Just at this time our little anchor dropped on a fairy island. There was as much bustle on board as if we had discovered a new Columbia. We landed for a few minutes to enjoy a glorious view of the lake, to which this island was the centre, and explore a curious cave, which, according to tradition, had been the dwelling of some unsocial anchorite in Gothic days. The rocky walls of this cell were now inscribed with the names or initials of summer holiday visitors from provincial towns.
“See,” said the Painter, “how instinctive to man is the desire to leave some memorial of himself wherever he has been.”
“Do you acknowledge then,” said Tracey, “that the instinct which roused Joseph Higgins to carve on the rock, for the benefit of distant ages, the fact, that in the year 1837 he visited this spot in company with ‘Martha Brown,’ is but a family branch of the same instinct which makes genius desire to write its name on the ‘flammantia mœnia mundi?’”
“Perhaps,” replied the Painter, “the instinct is the same; but if it be so, that truth would not debase and vulgarise the yearning of genius—it would rather elevate and poetise the desire of Joseph Higgins.”
“Well answered,” said I. “Has any one present a knife that he will not mind blunting? if so, I should like to carve my name under that of Joseph Higgins. It is something to leave a trace of one’s whereabout twenty years hence, even in the rock of this lonely cave.”
Henry produced the knife, and I carved my name under that of Joseph Higgins, with the date, and these words—“A Summer Holiday.” “I have not had many holidays,” said I, “since I left school; let me preserve one from oblivion.” I passed the knife to Tracey.
“Nay,” said he, laughing, “I have no motive strong enough to induce me to take the trouble. I have no special holiday to record—my life is all holiday.”
We re-entered our vessel, and drifted along the lake—the Painter jotting down hints of scenery in his sketch-book, and Percival reading to us aloud from a volume of Robert Browning’s Poems which he had brought with him. He was a great admirer of that poet, and was bent upon making Clara share his own enthusiasm. Certainly he read well, and the poems he selected seemed in harmony with the scene; for there is in Robert Browning a certain freshness and freedom of music, and a certain suggestiveness of quiet thought reflected from natural images, which fit him to be read out of doors, in English landscapes, on summer days.
When we returned from our cruise, we found our rural banquet awaiting us. We were served under an awning suspended from the trunks of two mighty elms, whose branches overhung the water. Lady Gertrude had not exaggerated the culinary skill of the ci-devant housekeeper. What with the fish from the lake, various sorts, dressed in different ways, probably from receipts as old as the monastic days in which fresh-water fishes received the honours due to them—what with some excellent poultry, which, kept in that wild place, seemed to have acquired a finer flavour than farmyard coops bestow—and what with fruits, not rendered malefic by walls of pastry—the repast would have satisfied more refined epicures than we were. Cool, light, sparkling wines, innocent as those which Horace promised to Tyndaris, circled freely. All of us became mirthful, even Clara—all of us except Henry, who still looked as if he were wasting time; and the Painter, who became somewhat too seriously obtrusive of his art, and could with difficulty be kept from merging the whole conversation into criticisms on the landscape effects of Gainsborough contrasted with those of Claude.
After dinner we quietly settled ourselves to our several amusements—Lady Gertrude to some notable piece of female work. Clara, after playing us a few airs on her lute, possessed herself of Tracey’s volume of Browning, and pretended to read. The Painter flung himself on the grass, and contemplated with an artist’s eye the curves in the bank, and the lengthening shadows that crept over the still waters. Henry, ever restless, wandered away with a rod in his hand towards a distant gravelly creek, in which the old man at the lodge assured us he had seen perch of three pounds weight.