A SILENT COURTSHIP.
Italian hotels of the old kind are a very pleasant remembrance to travellers from the north; they have the romance and the forlorn beauty which one expects to see, and few of the obtrusively modern arrangements called comforts. The new hotels that have arisen since the age of progress are very different, and not nearly so pleasant, even to the traveller with the most moderate expectations of the picturesque. The less-frequented towns inland have kept the old style of hostelry, as travel does not increase enough in their neighborhood to warrant the building of new-fashioned hotels; and though the palace floors and walls may be cold and look cheerless on a damp winter day, there are a hundred chances to one that no foreigner will be there to note down such an experience.
But Macchio, in the Umbrian Marches, once had a hotel more singular than almost any other. It had no name, such as even the most unmistakable palazzo generally puts on to show its present destination; it was called after the name of the old family whose stronghold it had once been; and as of this stronghold only one part was whole, the hotel was called “Torre Carpeggio.” It consisted, indeed, of a tower—that is, only the tower was whole, furnished, and usable; among some ruins of the rest of the building were a rude kitchen and stables, patched up with modern masonry not half so solid as the original, and some servants slept in the lofts above these apologies for “offices,” but the remarkable tower only was in good repair. The owner, a native of the place, and whose family had been for generations in the service of the Carpeggios, was an unsophisticated countryman of the old school, not at all like the exasperating landlord of city hotels, who has just begun to wake up to the dignity of his position and to experiment in his behavior towards his foreign guests. He was the real owner, having paid good money down for the castle; but he still called the last Carpeggio his young master, and loved him like his own son. This youth, like some of his remoter forefathers, was fond of learning, and, seeing no other means of securing an education and a start in life that should make something better out of him than a starveling noble of the Marches, had sold his inheritance to his old retainer, keeping back only one-third of the vintage produce as a small yearly income to fall back upon, and had gone to a German university, where even the most exacting of the professors considered him a modern Pico della Mirandola. The selling of his old ruined castle had brought down upon him the anger and contempt of neighbors of his own class, but he was indifferent to local opinion and despised the disguised meanness of too many of his neighbors. He had in reality passed through a severe struggle with his own prejudices before yielding to his better sense and parting with the shadow to pursue the substance.
If learning should ever bring him money, he meant to reclaim the old place, which in the meanwhile could not be in safer hands; but on this he did not reckon, and while he looked down on the sordid poverty that only prompted his neighbors to sell butter and milk, and take toll from visitors coming to see the faded frescos or old armor in their ruinous dwellings, he saw with very different eyes the probable future of another kind of poverty before him: the pittance and privations of a student’s lot, the obscure life of a professor or the uncertain one of a discoverer; but withal the glorious counterweight of intellectual life, the wealth of vigor and progress, and stimulated, restless thought, doubling and trebling his interests, and making akin to himself all the mental processes or achievements all over the world, which would come of a few years’ study and the sacrifice of his home. Far more patriotic and far more proud was this youth who sold his inheritance than the indignant vegetators around him, who all felt the honor of their order insulted by his unheard-of deed, and their country deprived of another son unworthy of her because he could see in Germany something more than a barbarous, hereditary tyrant and enemy!
So it came about that the good Salviani kept a hotel in Carpeggio tower, the walls of which had always been kept in good repair, and which was easily furnished, at no great expense, from the contents of various lumber-rooms and a little intelligent help from the local carpenter, who, like most Italians, had an intuitive understanding of the artistic. Tourists who had stopped here for a night or two; artists who had established their sketching headquarters here; Italians of some fortune who passed here on their way to their inland villeggiature; anglers and peddlers, friars, and even commercial travellers of various nations who had begun to experiment on the rural population hereabouts; pilgrims to the two neighboring shrines hardly known beyond twenty miles around, and yet the boast of the neighborhood for nearly four hundred years; wine merchants from the next cities—these and many more could witness to the satisfactory way in which Salviani kept the only hotel in Macchio. And of course his prices were moderate—indeed, to a foreigner they seemed absolutely ridiculous; and he always made it a point to give an Englishman or an American plenty of water, having found that by experience a salve to the fault-finding spirit, and his young master having also accustomed his old attendant to it by requiring it himself ever since his boyhood. Foreigners with a “turn” for antique furniture spent more time roaming the old chambers than they did eating at the landlord’s excellent, if strictly national, table (for Salviani, knowing that he was ignorant of foreign dishes, never attempted to drive away his guests by bad imitations). The tower was very high and uncommonly large in proportion; in fact, it reminded you rather of two Cecilia Metella tombs raised one above the other than of an ordinary tower; and it was oddly distributed within. A staircase wound in the centre of the building, communicating with the rooms on each tier by a circular corridor on which the doors opened; but from the third floor this staircase ceased, and from that to the fourth there was no access except from a winding stair within the thickness of the outer wall. The great stairs were of stone and uncarpeted, and in the corridor on which the doors of the rooms opened were placed at intervals pieces of furniture, such as chairs, tables, stands, bronzes, vases, marble cornices, things picturesque, but not always available for use, and many sadly injured and mutilated, yet forming such a collection as sent a thrill of envy to the heart of a few stray connoisseurs who had come across it and never been able to bring away even a specimen. Old Salviani had his superstitions, but, unlike his countrymen in general, he felt that these forbade him to sell anything belonging to the old family seat, especially to a foreigner.
One day two travellers stopped at the hotel, a mother and daughter—“English, of course,” said the landlord with a smile, as he saw their costume and independent air. The daughter was, equally of course, in evident and irrepressible raptures about everything she saw in the place, from the ruinous outhouses to the museum-like interior. Their own rooms on the first floor, large, marble-paved, and scantily but artistically furnished with the best preserved of the antique things, satisfied them only for a short time; they wanted to be shown over the whole house. The bedrooms were not quite in such good taste, they thought; and indeed, as Salviani was not perfect, here the “cloven foot” did appear, for a peddler had once beguiled him into buying some Nottingham lace curtains with which he disfigured one of the third-story rooms, and some cheap chintzes which he had made into curtains for some of the patched-up bedsteads. But as the two strangers went up through each corridor, looking down at the tier below and at the various beautiful things beside them, they forgot these blemishes in their delight at a sight so unusual as this large, inhabited, well-preserved tower. They had seen nothing like it and could never have imagined it. It had an air of dignity, of grandeur, of repose, and yet of connection with the present to which one is more accustomed in old English country-houses than in Italian palaces.
One of the rooms on the fourth tier was almost unfurnished, having only two dilapidated bedsteads, one very large and promiscuously heaped with bed-quilts of equal dilapidation, while the other, in the form of a cot, or child’s bed, was also much larger than such beds are made now. On this was thrown an old-fashioned but almost new black mantle trimmed with silk ribbon. This was the room afflicted with the Nottingham lace curtains, which were cleaner than seemed natural in such a room. The view hence was beautiful, and the young Englishwoman was moved to suggest that they should change their plans a little and stay here a few weeks, when she would endeavor to learn the language and would make a study of this tower-nest with the fine view. It would be so out of the way, and a few antique chairs and a table would be enough furniture to replace the beds, which could be put into the next room. The mother smiled; she was used to these sudden schemes growing up full-fledged out of any pleasant and suggestive-looking circumstances, but the landlord, seriously entering into the proposal, said he feared the other room was too small to hold the beds—certainly the big one, which could not be got through the door, and, in fact, did not take to pieces. This set the young girl to examining the bed, and suddenly she called her companions to notice a panel in the tall head-board, which reached nearly to the ceiling. It seemed movable, she said, and might she not try to find the spring? Did the signor know anything about it? Salviani turned rather pale and hastily crossed himself, muttering something in Italian; then, in bad French, attempted to explain to his guest that there was a story of a former Carpeggio who was said to have lived alone on this top story and to have been a wizard, but how long ago he could not tell, nor if the bed had been there then. The young girl insisted on getting to the bottom of the secret of the panel, which at last yielded, and revealed a space between itself and another room of which only a corner was visible, and a very small grated window high up in the wall. She scrambled through the panel opening, out into a lot of rubbish which filled the intervening space and covered the sloping floor several inches deep. The door into the other room was gone, or else there had never been one, and there were large hooks on either side of the gap, as if curtains might once have hung there. The floor was sunk much lower than this level—quite three feet—giving one the impression of a shallow well, so that there must have once been some movable way of descent. An old press or chest, with two drawers at the bottom, filled one corner, and on it was a faded piece of green silk, looking unmistakably part of a woman’s dress, and a beautiful, delicate ivory desk lying open, with many thin plates folding together like the leaves of a portfolio. The curious girl handled it with a sort of dread, yet eagerly and closely inspected it, leaving it afterwards in just the position in which she had found it. As she turned from it she gave a cry of surprise; a chair stood in the corner, half hidden by the press, and across the back of it hung a long lock of hair, brown and silky, now fluttering in the unaccustomed draught from the open panel. Suddenly the intruder was aware that the walls were covered with books but they were hidden behind a close, thin green wire netting, which had at first looked like the pattern of the wall. She eagerly called for a chair to stand on to examine them; the landlord handed her one through the door, and then for the first time, fascinated yet afraid, gazed into the room. Many were the voluble and simple exclamations he uttered; but he was evidently more concerned as to the risk of touching such uncanny things than pleased at the discovery of the energetic stranger. Meanwhile, she looked at the books, which filled up two sides of the room from floor to ceiling—they were a treasure, as she knew: old Italian and German books on theological and philosophical subjects; translations into Italian of some Elizabethan authors—these, perhaps, unique of their kind, and rarer than originals in either English or Italian; Italian translations of more modern English books; poetry, science, illuminated manuscripts, first editions of sixteenth-century printed books—the Italian ones, even those in black-letter, perfectly clear and legible to a tyro, while a few English books of a century later were not half so decipherable; a good many Greek and Latin books, but not so many as of the Italian and German; and a few Oriental manuscripts, chiefly Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac. In two places on the wall, which showed traces of a rough kind of painting as a background, were hung unframed Chinese landscapes on wood, and in other parts of the room old engravings, some plainly framed, some not, but pasted on to boards, and one or two unfinished etchings. The most interesting purported to be a head of St. Peter—not a conventional one, but a copy from some old painting, itself copied from a Byzantine fresco, and claiming to be—so said the quotation at the foot of the etching—a portrait of the apostle as he really was. The pedigree of the portrait, however, was the really interesting point, and this was minutely traced in the foot-note, added by one signing himself Andrea C., to the unfinished etching of the artist, who, it seems, had died while engaged on this work.
