A DAY AMONG THE KIOWAS AND COMANCHES.
It was rather cold and frosty in the early January morning as we rode eastward from Otter Creek to the Kiowa and Comanche reservation, in the Indian Territory. Toward noon, however, the sun came out, brilliant and warm. The effect on the transparent covering of the trees and shrubs was dazzlingly beautiful. Some were encased in a bright armor, cunningly linked in chains of crescents. I detached a perfect “ice-plant,” with every curve of the stem, every nerve of the leaves, taken in ice. The humblest weeds on the prairie sparkled with frosty diamonds. But as the sun grew warmer they began to bend under their gorgeous burdens, as if wearied by their splendor, like tired beauties after a ball.
In the afternoon the weather was as clear and balmy as on a day in June. Our way lay through the most beautiful part of the Indian Territory. We skirted the southern slopes of the Wichita Mountains. These, as if in honor of our coming, exhibited all their jewelry in its brightest lustre. Down their dark slopes ran shining streams, like chains of silver adorning their broad breasts. Stones of gray and yellow and green and purple were
heaped together in distracting profusion, the whole seen through the most surpassingly tender of violet tints, too delicate to be compared to the filmiest marriage-morning lace. As we proceeded the country became more and more diversified. Upland and vale succeeded each other in delightful variety. Beautiful glens, wooded slopes, bold mountain-crests, filled the landscape. The day had become warm enough to free the babble of the scores of pretty little streams that flow into the Cache. We rode through groves of mesquite and forests of oaks. The long, straight paths through the oak-woods made one think of the long alleys of Versailles. We pass along the Main Cache; the scenery is ravishing. To the right flows the stream. It is thickly wooded; and through the English effect, produced by the smoke of a prairie fire in the far distance, it brings back the memory of a railroad glimpse of the line of Windsor Forest. Occasional circles of oaks in the midst of noble stretches of upland render more striking the likeness to the park scenery of old England. To the left are the mountains. They actually furnish the luxury of rocks, covered with
moss and mould as green as you could see upon Irish ruins. What a joy was the spectacle of so lovely a region to our eyes, that had been starved for months on sand-hills and treeless deserts!
We passed hundreds of lovely sites for cottages, in pleasant nooks, sheltered from all cold winds by wooded slopes that opened towards the south and bounded semi-circular vales of marvellous fertility. Indeed, in beauty of scenery and in richness of soil I think this portion of the Indian Territory may be considered the garden of the western world.
But, alas! nothing earthly is perfect. The brightest prospect has its shadow. Over this seeming paradise, where you can see in a day’s journey the loveliest characteristics of the most favored climes, malaria spreads its black and baleful wings.
I visited the reservation of the Kiowas and Comanches soon after it was entered by one of the expeditions that operated against the hostile bands of these Indians and of the Cheyennes in the winter of 187-. This force had driven in a number of Kiowas and Comanches. It was a close race between the troops and the Indians. But the latter, having the great advantage of the start, throwing away all impedimenta, leaving their line of flight marked by abandoned lodges, lodge-poles, ponies, cooking utensils, etc., had won the race by a few hours only, and surrendered not a moment too soon. I wanted to see all I could see of Indians while opportunity offered. I visited the commanding officer of the adjoining military post, and made known to him my wishes. He received me with great courtesy and kindness, placed a vehicle at my disposal,
and instructed his interpreter to accompany me through the Indian camps. The Indians had pitched their tepies in the timbered bottoms along the streams for several miles around the fort.
The interpreter was an “old Indian man.” I found him intelligent and polite. He had evidently been well brought up and fairly educated. His language was generally good; and when he indulged, occasionally, in a graphic, frontier mode of expression, it was easy to see that this was an after-graft, though not the less apt and piquant on that account. The Indians on the reservation were divided into two great classes, those under civil and those under military control. The former were under charge of the agent; the latter under that of the commander of the fort. These were again subdivided into the incarcerated, the enrolled, and the paroled (pronounced by the employees of the post and reservation, pay-rolled).
The imprisoned were again subdivided into two classes: the more guilty and dangerous, who were placed in irons and confined under strict surveillance in the post guard-house; and the Indians of less note and guilt, who were in confinement, but not in irons. Of the first the principal was White Horse, a Kiowa chief, a murderer, ravisher, and as great a general scoundrel as could be found in any tribe. These really “bad Indians” did not number more than half a dozen. The Comanches and Kiowas belonging to the second subdivision were confined within the walls of an extensive but unfinished stone building, intended for an ice-house, one hundred and fifty feet by forty. They numbered about a hundred and twenty.
I told the interpreter I should like to begin by a visit to White Horse.
“Then,” said he, “we shall have to see the officer of the day; for the sergeant of the guard has orders to let no one visit White Horse without special instructions.”
Two old squaws, evidently in great distress, now came up to the interpreter, and, having shaken hands with him, began to talk to him with great eagerness.
“You’re in luck,” said the interpreter to me. “These are two of his mothers who want permission to see him.”
“Two of his mothers!” I exclaimed. “How many mothers has he, for heaven’s sake?”
“Only one regular one,” he replied, laughing. “The other is his aunt; but among these Indians the aunts also call themselves mothers.”
Accompanied by the two squaws, we went to seek the officer of the day. We soon found him. He was a tall, fine-looking, genial, impulsive Kentuckian, a cavalry officer. He went with us to the guard-house. He first took the interpreter and myself into the prison-room where White Horse’s five companions were confined. They looked greatly dispirited. They all shook hands with us with great warmth. I noticed the eagerness of the last hand-shaker, who seemed to fear that we might leave the cell before he had gone through the ceremony with each of us. Poor wretches! I presume they thought their hour was nearly come, and, like drowning men, they grasped even at the semblance of straws. They evidently had some rough idea of “making interest” with the victor “pale-faces” in a forlorn hope for pardon. They were effusive
in their manifestations of friendship for the officer, who, with his revolver in his belt and his long cavalry sabre clanking at his heels, represented Force to them. Force is something Indians understand, and they respect its emblems. Indeed, most of them have been afforded but poor opportunities to understand anything else.
The officer then conducted us to a private room, into which he ordered White Horse to be brought. A clanking of chains was heard along the corridor, and White Horse, doubly ironed, stood in the door-way. He entered, not without a certain untutored majesty of gait, maugre his irons. He put out his manacled hands, and energetically went through the ceremony of hand-shaking, beginning with the officer of the day, and giving him an extra shake at the end.
White Horse was a large, powerful Indian. He wore a dark-colored blanket which covered his entire person. I could discern no indications of ferocity in his countenance. His face, on the contrary, had rather what I should call a Chadband cast. His flesh seemed soft, oily, and “puffy.”
