THE TRIBUTE OF NOMENÖE.
(Drouk-kinnig Neumenoiou), A.D. 841.
Cut is the gold-herb.[161] Lo, the misty rain
Forthwith in steam-like clouds drives o’er the plain.
Argad! To war!
I.
Spake the great chief: “From the heights of the mountains of Arez,
Mildew and mist for the space of three weeks have passed o’er us,
Mildew and mist from the land that lies over the mountains:
“Still from the land of the Franks, more and more, thickly driving,
So that in no wise my eyes can behold him returning,
Karo, my son, for whose coming from thence I am watching.”
“Tell me, good merchant, who travellest all the land over,
Hast thou no tidings to tell me of him, my son Karo?”
“May be so, Father of Arez, but where and what does he?”
“He, wise of head, strong of heart, with the chariots departed,
Drawn by three horses abreast, into Rennes with the tribute,
Bearing among them the toll in full weight of the Bretons.”
“Chief, if your son bore the tribute, in vain you expect him:
Each hundred pounds’ weight of silver was found to be lacking,
Lacking by three when they weighed it: whereon the Intendant
“Cried out, ‘O vassal, thy head shall make up the scant measure!’
Straight, with his sword swept his head off, and then, by the long hair
Taking it up, he has thrown it down into the balance.”
Hearing these tidings, the aged chief fell, nigh to swooning,
Heavily fell on the rock, with his long white hair hiding,
Hiding his face, groaning, “Karo, my son! my son Karo!”
II.
The aged chief is journeying with all his kith and kin,
Till he to Nomenöe’s castle strong the way doth win.
“Say, porter at the castle gate, your lord, is he at home?”
“Or be it so, or be it not, to him may no harm come!”
E’en as he spake, his lord came riding through the portal strong,
Returning from the chase, his fierce hounds scouring swift along;
His bow he carried in his hand, and o’er his shoulder slung
A wild boar of the forest, huge, all dead and bleeding, hung.
“Good-day to you, brave mountaineers, and father, first to thee.
What tidings bring you, or what is it you would ask of me?”
“We come to learn if Justice lives—if God in heaven there be:
We come to learn if still there is a chief in Brittany.”
“Sure, I believe that God in heaven ever dwells on high;
And, so far as I can be, chief of Brittany am I.”
“Who will be, can; and he who can will drive the Franks away,
Will chase the Franks, defend the land, vengeance on vengeance pay.
“My son and me he will avenge: the living and the dead:
Karo, my child, from whom the Franks have stricken off his head.
The excommunicated Franks, who pity know nor truth,
Have slain him in the early flower and beauty of his youth.
“His head, so fair with golden hair, they threw to make the weight,
They threw it in the balance, and have left me desolate.”
Then thick and fast the tears fell from the father’s aged eyes,
And glittered down his long and silvery beard in piteous wise;
They sparkled like the morning dew upon the aspen white,
When earliest sunbeams wake them into gems of quiv’ring light.
When Nomenöe that beheld, a fearful oath he swore:
“By this boar’s head, and by the dart wherewith I pierced the boar,
I swear my country to avenge ere many hours be o’er:
Nor will I wash away the blood from thee, my crimsoned hand,
Till I have washed the bleeding wounds of thee, my injured land.”
III.
The thing which Nomenöe did no chief hath done before:
With sacks to fill with pebble-stones he went down to the shore:
Pebbles and flints for tribute to the bald-head Frankish king:
No chief but only Nomenöe e’er hath done this thing.
He shod his horse with silver shoes, turned backwards every one,
And he himself to pay the tribute forth to Rennes is gone,
Prince that he is: no chief but he did ever this before,
And never chief will do the like again for evermore.
“Ho, warden! open wide your gates! wide open let them be,
That I may enter into Rennes as it beseemeth me.
Hither come I, Lord Nomenöe, bringing store of gold:
My chariots all are filled therewith as full as they can hold.”
“Descend, O chief! my lord, descend, and enter in, I pray;
Enter the castle, and command your chariots here to stay,
And in the hands of your esquires your white steed leave below,
While you ascend to supper; but you first would wash, I trow:
Hark! even now to horn the water[162] do the cornets blow.”
“All in good time, my lord, I wash: be first the tribute weighed.”
The first sack brought they, well tied up, the weight in full it made.
The second sack was eke the same, and then the third they threw
Into the scales. Oh! oh! there lacks the weight that here is due!
When the Intendant that beheld, quick stretched he forth his hands
All eagerly upon the sack, to loose the knotted bands.
“Hold! Sir Intendant, I will cut the fastening with my sword.”
And swift it from the scabbard leapt ere he had said the word.
Upon the crouching Frank it fell, it fell with might and main,
Clean from his shoulders swept his head, and cut the balance chain.
Then rolled the head the scales into, and weighed the balance down.
“Stop the assassin—stop!” they cried all wildly through the town.
He flies! he flies! The torches bring; haste! follow him with speed!
“Ha! bring your links to light my way—the night is dark indeed.
The night is dark, the road is ice: ‘twill spoil your gilded shoes
Of leather blue so fair bedecked, and ye your toil shall lose;
For ne’er again your scales of gold shall you, for evermore,
Use to weigh flints from Brittany and pebbles from her shore.”
[KOCHE, KING OF PITT.]
Koche, the subject of this memoir, was born on the remote island of Chatham, in the Southern Pacific Ocean. Forced by a cruel servitude to fly from his native island, he passed many years in absolute solitude on the little uninhabited island of Pitt, lying some miles distant from Chatham. Here he reigned undisputed master of the land and all it contained: whence the title of “King of Pitt” among those who knew him. His account of his native island and its inhabitants, together with his own adventures, show him to have been a man of an undaunted spirit, which no adverse fortune could bend, much less break; and had he been known to Carlyle, would have been placed by him among his heroes for worship and imitation; but, unluckily, Carlyle never heard of him.
It is well, in order to understand the life and adventures of Koche, “King of Pitt,” to relate the history of the country and people from which he sprang, before going into the details of his career.
Ware-kauri, one of the South Sea islands, called by the English, Chatham, lies several hundred miles to the eastward of New Zealand. Its history up to the year 1791 rests upon tradition, as prior to that date its inhabitants had not acquired, among their many accomplishments, the art of letters. Koche himself, from whose mouth this narrative has been taken, says that his people were from the earliest period inclined to peaceful pursuits, and subsisted chiefly upon fish and seal; that they enjoyed a democracy, and conducted their simple affairs by a council of notable men. He did not hesitate, however, to acknowledge that when at long intervals, covering a generation, a high and prolonged west wind drove a canoe-load of New Zealanders upon their shores, they forthwith and without ceremony slew them. But he justified this departure from their ordinary habits on the ground of public policy; as, had they received them in charity, and pursued the peaceful tenor of their way, their involuntary visitors would have ended by slaying and, moreover, devouring them; the first party of this sort who landed on the island having made it distinctly understood that men and women were their favorite articles of diet. But among themselves, the taking of life, he said, was unknown; and why should it not be, since they were not fond of men, as some people were, and never suffered for want of food; and on the sea-shore they found plenty of seal and birds, and, in the marshes and lakes of the interior, fish and fowl in abundance? No! the race of the Tuïti, his forefathers, were no man-eaters; they had become “missionaries,” or Christian, in the days of his father, and remained so ever since, such of them as had not been devoured or driven to death by the hated Zealander—at whose name his black eye flashed fire—who had made a slave-pen and shambles of his once happy island.
Their tradition goes back to a first pair, man and woman, who appeared on the Isle of Rangi-haute, a score of miles to the southeast, called by the English, Pitt. It is a solitary volcanic mountain, lifting its truncated summit above the waters of the South Sea, whose waves have beaten in vain for untold centuries upon its rock-bound base. How the first pair came is unknown; whether brought by the Spirit from above, or created on the mountain, none could tell; the time was remote, and tradition was confused in going back to the origin of the human race, to the beginning of the world; the memory of man did not run beyond the apparition on Rangi-haute.
But the history of the couple and of their children is handed down in the following legend: They lived upon the top of the mountain, from whence they caught and worshipped the first ray of the morning sun, and bowed in adoration to that luminary as he sank beneath the western wave. The ground was held sacred; and their descendants in after-days consecrated like spots, devoted alone to prayer and propitiation, on which no article of dress even could be placed, and from the desecration of one of which arose the destruction of the race.
Trees clothed the slopes of the mountain, and everywhere among them, planted by the beneficent hand of the Creator, rose the karaka (bread-fruit) laden with golden fruit—the sole food of man, and source of perpetual youth and health. In after-days, it turned acrid, and fatal to life, until the pitying Creator taught his children, by immersion in boiling water and a running stream, to restore it in a measure to its pristine state.