And here ends the part the strangers took in the affair; for they continued their journey to Ancona, and often in after-years, in their quiet English home between lake and rocky fell, wondered what became of the books of Torre Carpeggio. But the faithful Salviani had written to his young master at once, and Carpeggio returned a joyous answer, full of excitement and curiosity, promising a visit as soon as his means and his studies combined would allow of it. It was a year before he was able to come—a year during which he had changed and ripened, but which had left the old tower, and, indeed, the sleepy, beautiful old city, as unchanged as anything can be where human beings are being born, married, and buried in due season. Even this inevitable change, however, was neutralized by the firmly-grooved life which, as each generation grew up, it placidly inherited from the last and religiously carried out, undreaming of any other possibilities and ignorant even of its own dormant energies. This was before the commotions of the last twenty years, and there was not even a political ferment, much less an intellectual one, to disturb the even flow of things. One or two of the cathedral clergy had the reputation of being great scholars, and, indeed, had the right to be so looked upon, if by scholarship we understand the kind of knowledge which made the men of the Medici days fully the equals of the Oxford dons of only one generation ago; but that sort of scholarship harmonized well with the air of serene drowsiness that covered the picturesque and half-deserted old city. The old canons kept much to themselves, and studied in a dainty, desultory, solitary way, not extending the daintiness to dress or furniture, but keeping up an unconscious kind of picturesqueness which they chiefly owed to such details as velvet skull-caps and bits of stray carving, or an old and precious ivory crucifix or Cellini relic-case—things prized by them for their meaning rather than for their art-value.
To this quaint, quiet city Emilio Carpeggio came back, after a two years’ absence, a youth still—for he was only twenty—but a phenomenon, if any one had known what was passing in his brain. He found the state of things more deplorable than ever, now that he had had experience of a different lot; he had thought it hopeless enough before. Practical and far-seeing, he did not find a panacea in reckless political disturbances, and in impossible strivings to make citizens and statesmen out of his easy-going neighbors, so he was saved the loss of time that clogged the efforts of so many well-meaning men of his acquaintance abroad; individual mental activity was what he looked forward to as the thin edge of the wedge that should break up this spell of what he could not help looking upon as lamentable stagnation, however beautiful the disguise it wore.
His three months’ holiday came to an end, and he disappeared again, carrying off his treasures with him to Germany, where they became the wonder and envy of the professors. But such luck, after all, was only due, said the kindly old men, to one who had done so much to win knowledge.
There was one of these men, not nearly so old as the rest, the special teacher to whom Carpeggio had attached himself, who was the young man’s best friend. To him only the dreams and hopes and resolves of this concentrated young mind were made freely known; for, though young as regards most of the professors, Schlichter was like a father to the Italian student. He was only forty-two, and already had a European reputation in his own line—mining engineering. A year after Carpeggio came back from his visit to Italy his master received an invitation from a scientific society in England to give a course of lectures in London during the summer. He proposed to the young man to accompany him, telling him that there was no knowing what practical advantages might result from his visit to a country where you needed only energy to grasp success.
“But you forget the Mammon-worship of the English,” said Emilio, “of which you yourself have so scornfully told me, and that obscure young foreigners without interest are not likely to have a chance of showing off their energy. I think I had better stay and study here another year or two, instead of deliberately exposing myself to the vertigo of London.”
“Nonsense!” said Schlichter impatiently. “Society is not likely to dazzle us, or, indeed, take much notice of us; they know how to keep the streams separate, even if the fine ladies do play at a little pretty enthusiasm for science now and then. A lecture nowadays is only another excuse for a pretty toilette, a change from the breakfast and morning concert or the afternoon kettle-drum; but that does not imply a real, personal notice of the lecturer, or, indeed, of any other working-bee. But, seriously, I know some men in London who might help you, if they had a mind to do it. You know how many surveys and plans there are—always some new expedition to far-away places—and young men of brains are always useful, especially single men, who can leave home without regret or difficulty. You speak English and other useful modern languages, and you have every chance, I tell you, if you will only keep your eyes open. As for study, a man need never say he can find no time for it, however busy he is. If my evil genius had made me a merchant, I should have found time for study, and so will you, just as well as if you stayed at home. It is settled, is it not?”
So they went, and the lectures were given, and the little world of learned men which is the leaven of England met the two strangers heartily; but, as Schlichter had foretold, nothing very remarkable or very dazzling occurred to them, though, to be sure, the elder man kept a jealous eye on his young friend, as if he had fears or expectations of something happening. But Emilio calmly came and went, studied and saw sights, went to quiet family gatherings or to large parties which the uninitiated could not have distinguished from those of the charmed uppermost circle, and yet no one of the many girls he saw seemed to dwell in his thoughts more than courtesy required while he was in their presence. One day Schlichter told him that a friend of his had recommended him to a mine-owner as general overseer and agent of his underground property, and that he probably would have nothing to do but to step into the place. “You would rather have been tacked on at the tail of some South American expedition or Central African survey, I dare say,” he said; “but you had better take this and be thankful, Carpeggio. The country is wild and picturesque, I believe—Monmouthshire, just on the Welsh border—and you will be pretty much your own master. It only depends on you to go up higher; but still I would not have you forget the practical altogether. One must live, even if one does not run after money for its own sake, which you, at all events, are not likely to do.”
So Emilio was left alone in England, in a responsible if not very brilliant position, and faithfully did his work so as to gain his employer’s whole confidence and respect. The local society decidedly flattered the grave young overseer, whose title had over women the vague charm it always awakens in romantic or speculating Englishwomen, and was even not obnoxious to the men, whose practical minds forgave the “foreign bosh” for the sake of the man’s good English and modest, hard-working life. He was popular among the miners, and altogether, in his little sphere, supreme. But parties and picnics sadly wearied him, and he feared he was growing misanthropic (so he wrote to Schlichter), when his employer took a new turn and began to court the notice of guests for one of his newest mines, of which he made a pet and a show. Whenever he had people to see him he arranged a party for going to see the mine and its new improvements; it was to be a model, the machinery was carefully chosen on improved principles—in fact, the place became a local show. Strangers came, and the country people began to take pride in it, so that Carpeggio often had to escort fat dowagers, experienced flirts, fast young men, and statesmen on a short holiday, down the mine. The contrast between this and his old home among the vineyards of Umbria often made itself felt with strange vividness as he sat by these people in the large cage or basket, swinging up or down between the dark, damp, unfragrant walls of the shaft, he shouting one steady word to the men who held the ropes, and then quieting the half-sham tremors of a young lady, or smiling at the equally assumed carelessness of another whose part in the play was the reverse of the old-fashioned ingénue.[[7]]
It was the contrast between his old life in Germany, so true and still, and this English one, so full of froth and shifting scenes, that kept him from feeling the fascination of his new surroundings. Graver and graver he grew, as the wonder in his mind grew also, concerning the effect that all this whirl of unreality must have, in its different degrees, upon its victims. Were they all willing or passive ones? Did no one ever rebel against the mould? Did no woman’s heart and woman’s hopes strive against those worldly calculations which seemed to hedge in every family, from that of the half-starving village solicitor, and even that of the hard-working vicar, to that of his employer, and no doubt also of the squires and the marquis, whose two daughters had just been presented at court? Report said that one of these was very beautiful; it also added, wilful. But that probably meant only a spoilt child, not a woman with an individuality of her own.
One day Emilio was in the mine, making a sketch by the light of a lantern for an improvement that had just occurred to him, when he heard a noise not far off, and knew it to be the basket coming down the shaft. He was putting his papers together to go and see who had come, when he was met by one of the men smiling covertly, who told him that two young ladies had insisted on coming down with him as he returned from an ascent with a load of ore. They were alone, he said, and wore gray waterproof cloaks and rubber boots, which they said they had put on on purpose, meaning to go down the mine. He had begged them to wait till he brought the overseer to do them the honors. “As pretty as pictures,” said the man as Carpeggio moved off, “but evidently strangers to the place.” A solution at once darted to the young man’s mind, but he said nothing, and, when he got to the opening, he saw before him the great, dirty basket, and two laughing, fresh faces still inside, as the girls clung with ungloved hands to the ropes and peered out into the darkness beyond them.