White Horse’s mother and aunt were now permitted to enter. The mother rushed to her son, threw her arms around him, kissed him on both cheeks, while the tears rolled down her face; but she uttered not a word. The aunt kissed him in like manner. White Horse submitted to their embraces, but made no motion of responding affection. He seemed a little nervous under their caresses, and probably under our observation. The mother took hold of his chain, looked at it for a moment, and then came another paroxysm of silent grief, revealing itself in tears alone.
They sat on a rough wooden bench, White Horse in the centre, his mother on his right, his aunt on the left, each holding one of his hands in both of hers. White Horse uttered no sound; no gesture betrayed any emotion, yet I thought I could detect a moistening of the eye. This made me feel that I had no business there, gazing on his grief and that of the poor Indian women. I suppose I ought to be ashamed to say it; but the truth must be told, and I must confess that, villain as he was, I could not help feeling for him. Of course it was a weakness, but I am miserably weak in such matters. I believe I should have pleaded for mercy towards him, though he showed little mercy to others. There are few human beings who do not, at some time in their lives, need mercy shown them; and when they themselves cry out for it, it must be a great consolation to them to reflect, as they look back, that they, in their time, have not been deaf to the cries of others.
I signified a wish to withdraw, and left, accompanied by the officer and the interpreter. Before we were permitted to depart, however, we had to shake hands with White Horse and the two squaws. The women looked at us with an appealing expression, as if, in their poor, simple minds, they thought it possible that, in some way or other, we might have an influence on the fate of the son.
We next visited the unfinished building in which the one hundred and twenty lesser Indian criminals were confined. They were bestowed in a sufficiently comfortable manner. Common tents were ranged along the walls, and there were fires burning at proper distances down the centre of the building. The occupants
of the tents were mostly engaged in gambling with monte cards and in various other ways. Your Indian is unfortunately “a born gambler.” They quitted their play, however, and crowded around us, eager to shake hands with us, and uttering the Indian monosyllabic expression of satisfaction, which sounds as if written “how.” This hand-shaking took some time, as every Indian insisted on going through the ceremony. When I supposed I had shaken my way through the crowd, I was touched on the arm, and, turning, met a face which was evidently not that of an Indian, though its owner was garbed in Indian guise. He put out his hand, saying “how” in the usual way. I said to him in rather “Brummagem” Spanish that he was not an “Indio.”
He shook his head and replied: “No.”
“Mejicano?” I asked.
“Si,” he replied with a broad grin.
The other Indians crowded around us, laughing and nodding their heads, ejaculating: “Mejicano! How! how!” and turning towards each other with gestures of wonder or admiration (exactly as I have seen the chorus do at the Italian opera). This was no doubt done with a rude idea of flattering me on my perspicacity. There are worse judges of human nature than the untutored Indian. I suppose there is very little doubt that, had I any power over their fate, the compliment would not have been thrown away on me, or on most men for that matter.
Of course they wanted tobacco, and we gave them what we had about us. They had a good deal to say to the interpreter. Every one had some little grievance to
complain of or want to be satisfied. At length, after some more hand-shaking, we escaped from them.
On leaving the prison-house we learned that we should not find the principal Indians in their camps until later in the day, as they were then collecting in the commanding officer’s office to talk about sending a party to find some of the Cheyennes, who, having been driven from the brakes of the Staked Plains, were supposed to have gone to southern New Mexico. The interpreter said I should have a good opportunity to see the “head men” there; we could visit the camps afterwards. To the office we went, and found there about fifteen or twenty chiefs, among them Little Crow and Kicking Bird, the head chief of the Kiowas. If ever there were a good Indian—and there are many very honest people west of the Mississippi who think that no live Indian can be good—I think Kicking Bird was a good Indian. During the recent troubles he never left his reservation, was constant in using his influence in favor of the whites, and never wavered in his fidelity to the government.
He was a fine-looking Indian, and had as winning a countenance as I have looked upon anywhere. The expression of his eyes was remarkably soft and pleasing. There was a quiet, natural dignity in his manners, tempered by great natural grace. I was taken by his appearance from the first, and shook hands with him with pleasure and sincerity, which was not the case on every occasion of hand-shaking that morning. Kicking Bird, as nearly as one can judge an Indian’s age (an Indian is generally as great a chronological difficulty
as a negro), was then about thirty-five years old. He was somewhat above the middle height, richly but not gaudily dressed. Hanging by a loop from his left breast were a pair of silver tweezers.
After the “talk” was over and the arrangements for sending out the party agreed upon, every chief except Kicking Bird had some private “axe to grind”—something to ask for. As the presentation of these “private bills” was likely to take much time, we withdrew, mounted our wagon, and drove to the Kiowa camp.
The camps of the three tribes, Kiowas, Comanches, and Apaches, were pitched in the fringe of timber that borders Medicine Bluff Creek and the Main Cache. The day was bright and warm for the season. The scarlet and white blankets of the Indians, seen here and there among the trees, gave life and color to the landscape. Crowds of children gambolled and shouted, and seemed to enjoy themselves intensely. They had no idea they were the children of a doomed and dying race. There was no trace among them of the stoicism of the Indian of maturer years. No crowd of French urchins playing around the Tour Saint Jacques in the grounds of the Palais Royal, or the gardens of the Tuileries, was ever more full of gayety and espièglerie than these little savages. They threw their arms about and “kicked loose legs” as naturally and with as much abandon as any white children could have done. Some, more industriously inclined, built little tepies, or lodges; others made tiny camp-fires, playing “war-party”; others, with miniature bows and arrows, skipped along, shooting at the small birds that crossed their path. Now an urchin, more bold
than the rest, would hop alongside our wagon and return our “how, how” with compound interest. Emboldened by his example, others would follow, until we had a crowd of little red-skins of both sexes about us, hopping, laughing, and “how-how”-ing. Occasionally they indulged in a general shout of good-natured merriment, which may very probably have been caused by some more than usually good joke at our expense.
Our first visit was to Kicking Bird’s lodge. It was quite roomy, being a tepie of twenty-four poles. In rear of the lodge, and carefully covered by a paulin, like the carriage of any civilized gentleman, stood our friend Kicking Bird’s “buggy.”
Kicking Bird had not yet returned from the talk at the post. His wife, a buxom young squaw, profusely beaded, brightly blanketed, vermilion-cheeked, but not over-washed, did the honors. She had a child about ten months old—a lively, stout little red rascal, whose flesh was as firm as vulcanized rubber. The little wretch was just beginning to walk. He was in puris, of course. He took wonderfully to us. He would try to walk across the lodge to each of us in turn, falling at every other step, and getting up again with a loud crow of determination. Then he would toddle from one to the other, holding by our boot-tops as we stood in a circle around him, and being jumped as high as arms would admit of by each in turn, to his intense delight and the great enjoyment of his mother.