One day, a youth wandered down to the sea-shore among the birds that lined the rocks, and, seating himself near where an eagle was perched pluming his wing, they fell into conversation. The eagle complained that they could no longer soar into the high air, by reason of a spell cast over his tribe he believed by the Tuïti; his progenitors, he said, had sailed over the mountain at will, and preyed upon the living mako-mako, or honey-eater and the tuïs, or mocking-bird; while he could fly only in the heavy air along the beach, and was compelled to consort with sea-fowl, who held him in contempt; and to feed on garbage. The youth answered that the blood of the honey-eater and the mocking-bird had cried to the Creator, and brought down upon the eagle his banishment. The Tuïti warred neither with the Maker nor his children; they fed on fruit, and shed no blood: the eagle had banished himself. The king of birds, avoiding the issue, replied that in the great island to the northwest, which his friend had doubtless seen from the mountain, the woods were filled with beautiful birds, and fruit of every color, hanging over the dark, transparent waters of many lakes, while here—what a poor place! One solitary mountain, no lakes, and no fruit, save the karaka, which, sweet as it was, was bitter compared with the fruit which grew in the west. There was no man upon it to rule the great island. It called aloud for a master—a son of Tuïti—to go over. The youth listened to the tempter, and ambition elated his soul; he arose from the rock, and asked to be shown the path that led over the water. The eagle, looking at him askance, promised him wings to fly over, provided he would first render an easy service by taking him to the top of the mountain. On hearing this, the youth cast himself upon his face on the sand, trembling; where he lay for hours torn by the conflict between the good spirit of obedience, and the evil one of ambition, as they warred within him for the mastery. As the sun sank, his guardian angel fled discomfited, and he rose to his feet with a shudder, and, taking the eagle on his wrist, ascended the mountain, and in the dark cast him loose in the forbidden field. All night long the flutter and death-cry of birds smote upon his ear, and, when morning dawned, the song of the mako was mute, and the tuïs had ceased to mock.
The people assembled in alarm. A child to whom its mother had given fruit fell dead; they gathered about its body in terror. The eagle hovered over them, and uttered his war-cry. The conscience-striken youth confessed. The day was passed in penitence and sorrow about the body of the child in the lap of its wailing mother. Hunger assailed them; they burned the remains on a funeral-pyre built of the fragrant kalamu, and, descending the mountain, fed upon the root of the fern, and drank from the living spring.
The youth wandered by the shore, alone, stung with remorse, and, meeting the eagle, was taught by him to construct the korari, the model of all canoes, made in the likeness of a sledge, with a wicker-work of tough creepers, having a false bottom filled with buoyant kelp. He put to sea with his family, and landed on Ware-kauri, which he found, as the eagle had said, uninhabited by man, a continent in size compared to Rangi-haute; with undulating, fertile plains to the south, and lofty mountains in the north, sparkling with lakes of dark transparent water, and vocal with the song and bright with the plumage of birds. Filled with new joy, he sent back tidings to his kinsmen, and was followed by successive emigrations, until Rangi-haute was deserted save by a timid few who feared the sea. Thus came about the settlement of Ware-kauri: and to this extent is the tradition of the people.
From this time on they had lived in single families, or in companies of two or three, moving from place to place as food became less plentiful, or as fancy or a love of change dictated; being careful, in pitching their new and fragile habitations, not to crowd upon established groups. In the sealing season, the families of the interior came down to the coast, and laid in from the rocks and reefs a supply of meat and skins; and when fishing on the shore became dull, or the birds wild with much hunting, the people of the sea bundled up their effects, and moved to the interior lakes, chiefly to the great Tewanga, filled with fish, and covered with wild fowl.
They dressed in cloaks of sealskin. Their only weapon of offence or defence was a club, seldom used except in killing a seal. Tattooing was unknown. No ornaments were in use. The teeth of deceased relatives were burned with their bodies, not worn about the neck and wrist, as in New Zealand, where they commit the absurdity of placing the departed in a sitting posture in wooden boxes, after abstracting their teeth to deck the survivors, in the name of religion. The Tuïti burned their dead to avoid the fearful idea of prolonged decay. Man springs from the earth as the flower springs: they return him to his mother, as the fall fires, sweeping over the plain, return the flower; she drinks in with the rain the ashes of her children, man and flower, and sends them forth again after a season of repose to reign over and to beautify the land. The songs of the women were plaintive and sweet, rivalling those of the honey-eater, the mako-mako, who sang of love, and of the tuïs, or mocking-bird, that mimicked from every tree and bush, and filled the island with its false but beautiful notes.
Thus had lived the race in peace and plenty for centuries beyond their simple means of computation, and thus were living, fearing no evil from without, save the landing of a stray storm-driven canoe from Zealand, when, towards the end of the last century, the sloop-of-war Discovery and its armed tender Chatham, commanded by Vancouver, made a voyage of discovery around the world, by command of his majesty. The Chatham, Captain William Henry Broughton, separated in a storm from her consort, discovered the island on Nov. 29, 1791, and took possession of it with the customary ceremonies, in the name of his majesty, as first discoverer.
Broughton, as he approached the coast, saw a continued white sandbeach interspersed with cliffs of reddish clay, and mixed with black rocks. The country appeared very pleasant, with clearings here and there, and smoke arising above the trees. With his glass he perceived some people hauling up a canoe, and proceeded to the shore in a cutter. The natives, seated on the beach, invited the party to land, and approached and saluted them by meeting noses; and with great noise entered into an animated but unintelligible conversation by signs, gestures, and speech. They were a cheerful race, the conversation of the English frequently exciting them to bursts of laughter. The young wore feathers in their hair, and a few among them a necklace of mother-of-pearl. All were cleanly and neatly dressed. The woods, which grew in a luxuriant manner, afforded delightful shade, free of low limbs and underbrush, and in many places were formed into arbors by bending and interlacing the branches when young. The soil was rich, and the forests and beach alive with birds of various species, which appeared as though never molested.
The surprise of the islanders, their exclamations, and admiration on beholding the strangers, could hardly be imagined. They pointed to the sun and then to Broughton, and inquired if he came from thence. In answer he gave them a dead bird, pointed out the cause of its death, fired his gun, and advanced upon them. All fled to the wood excepting one man, who stood his ground and offered battle. War was proclaimed. The hero was reinforced, and the sailors fell back to the beach, followed by fourteen men, armed with spears or driftwood picked up as they advanced. “When abreast of the boat,” says Broughton, “they became clamorous, talked loud to each other, and surrounded us. A young man strutted towards me in a menacing attitude, distorted his person, turned up his eyes, and made hideous faces and fierce gestures. As the boat came in, they began the attack. We fired. Johnson’s musket was knocked from his hand by a club. Our men were forced into the water, when the boat’s crew opened upon them and they fled, save one who fell on the beach with a ball through his breast. As we pushed off, a man came out of the woods, sat down by the deceased, and in a dismal howl uttered his lamentation.” He explains that in making the boast which brought on hostilities he merely wished to show the natives the superior effect of his firearms. This may be so, or it may be that in the laborious process of confirming his majesty’s title to the island, and in order to make assurance doubly sure, he had emptied more bottles to his majesty’s health than was good for him, and had fired to astonish the natives. Be this as it may, it was deeply to be regretted that the answer to a question indicating such deep respect should have been a warlike demonstration. But the Saxon knows but one way to colonize, and that leads the aborigines “into the blind cave of eternal night.”
The father of Koche told him that as the ship was leaving the shore the atmosphere became dark, sultry, and gloomy, and thunder and lightning descended the mountain and pursued the retreating strangers into the sea. Meantime, the dead man lay on the white beach with a bullet through his heart. Civilization had paid the Tuïti its first visit.
A council was held, and the fact that the slain was not carried off was considered proof that “the children of the sun” were not cannibals, and by some doubts were expressed as to their intent in landing. It was concluded, in the event of their return, to meet them with an emblem of peace. Accordingly, when in after years a sealer entered the bay of Waitangi and its boat touched the sands, the natives laid down their spears and clubs, a man advanced and placed one end of a grass plant in the hands of the captain, and, holding on to the other, made him a speech of welcome, threw over him his own cloak, and thus established a firm and lasting peace; and from thenceforward the fishermen who frequented the coast found them hospitable, cheerful friends, and willing assistants in their labor, and “love between them flourished like the palm.”
On the quarter-deck of an American vessel traversing the Pacific Ocean, and chiefly at night, Koche related the sorrows of his race, the private and public wrongs that had reduced the Tuïti to a handful of slaves. Of his own mistreatment he made little account, relating his personal oppression in a spirit of fun and bravado, relieved occasionally by a flash of hate. In calm weather his broken narrative ran tersely, and was marked by humor and a lack of strong feeling; but when the storm-spirit arose, and washed the lower deck and enveloped the upper in spray, his voice grew hoarse, his eye flashed, and his white teeth from time to time came together with a clash that made the blood tingle.