“Allow me,” he said, as he offered one of them his hand. “I am afraid you will be disappointed in the very little there is to see, but I shall be happy to show you over the place.” The two girls seemed suddenly confused and answered only by letting him help them down. He led them on, and here and there explained something which was Greek to them. Presently one whispered to the other: “Why, Kate! he is a gentleman.” “Hush,” said the other in sudden alarm: “he will hear you.” And she immediately asked a question of their guide. When she found out that there was a lower level than the one they were on, she asked to go down at once, but Carpeggio gravely declined, on the plea of their being alone and his not wishing to take the responsibility if they should get wet through.
“No one need know,” said one of them. “We ran away on purpose, and there is just time to go down and get home for tea. Luncheon does not matter.”
“Forgive me, madam,” said the young man with a smile, “but I would rather not, and you can easily come again, with any one authorized to let you have your own way. I cannot in conscience allow it while you are alone.”
“It is no fun coming with a lot of old fogies, and in a carriage, and one’s best behavior, and so on,” said the spokeswoman; “is it, Kate?” The other blushed and hesitated, and at last said she thought it was best to give up the lower level and go home; yet she seemed just as full of life and fun as her companion, and had evidently enjoyed the escapade just as much. Carpeggio looked at her for a moment and led the way towards the basket. He went up with them and courteously bade them good-by at the mouth of the shaft. The younger one held out her hand and said: “You will tell us whom we have to thank, I hope?”
“Oh!” he said confusedly, glancing at the other and only seeing the outstretched hand just in time not to seem rude, “I am only the overseer.”
The other girl suddenly looked up and held out her hand to him, saying: “Thank you; I am sure you were right about going further down. And now we must say good-by.”
Carpeggio went down again to his interrupted drawing, but the face and name of “Kate” came between him and his work. He saw neither of the girls again for weeks, and carefully forbore to make any inquiries; the gossip of the men did not reach the society which might have twitted him with the visit of those unexpected explorers, and he kept his surmises to himself.
Yet the door had been opened, and he was no longer the same, though to outsiders no change was visible. Two months later there was a public ball in the county town—an occasion on which many persons meet officially on terms that are hardly kept up all the year round, but which yet offer opportunities of social glorification “warranted to keep” till the same time next year. This ball was to be followed the next night by another, given by the regiment; and though this was “by invitation,” it was practically nearly as public as the other. These gayeties greatly excited the small world of the mining district, and for the first time became of interest to Emilio, though he was angry and ashamed to acknowledge it to himself. His work was the only thing that did not suffer; as to his studies, they were interrupted, and even his calm gravity became absent-mindedness. He was one of the earliest guests present at the county ball, and watched the door eagerly for an hour at least before he was rewarded. Then came a large party, to whom the appointed ushers paid unusual attention, though the head of it seemed but a kindly middle-aged man, remarkable only for his geniality. Every one, however, knew the marquis by sight; Carpeggio, who did not, felt it was he before even the deference paid to him told him so. By his side were the two girls he had first seen in the mine-basket, now dressed in white ball-dresses, airy and commonplace, just the same society uniform as the three co-heiresses, the daughters of his own employer, but to him how different, how tender, how sacred! That is to say, Lady Katharine’s; for her pretty sister seemed an ordinary woman beside her.
And now began all the sweet, old-fashioned, foolish tumult of which bards and romancers weave their webs; the trembling and fear and joy and jealousy which Carpeggio had read of, but thought impossible in this century of sham excitements and masqueraded lives. He thought that she looked much more beautiful in her gray cloak and drooping black hat; but still “Kate” in any dress was a vision of heaven rather than a common mortal. As she came into the room, she looked anxiously around and saw him at once. She had expected to meet him here, then—both were conscious of it in that one look, and it seemed as if this blissful understanding between them were enough. The youth turned to do his duty by his employer’s three daughters and all the rest of his acquaintances, to whom, in the character of a “dancing man” as well as a good match, he was interesting; he spun off little courteous speeches, not untrue but commonplace, until he felt that he had satisfied natural expectations, and then he allowed himself a respite and gazed at the marquis’ youngest daughter. Towards supper time Carpeggio’s employer, proud of the great man’s courteous notice of him, suddenly bethought himself that an “Italian nobleman” in his wake might make the marquis respect his all-powerful purse the more, so he introduced his young overseer to the marquis with a flourish very unpleasant to the former and rather amusing to the latter. Emilio was struck with dumbness or confusion; his new acquaintance took compassion on him and led him up to his daughters, whose eyes had been for some time fixed upon him with breathless interest. As he shook hands with them the second time he was in an awkward bewilderment whether or no to allude to their former meeting; in fact, his usual indifference was wholly upset. Lady Katharine was equally silent; whether she shared his embarrassment he could not tell; but the other, Lady Anne, skilfully and with a latent, suppressed gleam of mischief in her eye, talked so as to cover his confusion and clear away the thorns that seemed to grow up between him and her sister. At last he had the courage to ask each of the girls for a dance, and this, together with a word in the cloak-room as he escorted them to their carriage, and the certainty of meeting them again at the military ball next night, was all that happened to feed the flame of a feeling he knew to be already beyond the bounds of reason.
Yet he did nothing to check this feeling; are not all lovers fatalists for the time being? Of course it was hopeless, insane, impossible—he could see it with the eyes of the world; but he also knew that it was true love, the ideal and pure love of Arcadia, the one thing which, whether realized or not, lifts men above conventional life and turns gold to dross. He also fancied that this love might be returned, and did not care to inquire further just now, when to be blind to details was to be happy. Besides, these were the first girls he had seen that had not lost their naturalness, and he wanted to watch and see if they could keep it in the atmosphere in which they lived. This was not quite an excuse; for the young cynic had really got to be a sharp observer of human nature, and had, like most such observers when young, hastily concocted one or two theories which he was now becoming anxious to test.
Nothing happened at the military ball more than the most uninterested spectator might see at any ball; and yet much happened, for Carpeggio met Kate and danced with her, and both, as if by mutual understanding, were very silent. Her sister, however, made up for this by chattering in the most meaningly meaningless way, and delighting the lovers by her tacit abetment of anything they might choose to think, say, or do. After these balls there was for a long time no more opportunity for meetings, and Emilio chafed against his fate, using the leisure time he had before spent in study for long walks to the marquis’ house—that is, as near as he dared go without danger of trespassing. Once or twice he was lucky enough to meet the girls on the highroad outside the park, and this he enjoyed indeed; the progress was quicker, though as silent as in the ball-room. Then once he met them out driving with their father, and on another occasion came upon them at a neighboring squire’s, where they were on a state visit. But all this made little outward difference, though he felt as if he no longer needed anything but a solemn pledge to change the inner certainty into an acknowledged fact. Lady Anne was evidently a thorough partisan, and her sister’s silence and looks told him all he wanted to know; yet he refrained from saying the word, and knew that she understood why he did so. The fact was, he trusted to Providence and his own power of shaping any opportunity sent him. The whole thing seemed to him wonderful and mysterious; and as it had begun, so doubtless would it be guided to a happy end.
One day his employer told him with much importance that he was going to bring a “very distinguished” party to see the mine, and afterwards to go through the works and see the melted ore pouring out from the furnaces, “as that always amused young people so.” The marquis was coming with his daughters and his only son from Eton, and a young friend, a cousin of his, Lord Ashley; then he would have one or two of the “best people” from the immediate neighborhood, and his own daughters, besides the son of a friend out in Australia, a Mr. Lawrence, whom Carpeggio had heard rumor speak of as a not unwelcome son-in-law in the eyes of the rich mine-owner. He wondered whether Lord Ashley might be destined by her father as a suitor for Kate; but the elder daughter would be more likely to be thought of first, besides being the prettier.
The day came, and with it the party, who arrived in the afternoon, picnicked in the adjoining woods, and then sauntered over to the shaft, where Emilio met them. Kate wore the same gray-water proof, and, as he took her hand to help her into the basket, he gave it the slightest pressure, with a look that spoke volumes. She was almost as grave as himself. I cannot describe all that went on during the inspection, which to all, save Mr. Lawrence and the marquis, was a pleasure party in disguise; for the former knew something of the subject from Australian experiences, and the latter was considering the question of renting, or himself working, a mine lately found on his own property. Technical questions, explanations, and discussions, between these two visitors and the owner and overseer took up the time, while the young ladies, Lord Ashley, and the jolly Eton boy, who was a counterpart of his livelier sister, laughed and joked like a mixed school in play-time. Carpeggio, however, kept his eye on Kate the whole time, and was comforted; for there was no fear of that nature being spoiled, though he thought with sorrow that it might be bruised and crushed. Suddenly, in the midst of a discussion, his ear caught an unaccustomed sound, and he turned pale for a moment, then bent forward composedly and whispered in his employer’s ear. The latter, after an almost imperceptible start, said briskly to his guests: “As it is near the hour for the furnaces to show off at their best, I think we had better be moving,” and led the way rather quickly to the shaft. Carpeggio contrived to get near Kate, whose silence showed how glad she was of the companionship, but he was preoccupied and anxious and spoke a few words absently. A loud noise was heard, seemingly not far away, and the visitors asked, “What is that?” while the master hurriedly said, “Oh! it is only a blast, but we must not be late for the furnaces; come,” and tried to marshal his guests closely together. Instinctively they obeyed and hurried forward; the marquis looked round for his children. Anne and the boy were near him, but Kate not to be seen. There was a corner to be turned, and she was just behind it, when another noise overhead was heard and Carpeggio rushed like the wind from behind the angle, carrying the girl in his arms. It was the work of a second; for as he set her on her feet by her father’s side, and almost against the basket, down came a huge fragment and all but blocked up the gallery behind them, falling on the spot where she might have been had she lingered another moment. Whether or not she had heard his passionate whisper, “My own,” as he gathered her suddenly in his arms and took that breathless rush, he could hardly tell, for she was dazed and half-unconscious when he set her down again. Her father thanked him by an emphatic shake of the hand and a look he treasured up in his soul; but there was no time for more, as the basket was hastily loaded with the girls and drawn up. As the signal came down that they were safe, the owner’s tongue was loosed, and he explained rapidly that something had happened on the second level (they were on the third) and shaken the rock below; he trusted nothing more would happen, but he must beg his guests to visit the works alone, as he must stop to see to the damage.