We walked through the camp and watched the squaws tanning buffalo-hides and preparing antelope-skins. I was very anxious to get a papoose-board, as a telegram from a medical friend had just informed
me that there was an opportunity of utilizing such a piece of furniture in the family of a very particular friend. But I could not beg or buy one, even with the help of my friend the interpreter. We asked several squaws, but not one of them would sell. I heard afterwards that an extravagantly high price, backed by the Indian agent’s influence, failed to procure one. The squaws no doubt consider it “bad medicine” to sell a papoose-board.
A gaudily-dressed Indian, whose cheeks were streaked with paint of all the colors of the rainbow, approached us. In my civilized simplicity I supposed that this glaring individual was some very big chief indeed. I asked the interpreter what great chief he was.
“Some Indian plug,” responded that gentleman; “no chief at all.”
“How comes he to be so extravagantly adorned?”
“They can wear anything they can beg, buy, or steal.”
My mistake reminds me of a similar one made by Indians with regard to some white visitors. Col. —— visited an Indian camp, accompanied by some officers and a cavalry escort. The colonel and the officers were dressed in fatigue uniform, with merely gold enough about them to indicate their rank to a close observer on close inspection. The observed of all the Indian observers, however, was a “fancy” Dutch bugler, with his double yellow stripe and his bars of yellow braid across his breast. To him the most respectful homage and the greatest consideration were paid.
As we passed one of the Kiowa lodges, a young man, seemingly about twenty-five or twenty-eight years old, came out to meet us
with outstretched arms. With the exception of Kicking Bird, he was the most pleasing Indian I met. He was very fair-skinned for an Indian, bright, intelligent-looking, with a frankness of manner rare among Indians. He was presented to me as Big Tree, a paroled Indian.
The interpreter told me that, up to the time Big Tree was taken with Satanta, the former was an Indian of no note. He was innocent of crime, and achieved a reputation merely by his accidental associations with Satanta.
Notwithstanding the lesson I had received, when we met some gaudily-bedizened Indian I could not refrain from asking who he was.
The interpreter’s answer was invariably: “Only some Indian plug.”
We drove to the Comanche camp, and visited the lodge of Quirz-Quip, or “Antelope-Chewer.” I had met him at the “talk” in the morning. He recognized me and shook hands in a very friendly manner. Quirz-Quip’s countenance was not an attractive one. It was at its best then, however, for he was in high glee at his good fortune in reaching the reservation, even with the loss of almost everything he had, and the troops close at his heels. He only got in a few hours ahead of them, and they had been gaining on him hourly. As his dinner was ready, Antelope-Chewer invited us in to join him in the repast, and I accepted the invitation eagerly.
The lodge was a large and comfortable one. No doubt it had been kept standing on the reservation for the use of the squaws and children while Antelope-Chewer was on the war-path, and for a pleasant and safe resting-place for that gentleman when the troops
made the war-path too hot for him. Mats were placed around the lodge. On these we sat tailor-fashion. Valises, made of buffalo-hide, scraped and painted in the usual Indian fashion, were placed at intervals around the tepie. The fire was in the centre, in a hole eighteen inches or two feet deep. The lodge was pleasantly warmed, and there was not the least smoke. Two young bucks occupied about four yards of the lodge. They lay stretched at full length on their backs. Each had a bow and arrow, with which he amused himself by toying. The arrow was in its place, ready to be sped. Ever and anon they would draw the arrows back to the head, and then relax the strings again. I felt that the rascals would have sent the barbs through us with pleasure, if they could only do so with safety. We were unarmed, it is true; but there were thirteen companies of cavalry and five of infantry within a mile and a half, and the chances of ultimate escape were more than doubtful. I should not wish to meet even my worthy friend Quirz-Quip off the reservation, if I were unarmed and no help near.
The young men merely nodded to us as we entered, without changing their positions or intermitting their bow-play. They gave us a half-careless, half-supercilious smile, and glanced at each other, as if they should say:
“Buffalo-Heart, my boy! what does the governor mean by bringing these fellows here?”
They seemed to look upon us as a pair of young scions of the old French noblesse might have looked upon a republican guard detail entering their private apartments in their ancestral château.
We shook hands and exchanged
grunts with the squaws and children. The interpreter joked Quirz-Quip about his race with the troops. The Indian laughed, indulged in several “how-hows” and buenos (the Comanches use a good many Spanish words), and shook hands with me again with great seeming cordiality. He was evidently very much elated by his good fortune in getting to a place of safety, and showed it by repeated chuckles.
Dinner being ready, we drew closer to the festive fire-hole in which the viands were cooking. As a not very comely old squaw put forth a not very clean hand and arm to serve the first course, a young gentleman who had joined our party made a precipitate retreat. The young fellow was troubled with a delicate stomach. Another gentleman, having tasted of the first course, said he found the tepie rather close and withdrew. There remained of our party, then, only the interpreter and my unworthy self to do honor to Antelope-Chewer’s hospitality.
The party assembled around the hospitable stew-pan consisted of the old squaw who did the honors of the camp-kettle; a younger squaw, plump and dirty, evidently the latest favorite; Antelope-Chewer and several little Chewers, ranging from six months to twelve years old; the aristocratic young bucks (whose food was handed to them by the old squaw), the interpreter, and the writer. The repast consisted of stewed buffalo meat served in the vessel in which it was cooked. Each convive takes his clasp-knife in his right hand, seizes one end of the piece of meat with the thumb and forefinger of his left, and cuts off a piece of the required size. It is “bad medicine,” as well as mauvais goût, to take
more than you can consume. The manner in which salt was used struck me as being an improvement on our civilized mode of using it. It was served dissolved in water in a shallow vessel, and each guest dipped his piece of meat in the fluid. Of course if this method were adopted in our hotels or boarding-houses, I should wish to have my salt and water served in an “individual” salt-vessel.
There was no bread. The Indians on the reservation had received no flour for weeks. We had the Indian substitute for bread—the fat of the meat cut off in strips, pressed, and served separately, cold. There are worse substitutes. A cup of coffee (without milk, of course) concluded the repast. It was by no means bad. It was hot and strong, though not quite sweet enough, as the ration of sugar issued to the Indians was insufficient. I enjoyed it, however. It is only justice to say that Quirz-Quip’s coffee was much better than some I have tasted in railroad eating-houses and “end of the track” towns.
Dinner being over, we left the lodge to walk through the camp, and especially to visit and view a bridge made by the Indians themselves across the Medicine Bluff. It was a structure of mud and logs quite creditable to Indian ingenuity and industry. It showed that the lessons of their teacher—the beaver—had not been thrown away upon them.