He said that one summer, about eighteen years before, a vessel in search of seal anchored in the small oval bay of Pohaute, overlooked by the Maunga Wakai Pai, a volcanic pyramid, the loftiest on the island, at the base of which he lived. With his family and friends, he went down to greet the new-comers, when, to the surprise of every one, there landed among the white men a New Zealand chief armed to the teeth. His hair, carefully combed and oiled, was tied up on the crown of his head, and surrounded by a fillet of white feathers, and from his ears protruded bunches of soft down. Evidently a man of power, accustomed to command, he inspired a mysterious dread, and would have been slain but for the protection he was under. The future darkened as he walked the beach, questioning the people on their politics and religion, manners and customs; and it was long remembered that he highly commended the veneration they entertained for sacred places, and walked off musing when in answer to his inquiry one was pointed out. It was Mate-oro, chief of the Nga-te Motunga, who had lately been defeated in battle by the Waï Kato, and driven with his tribe from the valley of the Komimi to the coast of New Zealand, from whence he had embarked for Ware-kauri, and appeared among the simple inhabitants as Satan in Paradise—the forerunner of troops of fiends.
A red bluff beetled over the bay—a conglomerate of particles of colored clay, cemented by a carbonate of lime, embedded with dark shining nodules of iron, and traversed by dikes of basaltic lava. Its summit was sacred. One morning before sunrise, a native ascended to offer his devotions, and was horror-struck on beholding in the holy field an iron pot. He sped down to communicate the startling intelligence, and returned with a party of thirteen to verify the reported sacrilege. Koche, who was of the number, threw off his cloak, tore up a fragment of rock, and dashed the profane utensil to pieces. A party of sailors, with a couple of bull-dogs, guided by Mate-oro, pursued and overtook them. He shot dead one who turned and attempted an explanation; the remaining twelve were bound and hung by the feet from a tree, head downward, until nearly dead. The chief returned to New Zealand, assembled his people, represented the island as fertile and full of unarmed slaves, and recommended its subjugation. The brig Lord Rodney, taking her pay in pigs, potatoes, and flax (and flame, later on!), in two trips landed the tribe, numbering eight hundred, on the fated isle. The natives offered no resistance to their fierce invaders armed with firelocks, and were duly parcelled out among their conquerors, and condemned to hard labor for life. No idea of moderation in the amount exacted was entertained. In a short time, they furnished thirty vessels annually with supplies. But the race began rapidly to run out, with bent backs and paralytic limbs. Skulls on the beach, pierced by musket balls or battered by clubs, told a tale to visitors their tyrants could not deny. Valuable as was their labor, in drunken orgies they were slain for food.
Once cheerful, full of mirth and laughter, they became morose and taciturn. Koche, with many others, persistently refused to work; some died under, others yielded to, the lash; and he, who had been dragged by a rope to the field, and beaten in vain, and would neither yield nor give up the ghost, was taken by the chief to his house to break in. He continued moody, and maintained his independence so far as to execute only such commissions as pleased him, frequently courting death by mutely and stubbornly refusing to obey orders. Mate-oro seemed to respect his attitude to some extent, and employed him to supply his table with sea-fish, giving him a canoe furnished with nets and lines for the purpose. The struggle between them now ceased, for this occupation gave Koche solitude and freedom when afloat, and opportunity to muse over the condition of himself and people. He soon came to the conclusion that it was useless to attempt an insurrection, the population being unarmed, dispirited, and under an iron subjugation. But for his single self, he was resolved on resistance to the last, and, as his boat tossed on the wave, he brooded over many schemes for the destruction of his would-be master. A personal conflict was most in accordance with his disposition, and many a time he was tempted, unarmed as he was, to close in a death-struggle, out of which, doubtless, he would have come victorious, if uninterrupted; for though but little above the middle height, he was broad and deep-chested, with sinews of iron, and capable of immense exertion; and, above all, was animated by a spirit that would have revelled in the fight. But followed as the chief was, fair play was not to be looked for, and he reluctantly abandoned his favored purpose. His thoughts often wandered to the cradle of his race, now uninhabited, to which he had made a visit with his father in youth, where he felt assured he would find a harbor of refuge, if Mate-oro could be first despatched. Whilst in the midst of such reflections one afternoon, he drew up from the ocean a fish seldom taken—the mo-eeka, pleasant to the taste, but a virulent poison, a small portion of which when eaten producing a deathly sickness, and a full meal, death. His massive face beamed with satisfaction, and his dark eye glistened as he unhooked and dropped it into the boat, contrary to the custom, which was to kill and throw it back into the sea. On landing, he placed his dangerous prize in a small salt-water pool near the beach, into which, as he caught them, he placed others, until a large mess was collected. This he brought home one night when the wind blew from the northwest, and persuaded the cook to serve up for the morning meal. Directing her to throw the offal to the wood-hogs, he disappeared, and soon after midnight reached the east coast, seized a canoe, and put to sea. The cook, who had her more immediate grudge to gratify, regaled the favorite dogs with the heads and entrails; and this deviation from orders frustrated the amiable purpose of her co-conspirator. The howls of his four-footed companions in the night, followed by their death in the morning, told the suspicious Indian a tale of poison, which a visit to the kitchen confirmed. A portion of the breakfast thrown to a stray dog promptly finished him.
Koche was sought for high and low, the island ransacked in vain; no trace of him was found, and the conclusion was arrived at that he had thrown himself into the sea. The chief had taken up a hatchet to kill his cook, but she sullenly asserted she had never seen a mo-eeka before, and was believed and spared, partly because the fish was rare and seldom brought to land when taken, and partly because her good cooking tickled his palate.
Prior to this attempt to treat him to the mo-eeka, Mate-oro had swept the Isle of Rangi-haute of its inhabitants. The number of captives had proved much smaller than had been anticipated, amounting in all to ten families, and barely repaid the trouble and risk of the voyage.
When Koche, on the day following the episode of the poison-fish—the last, as he flattered himself, of Mate-oro—ascended the mountain of Pitt, and stood upon a throne—
“He was monarch of all he surveyed,
His rights there were none to dispute:
From the centre all round to the sea,
He was lord of the fowl and the brute.”
His first care was to make a royal progress over his dominion, in which he fully expected to reign to the termination of his life. He felt no fear of invasion, having traversed Ware-kauri, and effected his embarkation unseen. No motive existed sufficiently strong to induce one, in the face of the difficulties of a return trip against the wind, unless it might be revenge on the part of Mate-oro, who was dead, and had ceased to trouble him. Of domestic foes he had none. The Norway rat, a deserter from a seal-ship, was the only quadruped on the island; and the seal and sea-lion, the only amphibious animals that had ever frequented the coast, had long since been extirpated, and the sealers came there no more. All looked favorable for a quiet reign.
Near an old seal camp, he found growing some wild wheat, which he cultivated after a manner, and which, with wild celery, water-cresses, fern-root, and karaka, left him nothing to desire in the way of vegetable food. On the shore, he found crabs and lobsters, and the echini (sea-eggs) in the hollows of the rock; and at times, to supplement his feast, the sea threw up her orange-colored pear. The blue petrel had their habitations in the woods, in the ground under the roots of trees, and in crevices of rocks, and were speared at night as they flew about in numbers with a noise like the croaking of frogs. They passed the day at sea-fishing, and not one was to be seen until dark put a stop to their pursuit, when they returned to land, and fluttered and croaked for hours before retiring to rest. But the subject that gave its sovereign least trouble was the dark-brown water-hen, of the size of a barnyard fowl, which inhabited the skirts of the woods, and fed on the beach. It was unable to fly, and made no attempt to escape when approached, but stood its ground, and bowed, like a pious Turk, to its fate.
At the base of the mountain, near a strong spring, he formed a summer-house—an arbor of the trees and shrubs of aromatic myrtle—and, besides supplying his wants, did little else but wander over the isle during the summer season; but, when winter came, he retired to a cave in the mountain, from which he expelled the bats, and devoted his leisure to making the utensils of the chase, toilet, and kitchen. He manufactured baskets, nets, and lines of twisted fibre, fish-hooks of mother-of-pearl, knives of sharp quartz, razors of shell, and mats for bedding and cloaks.
He covered his fish alive in red-hot ashes, and, when cooked, peeled off the skin, and ate the flesh from the ribs. He cooked his meat in an oven, of which he had one at each residence, and several at points on the shore. It consisted of a hole in the ground lined with stone, in which he built a fire, and placed pebbles and stones. His game, after the ordinary cleaning, was scrubbed with sand on the outside, and well washed inside and out. Hot pebbles were placed in the belly and shaken in under the breast, and green aromatic leaves stuffed in upon them. The oven was then cleared of fire and pebbles, and lined with green leaves, and the game placed in the bottom. The fat was washed, and placed with hot pebbles in a vessel of bark, and beside it the blood, tied in a leaf, and propped with hot stones. Then came a layer of such vegetables as were in season or at hand, and the whole was spread over with leaves, on which the remaining hot stones were placed, covered in turn with leaves, and filled in with sod and earth. After an interval according to the size of the mess, it was taken out, spread upon a cloth of the glossy leaves of the karaka, and eaten hot.