“No,” said the overseer, “think of your daughters’ anxiety, my dear sir; there is probably nothing very serious, and it is nearly time for the men to come up. I shall do very well alone.”
The marquis looked at him admiringly; he could not advise him to leave without doing his duty, yet he felt suddenly loath to have anything happen to the preserver of his daughter. After a short altercation the master consented to go up, provided Carpeggio would send for him, if necessary; and the basket came down again. As they reached the next level, where the overseer got out, they heard uncomfortable rumblings at intervals; and when they got out at the mouth of the shaft, where they met a good many of the men who had come up by another opening, they were very unlike a gala party. Kate was still there; they had wanted her, said the girls, to go in and rest in a cottage near by, but she insisted on waiting; and when she saw all but Carpeggio she only turned away in a hopeless, silent way that concerned her sister, who alone knew the cause. Anne immediately put questions that brought out the facts of the case; and as their host tried hard to put the party at their ease again by hastening to the furnaces under the sheds, she whispered: “Kate, do keep up, or there will be such a fuss.”
“Never fear,” said the girl; “and try and make them stay till we hear what has happened, Anne; I do not want to go home without knowing.”
It was nervous work for the master and the men who were tending the molten ore to conceal their anxiety. The beautiful white iron, flowing like etherealized lava, rushing out from the dark, oven-like furnaces and spreading into the little canals made ready for it, gave one a better idea of pure light than anything could do. The heat was intense, and the men opened the doors with immense long poles tipped with iron; the gradual darkening of the evening threw shadows about the place, and the streams of living light, that looked as the atmosphere of God’s throne might look, settled into their moulds, hardening and darkening into long, heavy, unlovely bars. A suppressed excitement was at work; groups of men came up every minute with contradictory reports as to the accident; women and children met them with wild questions or equally wild recognition; and the master repeatedly sent messages to the mouth of the shaft. At last, throwing by all pretence, he begged his guests to wait for news, and with Lawrence went back to the mine. More men were coming up—the last but five, he was told—and Mr. Carpeggio had said he thought he and his four mates could do all that was needed and come up before any mischief happened to them. The soil was loosening under the action of water, and to save the ore accumulated below, and which could not be hauled up in time, they had built a sort of wall across the gallery as well as the circumstances and the time would allow; Mr. Carpeggio had sent the men away as fast as he could spare them, and kept only four with him to finish, which was the most dangerous part of the business, as the water threatened them more and more.
“He sent all the married men up first, and asked the rest to volunteer as to who among them should stay, as he only wanted four,” said one of the men; “and I thought they would all have insisted upon staying, but he grew angry and said there was no time; so they agreed to draw lots.”
Another quarter of an hour’s suspense, and then a low, muttering sound that spread horror among the whispering multitude gathered at the mouth of the shaft. Some men went down to the first level, and soon came up with blank faces and whispered to the master: no sound but that of water was to be heard below, and fears for the safety of the workers were too confidently expressed. Nothing remained but to give orders for affording relief; the only comfort was that there had been no sign of the air becoming vitiated. Here the master’s experience was at fault, and he had to rely on that of some of the older men. “If Carpeggio had been here, he would have got the men out in two hours,” he asserted confidently; “but he must go and get himself mewed up there, and leave me no one to direct things—though I believe he can get himself out as quick as any of us can dig him out,” he said, with a half-laugh; and one of the men whispered to his neighbor:
“I do not wonder he sets such store by him; I had rather be down there myself than have him killed.”
At last it became certain, by signs which this faithful chronicler is not competent to explain technically, that the five men had been cut off behind a mass of rock and ore, and that it would take two days or more to get them out. Work was vigorously begun at once; relays of men went down to search, by making calls and rapping on the echoing walls, in which direction lay the least impenetrable of the obstacles between them and the sufferers; the pumps were set going and every one worked with a will. The news was received by the party at the works in a silence that marked their interest well, and the young men eagerly asked their host if they could be made of any service personally, while the marquis offered to send down some of his men to help, if more were wanted, and promised to send all he and his daughters could think of as useful to the imprisoned men when they should be brought out of their dangerous predicament. But as this accident refers only, so far as our tale is concerned, to the links between Emilio and Kate, we must pass over the hourly exciting work, the reports, the surmises, the visits and inspections of newspaper men and others, the telegrams and sympathy of people in high places, the details which accompany all such accidents, and which it takes a skilled hand to describe in words that would only make the expert laugh at the ambitious story-teller. Space also, and mercy on the feelings of practised novel-readers, make us hesitate to do more than hint at the state of mind of the girl whose dream of love and happiness hung in the balance for nearly five days. Only her sister guessed the whole, and skilfully managed to shield her from inconvenient notice and inquiry; and, indeed, the excitement of the time helped her in her work. The fifth day, towards evening, a messenger on horseback brought word of the safety of the men—all but one, who had died of exhaustion and hunger. Carpeggio and the rest had narrowly escaped drowning as well as starvation, but had nevertheless managed to help on his deliverers by working on his own side of the bed of earth and clearing away no small part (considering his disadvantages) of the embankment. The men had declared that but for him and his indomitable spirit, their suspense, and even their danger, would have increased tenfold; and, besides, he had contrived, by his efforts previous to the final falling in of earth and rushing in of water, to save a large portion of valuable ore which must otherwise have been either lost or much spoilt. He had been taken to his employer’s house, where the greatest care was bestowed on him, and the other men to their respective homes. The marquis resolved to go over the next day and inquire after him, and showed the greatest interest and anxiety about him; but Lady Anne shook her head as she said to her sister:
“He will do anything, Kate, for Mr. Carpeggio” (the young man had tacitly dropped his proper title for the time being), “except the one thing you want; and you know that, with me, the wish is far from being father to the thought in this matter.”
There was nothing to do but to wait, and then came the overseer’s recovery and first visit to the house of his love as a cherished guest, his silent look of longing and uncertainty, the gradual and still silent knitting together of a new and happier understanding than before, and finally the offer of the father to make him manager and part owner of the new mine on his own estate. The ownership he at once refused; but, as he could well manage the overseeing of the marquis’ colliery without prejudice to his first employer’s interests, he joyfully accepted the first part of the proposal. Then a cottage was pressed upon him, and this also he accepted, provided it was understood to form part of his salary. The old man was both pleased and nettled at his stiff independence; but when Anne reminded him that the circumstances of the case made this the only proper course, he forgot his vexation and heartily praised the manliness of his new employé.
Carpeggio was often at the house, and in fact grew to be as familiar a presence there as that of the inmates themselves, and still the silent bond went on, seemingly no nearer an outward solution, though the marquis’ favor visibly increased. The colliery prospered and brought in money, and the overseer carefully put by his salary and studied hard at night, till his name got to be first known, then respected, in the scientific world; and one day an official intimation was made to him that the third place on a mining survey expedition to South America was at his disposal. He had written to Schlichter constantly, and at last had made a clean breast of what he called his unspoken but not the less sealed engagement. The two girls had gone through two London seasons; Lord Ashley and Mr. Lawrence had become brothers-in-law by each marrying one of the trio who had so long expected to make a conquest of the overseer himself; and Carpeggio had enough to buy a large share in the concern of either of his two employers. Such was the state of affairs when the proposal of an American trip was made to him; if the survey was satisfactory, and a company formed in consequence, he would be out at least three years, with the chance of a permanent settlement as director of the works and sharer in the company. Both pecuniarily and scientifically a career was open to him, while at home there was success in all but love—nearly as certain. Schlichter strongly advised him to go; the marquis himself saw the thing as a thorough Englishman, and was willing to lose his right-hand man, as he called him, for the sake of this opening; Carpeggio saw the alluring chance of travel, adventure, the prestige of his possible return in a different character, the enlarged field which he could not help looking on as more tempting than success—equally solid, perhaps, but more humdrum—at his very elbow, and the glorious southern climate, like to, and yet more radiant than, the old home one to which he had been used as a boy among the vineyards of Umbria. He knew that Kate would follow him there gladly, as she would had he gone to the North Pole; but there was the intangible yet terribly real barrier. In everything but the weighty affair of mating he was held as Kate’s equal, and the equal of all whom he met at the marquis’ house; even in London, where he had once stayed with them a week, and gone into that society which was “their world,” he had been received in a way unexceptionally satisfactory; he was put on more than an equal footing with young Englishmen of good standing, but he knew that he shared with them the cruel, tacit exclusion from competition for first-class prizes. He was good enough to dance with, ride with, flirt with, and escort to her carriage the daughter of a duke; so were the many young fellows who made the bulk of the young society of the day; but there were preserves within preserves. The second sons, the young lawyers, the men in “marching” regiments, the naval cadets, the government clerks, and even the sons of admirals, clergymen, and men who had made their mark in the literary and scientific as well as the social world—all these were tacitly, courteously, but inexorably tabooed as regards marriage with their partners, friends, and entertainers. In fact, society had bound these youths over to “keep the peace,” while it encouraged every intimacy that was likely to lead to a breach of it. Carpeggio had lived long enough in England to be quite aware of this and to “know his own place” in the world; but he trusted to time and Kate’s faithfulness. He at last made up his mind to go to South America, and that without saying anything that would weigh Kate down with the knowledge of a secret to be withheld from her father; but he had likewise made up his mind to speak to the marquis on his return. He would be true to his employer, but could not afford to be false to himself; his own rights as a man were as present to his mind as the position and prejudices which he appreciated and tolerated in the person of a man so thoroughly gentlemanlike as his patron; and this compromise of a three years’ absence and silence seemed to him to honorably fulfil all the expectations that could be formed of him. He said good-by to the girls together in their father’s library, and the old man blessed him and bade him Godspeed in the heartiest fashion, almost with tears in his eyes; but of more tender and definite speech there was none. Who is there, however, but knows the delicate, intangible farewell, the firm promise conveyed by a pressure of the hand, and one long, frank, brave look, and all that true love knows how to say without breaking any other allegiance and without incurring the blame of secrecy?