We invited Antelope-Chewer to come with us to the fort bakery, and we would make him a present of a dozen loaves of bread. He consented, but said he wanted his squaw to go too.
“He wants her to carry back the bread,” said the interpreter.
We agreed, and got into the wagon.
Quirz-Quip desired that the plump and dirty squaw should ride inside with us. To this we would not submit, and insisted that she should take the seat beside the driver. Indeed, I felt already an itching sensation all over me—no doubt the effect of imagination; for the interpreter assured me there was no danger of anything of the kind, unless I should spend a night in a lodge. I assured him that such a thing was not at all probable. Nevertheless, and notwithstanding two or three baths, it was some days before my epidermis regained its accustomed tranquillity.
We drove to the Apache camp for our young friends who had fled from Quirz-Quip’s hospitality, and returned by the Comanche chief’s lodge to pick up the plump and dirty squaw. She had become tired of waiting, and had gone away, much to her lord’s disgust and our satisfaction.
We drove to the bakery and bought a dozen loaves of bread for Quirz-Quip. He wished us to drive him back to his camp with the bread. The interpreter told him we could not do it. Then the modest Comanche asked us to lend him the wagon to take the bread. The interpreter shook his head, and assured him that it was impossible.
“Then,” said Quirz-Quip, “how am I to get the bread to camp?”
“If you are too lazy to pack it,” said the interpreter, “you can leave, and be confounded.”
As we drove away, we saw him, with a rueful countenance, spreading out his blanket on the floor to receive the coveted bread but hated load.
On our return from the camps we passed by the agency. I asked what kind of a man the agent was. I was answered that he was “a
good sort of man,” but “he knows nothing about Indians or their ways.”
“He is a Quaker, I suppose.”
“A kind of a made-up Quaker, like a good many of ‘em.”
We stopped at the agency door, and I was introduced to the agent. He was a gentleman in his manners, and looked to me like an honest man. There was to be an issue of blankets on the following day. The agent kindly said he would be glad to have me present, and if I would come he would send a wagon for me. I accepted at once.
The Indian agent was as good as his word. He sent a carriage for us about half-past eight next morning. The issue was to take place about half-past nine. It was nearly half-past eleven, however, before the Indians began to arrive. Your Indian is invariably unpunctual. You may set what hour you please, but you cannot make him come until he is quite ready. By half-past twelve they began coming in considerable numbers and the issue commenced. The women and children were out in great force, and were in high good-humor, chatting and laughing in the gayest manner possible. Each family ranges itself in a semi-circle; the chief, or male head thereof, stood about the centre of the chord. Each chief, after receiving the number of blankets to which he was entitled, tore in two a double blanket of each color; there were only black and white blankets to be issued that day, no scarlet ones, greatly to the disappointment of the squaws and children. Beginning at one end of the semi-circle, the chief threw a piece of each color at the head of the person for whom it was intended. It was caught with a shout of glee and many remarks,
evidently of a humorous nature, judging by the laughter with which they were hailed. Sometimes the dignified chief, with as near an approach to a smile as his dignity would allow, threw a joke with the blanket at the head of a dependant. His jokes, like those of all persons in power, were always greeted with applause. When the blanket was so thrown as to strike the recipient full in the face, the merriment was uproarious. Our friend Quirz-Quip was present, of course. He was very busy, getting all he could, and dividing what he got among his interesting family. He was harder to please than if he had always been a good Indian and had never left the reservation to go on the war-path.
The blankets were of very good quality. They were marked with the letters U. S. I. D. It was found necessary to stamp the blankets to prevent the Indians from gambling or trading them away to Mexicans in the summer.
Here and there some wretched squaws stood apart from the general throng, as if they were Pariahs among their sisters. They seemed utterly forlorn and miserable. They took no interest in the busy scene before them. Their faces wore an expression of blank hopelessness. The world had nothing for them in the present, nothing in the future. They came to the issue as mere drudges, to carry back the blankets to the camps. They had each an angular piece cut out of the nostril. This is the Scarlet Letter of the Comanches.
When the issue was over I visited the Indian hospital and had quite an interesting chat with the doctor. The Indians were then suffering a good deal from colds, influenza, etc., brought on by exposure at night,
“making medicine”—i.e., performing incantations. As we went from the hospital to the carpenter’s shop, I met young Satanta, a paroled prisoner, son of the notorious Satanta who was delivered by the War Department to the civil authorities in Texas to be tried for murders and robberies committed by him within the boundaries of that State. Satanta, Jr., was a bright-eyed young man of twenty. He wore a long, straight red feather in his hat, and carried in his hand a bow, from which ever and anon he discharged an arrow as he went, and picked it up again.
An Indian, who evidently thought he was suffering under a very great grievance, now met us and talked very earnestly and excitedly to the interpreter.
“That Indian is smarting under the sense of some great wrong, real or fancied,” I said.
“Yes,” said the interpreter, smiling; “he has trouble with another Indian about a greyhound pup. I promised this fellow and another a pup each (I have the finest greyhounds in the Territory). The other fellow, while I was away, took both the pups, and won’t give this fellow his. They are just like children in many things.”
There was little doing in the carpenter’s shop. I was shown some work done by a young Indian which was fair, for an Indian. There were no Indians at work, but I was told that Kicking Bird’s son was to begin his apprenticeship the following week.
Nor was there anything doing at the school. There were hopes of opening it the following month, with twenty Apaches, twenty Kiowas, and the same number of Comanches.
The trader at the military post
was also the trader for the Indians. The store was thronged from morning to sunset by Indians of both sexes. Comanches, Kiowas, Apaches, hung around in groups, standing in the doorways, blocking up the windows, when they were closed, with their faces against the panes, or their heads and the upper part of their bodies thrust in when they were open. The majority of the trader’s store-idlers are women, young girls, and children. They are by no means backward in begging. The clerks told me it was not wise to leave anything on the counter even for a moment when the red brethren and sisters were in the store; they had to be watched as narrowly as fashionable white kleptomaniacs.
I was rather pleased with the appearance of the Indian agent. He seemed honest and frank. Of his ignorance or knowledge of Indians and their ways I can say nothing. “Old Indian men” are apt to think that, in the way of knowledge of Indians, they have pulled the ladder up after them.
I thanked the agent for his politeness, and said that, if he did not think it impertinent, I should like to ask a question or two for my own information and satisfaction. He replied that he would be very happy to give me any information in his power.
“Well,” said I, “not to mince matters, you know they say a great many hard things about Indian agents.”
“Of course I do. When I received this appointment, one of my most intimate friends wrote to me not to accept it, warning me that, were I as pure as snow, I should be denounced by everybody as a swindler and a thief before six months.”