No king fared better, and no one that ever reigned passed his days in equal quietude and peace. No opposing politicians were there to vex his soul with diverse counsels, and make the worse appear to him the better reason; no blood of fellow-men weighed down his spirit; no friends clamored for reward, or silent enemies shrank from punishment.
He knew neither hunger, thirst, nor cold, nor fear, nor jealousy, and approached as near as it lay in fallen man to the estate of our renowned ancestor in the garden before the presentation of Eve. He was content, wanting no Eve, or Cain, or Abel. And for ten solitary years his wish was gratified: he was unapproached, and reigned unchallenged.
In 1839, the captain of a vessel from Sidney offered to buy of Mate-oro a portion of the island of Ware-kauri that lay about the bay of Waitangi, then owned and possessed by a branch of the tribe commanded by Nga-te-Toma. The terms were agreed upon, payment to be made on delivery. But the Nga-te-Toma could not be prevailed upon to deliver their possessions of black loam on demand, the more especially as Mate-oro was to handle the purchase-money. War was declared, and the contumacious Te-Toma were driven in the following spring into their stronghold near the beach, and regularly invested.
At this juncture, the bark Cuba, having on board one Dieffenbach, a naturalist, dropped anchor in the bay, entered into negotiations with both parties, and, moved by the spirit of Christian charity, ended by taking off the Te-Toma at night in boats to their ship—first the women and children, followed by the naked warriors, stained with ochre, armed, feathered, and equipped. The last to leave set fire to the huts and abandoned property. The flames gave the alarm to their opponents, who rushed through the fort to the beach, where they arrived just too late, and presented, illuminated by the burning village in the background, a vivid picture of baffled rage, going through the war-dance with fearful yells and contortions. But they danced in vain, though the exercise may have afforded them a melancholy gratification. The Cuba forthwith put to sea, and landed her human freight on the northeastern shore among friends; but not until she had taken from them deeds in fee of all their possessions in the west. Then, judging wisely that Mate-oro would be found in no mood at that moment to discuss their lately acquired title, she put to sea and bore down on Rangi-haute, being the first vessel to cross the channel since Koche passed over in his canoe ten years before.
Dieffenbach landed with a party, and in botanizing the isle was led to the bower by a small spiral column of white smoke that arose from the oven. No inhabitant was to be seen. The summer-house was ransacked of nets, pearl-hooks, knives, and baskets; the oven opened, and a spread of roast duck, hen, and karaka highly relished. The dark, transparent water of the spring reflected the faces of the robbers, as they bent over to drink, with a distinctness of outline unattainable by the white water of other lands; but when Koche returned to his habitation, which he did when the ship was well at sea, the reflection had vanished from his mirror, the dinner from his oven, and the furniture from his bower. As from a rock he watched the receding bark, freighted with his peace of mind, he hoped and prayed she would pass Ware-kauri without touching; but she ran in nevertheless, communicated with her friends, and related the visit to the isle. The news that Rangi-haute was inhabited soon reached Mate-oro, who read the riddle at once, and soon after went over in person in pursuit of his quondam slave.
The party landed before noon, and, separating, closed in upon the bower from different directions to find it empty. They soon, however, struck a fresh trail, which led them down the coast to a small inlet, in which it disappeared. Finding it did not issue on the opposite side, they ascended either bank, watching closely for signs, until the bed of the stream dwindled to a rivulet and entered a thicket; when the trail was taken up and followed with difficulty through bushes and underwood, matted with vines, until it failed totally. Circuits were made, and much time wasted in fruitless search, but the thread was lost, when the leader suddenly ordered the party back on the trail to the mouth of the inlet, which they crossed, and moved down the beach looking for footprints in the sand. Late in the afternoon they arrived opposite a coral rock that stood out a mile in the sea. The water was smooth, and a man swam out to reconnoitre. They watched him until he disappeared behind the rock, which presented a bluff to the shore, and waited patiently to hear from him, but an hour had elapsed and he made no sign. The general opinion was that he had been devoured by a shark. Mate-oro thought otherwise. He sent back a couple of men with orders to bring down the boat at daybreak, set a watch on the beach, built a fire, and went into camp.
A favorable breeze springing up, the boat came in early, took aboard the party, and rowed out. In a deep fissure in the rock, from which he was unable to extricate himself, they found the Indian who had swum out the evening before. He told them that when he turned, and was about to land, he was seized by the foot and drawn under the water, and, being tired and out of breath, almost instantly lost consciousness.
When he recovered he found himself in utter darkness, and thought he had passed into the spirit-land and was imbedded in a mountain for punishment. After a time he had looked up and seen the stars, but could make nothing of his condition. He had seen or heard no one, but as well as he could recollect, the grasp on his ankle felt like the hand of a man. Several pieces of fresh broken coral were found, but no footprints.
The party hastened ashore, and, leaving a man with the boat, moved down the beach, and an hour later struck the trail coming out of the water, and pursued it up a frightful chasm in the mountain, apparently without an outlet. But as they neared the head they discovered the point at which the trail began the ascent, and abandoning their dogs, the men, after much difficulty and danger, gained the summit; when, to their inexpressible astonishment, the trail led them directly back to their camp on the beach—on reaching which they found their boatman lying on the sand bound hand and foot with a running vine, gagged, and stunned by a blow on the head, and the boat gone.
The rage of Mate-oro was excessive, and expended itself upon the ill-starred boatman, whom he ordered to be tossed into the surf—a step he speedily regretted and attempted to rectify; but when dragged out to be cross-questioned, the body could return no answer; its shade had quitted it, and was paddling a phantom canoe over the Stygian river to the shadowy fishing-grounds.
The pursuers, full of wrath, set to work and built a korari, in which, when the wind became favorable, they made their way home, calling down maledictions upon the head of the rebellious runaway. During their stay they scoured the island for Koche, and kept a lookout for their lost boat, but saw nothing of either.
To the eastward of the southern point of Rangi-haute, and five miles distant, lies the islet of Ranga-tira, consisting of a single mount of moderate elevation, from two to three miles across at the base, behind which Koche took shelter in his captured boat. The same favoring breeze that brought down his enemies in the morning, enabled him in a short run to double the “tira,” and land upon her little beach of forty yards, quite out of sight and reach.
Had the fugitive been content to take up his permanent habitation here, all might doubtless have gone well; but the islet was too small to offer a place of concealment, and he feared an unsuccessful search on the larger island would be followed by one on the smaller, in which event escape would be impossible. For this and other reasons, in which the question of food entered, but a cat-like attachment to his old haunts ruled, he returned in the night after an absence of a month, and, reconnoitring, found the coast clear. He had resumed his old habits, adding to them a bright lookout to the northwest, when one morning at daybreak, some months later, he discovered three canoes close in to shore. He instantly struck into a deep ravine, and hoped by doubling to gain time to reach and launch his boat. But he had hardly got fairly off before his trail was taken up, and after a hot chase, in ascending a dark defile, the dogs brought him to bay, and, turning, he took up a rock and dashed out the brains of the foremost, and was in deadly conflict with the pack, bleeding and faint, when a Zealander came up with a club and felled him to the ground. When he recovered his senses they were dragging him down the mountain by a rope tied about the waist, torn with stones and briers, and bathed in blood; but even then, until they reached the white beach, soon stained red, he caught at every root, and projecting stone, and bush, and log, and held on with such tenacity that they were compelled to beat his hands to force them to relax. He lay on the sand bound hand and foot all night, with parched mouth and throat, so bitten by the black sand-fly that by noon on the following day he was swollen out of the semblance of man.
When taken back to Ware-kauri he was confined and watched closely, taunted with the title of “King of Pitt Island,” fed and watered, but not bodily ill-used. When sufficiently recovered and ordered to work, he stood mute under two days’ lashing, seeking death; but his master, who felt his honor enlisted in the contest, had resolved to break, not kill him; and no provocation could wring from him the death-stroke. Perceiving this on the third morning, Koche set to work when ordered, and from thence performed the labor of two men; apparently completely subjugated. From the fight with the dogs in the defile he had not uttered a word; now he became cheerful and talkative.
In the fourth year of his renewed captivity, all watch upon him having been removed, he was one evening among the slaves, employed in paddling out canoe-loads of provisions to a whale-ship that was lifting her anchor to sail. He boarded, and hid away in the hold unnoticed; and the ship was clearing the harbor, when Mate-oro came out and instituted search. He was found and dragged on deck, but broke from his captors and sprang overboard. The ship’s boat gave chase, overhauled him, and, as Mate-oro rose up in the bow to lay hands on him, he dived, and, coming up behind, unshipped their rudder, and in the gathering dark reached the headland and disappeared. He made his way by forest paths to the eastern coast, where, finding an abandoned and broken canoe, he stuffed her with kelp, and put to sea; by daylight he had sunk her below the eastern horizon, and at nightfall ran her on the beach of Rangi-haute.