So Emilio Carpeggio went and prospered, while Kate remained a beauty and a moderate heiress (she had half of her mother’s small fortune), courted and loved, and going through the weary old treadmill of London seasons and country “parties.” People wondered why she did not marry. Her sister did, and made a love-match, though there was no violent obstacle in the way, and the lover was perfectly acceptable as to station and fortune. She was lucky, also, in loving a man who had some brains to boast of. This unknown brother-in-law in after-times became a powerful lever in favor of Carpeggio’s suit; but long before the young engineer came back the kind, tender-hearted old marquis had found out his daughter’s secret, and after some time overcame his natural prejudices, and as generously agreed to Kate’s hopes as he had before vigorously opposed them. And yet all this was done while hardly a word was spoken; for if any courtship was emphatically a silent one, it was this. Everything came to be tacitly understood, and a few hand-pressures, a kiss, a smile, or a long look expressed the changes and chances of this simple love-story. At the end of three years the young man came home on a holiday, which he meant to employ in determining his fate. He had promised the new company to go back permanently and take charge of their interests as a resident, and many of the native members had shown themselves willing and eager to make him a countryman and a son-in-law. He went home, and saw the marquis the first evening of his stay, two hours after he got off the train. To his surprise, he found his request granted before he made it and his road made plain before him. The old man did not even ask him not to return to America. It is of little use to descant on his meeting with Kate and on his (literally) first spoken words of love. They told each other the truth—that is, that the moment they met in the mine, five years before, was the beginning of their love. They were married with all the pretty pastoral-feudal accessories of a country wedding in England, and spent their honeymoon in the old tower of Carpeggio, where the bride explored the library-room with great curiosity, and was charmed with the old-fashioned figures of the principal people of the town, whom she entertained in what was now again her husband’s own house.
Signor Salviani had built a pretty, villa-like hotel half a mile further, and was as proud on the day when his young master again took possession of the old tower as the bridegroom himself. From there Carpeggio went to his German friends, presented the famous Schlichter to his wife, and got his rough and fatherly congratulations on his choice, his perseverance, and his success. In three months the young couple set sail for their new home, where Carpeggio had sent the last orders needed to set up quickly the nest he had half-prepared already in anticipation of his visit to England. When they arrived, Kate found a lovely, fragile-looking, cool house, half-southern, half-northern, covered with vines which the natives still looked upon with distrust, but beautiful and luxuriant beyond measure (this was the oldest part of the house, the original lodge which the overseer had lived in when he first came), some rooms with white tile floors, and some partially covered with fancy mats of grass, while one or two rejoiced in small Turkey rugs, suggestive of home, yet not oppressively hot to look at. All his wife’s tastes had been remembered and gratified, and Carpeggio was rewarded by her telling him that if she had built and furnished the house herself, she could not have satisfied her own liking so thoroughly as he had done. One room was fitted up as their den (or, as the world called it, the library), and was as much as possible the exact counterpart of the room in Torre Carpeggio where the books and curiosities had been found. Of course the collection had been carefully transferred here. Years afterwards this place was the rallying-point of English and American society; travellers came to see it and its owners; its hospitality was the most perfect, generous, and delicate for a hundred miles around; no jealousies arose between its household and those of the natives; the mining company prospered, Carpeggio grew to be an authority even in German scientific circles, and a sort of paradise was once more realized. True, this kind of thing only happens once or twice in a century; but then it really does, so it is pardonable for a story-teller to choose the thousand-and-first couple for the hero and heroine of his tale.
CRIMINALS AND THEIR TREATMENT.[[8]]
The judicious management of the criminal classes is a question which has long occupied the serious consideration of legislators and social reformers throughout the civilized world; and though much of what has been said and written on the matter is visionary and based on imperfect data, the agitation of the question cannot but be productive of advantageous results. In pagan times penal laws were enacted chiefly with a view to the punishment of crime, and but little account was taken of the criminal. The Julian law and the Justinian Code and Pandects inherited this cruel and unchristian character, which attached itself to them for centuries even after the birth of our Saviour. The influence of Christianity was long powerless to mitigate the horrors of barbarous legislation. In vain did the bishops of the church protest against the atrocities which were everywhere practised on prisoners. So far from listening to these humane appeals, hard-hearted rulers exhausted their ingenuity in devising new modes of penal torture, while for the wretched culprit not a pitiful word went forth from royal or baronial legislative halls. Among the Romans treason was punished by crucifixion, the most cruel of deaths. The parricide was cast into the sea enclosed in a sack, with a cock, a viper, a dog, and a monkey as companions. The incendiary, by a sort of poetic retribution, was cast into the flames, while the perjurer was flung from the heights of Tarpeia’s rock. But the treatment of prisoners for debt was still more barbarous and quite out of proportion to the magnitude of the offence. The unfortunate being who could not meet the demands of his creditors was compelled to languish in a filthy dungeon for sixty days, during which time he was fed upon twelve ounces of rice daily and had to drag a fifteen-pound chain at every step. If, at the expiration of that time, the claim against him was still unsatisfied, he was delivered over to his obstinate and unrelenting creditors to be torn limb from limb as a symbol of the partition of his goods.
The severity of these provisions was somewhat softened in later times, but throughout the middle ages, and, indeed, down to the latter half of the eighteenth century, the same fierce and Draconian spirit pervaded all laws having reference to the punishment of crime. Vast numbers of prisoners, without distinction of age, sex, rank, or character of crime, used to be huddled together in wretched pens, where they rotted to death amid blasphemous and despairing shrieks. Spiritual comfort and advice were withheld from them; for it was a feature of these miserable laws to pursue their victims beyond the grave by a clause which stipulated that they should die “without benefit of clergy.”
Individual efforts here and there were not wanting to alleviate the sufferings of prisoners, and many a bright page of the martyrology grows brighter still with a recital of the noble sacrifices made by the saints of the church to ameliorate the condition of captives. St. Vincent de Paul, a voluntary inmate of the bagnes of Paris, teaching and encouraging his fellow-prisoners, was the prototype of Goldsmith’s kind-hearted Dr. Primrose, with the exception that the saint outdid in reality what the poet’s fancy merely pictured. Other saints, when prevented from offering relief at home, sold themselves into foreign servitude; and we read of their noble efforts to render at least endurable the acute sufferings of captives in Barbary, Tripoli, and Tunis.
But these spasmodic and unsystematic endeavors to better the condition of criminals were attended with no lasting good, and not till the serious labors of the noble Howard invited attention to the importance of the matter was public attention fully awakened. His visits to the prisons of the Continent of Europe, and his frequent appeals to the governments to introduce much-needed reforms and to redress palpable wrongs, enlisted the active sympathies of the wise and good. Then for the first time the doctrine which Montesquieu and Beccaria had so often admirably set forth in their writings was adopted in practice, and legislators and governments assumed as the basis of prison reform the principle that all punishment out of proportion to the crime is a wrong inflicted on the criminal. Advances at first were exceedingly slow, but the true impetus to prison reform was given and a new and higher social lode was struck.
While John Howard was yet engaged in the effort to solve the problem he had set before himself, a new science was springing into existence which was to lend to his labors the full promise of success. The value of statistics was but little understood and appreciated till the latter portion of the last century, and so imperfect in this respect had been the records of town, provincial, and national communities that history has keenly felt the loss of this important adjunct to her labors, and has been compelled to grope in darkness because the light of statistical information could not be had. Since this century set in, however, statistics have risen to the dignity of a science, and the truly valuable information they afford, the floods of light they have shed on all social matters, the service they have lent to medical science, to hygiene, to sanitary reforms, and above all to the prevalence of crime with its grades and surroundings, fully attest the sufficiency of its title.
Through statistics, then, we are placed in possession of the facts relating to crime and criminals, and facts alone can give the color of reason and good sense to all measures of reform, to all projects looking to the suppression of crime and the elevation of the criminal classes. Statisticians, therefore, whatever may be their theories, whatever their pet views about crime and criminals, deserve well of the community; for without their close and painstaking work the most ingenious theorist and the best-inclined philanthropist would be utterly at sea; for as Phidias could not have chiselled his unrivalled Zeus without the marble, neither can the most zealous reformer advance a foot without clear and well-tabulated statistics.
