The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner — Volume 1

by Charles Dudley Warner

I did intend to insert here a little poem (as it is quite proper to do in an essay) on the south wind, composed by the Young Lady Staying With Us, beginning,—

"Out of a drifting southern cloud
My soul heard the night-bird cry,"

but it never got any farther than this. The Young Lady said it was exceedingly difficult to write the next two lines, because not only rhyme but meaning had to be procured. And this is true; anybody can write first lines, and that is probably the reason we have so many poems which seem to have been begun in just this way, that is, with a south-wind-longing without any thought in it, and it is very fortunate when there is not wind enough to finish them. This emotional poem, if I may so call it, was begun after Herbert went away. I liked it, and thought it was what is called "suggestive;" although I did not understand it, especially what the night-bird was; and I am afraid I hurt the Young Lady's feelings by asking her if she meant Herbert by the "night-bird,"—a very absurd suggestion about two unsentimental people. She said, "Nonsense;" but she afterwards told the Mistress that there were emotions that one could never put into words without the danger of being ridiculous; a profound truth. And yet I should not like to say that there is not a tender lonesomeness in love that can get comfort out of a night-bird in a cloud, if there be such a thing. Analysis is the death of sentiment.

But to return to the winds. Certain people impress us as the winds do. Mandeville never comes in that I do not feel a north-wind vigor and healthfulness in his cordial, sincere, hearty manner, and in his wholesome way of looking at things. The Parson, you would say, was the east wind, and only his intimates know that his peevishness is only a querulous humor. In the fair west wind I know the Mistress herself, full of hope, and always the first one to discover a bit of blue in a cloudy sky. It would not be just to apply what I have said of the south wind to any of our visitors, but it did blow a little while Herbert was here.

II

In point of pure enjoyment, with an intellectual sparkle in it, I suppose that no luxurious lounging on tropical isles set in tropical seas compares with the positive happiness one may have before a great woodfire (not two sticks laid crossways in a grate), with a veritable New England winter raging outside. In order to get the highest enjoyment, the faculties must be alert, and not be lulled into a mere recipient dullness. There are those who prefer a warm bath to a brisk walk in the inspiring air, where ten thousand keen influences minister to the sense of beauty and run along the excited nerves. There are, for instance, a sharpness of horizon outline and a delicacy of color on distant hills which are wanting in summer, and which convey to one rightly organized the keenest delight, and a refinement of enjoyment that is scarcely sensuous, not at all sentimental, and almost passing the intellectual line into the spiritual.

I was speaking to Mandeville about this, and he said that I was drawing it altogether too fine; that he experienced sensations of pleasure in being out in almost all weathers; that he rather liked to breast a north wind, and that there was a certain inspiration in sharp outlines and in a landscape in trim winter-quarters, with stripped trees, and, as it were, scudding through the season under bare poles; but that he must say that he preferred the weather in which he could sit on the fence by the wood-lot, with the spring sun on his back, and hear the stir of the leaves and the birds beginning their housekeeping.

A very pretty idea for Mandeville; and I fear he is getting to have private thoughts about the Young Lady. Mandeville naturally likes the robustness and sparkle of winter, and it has been a little suspicious to hear him express the hope that we shall have an early spring.

I wonder how many people there are in New England who know the glory and inspiration of a winter walk just before sunset, and that, too, not only on days of clear sky, when the west is aflame with a rosy color, which has no suggestion of languor or unsatisfied longing in it, but on dull days, when the sullen clouds hang about the horizon, full of threats of storm and the terrors of the gathering night. We are very busy with our own affairs, but there is always something going on out-doors worth looking at; and there is seldom an hour before sunset that has not some special attraction. And, besides, it puts one in the mood for the cheer and comfort of the open fire at home.

Probably if the people of New England could have a plebiscitum on their weather, they would vote against it, especially against winter. Almost no one speaks well of winter. And this suggests the idea that most people here were either born in the wrong place, or do not know what is best for them. I doubt if these grumblers would be any better satisfied, or would turn out as well, in the tropics. Everybody knows our virtues,—at least if they believe half we tell them,—and for delicate beauty, that rare plant, I should look among the girls of the New England hills as confidently as anywhere, and I have traveled as far south as New Jersey, and west of the Genesee Valley. Indeed, it would be easy to show that the parents of the pretty girls in the West emigrated from New England. And yet—such is the mystery of Providence—no one would expect that one of the sweetest and most delicate flowers that blooms, the trailing. arbutus, would blossom in this inhospitable climate, and peep forth from the edge of a snowbank at that.