Koche was himself again. He breathed anew the air of freedom, and his soul exulted. Taught in his little school of adversity, he knew that vigilance would be the price of his liberty, and determined to exercise it, and carried out his resolution as well, perhaps, as any man since the sun first shed on Eden his delightful beams—that sun which shone upon him in his frail canoe that day for the last time for two dark years; and on which, of his own free will, he never would have looked again.
After picking up what food he could find upon the beach, and breaking up and burying his canoe in a sand dune, he crossed the mountain, and, plunging into an obscure thicket, almost impenetrable, crawled into a crevice surrounded by jagged fragments of volcanic rock. The spot was almost absolutely inaccessible, and the danger of approach would have appalled a spirit less dauntless than his—not bent on liberty or death. He had breasted his way to it in the glare of day when perambulating his dominion; he now entered it with speed and safety a fugitive at midnight.
In his retreat, he made and used no instrument whatever—no spear, or snare, or knife, or line, or net. He never once approached the shore, or left the circle of his crags and dense surrounding thicket. At dusk he peered from his sepulchre, and watched the birds take up their roosts upon the overtopping trees and bushes, and climbed up and caught them in the night, and ate them raw. Hunger at first assailed him; but his eye, becoming adjusted to the dark, marked down his prey with unerring certainty, and he was soon able to drive and keep the wolf from his den; and a water-drip in the rock quenched his thirst. At dawn he sank into the earth, leaving behind no trace, no print of foot, no trail; and when the sun uprose,
“The mists were curl’d
Back from a solitary world.”
The annals of his dark reign are soon told. Sleeping one day down in the impenetrable darkness, he was startled by the deep bay of a bloodhound; and his prophetic soul told him that the day of his second dethronement had dawned, and his night of freedom passed. Mate-oro had searched the isle in vain, and given up the hunt, when Gobiah, a New Zealand son of Belial, brought over a slave-hunter whose deep hate penetrated the impenetrable, and ran the fugitive to earth.
Expectation in Ware-kauri was on tiptoe during the absence of the hunting-party; and on its return with the captive king a curious crowd assembled on the beach to greet them. As the boat came through the surf with Mate-oro on the prow and Koche bound at his feet, a shout went up in honor of the chief, followed by derisive howling for the “King of Pitt.” The march across the island was triumphal. Crowds flocked to gaze upon the principal figures. The New Zealanders praised their persevering chief, and called upon the “king” to burst his bonds. The Tuïti, apart, with sullen and downcast looks, felt their faint hearts beat quick as they caught a glance of their indomitable countryman, stimulated by the sunlight, erect and proud, by whom the taunts of the malignant masters were passing as the idle wind.
Gobiah and the hound shared the honors of the day, and all went merry as a marriage-bell.
The capture, with its varying and contradictory details, was the sensation of the period, and would have filled the columns of a newspaper, had one existed, for a month. It subsided in due course, and Koche, after another futile attempt to get himself despatched, went to work as before with vigor and good cheer. His sovereign character was now universally recognized, and he was invariably addressed by his title in full. He accepted it in good humor, tinged with a little pride. The Zealanders looked upon him with secret respect, while by his own people he was regarded as one who, had their lot been less hopeless, would have proved the leader and saviour of the nation.
Two years elapsed, when an American vessel, ready for sea, was boarded by Mate-oro, and a demand made for the fugitive king. The ship was searched from deck to keel, but no trace of him found. Unwilling to anger the fierce chief, who still declared he was aboard, she lay over a day, and the search was renewed with like effect. In the afternoon she stood out to sea, and at nightfall her hull was down, and the island had disappeared, all save one volcanic peak that rose like a pyramid above the waves. Then Koche came out from the fore-chains, in which he had in some mysterious manner buried himself, and caught a last glance of his native mountain as it sank for ever from his view.
[NECESSITY VERSUS ART.]
We live in very busy days, and our lives hurry on to their end after a very unceremonious fashion. Courtesy is out of date, and the world scrambles on chiefly according to the principle embodied in the words, “Every one for himself, and God for all.” This is the age of individualism on the one hand, of levelling on the other. The system of aggregate life, of Christian brotherhood, and helpful fellowship is broken, and each one lives his little span to himself, jealously cherishing a phantom of independence which, when appealed to for protection, has a tendency to shelter itself under the broader ægis of state supremacy. We live fast, and our lives wear us out. We pass through all the emotions, all the experiences, of life in fewer years than our forefathers took to study their classics or prepare themselves for a profession. Young men who have reached the nil admirari stage before they are twenty, and young women who, before they are out of their teens, have gone through the various religious phases, and made up their minds that infidelity is the only rational system to adopt, are unfortunately on the increase among us. After pleasure, after controversy, what remains? Nothing but business. The mind of our day is essentially practical. A certain social necessity exists of living as well as your neighbors do, and of not “going down in the world.” Certain artificial habits are formed almost unconsciously in early youth; certain fictitious indispensabilities grow up silently by your side, and, to keep up appearances, a certain amount of money is wanted. In a new country where there is no privileged class, no landed aristocracy, no law of primogeniture, each individual, to keep his head above water, imagines he must take some means to increase his income as years go on. This means that the whole community should devote itself to commerce. But how does this “necessity” affect the abstract principles of right and wrong, of moral beauty, of intellectual development? In this race for life, where is all that makes life beautiful? This utilitarian spirit looks upon all that from its own point of view, as an auctioneer, not as an artist. The question is, “Will it pay?” or “How much will it bring?” not “Is it civilizing, is it beautifying, is it ennobling?”
Beauty is nothing to modern critics; it is no longer judged by an abstract standard, but by the use which can be made of it. It is utterly debased from its original estate; for, from being the consolation of the many, it has become the luxury of the few. Rich men think it right and proper that they should be surrounded by ornamental objects, not because they appreciate their worth, but because it shows off the wealth whose surplus they could afford to waste on such expensive baubles. Costliness in ornamentation is the fashion of our day, as simplicity and studied ruggedness were the fashion in the days of Cromwell; and, cost what it may, the fashion must be followed. Do these men care for their treasures? See what they would do with them if it ever became the fashion again to sit on wooden chairs, and eschew looking-glasses. They are valued, as in a shop, by the price they cost; and old or new, elaborate or plain, it is all the same. The number of figures on a Dresden vase is nothing: the number of dollars the vase cost is everything. Some people would think nothing of a gem of workmanship if it was got “at a bargain” or picked up on an old stall; some would not be satisfied if the velvet they wore had been purchased at half price, so that they could not boast it had cost twenty-five dollars a yard! We will hope that such people are exceptions; still, they exist. This is the exaggeration of the spirit of the age, and prevails chiefly among those whom the latter half of the age has just landed among the inhabitants of the modern El Dorado; but, in a more or less rampant state, this spirit shows its cloven foot everywhere on this vast continent.
But this is not the worst. If the appreciation of true art is wanting in the patron, the time to perfect æsthetic productions is wanting to the artist. Nowadays everything must be done at once; people cannot wait; their houses must be run up in six weeks; for their churches they will not wait longer than a year. Ornaments of all kinds must be forthcoming immediately, and, indeed, if any vegetable model could be found, which, like the acanthus leaf of Greek sculpture, might be identified with the idea of our modern “art,” who shall say that the mushroom is not a most fitting type? Must we suppose it to be the result of our wonderfully rapid progress in art that we should constantly change our ideals, and demand quite a different standard of beauty this month from that we asked for last June? No doubt we are so much more enlightened now that we could not wear the same colors we wore last spring, and really thought quite pretty then, or that we could not sit upon a sofa of the same shape as we found perfectly charming last year! Of course, since our standards of taste vary so quickly, it could hardly be expected that very minute care should be bestowed on our ornamental surroundings. In old days, when men worked for future ages, the leg of a chair was as delicately carved as a cathedral buttress; when houses were built for twenty coming generations to live in, the sculpture of a mantelpiece was wrought with as much care as a monumental effigy. But nous avons changé tout cela. Our houses are only intended to stand till they are pulled down to make room for a railway depot, or till some advantageous offer is accepted to turn them into a suite of modiste’s or confectioner’s show-rooms. Our furniture is meant to remain under our eyes only until we see a set five times as gorgeous and ten times as expensive, when the things we once thought so perfect will be sent as antiquated rubbish to some auction-room, or ignominously hidden in the nursery or garret. And in the meanwhile, where is art, nay, where is even comfort? Shall we not very soon have overshot the mark, and find our lives becoming little short of a pilgrimage from hotel to hotel? An English lady, whose husband owned estates in all parts of England, Scotland, and Wales, and who had at least six country-houses, each claiming the advantages of family residence during a short part of the year, once said to a friend less plentifully encumbered: “My dear, I envy you. I have half a dozen houses in the country, and a large town-house; and, among them all, I have not got a home!”