For this reason we bid especial welcome to the interesting monogram of Mr. Dugdale, which is a monument of patient and laborious exploration in a field of limited extent. It is evident that he did not set about his work in a dilettante spirit, but spared no effort and avoided no inconvenience—and his inconveniences must have been many—to ascertain the utmost minutiæ bearing on his topic. He has not contented himself with adhering to the methods of inquiry usually in vogue, but has added to the law of averages, which ordinary statistics supply, individual environments and histories which may be considered causative of general results, and as such are the key to common statistics.
“Statistics,” he says, “cumulate facts which have some prominent feature in common into categories that only display their static conditions or their relative proportions to other facts. Its reasoning on these is largely inferential. To be made complete it must be complemented by a parallel study of individual careers, tracing, link by link, the essential and the accidental elements of social movement which result in the sequence of social phenomena, the distribution of social growth and decay, and the tendency and direction of social differentiation. To socio-statics must be allied socio-dynamics. Among the notable objections to pure statistics in the present connection is the danger of mistaking coincidences for correlations and the grouping of causes which are not distributive.”
Thus, Mr. Dugdale recognizes as underlying the testimony of mere figures a variety of factors essentially modifying the inferences which the former, exclusively viewed, would justify us in drawing, and endeavors to catch the ever-shifting influences of individual temperament, age, and environment. Heredity and sex, being fixed, are covered by the ordinary methods of statistical compilation. But as environment is the most potent of the varying factors which determine a career of honesty or crime, so heredity may be regarded among the fixed causes as the most contributive of effect in the same direction. “Heredity and environment, then, are the parallels between which the whole question of crime and its treatment stretches, and the objective point is to determine how much of crime results from heredity, how much from environment.” It is to the solution of this rather complicated problem that Mr. Dugdale addresses himself; and when we say it is complicated we do not exaggerate, so that we may be pardoned if, at times, in the course of the sinuous meanderings the question must necessarily take, we find ourselves at variance with some of his conclusions. Heredity is of two sorts: 1, that which results from cognate traits transmitted by both parents; and, 2, that which exhibits the modification dependent on the infusion of strange blood. This distinction is important as bearing on the question of heredity in its tendency to perpetuate propensities. If consanguineous unions intensify and transmit types of character with any degree of constancy and uniformity, we are justified in conceding that heredity is a criminal factor quite independent of environments, and that its relation to the solution of the problem why crime is so prevalent cannot be ignored. Now, the test furnished by the infusion of strange blood will enable us to judge whether constancy and uniformity of types are confined to consanguineous unions or not; for if, the environments remaining the same, a change of type is induced by non-consanguinity, then to the admixture of fresh blood alone can we attribute change of type, and so we must again admit the importance of heredity in the study of the case, but only to the extent and within the limits we shall hereafter point out. Mr. Dugdale is of opinion that both heredity and environment play a very important part in the career of the criminal, and it is with the design of sustaining his opinion that he has given us the history of the “Jukes.” Before we deal further with his conclusions we will here present a brief summary of the facts as related by him.
The term “Jukes” is a sort of pseudonym very considerately intended to cloak the identity of members of the family who may now be engaged in honest pursuits. The family had its origin in the northern part of the State of New York, and has rendered the place notorious by the unbroken chain of crime which, link after link, binds the jail-bird of to-day with the jolly and easy-living “Max” of a century ago, who drank well, hunted well, and ended his days in the quiet enjoyment of animal peace. He certainly was more intent on hospitable cares and the gratification of his passing desires than on the welfare of his progeny; for no man ever left behind him a more serried array of criminal descendants whose name has become the synonym of every iniquity the tongue can utter or the mind conceive. This man had two sons, married to two out of six sisters whose reputation before marriage was bad. The eldest of the sisters is called “Ada Juke” for convenience’ sake, though in the county where the family lived her memory is unpleasantly embalmed as “Margaret, the mother of criminals.” Ada had given birth before her marriage to a male child, who was the father, grandfather, and great-grandfather of the distinctively criminal line of descendants. She afterwards married, and thus commingled in her person two generations exhibiting characteristics essentially peculiar to each, though they often bear leading features of resemblance. The sisters “Delia” and “Effie” married the two sons of Max, and in this way, though somewhat obscurely, Mr. Dugdale connects Max with the most criminal branch of the Jukes. We say somewhat obscurely; for the reader is first inclined to believe that Ada was married to one of Max’s sons, till on chart No. iv., page 49, he quite casually lights on the remark “Effie Juke married X——, brother to the man who married Delia Juke, and son of Max.” While acknowledging the inherent difficulty of a lucid arrangement of facts so complicated and bearing such manifold relations, we believe that a little more fulness of statement would lead to at least an easier understanding of Mr. Dugdale’s work. “Effie” became, through her marriage with the second son of Max, the ancestress of one of the distinctively pauperized branches of the family. The progeny of Delia inclined more to crime, and Ada thus became the parent stem whence both the criminal and pauperized army of the “Jukes” mainly sprang; for it is a circumstance deserving notice that, whereas the offspring of “Ada” before marriage founded the criminal line of the family, her offspring after marriage inclined rather to pauperism than to crime. So likewise in the case of “Effie,” whose known offspring was the result of marriage; we find few criminals, but nearly all paupers, among her descendants.
In the first chart Mr. Dugdale exhibits a detailed history of the illegitimate posterity of “Ada” throughout seven generations. The first legitimate consanguineous union in the family took place between the illegitimate son of “Ada” and a daughter of “Bell,” from which six children resulted. The branch is considered illegitimate, as far as “Ada” is concerned, so that Mr. Dugdale sets down each collateral branch as either legitimate or illegitimate, according to the legitimacy or illegitimacy of that child of the five sisters which stands at the head of the list. Now, glancing along the column of the third generation, or that exhibiting the six legitimate children of the illegitimate son of “Ada” and a legitimate daughter of “Bell,” we find their history to be as follows: The first, a male, lived to the age of seventy-five; was a man of bad character, though inclined at times to be industrious, and depended on out-door relief for the last twenty years of his life. The sisters and brothers of this man strongly resembled him in character, being all noted for their longevity, their propensity to steal, and their habitual licentiousness. They were, moreover, exceedingly indolent, with one exception, and were a constant burden on the township. It is unnecessary to trace out the history of these or of their descendants, except to present a few typical cases which will enable us to understand the conclusion arrived at by Mr. Dugdale.
The first son of “Ada,” just mentioned, married a non-relative of bad repute, by whom he had nine children. This woman died of syphilis; and it is well to note at what an early period this poisonous strain showed itself in this the illegitimate branch of “Ada’s” descendants. These nine children surpassed their father, their uncles, and their aunts in criminal propensity. They were especially more violent, were frequently imprisoned for assault and battery, and, though no more licentious than their father, were especially addicted to licentiousness in its grosser forms. They inherited the constitutional disease of which their mother died, and with it the penalty of an early death, the oldest having died at the age of fifty-one and the youngest at twenty-four. It will be observed that they were not so constantly dependent on out-door relief as the generation immediately preceding them; this fact being attributable to the greater violence of their temper, which induced them to acquire by robbery and theft the means of livelihood, while the others preferred to beg. One aunt of these nine—viz., the second sister of their father and fourth from him in birth—never married, but had four children by a non-relative; and, for a purpose soon to be understood, we will compare their career with that of their nine cousins, who, it must be remembered, were born in wedlock. These four were illegitimate all the way back to their grandmother, “Ada”; and if there be any force in the statement that prolonged illegitimacy has an influence in the formation of character, we here have an opportunity of verifying it. The first of these, a male, was arrested at the age of ten; was arraigned for burglary soon after, but acquitted; was indicted for murder in 1870, and, though believed to be guilty, was again acquitted; was in the county jail in 1870, and in 1874 was depending upon out-door relief. The second, a female, began to lead a loose life at an early age, which rapidly developed into a criminal one. The third, a male, was guilty of nearly every known crime, and at last accounts was undergoing a term of twenty years’ imprisonment in Sing Sing for burglary in the first degree. The fourth, also a male, died at the age of nineteen, after having spent three and a half years in Albany penitentiary. Thus, though the record of the nine cousins is not very flattering, the vicious proclivities of these four illegitimates are manifestly more marked and decided.
If we now turn to the chart exhibiting the posterity of the legitimate children of Ada Juke, we will find an order of things entirely different. The husband of “Ada” was lazy, while her paramour, on the contrary, was always industrious. Syphilis likewise showed itself at a still earlier period than in the illegitimate branch; for whereas this disease first appeared in the generation of the illegitimate line, Ada’s first child by marriage became a victim to it at an early age, and her two legitimate daughters are set down as harlots at an equally early age. Ada’s first child, a son, married after the poisoned taint had got into his blood, and transmitted the loathsome heritage to his eight children. The immediate descendants of these eight were for the most part blind, idiotic, and impotent, and those who were not so became the progenitors of a line of syphilitics down to the sixth generation. Moreover, the intermarriages between cousins were much more frequent along this line than in the illegitimate branch. It is a noteworthy fact that in this chart one of the “Juke” blood is, for the first and only time, set down as being a Catholic—the only time, indeed, that reference is made to the question of religion. Mr. Dugdale allows us to infer from this exceptional allusion that he found but one Catholic in this edifying family. We would recommend this fact to the consideration of our rural friends who think that chiefly in the metropolis abound the criminals, quorum pars maxima they believe to be Catholics. The first time these unco-pious people had the fierce light that beats upon a town turned upon themselves, the spectacle thus revealed is not over-pleasant. This en passant. Were we to examine the other statistical exhibits of Mr. Dugdale, we would find pretty nearly the same result made clear. Without, therefore, entering into details that are painful in character and difficult to keep constantly in view, we will give a summary of the conclusions which the detailment of facts seems to justify:
1. The lines of intermarriage of the Juke blood show a minimum of crime.
2. In the main, crime begins in the progeny where the Juke blood has married into X—— (non-Juke blood).
3. The illegitimate branches have chiefly married into X——.
4. The illegitimate branches produced a preponderance of crime.
5. The intermarried branches show a preponderance of pauperism.
6. The intermarried branches show a preponderance of females.
7. The illegitimate branches produced a preponderance of males.
8. The apparent anomaly presents itself that the illegitimate criminal branches show collateral branches which are honest and industrious.