“It is said that for several weeks
the Indians on this reservation have been without bread. Is this true?”
“It is. The freight contractors have failed to deliver the flour. I cannot issue what I have not. To make up for the lack of flour, I issue four pounds of beef to each Indian daily.”
“It is charged that the beef is poor. Is this charge true?”
“It is. What can I do? Like a quartermaster or commissary, I can only issue what I have on hand. If I had not this beef, the Indians would have nothing to eat. I cannot throw it back on the contractor’s hands, and wait for a better quality of meat; for while I was waiting the Indians would starve or leave the reservation to find subsistence where they could.”
“What is the allowance of coffee and sugar?”
“Four pounds of the former and eight of the latter to one hundred rations.”
I now took a friendly farewell of the Indian agent, and went away with a vague impression that it is not the poor, subordinate official who makes most money out of the Indians, but freighters and “big contractors,” and perhaps more especially their financial “backers,” the speculators of the great Eastern cities.
On our way back to the post we met Kicking Bird returning to his camp. He was mounted on a large cream-colored mule. We stopped, shook hands with him, and chatted a little. The interpreter joked him about riding a mule. Kicking Bird laughed, and said that as he was going to live hereafter like a white man, like a white man he should ride a mule.
It was the last time I saw Kicking Bird. Shortly afterwards he delivered
up to the military authorities a number of the revolted Indians. Among them was a brother of one of his squaws. In revenge she poisoned the faithful chief.
Poor Kicking Bird! He had given his gorgeous war-bonnet to a veteran officer of the army as a token that he had left the war-path for ever. He proposed to teach his children the white man’s language and the white man’s peaceful arts. He fell a martyr to his fidelity to the government.
DE VERE’S “THOMAS À BECKET.”[210]
It is doubtful whether two years ago even the admirers of Aubrey de Vere looked for anything strikingly new or startling from his pen. His measure seemed filled. He was known and read as a poet whose melodious verse was the expression of thoughts lofty as well as tender, of profound meditations and large aspirations, of purity without fleck, yet cold almost as it was chaste. This were an enviable fame at any time, infinitely more so just now, when the ambition of our poets seems to be that of the prodigal, to waste their divine birthright on worthless objects, to live riotously, and finally, when all else is gone, to feed themselves and their readers on the husks of swine. Suddenly Alexander the Great appeared, and in the author we beheld a new man. At once his fame took wings, while he, with the unconscious ease of one who took his place by right, strode beyond the men of to-day, and entered into that narrower circle of larger minds whose names are written in brass, whose works live after them and become part and parcel of the English tongue. One sign of Mr. de Vere’s undisputed
success was significant. It is only such a transcendent genius as that of Dr. Newman that can overleap the barriers which prejudice has set around the Catholic name. It is still true, though less so than formerly, that the grand old name of “Catholic” blazoned on a literary scutcheon is regarded as a bar sinister by the non-Catholic press. Yet even this difficulty of caste was overcome by Mr. de Vere, and his Alexander the Great was hailed by critics of every class and kind of thought to be a return to the palmy days of English drama, and a welcome addition to English literature.
Two years have passed, and a new drama is presented to us by the same author. From Alexander the Great to Thomas à Becket is a long stride and a trying one. It is a passage from the height of paganism to the height of Christianity. The hero of the one is the personification of the pride and the pomp, the glory and shame, the greatness and essential littleness, of paganism. The hero of the other is one of those men who throughout the Christian era, even up to our own times, have been found to stand up in the face of the princes of this world, and, if need be, pour out their hearts’ blood in confessing
Christ and upholding his kingdom on earth.
We may as well say at once that in the new drama we miss many things which in Alexander the Great won our admiration. We miss the sustained magic of those lines, almost every one of which is poetry of the highest order, yet so skilfully adapted that whosoever speaks them speaks naturally and in keeping with his character. In no place in Alexander the Great could one say, “Here speaks the poet,” “Here the rhetorician,” “Here the dramatist.” This much, indeed, is true of Thomas à Becket. We miss, too, the brilliant epigrams, the proverbial wisdom of the brief sayings thrown so liberally into the mouths of this character and that. We miss the sharp contact and contrast of character so perfectly worked out among the different types of Greeks. There is no place in the later drama for such a conception as Alexander himself, the slow growth and development under our eyes of his many-sided character, with his strong resolve, his dreams, his daring hopes, his insane ambition, his thorough, practical manner of dealing with things as they pass, his slow-coming doubts, his wonder at the world, at his own mission in it, and at the unseen power that rules them both from somewhere. Indeed, we cannot call to mind a like conception to this in any drama.
The reason for the absence of such features as these is plain. In the one case the poet was freer to follow the workings of his own imagination; in the other he is more closely bound down to history, to facts, to the very words often spoken by his characters. And how thoroughly he has studied his subject may be seen in the preface to the drama, which is an admirable,
though condensed, history of the whole struggle between St. Thomas and Henry II. But in compensation for what we miss we find a robustness, an off-hand freedom betokening real strength, a truth and naturalness of coloring, a noble manner of dealing with noble things, a straightforward honesty that winks at no faults, on whichever side they lie, a boldness and vigor that never flag from the first line to the last. There is less art than in the other, but much more of nature’s happy freedom. Moreover, the interest of the drama is none the less really of to-day because it represents men who lived and events which occurred seven centuries ago. Has this century seen no Henries or his like? Who shall say that we have no Beckets? Are there no men to-day ready to stand up in the face of princes calling themselves Christian, to risk land and life and all they have in the cause of Christ, at the same time that they obey their princes, be they Catholic or non-Catholic, “saving their order” and “saving God’s honor”?
The whole world makes sad reply. And though in these scientific days it is not the fashion to dash the brains of God’s priests out in the sanctuary, a method equally effectual is adopted to quench, if possible, the spirit within them. They are drained of such means as belong to their offices by fine upon fine; every effort is made to compel them, as was the case with St. Thomas, to betray their trust, to recognize rebellious, apostate, and recreant priests. And at length, when there is not a penny left, they are either driven into exile, as was St. Thomas, or cast into prisons where their martyrdom consists of a thousand petty insults and deprivations,
and where, to take up recent examples, they are regaled on soup which is scientifically bad. After all, does there not seem something more magnanimous in the fierce brutality of the Plantagenet and his men?
