with this lady he received £10,000; this money enabled him to pay off some debts he had contracted, to purchase a house and ground, on which he built two houses, a studio and offices, and also to buy marble to proceed in the career he had begun." In 1812 he executed for the city of London a statue in marble of George III., placed in the council-chamber of Guildhall, and in 1817 he produced the exquisite monument—not to be surpassed for tenderness of sentiment and poetic beauty—of the two children whose death this piece of sculpture now commemorates in Lichfield cathedral. With this achievement the race was won. In 1818 he was elected an associate of the Royal Academy, and as soon after as the practice of the Academy admitted he was elevated to the rank of Academican.
From this period until his death, in 1841, the career of the sculptor was a series of noble and well rewarded efforts. He amassed a fortune, which at his death he bequeathed to the Royal Academy for the promotion of British art. He was a favored subject of three successive Sovereigns, and the friend and companion of the most illustrious among his contemporaries. His death was somewhat singular. For two years he had been in a declining state of health, but his condition had given his friends no immediate alarm. On the 22d of November he wrote to Sir Charles Clarke, from Norwich, expressing his intention to go to town on the following day, and announcing an invitation to Audley-end, which he had accepted for the 8th of the following month. On Thursday, the 25th of November, a friend called at his house in London, between 5 and 6 o'clock, and was pressed to dine. As he could not do so, Chantrey accompanied his visitor on his way home as far as Buckingham Palace, complaining on the way of a slight pain in the stomach, but at the same time receiving his friend's condolences with jokes and laughter. The clock struck 7 when the friends shook hands and parted. At 9 Chantrey was dead.
Let us regard Chantrey from what point we may, the features that present themselves to the observer bear the same unmistakable stamp. As sculptor and as man, at home or abroad, in his serious recreations or pleasurable pursuits, in his temper and social bearing, Francis Chantrey was a thorough Englishman. Heaven endowed him with genius, and his sound sense enabled him to take the precious gift as a blessing. Sheffield, that reared him, had no cause to be uneasy on his account; the prudence and shrewdness of the North were admirably mingled with the aesthetic qualities of the South. In the pocketbook which accompanied the sculptor on his Italian tour, notes were found referring to the objects of art visited on the way, and in the same tablet were accurate accounts of expenditure and the current prices of marble. Avoiding as much as possible the treatment of purely poetical subjects, Chantrey by the force of simplicity idealized the most ordinary topics. He shrank from allegory by a natural instinct, yet his plain unadorned forms have the elevation and charm of a figurative discourse. "Chantrey," says Mr. Jones.
"Cast aside every extrinsic recommendation, and depended entirely on form and effect. He took the greatest care that his shadows should tell boldly and in masses. He was cautious in introducing them, and always reduced them as much as might be compatible with the complete development of the figure. He never introduced a fold that could be dispensed with, rarely deviated from long lines, and avoided abrupt foldings. His dislike to ornament in sculpture was extreme."
In architecture he liked it no better. Superfluous embellishment in this branch of art he held to be either concealment of inability or a development of puerile taste. Fine buildings, he asserted, must still be fine, if divested of every ornament and left altogether bare. Apparent artlessness is the consummation of art. The busts of Chantrey bear immortal testimony to the fact.
The manly and courageous view which Chantrey took of his duties as an artist sustained him in every attempt he made to impress that view upon his works. He is described as "shrinking from no difficulty," as being "deterred by no embarrassment that labor, assiduity, and good sense could surmount." His independence was as great as his energy, and both smacked of the Saxon blood in his veins. The manner of the sculptor was rough and unceremonious, but he exhibited as little coarseness in his demeanor as in the massive figures of his chisel, which might offend some by their heaviness, but which gratified all by their undoubted grandeur and dignity. The quiet yet splendid generosity of Chantrey was equally characteristic of his country. He assisted the needy largely and unobtrusively. Instances of his bounty are on record which would do honor to the wealthiest patron of art. How much more luster do they shed upon the indefatigable day-laborer? If we follow the sculptor from his studio to the open fields, he is still national to the backbone. He escapes from London to pass days with his rod at the river side, or to walk with his gun on his arm "from 10 o'clock until half-past 4 without feeling the least fatigue." Yesterday he killed two salmon in the Conway, at Llanrwst, and to-day he kills "28 hares, 8 pheasants, 4 partridges—total, 40 head, all from my own gun." Visit him at home and e is the prince of hospitality. His dinners are of the best, and he is never happier than when presiding at them. Like an Englishman, he was proud of the illustrious society his success enabled him to summon around him, and, like an Englishman too, he had greater pride still in dwelling upon the humbleness of his origin, and in recounting the history of his difficult journey from struggling obscurity to worldwide renown.