We here find a most curious and interesting history and an epitome of conclusions which challenges serious consideration. That the family of the “Jukes” was more vicious than their neighbors whose surroundings were similar cannot be disputed, and the question arises, What was there peculiar and exceptional in their case that made the fact to be such? The habits of life of the immediate descendants of Max were bad in the extreme, but partly forced upon them by environments. These people dwelt in mud-built cabins, with but one apartment, which served all the purpose of a tenement. Here they slept and ate, and of course privacy was rendered entirely impossible. Decency and modesty were out of the question, and the anomaly of whole families utterly bereft of all regard for domestic morals began to exhibit itself. We will now lay down a fundamental principle, by the light of which we hope to be able to solve the knotty question of this intense perversity of a series of blood-related generations, and Mr. Dugdale himself will furnish the proofs.
Early impurity beyond all other causes warps the moral sense, blunts the delicacy of womanly modesty, dims the perception of the difference between right and wrong—in a word, is quickest to sear the conscience. Crimes of violence, crimes of any sort, which are not traceable to this origin are outbursts of momentary distemper; but impurity of the sort mentioned lays the foundation of an habitual aptitude to commit the worst crimes, as though the tendency to do so were inborn and natural. Let us examine the facts as exhibited in the history of the Jukes family. Throughout the six generations studied by Mr. Dugdale he found 162 marriageable women, including, as facts required him to do, some of very tender years. Of these 84 had lapsed from virtue at some time or other. This is an enormous percentage compared with the police returns of our most crowded seaboard cities. Among the Jukes women 52.40 per cent. were fallen women. In New York, London, Paris, and Liverpool the highest calculation does not exceed 1.80. If such was the moral status of the female portion of the family, it is not difficult to conceive what a low ebb morals among the males must have reached. The more closely we look into the facts recorded by Mr. Dugdale, the more irresistible becomes the conclusion that these moral pariahs yielded themselves up without restraint to every excess from the moment sexual life dawned upon them, and blushed not to commit crimes which do not bear mention. In the record of their lives we meet at every line expressions which brand these people as the modern representatives of the wicked ones who 3,700 years ago shrivelled in the fire of God’s anger on the plains of the Dead Sea. Indeed, the fact that the infamous practices which made the “Jukes” family notorious are the beginning of an utter loss of conscience has been long recognized by Catholic theologians, who, while admitting that loss of faith is a more serious loss than that of purity, contend that the latter is more degrading, more profoundly disturbs the moral nature of man, and speedily blinds him to the perception of every virtue. Many more facts might be adduced in support of this proposition, both from the pages of Mr. Dugdale and the various reports of our reformatory and punitive institutions, but what has been said will no doubt be deemed sufficient.
If, then, it be admitted that a corrupt life begun in early youth and continued for a long time is the broadest highroad to crime, it is interesting to enquire how far so-called criminal heredity is influenced by the transmission of impure propensities. It has become the fashion of late days to allow to hereditary influence a vast importance in the discussion and management of crime, so that there is danger even that the criminal will be led to look upon himself as naturally, and consequently unavoidably, vicious, and that society ought not to visit upon him the penalty of his misdeeds any more than it should punish the freaks of a madman. Dr. Henry Maudsley, in his recent work entitled Responsibility in Mental Disease, holds language startling enough to make every inmate of Sing Sing to-day regard himself as one against whom the grossest injustice had been done. He says:
“It is certain, however, that lunatics and criminals are as much manufactured articles as are steam-engines and calico-printing machines, only the processes of the organic manufactory are so complete that we are not able to follow them. They are neither accidents nor anomalies in the world, in the universe, but come by law and testify to causality; and it is the business of science to find out what the causes are and by what laws they work. There is nothing accidental, nothing supernatural, in the impulse to do right or in the impulse to do wrong—both come by inheritance or by education; and science can no more rest content with the explanation which attributes one to the grace of heaven and the other to the malice of the devil than it could rest content with the explanation of insanity as a possession by the devil. The few and imperfect investigations of the personal and family histories of criminals which have yet been made are sufficient to excite some serious reflections. One fact which is brought strongly out by these inquiries is that crime is often hereditary; that just as a man may inherit the stamp of the bodily features and characters of his parents, so he may also inherit the impress of their evil passions and propensities; of the true thief, as of the true poet, it may indeed be said that he is born, not made. That is what observation of the phenomena of hereditary [sic] would lead us to expect; and although certain theologians, who are prone to square the order of nature to their notions of what it should be, may repel such doctrine as the heritage of an immoral in place of a moral sense, they will in the end find it impossible in this matter, as they have done in other matters, to contend against facts.”
We have quoted the words of Dr. Maudsley at some length, in order to show to what unjustifiable lengths the recent advocates of heredity are inclined to go.
The argument employed by Dr. Maudsley is very weak—happily so, indeed; for were his conclusions correct man’s misdeeds would be neither punishable nor corrigible, any more than the blast of the tempest which strews the shore with wrecks and desolation. They would be the necessary outcome of his constitution. The trouble is that Dr. Maudsley pushes to excess a doctrine which has in it much that is true. We do not deny the doctrine of hereditary impulses; we know that some are more prone to evil than others, that the moral lineaments are often transmitted from parent to child to no less an extent than physical traits and resemblances; but we know that free will remains throughout, and that, no matter how strong the impulse to do a certain act may be, the power to resist is unquestionable. Habit and association may render the will practically powerless, but, unless a man has lost the attributes of his race, he never becomes absolutely irreclaimable. The allusion to grace and diabolical temptation is, to say the least, stupid. Dr. Maudsley knows as much about the matter, to all appearances, as the inhabitants of Patagonia. No theologian deserving the name ever asserted that man is swayed to good by grace alone, or equally moved to evil by the spirit of darkness, without any will-activity. The doctrine would be just as subversive of free-will and moral order as Dr. Maudsley’s, and consequently as absurd. The truth is that man’s will has been weakened by his fall (labefactata ac debilitata), is weaker in some than in others, but never becomes extinct, unless where the abnormal condition of insanity occurs. We regret that Mr. Dugdale accepts Dr. Maudsley as an authority and quotes approvingly the following words:
“Instead of mind being a wondrous entity, the independent source of power and self-sufficient cause of causes, an honest observation proves incontestably that it is the most dependent of all natural forces. It is the highest development of force, and to its existence all the lower natural forces are indispensably prerequisite.”
This is simply scientific jargon. It conveys no meaning, and in reality substitutes new and more obscure terms for old and well-understood ones. We are told to reject the “wondrous entity” mind, and to consider instead all so-called mental operations as the outcome of force. In a previous article[[9]] we pointed out the great diversity of meanings annexed to the word force, and proved that none of those who so glibly use it have a clear conception of what it signifies. Mr. Dugdale further accepts the recent materialistic doctrine of Hammond, Vogel, and the so-called modern school of physiologists, who make will a mere matter of cerebral activity and cell-development.
His system of psychology is exceedingly brief and meaningless, and invites the social reformer to deal with the criminal as the watchmaker would deal with a chronometer out of repair, or as a ship-calker would attend to a vessel that had felt and suffered from the hard buffets of the ocean. Now, while we utterly repudiate the doctrine which views the criminal as a mere machine, we do not wish to reject any doctrine or theory which facts sustain, and we accept the doctrine of heredity in the sense we shall shortly mention, and contend that the facts justify its acceptance to no further extent.
In the first place, most people of good sense will admit that environment is a far more potent criminal factor than heredity, and that the constant similarity of environments where heredity exists disqualifies the observer for ascertaining the exact extent to which the latter operates. The children of the vicious for the most part grow up amid the surroundings which made their parents bad, and no child born of the most depraved mother will fail to respond to healthful influences early brought into play, unless an obviously abnormal condition exists. The advocates of heredity in the ordinary sense point to the vast army of criminals propagated from one stock, and claim this to be an incontestable proof of their doctrine. But right in the way of this argument is the fact that it ignores similarity of environment, and that it overlooks the diversity of crimes. If the law of heredity were strictly as stated by many writers, then the burglar would beget children with burglarious instincts, the pickpocket ditto, and so throughout the whole range of crime. But nothing of this sort is the case. The vicious descendant of a sneak-thief is as likely to be a highwayman or a housebreaker as to follow the safer paternal pursuits. No special propensities to commit crime are transmitted, but appetites are transmitted, and appetites beget tendencies and habits. Now, the two appetites which prove to be of most frequent transmission are the erotic and the alcoholic. The erotic precedes the alcoholic, and, indeed, excites it to action. Mr. Dugdale says (p. 37): “The law shadowed forth by this scanty evidence is that licentiousness has preceded the use of ardent spirits, and caused a physical exhaustion that made stimulants grateful. In other words, that intemperance itself is only a secondary cause.” And again: “If this view should prove correct, one of the great points in the training of pauper and criminal children will be to pay special attention to sexual training.”