The whole drama of Thomas à Becket turns on the struggle between the archbishop and the king, and there is no hesitation on the author’s part in deciding which side to take in the contest. Mr. de Vere has certainly the courage of his convictions, and he is bold in their expression in days when St. Thomas is still regarded by the great majority of English readers as a mischievous and meddlesome prelate who courted, if he did not richly deserve, his fate. Let us, with Mr. de Vere’s permission, picture to ourselves a moment his lost opportunity of making himself infamously famous. Had he, with his great gifts and acknowledged place in the ranks of literati, only taken the other side; had he painted St. Thomas according to the orthodox Protestant reading, how his book would have been devoured, and what reviews written of it down all the line of the anti-Catholic army of writers! What comfort Mr. Gladstone would have found in such a convert in his next tilt with the Rock! Were it not a thing simply natural in any honorable man to adhere to the side of truth, and, more, to satisfy himself of the truth where doubts were raised, we should call it noble in Mr. de Vere thus to spurn the example of so many gifted writers of his time whose great ambition seems to be to pander to the vices around them. Indeed, not the least interest attached to this drama lies in the treatment, by a calm, poetic, yet deeply philosophic mind, of the
momentous struggle which it portrays—the struggle ever old yet ever new between church and state.
The drama is in five acts. The first opens at Westminster with the election of Thomas to the primacy, embraces his resignation of the chancellorship and first rupture with the king, and ends beautifully and solemnly with his consecration as Archbishop of Canterbury. This act is very interesting. It plunges at once in medias res. Not a line is wasted, and so natural is the coloring that one lives and moves among the men of long ago as completely as in Shakspere. Becket’s friends and foes come and go, and have their say about the new prelate and his appointment to the “Rome of the North.” Naturally, the appointment to such a see still filled men’s minds while the memory of Anselm lived,
“Stretching from exile a lean, threatening arm”
against the first Henry. It is plain from the start that Becket’s mitre is not to be wreathed with roses. Even were the king a tamer soul, the new archbishop leaves enemies behind him—time-serving prelates who hate an honest man, others who envy him his place, nobles, knights, and rascals who have felt his strong hand while chancellor. The scene shifts to Normandy and shows us Henry’s court at Rouen, presided over by his perfidious and vicious queen, Eleanor, whose bitter tongue ever fans the flames that threaten Becket, whom she hates. Here we see Henry at his best, when, as he thinks, all is going well with his scheme.
“Thomas, Archbishop—
That hand which holds the seal, wielding the staff—
The feud of Crown and Church henceforth is past.
… Henceforth I rule!
None shares with me my realms.”
Here we have, too, a thrilling picture of his wrath when this pleasant scheme is at once knocked to pieces by Becket’s resignation of the chancellorship. And now the fight begins.
In the second act come up the memorable scenes at Northampton with the question of the “Royal Customs.” In these trying scenes, where king and prelate enter the lists against each other, the dramatist has exhibited a power worthy the occasion, and, to our thinking, they are the finest in the drama. We can only glance at them and pass on. The forces are marshalled: on the one side the power of the king with the bandit nobles—for most of them were little else—and the craven prelates; on the other Becket, his oath, and his conscience. The scene between Becket and the bishops, where they strive to break down his resolution, is admirable, as showing the inner character of the man, the steadfast churchman, military half, who has not yet quite lost that outspoken scorn he used so freely while still in and of the world. His brief replies are full of negative meaning, and, when he does break forth, the scorn of the king is puny beside his words.
“My lords, have you said all? Then hear me speak.
I might be large to tell you, courtier prelates,
That if the Conqueror’s was an iron hand,
Not less ‘twas just. Oftenest it used aright
Its power usurped. It decked no idiot brow
With casual mitre: neither lodged in grasp
That, ague-stricken, scarce could hold its bribe,
The sceptres of the shepherds of Christ’s flock.”
And never were there nobler words than these:
“Bishops of England!
For many truths by you this day enforced,
Hear ye in turn but one. The church is God’s:
Lords, were it ours, then might we traffic with it;
At will make large its functions, or contract;
Serve it or sell; worship or crucify.
I say the church is God’s; for he beheld it,
His thought, ere time began; counted its bones,
Which in his book were writ. I say that he
From his own side in water and in blood
Gave birth to it on Calvary, and caught it,
Despite the nails, his bride, in his own arms.
I say that he, a Spirit of clear heat,
Lives in its frame, and cleanses with pure pain
His sacrificial precinct, but consumes
The chaff with other ardors. Lords, I know you.
* * * * *
To-day the heathen rage—I fear them not;
If fall I must, this hand, ere yet I fall,
Stretched from the bosom of a peaceful gown,
Above a troubled king and darkening realm,
Shall send God’s sentence forth. My lords, farewell.”
And surely Becket might have spoken this:
“My king I honor—honoring more my God;
My lords, they lie who brand mine honest fame
With fealty halved. With doubly-linked allegiance
He serves his king who serves him for God’s sake;
But who serves thus must serve his God o’er all.
I served him thus, and serve.”
But we could quote all this magnificent scene.
In the third act Becket escapes to France, visits the exiled pontiff at Sens, and finally takes refuge at Pontigny. The calm of this holy and peaceful abode seems to permeate this portion of the drama, offering a happy relief after the late fierce storms. There he abides, “musing on war with heart at peace,” and his spirit, without slackening in its strong purpose, grows insensibly calmer, milder, and more humble. From this dwelling he is driven forth by order of the king, only, as the king himself bitterly says, to “stand stronger than before.” The persecution is turning against the persecutor, who confesses in words Shakspere might have written:
“I have lit my camp-fires on a frozen flood,
Methinks the ice wears thin.”
But he is a man as full of device as resolution, and at his back are men still fuller of device. The plot thickens, and at last even Rome seems to fall from the archbishop, and give him over to the power of
his enemies. Something of the old fierce spirit leaps up, and Rome itself is not spared, until he is reminded by John of Salisbury, his tried and faithful friend, of the Pope that
“Who sits there
Sits on God’s tower, and further sees than we.”
Whereupon Becket breaks out into a speech full of beauty and of truth, which we regret our limited space forbids us to quote. At the end of it the two cardinals enter to endeavor to find a way for patching up a peace between the archbishop and the king. It must be borne in mind that in those days the church was in sore straits: the pope in exile at Sens; an anti-pope backed by all the power of the German emperor. As Cardinal Otho truly says:
“A mutinous world uplifts this day its front
Against Christ’s Vicar! Save this France and England,
I know not kingdom sound.”