This constant change of fashion necessitates flimsiness of material and carelessness of detail. But this is not all: it kills the artist spirit. The old workmen had a chance of becoming artists because they had plenty of time to exercise and sharpen their faculties; they became used to certain sorts of work, and could perfect their ingenuity in one particular line; and they had plenty of room for originality. Now, on the contrary, it is more likely that the artist will degenerate into a mere workman. He is hurried in his designs; he is often dictated to by ignorant patrons, who, not having the divine afflatus themselves, have not even the wit to trust to those who have; he is called upon for six times the amount of invention that any man’s brains can possibly furnish within a given time; and, to crown all, he is limited as to price—which simply means as to materials, size, detail, and ornamentation. He is in danger of becoming either a drudge or a renegade, very often both. His art gets to be a mere bread-winning business, a dry round of machine work, a careless fulfilling of an unpleasant contract; and, under such adverse influences, no wonder the creator-spirit leaves him, and he becomes simply a mechanic.
Art was once a power in the world: now it is rather an appendage to a power of a different sort. Even while it was patronized by popes and sovereigns, it was held as little less than sovereign itself; it dictated terms, and claimed a full meed of independence in the choice of its expressions within the limitations of orthodox symbolism. Now, on the contrary, it is only tolerated so long as it conforms to the fashion of the hour, so long as it ministers to the belittled taste of to-day. Its votaries are no longer the honored guests of princes, the equals of sovereigns, the arbiters of character. Of old, a painter could immortalize a man by placing him in a certain part of his picture, or he could ruin him by giving him a place on the opposite side. Dante did the same thing in his unrivalled poem, and the sting went home. But now what would the result be? The painter would lose his custom, like a tradesman who sold damaged goods! Truly a dignified position for the successors of Michael Angelo!
To be popular—and popularity just now is apt to be confounded with greatness—art must truckle to the vitiated taste of a mob of ignoramuses; architecture must give up noble proportions for the sake of speed and cheapness; painting must give up historical memories and religious inspirations for the sake of quick sales and gaudy coloring; music and poetry must adapt themselves to the maudlin taste of the age, and pretty, shallow ballads and idyls must take the place of symphonies, anthems, and epic poems. So with oratory—it must be graceful and piquant; that it should be logical and forcible is immaterial. So with sculpture—we must have Rogers’ groups, sewing-girls (why not have a sewing-machine and operator in marble?), shoe-blacks, anything that is domestic and prosaic, provided we have nothing heroic that will strain our powers of admiration, or excite high aspirations after the ideal.
As to minor articles which of old were real objects of art, how do we stand? Our jewelry, for instance—in what stage of decay is it? Would Benvenuto Cellini think our clumsy plate worthy of his attention, or our massive barbaric bracelets artistic productions? On the other hand, the lighter work is flimsy and insecure, equally unworthy of a chiseller’s notice, except he toss it into the furnace, and reduce the materials into an usable shape. Again the money test comes in: the mere value of a precious stone is all, in modern times; the delicacy of the setting, the thought of the designer, the time of the worker, are perfectly immaterial.
Then our glass: it has no individuality whatsoever. We remember noticing the strange contrast which happened to be most vividly exhibited in a certain street in London, where two shops side by side showed a glittering array of their respective specialty, English and Venetian glass. The former, all blown by machinery, showed the most perfect symmetry of design, each glass of a set the exact counterpart of the other, the designs not varied to the extent of more than half a dozen patterns, and the very prettiest things—baskets, for instance, or horns of glass—pairfully, like three or four dozen similar ones, allotted to their particular corner in the shop. The Venetian glass, on the contrary, was a study for a painter. Every conceivable variety of color, shape, and design, a luxuriance of detail, a fertility of invention perfectly incredible, a picturesque individuality which will not allow even pairs to do more than bear a general likeness to each other—such are a few of the characteristics of this beautiful display of ornaments. We took up a fruit-dish of opaque glass, and asked if there were any more of that sort, none but that one being visible in the shop. It was a marvellous conglomeration of colors, veined like marble, vivid shades dying off into browns and dusky yellows, etc. No; there were no more of them. “How was this produced?” we asked. “I cannot tell,” said the polite Venetian who kept watch over these treasures; “this is a mere chance; the glass sometimes runs into these designs, but we might try for years, and never be able to reproduce this.” The other articles, some useful, some ornamental, and all moulded by the hand, attested the most delicate and fantastic skill; the fancy of the workman had been allowed to run riot within certain general limits; no line was the exact counterpart of the other—in a word, the work was artistic, not mechanical. The contrast was evidently unfavorable to the faultlessly mathematical proportions of the English glass, which, however, in its own line, and freed from comparison with higher products, is very beautiful.
Machinery has spoilt many minor arts; even the choir-stalls and the screens of our day are often “turned” instead of carved, and in the place of wrought-iron we have cast-iron in our grates and railings. Even the domain of music has been invaded, and we have barrel-organs, orchestrions, and musical boxes. Some new mechanism in a Geneva box will command thousands of dollars, and for a musical canary with jewelled eyes, caged in a tiny gilded cage, people will give any sum; but who thinks twice of some unknown Beethoven or struggling Mendelssohn whose sonatas and anthems might rival those of the masters of old?
All that we have said is merely an introduction to an explanation of the main subject of which we wish to treat, i.e. the effect of this modern spirit on artists themselves. There are personal ramifications consequent on this low estimate of art which amount just to this: intellectual murder. The artist starts in life full of young enthusiasm—and we include here all scholars and men who, in different professions, reverence the principle more than they care for the use of their craft—he feels that there is an intellectual world beyond and above the world of business and fashion, and he strives to spread the love of this ideal among commoner mortals. He finds them unresponsive, though he feels himself a teacher sent to enlighten them. Still they remain callous; they look on and laugh, and he starves. His art is all he has whereby to live; for the spirit that recruits the ranks of art is a vagrant and fitful one, and does not qualify men for steady habits of lucrative drudgery. The truth now stares him in the face: he must either pocket his principles or lie down and die of hunger. If he is unusually persevering, and has that genius which does not alight more than three or four times in a century on any child of Adam, he may end by winning a place at last in public opinion, by commanding what prices he likes, and by drowning, in the precarious tide of success, the remembrance of the days when he fell below his own standard, and had to drudge for bread. More often he will never succeed at all; he will give up the unequal struggle, and be too glad if, by bartering his independence, he can feed his wife and children.
We need hardly stop to say how baleful marriage too often is in the case of artists; every one must see that. Unless in the rare instances when a man meets a woman heroic enough to help him on in the difficult paths of genius, nothing is more fatally clogging than marriage. It is idle to speak of the joys and comforts which it brings. These are ephemeral in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred where an artist of even average talent is concerned, while the responsibilities and vexations of marriage grow heavier every day. An artist’s joy in his wife can only be of two kinds: it results either from her physical beauty or from her intellectual sympathy. The former any sane man will weary of, even if he be rich enough to surround it with all those adjuncts without which the beauty itself will soon disappear; the latter implies that ideal union which we have reason to deplore as being too rare to be even taken into practical consideration. We are speaking emphatically of poor artists, and every one knows the peculiarly trying circumstances of poverty in any shape, more especially poverty endured by a refined nature. The domestic vexations of a poor artist’s married life are something incalculable, and are almost enough to destroy the patience of a saint. He may be poet, painter, or musician, it little matters what; but it is simply impossible that the daily, hourly shocks to his sensibilities should not leave a woeful impression on his spirit. Is it encouraging to be interrupted in the middle of a fine stanza by shrieks from the kitchen, and frantic appeals to come and rescue the urchin who has pulled the wash-tub over himself? Is it inspiring to be interrupted in a fugue by the sound of a servant’s shrill answer to the scolding of her incensed mistress? The contemplation of an empty larder, and the calculation of how to fill it again at the lowest figure of expense, is not an elevated occupation, nor is it likely to produce a very spirited picture or soul-stirring poem. Except in very rare cases, a rising artist should put off marriage till his fame is in all men’s mouths. A drag is a different thing from a companion, and to most such even a few years’ solitude ending in a mature choice ought to be far preferable to an uncongenial yoke which, long before success has softened it, has become only a necessary evil.