Now, what we contend for is—without presuming ourselves to attempt anything like a worthy portraiture of Francis Chantrey—that here, ready-made to the hand of any man competent to the task of illustrating a life full of instruction for the rising brotherhood of art, is a subject which it behooved the Royal institution that has so largely profited by Chantrey's liberality and fame, not to neglect, much less throw away. The book which we have taken for the foundation of this notice, written by a Royal Academician, is a disgrace to the Royal Academy. Is then, we ask, no single member of that gifted body competent to say a word or two in plain English for the departed sculptor, that such a melancholy exhibition of helplessness must needs be sent forth as a tribute from excellence to excellence? The life of Chantrey properly written could not but prove of the utmost value to Englishmen, and simply because it is the career of a man attaining the highest distinction by means thoroughly understood by his countrymen, and by the exercise of an intellect at all times under the salutary influence of a wholesale national bias. Jones on Chantrey is Jenkins on Milton; the poet of Moses and Son upon the Inferno of Dante—the ridiculous limping after the sublime.
The great aim of Mr. George Jones, R.A., in his present undertaking, seems to have been to exhibit his own vast erudition and his great command of the hard words of his native tongue. Indeed, he quotes so much Greek and Latin, and talks so finely, that it is only to be regretted that he does not now and then come down from his stilts in order to gratify himself with a little intelligible English and his readers with some homely grammar. It will be our painful duty to submit to the reader's notice a specimen or two of Mr. Jones' peculiar style, which, together with the profound simplicity of his original remarks, make up as curious a production as it has ever fallen to our lot to read and to criticise.
When our old friend, M. Soyer, declared his conviction that "to die is a religious duty which every human being owes to his Creator," and that when the parents of a family are suddenly cut off, the unfortunate event "not only affects the children personally, but their future generations, by destroying all the social comfort which generally exists in such families, and probably would cause misery to exist instead of happiness," it occurred to us that sterner truisms in more naked guise it would be difficult to produce. We had not then read Jones. His self-evident propositions are perfectly astounding. Here are a few of them.
"Chantrey believed that the mind and morals are improved by the contemplation of beautiful objects." Who could have supposed it? "Chantrey was convinced that variety in building, if under the guidance of good sense and propriety, tends much to the beauty of a country." Is it possible? "Chantrey believed that all which has been done may be exceeded when genius and ability are equal to the task, for as Raphael has surpassed the lay-figure art of most of his predecessors, so no reason exists why Raphael should not be surpassed." Had he never spoken again, this idea would have procured him a niche next to Francis Bacon. The sculptor actually believed that even the glories of the past may be outdone when there are genius and ability enough in the world to surpass them! Will Mr. Jones favor us with the day and precise moment at which this wonderful conception entered the great sculptor's mind? We should like to record it. "Chantrey felt that the blind adoration of right and wrong was likely to mislead the public." We really think we have heard the remark before. "Chantrey referred every object to the Creator of all, and admired without limit the works of the Great Artificer, from the smallest leaf to the noblest production, and in his mundane calling aimed at an imitation of that excellence of beauty which nature has displayed." There is nothing like getting at the idiosyncrasies of the famous. Since Chantrey, according to Jones, has set the example of referring creation to a creator, and of studying nature when be wished to imitate her, we can only trust that the practice may henceforward be universally adopted. Chantrey was of opinion—no, we mistake, this is Jones' own—Jones is of opinion that "although the literary education of artists ought to be as extensive as possible, yet they may sometimes require the assistance of those whose opportunities and abilities have enabled them to make a deeper research." Finely said. Jones is a case in point. We do not know the extent of his literary education, but whatever it be, the assistance of Lindley Murray would, we are certain, be of infinite service to him at this moment.
We forget how many thousands of pounds, poor Chantrey left to the Royal Academy. Jones never tires of lauding the Academy by referring to the munificent bequests; yet this, we repeat, is the return made by that favored institution, in the person of one of its chief members, to the no less distinguished and generous donor. The life of Chantrey would not have been difficult in the hands of a moderately informed artist. "Dear Jones, we wanted a man of taste (d—n taste), we mean judgment," and your professed regard for your friend should not have rested content until it had found one.
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