And here was Becket, the champion of the church, doing, in the eyes of many, what best he could to drive England also into the enemy’s camp. All these circumstances render the intellectual and spiritual duel between the archbishop and the cardinals one of intense interest, which again confirms what we noted in Alexander the Great, that Mr. de Vere has the true dramatic instinct of bringing together at the right place and right time opposing elements. It is the clash of contraries that imparts greatest interest to a drama, and the right working of the conflict that shows the dramatist’s skill. The contrast between the plausible, keen, politic, Italian nature, as it would be called by some, of Cardinal William, and the straight, unbending, single-minded nature of Becket, who is so rooted
in his position that nothing but death could tear him from it, is perfect. The cardinal builds up a very strong case in a negative manner against the archbishop. He hints at mistakes on the latter’s part; he counsels yielding here and there, or rather puts it to Becket why such and such might not be instead of such and such. In fact, his Eminence shows himself a thorough diplomat in cases where the issue was not a duel to the death. It would be amusing, were it not something of a far higher order, to see how Becket, with a strong, straight sentence or two, cuts mercilessly, half scornfully, through the cardinal’s fine-spun webs one after the other as they appear, scarcely giving them time to rise. Cardinal William is at length nettled into breaking quite through the diplomatic ice, and bids the archbishop resign. Becket refuses to listen to any voice but that which proceeds from the chair of Peter, and with this the act closes.
The fourth act opens with a beautiful scene between the nun Idonea and the aged Empress Matilda, whose character, small part as it plays in the drama, seems to us one of the most finished of all. Henry is back in England, only to find
“All’s well; and then all’s ill: who wars on Becket
Hath January posting hard on May,
And night at ten o’ the morn.”
On the other hand, Becket, with half-prophetic eye, seems to see the beginning of the end. After each new struggle, each new humiliation, he rises greater because humbler, leaving the dross behind him. Here is his own estimate of himself:
“Once I was unjust.
The Holy Father sees as from a height;
I fight but on the plain: my time is short,
And in it much to expiate. I must act.
I strove for justice, and my mother’s honor;
For these at first. Now know I that God’s truth
Is linked with these as close as body and soul.”
How true is this we all know. It only required a Luther to make of Henry II. a Henry VIII., and he had not stood so long in doubt as did the latter. The plot deepens. What an admirable touch it is that shows him, when the gravest news arrives from England, falling back a moment on his happier days at hearing of a smart retort given by his old pupil, the youthful prince! At last the king and Becket are brought together, and again in this long, historic meeting Mr. de Vere rises fully and easily to the level of the event. The inner vein of deceit for which he was marked shows through the monarch’s speech, and once a lurid burst of passion flashes forth like lightning and as quickly disappears. This prolonged scene, at the end of which the mask is almost openly thrown off by the king, ends the act, and is a fitting preparation for the consummation which is to follow.
The fifth act opens with preparations for the return of the archbishop to England. His heart and those of his friends are filled with the gloomiest forebodings. Ill-rumors thicken around them. Becket himself, in a speech of wonderful beauty and pathos, describes the “sinking strange” at his heart as, standing still on the French coast, he looks towards England. It is the flesh asserting itself and gaining a momentary victory over the spirit. He sails at length, and history tells us how he was received. It was a matter of life or death to his foes. There was only one end to a contest with a man of his stamp—either submission on their part or death to him. The drama
hurries on towards the catastrophe. The queen fans the flame. As Lisieux says:
“Year by year
She urged his highness ‘gainst my lord the primate;
Of late she whets him with more complicate craft:
She knows that all she likes the king dislikes,
And feigns a laughing, new-born zeal for Becket,
To sting the royal spleen.”
The short scene in which the barbed words of the queen draw a contrast between Becket’s triumph and the king’s humiliation is one of the many dramatic gems set in this drama. So graphic is the scene as she rises on the throne, cup in hand, and cries:
“A toast, my lords! The London merchant’s son:
Once England’s primate—henceforth King of England!”
that we scarcely need Leicester to tell us:
“Behold her, Lisieux!
That smile is baleful as a winter beam
Streaking some cliff wreck-gorged; her hair and eyes
Send forth a glare half sunshine and half lightning.”
At last falls that memorable feast of St. Stephen, and the end comes.
“The man is changed. Seldom he speaks; his smile
Is like that smile upon a dead man’s face,
A mystery of sweetness.”
The saint is already looking beyond this world. Standing at the window, as we are told he stood, he looks out and beholds the ground robed in snow. Here is how his poet makes him speak of it:
“How fair, how still, that snowy world! The earth
Lies like a white rose under eyes of God;
May it send up a sweetness!”
What other poet in these days could give us so pure and perfect an image as that—a flower plucked, surely, from the paradise of poets? The sweetness is sent up. It rises from the martyr’s blood.
Such is an outline of this drama. The character, of course, on which
the attention fastens chiefly is that of Thomas à Becket, and we think that in the portrayal of this great character Mr. de Vere is as happy as in his Alexander. Becket is a very easy man to write about, but a most difficult one to set living and real before us. In him for a long time the layman and the clerk struggled for mastery. There is no possible doubt that up to the time of his elevation to the primacy he was a man who lived in, and to a very great extent of, the world. He rejoiced in pomp and pride, in large retinues, in splendid appointments, in ostentatious display. He was not at all averse to showing that the arm of the cleric could tilt a lance with the bravest knight. Yet through all the temptations of such a life as his he undoubtedly retained his purity of heart, a right sense of his true vocation, and an honesty of purpose that never swerved. Certain it is that, in procuring his appointment as primate, Henry thought he had, if not exactly a tool, a devoted friend and a sensible man, who would not forget the favors his monarch had showered on him, and would be troubled by no such nice scruples as vexed his predecessor, Anselm. Becket had shown himself to be a keen-eyed, resolute, active, honest minister, with no sordid touch in his nature, with an intense sense of duty to his king and country. Indeed, had he not been a Catholic cleric, in days when clerics lawfully assumed many a civil office, there can be little doubt that he would have been pronounced, even by Protestant historians, to be one of the best and truest English chancellors that ever held the seals.
At a day’s notice this man, by the express command and desire of the king, is sent back to his real
duty—the tending of Christ’s fold. He obeyed against his will, foreseeing already something of the issue. But the fashion of the world is not brushed off in a day, however changed may be the heart and conduct. To-day he is the gay and brilliant chancellor of England, highest in the favor of his king; to-morrow, primate of England, and appointed to that post, as he knew, to betray it. The man is not yet a saint—very far from it; and in his seizing of this character just as the robes of the world were falling from him and he had donned the livery of heaven; in his awakening to the new and tremendous responsibility that had fallen upon him; in the gradual taming of his fiery and impetuous spirit; in the struggle between personal love for his royal master, pity for the disasters necessarily brought upon the kingdom by his action, and his clear conception of duty throughout all; in the slow braying of this spirit in the mortar of affliction until speck by speck all the dross was shaken and cast out, and the whole man left clean and pure for the sacrifice—in all this Mr. de Vere has shown the skill of a great artist. The obvious temptation for a Catholic in treating such a theme was to make Becket a saint too soon. Mr. de Vere has not fallen into this mistake, and the result adds largely to the effect of the drama. Not till the very last scene do we feel that Becket lives already above this world, and only awaits his translation. The night before his death the flesh still urged flight when he knew that death was coming surely and swiftly. And when the curtain drops for the last time on that terrible scene of the outraged sanctuary and the murdered archbishop, then do we surely feel
that the spirit of a saint and martyr has flown to heaven.