But even to the unmarried artist or scholar, life holds out terrible temptations. Many mistake popularity for greatness, sensationalism for genius. If the higher walks of art do not “pay,” let us forsake them, and pick up gold in the byways! The trace of the clay will not stick to the precious metal, and, if it has come from the pocket of ignorance to pay the price of vulgarity, still it is “hard cash,” and will be none the less welcome at the exchange! It will buy houses and land, it will buy broadcloth and velvet, it will buy champagne suppers and opera tickets. The artist sees that he must be a slave—a slave either to his own necessities or to the bad taste of his patrons. The former means silent worship at the shrine of true art, an early death, an unknown grave, and an obscure name; the latter means unblushing indifference to principle, a long and merry life, and a name on the lips of thousands. Human nature is weak, and, out of twenty men who once had the possibilities of genius, nineteen will crush its development to earn their daily bread. No wonder that we have so few artists nowadays; no wonder that men who might have been so are only caterers for public amusement and “turners-out” of so many landscapes or interiors a year. What are the subjects most in vogue just now, not to speak of nudities and immoralities? Everything that is trivial, pretty, if you will, but commonplace—children picking flowers, drawing-room scenes, a farm kitchen, a group of cattle, a nosegay lying beside a flagon of wine, a few vegetables sliced open, a woman mending a shirt, etc.! Truly most noble subjects whereon to expend the time, care, and ingenuity of a man of genius—a man, at least, who might once have aspired to genius! But these things sell—everything trivial, childish, and mesquin does in our day—and the artist must live! When necessity and art come into collision, art must go to the wall! In music, ballads are the order of the day—pretty little nothings set to pretty little tunes; strains that are often no better than a cross between a popular song and a revival hymn! In poetry, the case is no better; in the drama, it is worse. The very patronage which lifts a man into notice kills his genius and insults his manhood. A drawing-room pet is the highest title an artist can claim in these days, and, to gain that pitiful renown, he must throw overboard all respect for principle, all love of art. He must even make himself uncomfortable, forego innocent habits, burden himself with stupid formalities, in order to reach that favor which he feels in his inmost soul will only degrade him when he has won it. Many a man sells his soul to the devil in these days, just as in former times, but with this difference: that, in the old legends, the devil always gave a generous equivalent, whereas now he puts one off with very shabby gifts.
There is a quaint old tale of this sort current at Bruges, concerning an unhappy organist of very mediocre talents but immense ambition. He was dying with envy because the organist of the cathedral drew crowds to hear his marvellous playing, while he himself could barely draw out a few meagre harmonies. At last, in despair, he made a compact with the devil, bartering his soul for a long lease of years, during which he should be enabled to eclipse the best musicians in Europe. Suddenly it began to be noised about that there had been some strange charm at work; the obscure artist had blossomed into a prodigy, and the cathedral was deserted. Years went on, and all the musical talent of the mediæval world made pilgrimages to Bruges to hear the wonderful musician whose fingers could evoke such matchless harmonies, and cause the most hardened sinners to melt into tears. But one day, the poor man got frightened, and, with much contrition and many prayers, besought a priest to get him back his contract. The priest succeeded, and the devil was compelled to release his victim. The organist went as usual to his instrument. The church was full; foreigners were there and many of the notabilities of the town; but the musician’s power had fled. The result was a disgraceful failure, and the strangers left the church, declaring that a trick had been put upon them. The unhappy man, distracted and overwhelmed with shame, could not bear the ridicule of his altered position, and, in a moment of desperation, called again upon his former ally. The devil forbore to reproach him, and gladly gave him back the fatal talent. Things went on as before; it was said that a sudden indisposition had been the only cause of that memorable break-down, and crowds again flocked to hear the inspired organist. His end is darkly hinted to have been terrible.
Well in this case—supposing it to have been true—the power over the organ was a tangible and valuable gift; but nowadays artists and their patrons rather remind us of the story of Esau selling his birthright for a mess of pottage! Rich men should feel themselves honored by contact with artists, not vice versa. It is no more an honor for an artist to please a millionaire than it is for the church to receive again a truant and gifted son. The abstract laws of art and intellect are above the superficial and shifting necessities of the world, and, if there is to be any intercourse between the votaries of the former and the slaves of the latter, it should be the part of the lower natures to do homage first to the higher. A great king once said to his courtiers, when one of them importuned him to bestow a title upon him: “Assuredly I can make you a duke, monsieur, but God alone can make you a gentleman.” God alone can make an artist; God alone can mould a spirit as refined, a soul as complex, an organization as sensitive, as art requires in its devotees; and it follows that whosoever wilfully debases this spirit destroys God’s own handiwork. The world at large and its absurd maxims are much to blame, but the imprudence or carelessness of artists is none the less deplorable. No one should without reason arrogate to himself this position; it is a species of priesthood, and, except a man or woman be impelled to an æsthetic career by an irresistible impulse, it is not a safe or happy path to tread. None can live in that atmosphere unless God has really fitted them for it, and to them, if they carry their lamps unquenched to the end, it must needs be a path of trial. As a pure speculation, it is the worst career a practical man can embrace. It dooms the artist to a solitary life—solitary in fact if he wishes to succeed; solitary in spirit if he hastily burdens himself with a badly chosen companion.
We were going to say that the ideal state of art would be that all artists should be born rich; but, though that would have its advantages, it would perhaps take away from the dignity of art. Meyerbeer was born of a wealthy family, and Titian lived like a prince, but those are exceptions. Besides, Titian won his riches by his art, though his is a bad example to refer to, by the way, since he truckled very much to the prevalent taste of his gorgeous era. All artists who have touched the noblest chords of human nature have lived and died poor, and all artists in the future who care to emulate these giants of the past will have to resign themselves to a like poverty. Money, in these days—and perhaps, if we had lived in other days, we should have found it much the same then—means a compromise with principle. Those who are born with it can alone enjoy it unmolested, and, say what you will, they will always know how to enjoy it best. No one is so discriminating a patron of art and so considerate a friend of artists as the hereditary land-owner whose ancestors for generations were born to wealth and its duties; no one loves beauty so disinterestedly as one to whom the beautiful has never in any shape been a source of profit.
An aristocracy of birth and education is better fitted than one of wealth to appreciate the aristocracy of intellect; both are, in the purest sense of the word, a “privileged class,” and both ought to be actuated by the proud old motto: Noblesse oblige. Money can never be the test of the unseen; genius cannot be purchased, and art has no price. The heaviest equivalent ever paid for any work of art is but a drop in the ocean compared to the thing gained; for it is not the material you pay for—the canvas, the marble, or the painting; it is not even the artist’s time, though that is most precious; but it is the very soul of the man, the breath of his life, the essence of his being. What can ever be sufficient compensation for that? You can buy the expression of his thought, but his thought itself remains with him, so that his work is more his own than it is yours even after you have purchased it. His creations are his children, and belong to him by that inalienable right of paternity which no human law of sale and barter could possibly supersede.
After this, what are we to think of art? Simply that it is the most divine gift, in the natural order, vouchsafed to man, and entitles the artist to a place more exalted than that of any favorite of fortune, be he prince, noble, or merchant. When will the common world of rich men understand that? When will artists themselves ensure that it be not forgotten? That it is not merely a means of living, a bread-winning drudgery? It is a reflection of God, a ray of his creative power, a solace given to earth, a humanizing influence left among the barbarians of all times (for we are all barbarians in the long run, and saints and artists are the only civilized beings worth notice!) Let us, then, bow down our heads, and accept the dictation of art, rather than presume to impose our trivial conventionalities on one of God’s chosen messengers.
[MADAME JEANNETTE’S PAPERS.]
FROM THE FRENCH OF ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN.
When I was a boy, I used to go every day after school to watch Jean-Pierre Coustel, the turner, at his work. He lived at the other end of the village. He was an old man, partly bald, with a queue hanging down his back, and his feet encased in old worn-out shoes. He used to love to talk of his campaigns on the Rhine and on the Loire in La Vendée. Then he would look at you and smile to himself. His little wife, Mme. Jeannette, sat spinning in the corner behind him; she had large black eyes, and her hair was so white that it looked like flax. I can see her now. She would sit there listening, and she would stop spinning whenever Jean-Pierre spoke of Nantes; it was there they were married in ‘93. Yes; I can see all these things as if it were yesterday: the two small windows overgrown with ivy; the three bee-hives on a board above the old worm-eaten door, the bees fluttering in the sunshine over the roof of the hovel; Jean-Pierre Coustel with his bent back turning bobbins or rods for chairs; the shavings winding themselves into the shape of corkscrews.... I can see it all!
And I can also see coming in the evenings Jacques Chatillon, the dealer in wood, with his rule under his arm, and his thick red whiskers; the forest-keeper, Benassis, with his game-bag on his hip and his hunting-cap over his ears; M. Nadasi, the bailiff, walking proudly, with his head up, and spectacles on his nose, his hands in his coat-pockets, as if to say: “I am Nadasi, and I carry the citations to the insolvent”; and then my Uncle Eustache, who was called “brigadier,” because he had served at Chamboran, and many others besides; without counting the wife of the little tailor Rigodin, who used to come after nine o’clock in search of her husband, in order to be invited to drink half a pint of wine—for, besides his trade of a turner, Jean-Pierre Coustel kept a wayside tavern. The branch of fir hung over the low door; and in winter, when it rained, or when the snow covered the window-panes, many liked to sit under the shelter of the old hut, and listen to the crackling of the fire, and the humming sound of Jeannette’s spinning-wheel, and the wind whistling out of doors through the street of the village.