It would appear, then, from this that heredity chiefly affects the erotic appetite, and through it the entire character. The impure beget the impure, subject to improvement through grace and will-power, and, despite of changed environments, the diseased appetite of the progenitor is apt to assert itself in the descendant, though it is not, of course, so apparent in the matter of the erotic passion as in the alcoholic. These are the facts so far as they justify the view of crime as a neurosis. This conclusion, while harmonizing with the data of observation, renders the solution of the question, What shall we do with criminals? comparatively easy, and points to the best mode of treatment. Until society holds that the virtue of purity is at the bottom of public morality, and that the custom to look indulgently on the wicked courses of young men is essentially pernicious, we cannot hope to begin the work of reform on a sound basis. Corrumpere et corrumpi sœclum vocatur is as true to-day as eighteen hundred years ago, only now we call it “sowing wild oats.” And how is this change to be wrought? By education? Yes, by education, which develops man’s moral character—by that education which gives to the community a Christian scholar, and not a mere intellectual machine. Mr. Richard Vaux, ex-mayor of Philadelphia, who is a believer in Maudsley, and consequently an unsuspected authority, speaks in these significant terms:
“Without attempting to discuss the value of popular instruction for the youth, or to criticise any system of public or private education, we venture to assert that there are crimes which arise directly out of these influences, and which require knowledge so obtained to perpetrate. If the former suggestion be true, that the compression of the social forces induces to crime, then those offences which come from education are only the more easily forced into society by the possessed ability to commit such crimes. If facts warrant this suggestion, then education—meaning that instruction imparted by school-training—is an agent in developing crime-cause.... It is worthy of notice that a far larger number of offenders are recorded as having attended ‘public schools’ than those who ‘never went to school.’”[[10]]
This is a startling exhibit, upheld, it seems, by undeniable figures. Is it possible that the state is engaged in “developing crime-cause,” and that it is for this purpose oppressive school-taxes are imposed? Alas! it is too true. The majority of those who get a knowledge of the three “Rs” in our public schools come forth with no other knowledge. God is to them a distant echo, morality a sham, and they finish their education by gloating over the blood-curdling adventures of pirates and cracksmen in the pages of our weekly papers. Mr. Dugdale proposes some excellent means for the reclamation and reformation of the criminal, but they come tainted, and consequently much impaired, by his peculiar psychical theories. On page 48 he says:
“Now, this line of facts points to two main lessons: the value of labor as an element of reform, especially when we consider that the majority of the individuals of the Juke blood, when they work at all, are given to intermittent industries. The element of continuity is lacking in their character; enforced labor, in some cases, seems to have the effect of supplying this deficiency. But the fact, which is quite as important but less obvious, is that crime and honesty run in the lines of greatest vitality, and that the qualities which make contrivers of crime are substantially the same as will make men successful in honest pursuits.”
These remarks are full of significance and point unmistakably to the necessity of supplying work to the vicious. Hard work is the panacea for crime where healthful moral restraints are absent. The laborer expends will-force and muscular force on his work, and has no inclination for deeds of violence or criminal cunning. But how absurd it is to suppose that, as an educational process, its whole effect consists in the changed development of cerebral cells, and not, as is obviously true, in the fatigue which it engenders! Mr. Dugdale thus sets forth the philosophy of his educational scheme for the reformation of the criminal (p. 49):
“It must be clearly understood, and practically accepted, that the whole question of crime, vice, and pauperism rests strictly and fundamentally upon a physiological basis, and not upon a sentimental or a metaphysical one. These phenomena take place, not because there is any aberration in the laws of nature, but in consequence of the operation of these laws; because disease, because unsanitary conditions, because educational neglects, produce arrest of cerebral development at some point, so that the individual fails to meet the exigencies of civilization in which he finds himself placed, and that the cure for unbalanced lives is a training which will affect the cerebral tissue, producing a corresponding change of career.”
This is downright materialism, and is the result of Mr. Dugdale’s hasty acceptance of certain views put forward by a school of physiologists who imagine that their science is the measure of man in his totality. We admit that crime is closely connected with cerebral conditions, that the brain is the organ of manifestation which the mind employs, and that those manifestations are modified to a considerable extent by the condition of the organ. But this does not interfere with the character of the mind viewed as a distinct entity; indeed, it rather harmonizes with the facts as admitted by the universal sentiment of mankind. Mr. Dugdale makes a fatal mistake when he supposes that a changed cerebral state may be accompanied by a change in the moral character; for it is possible that a chemist may one day discover some substance or combination of substances which might supply the missing cells or stimulate the arrested growth. Man is not a machine; neither is he a mere physiological being. He is a rational animal, consisting of a soul and a body, two distinct substances hypostatically united; and until this truth is recognized no reform can be wrought in the ranks of the criminal classes by even greater men than Mr. Dugdale. If the “whole process of education is the building up of cerebral cells,” admonitions, instructions, and example are thrown away on the vicious. There is naught to do but to “build up cells” and stimulate “arrested cerebral development.” How false is this daily experience proves; for we know that a salutary change of prison discipline often converts brutal and hardened criminals into comparatively good men. Take as an instance what occurred in the Maison de Correction de Nîmes in 1839. This prison was in charge of certain political favorites who were fitter to be inmates than officials. Mismanagement reigned supreme, and the excesses committed by the prisoners can scarcely be believed. The most revolting crimes were done in broad daylight, not only with the connivance but at the instigation of the keepers. At last things had come to such a pass that the government was compelled to interfere, and, having expelled the unworthy men in charge, substituted for them a small band of Christian Brothers under the control of the late venerable Brother Facile, when an amazing change soon ensued. There was no question with the brothers of studying the increase of cerebral cells or stimulating arrested development. They changed the dietary for the better; they separated the most depraved from those younger in crime; they punished with discrimination; they encouraged good conduct by rewards; they set before the convict the example of self-sacrificing, laborious, and mortified lives; and in three weeks they converted this pandemonium into the model prison of France.
Can these facts be made to accord with the statement that the whole process of education is “building up of cerebral cells”? If Mr. Dugdale would substitute the term “moral faculties” for “cerebral cells,” he would theorize much more correctly and to better practical effect. Speaking of subjecting the growing criminal to a system of instruction resembling the Kindergarten, he says:
“The advantage of the Kindergarten rests in this: that it coherently trains the sense and awakens the spirit of accountability, building up cerebral tissue. It thus organizes new channels of activity through which vitality may spread itself for the advantage of the individual and the benefit of society, and concurrently endows each individual with a governing will.”
We agree with Mr. Dugdale that such a system of training is well calculated to bring about these results, but certainly not in the manner he indicates. Let us translate his language into that which correctly describes the process of improvement in the criminal, and we find it to be as follows:
Let the subject on whom we are to try the system of training in question be a boy of fourteen rescued from the purlieus of a large city. His education must be very elementary indeed. His intellectual faculties are to be treated according to their natural vigor or feebleness, but his moral faculties are especially to be moulded with care and watchfulness. He has been accustomed to gratify his evil passions and to yield to every propensity. The will, therefore, is the weakest of his faculties, and constant efforts must be made to strengthen it. With this view he should be frequently required to do things that are distasteful to him, beginning, of course, with what is easy and what might entail no discomfort on the ordinary boy. The will is thus gradually strengthened, both by this direct exercise and by the reaction upon it of the intellect, which is undergoing a concurrent training.
This is all that Mr. Dugdale means to convey when his words are translated into ordinary language. When he dismounts from his scientific hobby, however, he imparts counsel for the treatment of criminals which we heartily endorse. Thus, in speaking of industrial training, he says (p. 54): “The direct effect, therefore, of industrial training is to curb licentiousness, the secondary effect to decrease the craving for alcoholic stimulants and reduce the number of illegitimate children who will grow up uncared for.” He tells us that with the disappearance of log-huts and hovels—and, we might add, the reeking tenements of our cities—lubricity will also disappear. This is true to a great extent, but surely it is not all that is required. We might cultivate the æsthetic tastes to the utmost, we might have a population dwelling in palaces and lounging in luxurious booths, and be no better morally than those who, while enjoying those privileges, tolerated the mysteries of the Bona Dea and assisted at the abominations which have made the city of Paphos the synonym of every iniquity. All attempts at the reformation of our criminal classes without the instrumentality of religion will prove unavailing. You may “make clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but within you are full of rapine and uncleanliness.” These words will for ever hold true of those who inculcate and pretend to practise morality without religion. The attempt has often been made, and has as often signally failed, so that we regard the presentation of proof here superfluous. The student of the history of social philosophy is well aware of the truth of this principle, and none but the purblind or the unwilling fail to perceive it. Religion is the basis of morality, and morality the pivot of reform. Let the friends of the criminals recognize these fundamental truths, and they may then hope to make some progress in their work. Then it will be time to defend and demonstrate the merits of the congregate system of imprisonment; then we might with profit insist upon the proper classification of prisoners, the necessity of proportioning penalty to offence, and not blasting the lives of mere boys by sending them for twenty years to Sing Sing for a first offence, thus compelling them to consort with ruffians of the most hardened description during the period which should be the brightest of their lives. Then all those reforms which philanthropists are ever planning might be wisely introduced, but not till then can we hope for the millennium of true reform to dawn upon us.