The conception of Henry is almost equally good. The following picture of him will be remembered:
“Your king is sudden:
The tidings of his march and victory reach us
Like runners matched. That slender, sinewy frame,
That ardent eye, that swift, onstriding step,
Yet graceful as a tiger’s, foot descending
Silent but sure on the predestinate spot—
From signs like these looks forth the inward man.
Expect grave news ere long.”
Excellent foils to Becket and to each other are Becket’s two fast friends, John of Salisbury and Herbert of Bosham. The contrast between the two is well drawn by themselves:
“John of Salisbury. Herbert, you jar me with your ceaseless triumphs,
And hope ‘gainst hope. You are like a gold leaf dropped
From grove immortal of the church triumphant
To mock our church in storm! For manners’ sake,
I pray you, chafe at times. The floods are out!
I say the floods are out! This way and that
They come a-sweeping.
“Herbert.Wheresoe’er they sweep
The eye of God pursues them and controls:
That which they are to him, that only are they;
The rest is pictured storm.”
A mightier hand than Mr. de Vere’s might own so graphic a picture as this:
“Go where I might, except among the poor,
‘Twas all one huge conspiracy of error,
Conspiracy, and yet unconscious half;
For, though, beneath, there worked one plastic mind,
The surface seemed fortuitous concurrence,
One man the hook supplying, one the eye,
Here the false maxim, there the fact suborned,
This the mad hope, and that the grudge forgotten.
The lawyer wrote the falsehood in the dust
Of mouldering scrolls; with sighs the court-priest owned it;
The minstrel tossed it gaily from his strings;
The witling lisped it, and the soldier mouthed it.
These lies are thick as dust in March.”
And the “reptile press” had not yet come into being!
There is not a weak line in this drama. It will be welcomed by all Catholics as a glorious illumination
of the history which it pictures. Our boys should dwell on it in the schools. From no book can they gather a better idea of one of the most marked epochs in English history. It will, like Alexander the Great, bear reading and rereading, disclosing each time new beauties of thought and expression. Many of the speeches set one’s veins a-tingling, so vivid and real are they. The pictures of churchmen are a study. There is the prelate courtier, the prelate politician, the false ascetic, the blasphemous apostate, the timid prelate, who trembles between his conscience and his king. In striking contrast to these stand out Becket and his true men, while to and fro among the cleric gowns stalk the stalwart nobles, half-bandits, most of them, sick in turn of prelate and king. Mr. de Vere makes masterly use of these many opposite elements, groups, parts, and rearranges them with the highest dramatic effect.
The general tendency of English poetry in these days is downwards. It has gained nothing; it has lost much. It is least strong in its highest, the dramatic form. Without pretending to be at all dogmatic in mere literary criticism, we take this last statement to be indisputable. The failure, however, is not from lack of effort. There is surely some strange fascination about the drama. It would not be at all hazardous to say that nine out of every ten men with any literary pretensions, if they have not actually written dramas, have at least had the ambition and intention at some time or another to write them. What may be the precise reason for this general tendency towards that peculiar form of literature, unless it is that so very few succeed in it, we do not know, and do not
care to inquire just now. The unattainable, however, always possesses a strong fascination for aspiring minds; and as the dramatic literature of all countries is that which, though the least in quantity, has fastened itself most upon the hearts of the people, it is at least a worthy ambition which aims at this royal road to fame. The discovery of the North-west Passage has not been a more fatal lure to mariners than the drama to literary adventurers. Even men of approved position in other branches of literature, poets of fame, novelists whose names were household words, statesmen and philosophers, have failed at this last fortress that fame seems to hold only for her most favored sons. Here no art can win an entrance; the sweetest strains cannot charm the locks asunder, the profoundest thoughts cannot melt them. Nature and nature only holds the key.
A glance at a few of the writers of the century will reveal how true is this. Even Byron with his passionate soul, his strangely mixed nature, his bitterness and sweetness, his loftiness of thought and expression combined, his marvellous power over words, has written dramas which as poems are splendid, but as dramas wretched. Shelley was the only poet of his day who produced a really dramatic work, but its revolting subject unhappily removes it from clean hands. The lesser lights of our own day have each in turn attempted a like flight only to meet with disaster. Who thinks of Browning’s Strafford now? Who has cast a second glance at Swinburne’s Chastelard or Bothwell? Notwithstanding the “gush” with which it was at first hailed by some English critics, Tennyson’s Mary Tudor has fallen flat,
both on the stage and off it, and honest men have come to the conclusion that it rather detracts from than adds to the well-earned and well-worn fame of the author. The only good purpose it has served was to bring to light a real drama on the same subject by the father of the author whose latest work now claims our attention. Of that we shall have something to say at another time. Even that proverbial philosopher, Mr. Tupper, was seized with the inspiration in this centennial year of ours, and we heard something of a drama wherein George Washington was to figure as the hero, but it faded out of sight before it had well appeared. Sad to say, our own Longfellow’s Spanish Student, the only drama he ever published, happens to be about the worst of his productions. Mr. Disraeli even, in his wild youth, perpetrated a drama which was presented some years since at a second or third class London theatre, and, we believe, almost ruined the management. At all events it failed. And Bulwer Lytton’s best known drama is not one-fiftieth part as good as his poorest novel.
Bold then is the man who would tread this royal road which is strewn with so many a brave wreck. Rash the man who, with name and fame established, with the well-won laurels of a lifetime on his brow, would add a final and a crowning leaf plucked from this garden of death. Happy the man who, in face of the thousand dangers that beset his path, goes on his way boldly, grasps and holds the prize that a thousand of his fellows have missed. Mr. de Vere has won this prize. His dramas are dramas and nothing else. They are not verses stitched together without a purpose and a plan. They are not mere description;
they are instinct with act. We hope and believe that one who has accomplished so much and so well in so short a time may, as we do not doubt he can, do much more. The prizes to be won in this, to Mr. de Vere, new field are as many as the aspirants; but the winners are few. As Catholics we are proud of such a poet. As readers and observers we rejoice in these degenerate days at seeing so resolute a return to loftier thoughts and purer, to great conceptions, to real English, which is free at once from the affectation of the archaic and from the flimsy jingle that tries honest ears, to a right depicting of scenes and events that have stirred the world.
[210] St. Thomas of Canterbury. A Dramatic Poem. By Aubrey de Vere, author of Alexander the Great. London: Henry S. King & Co. 1876. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)