For my part, I did not stir from my corner until Uncle Eustache, shaking out the ashes of his pipe, would say to me: “Come, François, we must be going.... Good-night all!...”
Then he would rise, and we would go out together, sometimes in the mud, sometimes in the snow. We would go to sleep at my grandfather’s house, and he used to sit up and wait for us.
How plainly I can see these far-off things when I think them over!
But what I remember best is the story of the salt marshes which belonged to old Jeannette—the salt marshes she had owned in La Vendée near the sea, and which would have made the fortune of the Coustels if they had claimed their rights sooner.
It appears that, in ‘93, they drowned a great many people at Nantes, chiefly the old aristocracy. They put them into barks tied together; then they pushed the barks into the Loire, and sank them. It was during the Reign of Terror, and the peasants of La Vendée also shot down all the republican soldiers they could take; extermination was the rule on both sides, and no mercy was shown by either party. Only, whenever a republican soldier demanded in marriage one of these noble ladies who were about to be drowned, if the unfortunate girl were willing to follow him, she was immediately released. And this was how Mme. Jeannette had become the wife of Coustel.
She was on one of these barks at the age of sixteen—an age when one has a great dread of death!... She looked around to see if no one would take pity on her, and just then, at the moment the bark was leaving, Jean-Pierre Coustel was passing by with his musket on his shoulders; he saw the young girl, and called out: “Halt ... a moment!... Citoyenne, wilt thou marry me? I will save thy life!”
And Jeannette fell into his arms as if dead; he carried her away; they went to the mayoralty.
Old Jeannette never spoke of these things. In her youth, she had been very happy; she had had domestics, waiting-maids, horses, carriages; then she had become the wife of a soldier, of a poor republican; she had to cook for him, and to mend his clothes; the old ideas of the château, of the respect of the peasants of La Vendée, had passed away. So goes the world! And sometimes even the bailiff Nadasi in his impertinence would mock at the poor old woman, and call out to her: “Noble lady, a pint of wine!... a small glass.” He would also make inquiries about her estates; then she would shut her lips tight, and look at him; a faint color would come into her pale cheek, and it appeared as if she were going to answer him; but afterwards she would bend down her head, and go on spinning in silence.
If Nadasi had not spent money at the tavern, Coustel would have turned him out of doors; but, when one is poor, one is obliged to put up with many affronts, and rascals know this!... They never mock at those who would be likely to pull their ears, as my Uncle Eustache would not have failed to do: they are too prudent for that. How hard it is to put up with creatures like these!... Every one knows there are such beings. But I must go on with my story. We were at the tavern one evening at the end of the autumn of 1830; it was raining in torrents, and about eight o’clock in the evening the keeper Benassis entered, exclaiming: “What weather!... If it continues, the three ponds will overflow.”
He shook out his cap, and took his blouse off his shoulders, to dry it behind the stove. Then he came to seat himself on the end of the bench, saying to Nadasi: “Come, make room, you lazy fellow, and let me sit near the brigadier.”
Nadasi moved back.
Notwithstanding the rain, Benassis appeared to be pleased; he said that that day a large swarm of wild geese had arrived from the north; that they had lighted on the ponds of the Three Sawmills; that he had spied them afar off, and that the shooting on the marshes was about to begin. Benassis laughed and rubbed his hands as he emptied his glass of brandy and water. Every one was listening to him. Uncle Eustache said, if he went to shoot them, he should go in a little skiff; for as to putting on high boots and going into the mire, at the risk of sinking in above his ears, he would not fancy that much. Then every man had his say, and old Jeannette musingly murmured to herself: “I also owned marshes and ponds!”
“Ah!” cried Nadasi, with a mocking air, “listen to that: Dame Jeannette used to own marshes....”
“Certainly,” said she, “I did!...”
“Where were they, noble lady?”
“In La Vendée, on the sea-coast.”
And as Nadasi shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say, The old woman is crazy! Mme. Jeannette ascended the little wooden staircase at the back of the hovel, and then came down again with a basket filled with various articles, needles, thread, bobbins, and yellow parchments, which she deposited on the table. “Here are our papers,” said she: “the ponds, the marshes, and the château are there with the other things!... We laid claim to them in the time of Louis XVIII., but my relations denied our rights, because I had married a republican. We would have gone to law, but we had no money to pay the lawyers. Is it not so, Coustel, is it not true?”
“Yes,” said the turner, without moving.
The persons assembled took no interest in the thing, not any more than they would have done in the packages of paper money of the time of the Republic, which may still be found in old closets.
Nadasi, still mocking, opened one of the parchments, and was raising his head to read it, in order to laugh at Jeannette, when suddenly his countenance become grave; he wiped his spectacles, and turning towards the poor old woman, who had sat down again to her spinning.
“Are these your papers, Mme. Jeannette?” said he.
“Yes, sir.”
“Will you allow me to look at them a little?”
“You can do as you please with them,” said she; “they are of no use to us.”
Then Nadasi, who had turned pale, folded up the parchment with several others, saying: “I will see about that.... It is striking nine o’clock; good-night.”
He went away, and the rest soon followed him.
Eight days after this, Nadasi set out for La Vendée; he had obtained from Coustel and Dame Jeannette his wife their signature to a paper which gave him full power to recover, alienate, and sell all their property, taking upon himself the expenses, with the understanding that he was to be repaid if he obtained the inheritance for them.
Soon after a report was spread in the village that Mme. Jeannette was a noble lady, that she owned a château in La Vendée, and that Coustel would soon receive a large income; but afterwards Nadasi wrote that he had arrived six weeks too late; that the own brother of Mme. Jeannette had shown him papers which made it as clear as the day that he had held possession of the marshes for more than thirty years; and that, whenever one holds the property of another for more than thirty years, it is the same as if one had always had it; so that Jean-Pierre Coustel and his wife, on account of their relations having thus enjoyed their property, had no longer any claim to it.
These poor people, who had thought themselves rich, and whom all the village had gone, according to custom, to congratulate and flatter, when they found they were to have nothing, felt their poverty still more keenly than before, and not long afterwards they died within a short time of each other, like Christians, asking of the Lord pardon for their sins, and confident in the hope of eternal life.
Nadasi sold his post of bailiff, and did not return to the country; doubtless he had found some employment which suited him better than serving citations.
Many years had passed; Louis Philippe had disappeared, then the Republic; the couple Coustel slept on the hillside, and I suppose even their bones had crumbled into dust in the grave. For my part, I had succeeded my grandfather at the post-house, and Uncle Eustache, as he himself had said, had taken his passport, when one morning, during the gay season at Baden and Homburg, there happened to me something quite surprising, and of which I still think frequently. Several post-chaises had passed during the morning, when, towards eleven o’clock, a courier came to inform me that his master, M. le Baron de Rosélière, was approaching. I was at table. I immediately rose to superintend the relay of horses. Just as they were being harnessed, a head was put out of the coach-window—an old wrinkled face, with hollow cheeks, and gold spectacles on the nose—it was the face of Nadasi, but old, faded, worn out; behind him leaned the head of a young girl; I was all astonishment. “What is the name of this village?” inquired the old man, yawning.
“Laneuville, sir.”
He did not recognize me, and drew back. Then I saw an old lady also in the coach. The horses were harnessed: they set off.
What a surprise, and how many ideas passed through my mind! Nadasi was the Baron de Rosélière. May God forgive me if I am wrong! but I still think that he sold the papers of poor Jeannette, and that he assumed a noble name to ward off the questions of the inquisitive. What was there to prevent him? Had he not obtained all the title-deeds, all the papers, all the powers of attorney? And now has he not had the thirty years of possession? Poor old Jeannette!... What misery we meet with in this life!... And God permits it all!...
[THE ANGEL AND THE CHILD.]
FROM THE FRENCH OF REBOUL.
An angel bent with pensive air
Above an infant’s dream,
And seemed to view his image there
As in a stainless stream.
“O beauteous child!” he said, “I see”—
His breath like music’s sigh—
“The earth is all unworthy thee:
Come with me to the sky.
“Earth has no happiness complete;
The soul can never lift
Thee to a height where round thy feet
No clouds of pain will drift.
“At every feast, unbidden guest,
Some fear will still intrude:
No day so calm but in its breast
The morrow’s storm may brood.
“And shall care leave with passing years
Its impress on this brow?
And sorrows dim with growing tears
These eyes so tranquil now?
“No, no, sweet child! Come, let us mount
Above the fields of space;
Kind Heaven will cancel the account
Of life’s foreshadowed days.
“I pray no selfish grief may view
This day with mournful eyes,
Or with reproachful words pursue
Our way to paradise.
“But let your mother lift her brow
To Faith’s serenest light;
To one as innocent as thou,
Life’s last hour shines most bright.”
A subtle radiance from his wings
Upon the child was shed;
The angel mounting upward, sings:
“Poor mother! thy child is dead.”