her supple loveliness, some idea of which can be gauged from the
reproduction of Punter's famous portrait on page 74. Though painted at a
somewhat later date, this masterpiece still presents us with most of the
leading characteristics of its ravishing model. Note the eyes--the
dreamy, cognisant expression; glance at the pretty mouth and the dainty
ears. Her demeanour is obviously that of a meek and modest woman, but
Punter, with his true genius, has caught that glint of inward fire, that
fleeting look of shy mischief that earned for her the world-famous
nickname of "Winsome Sal."
It was when she was eighteen[11] that Destiny, with inhuman cunning,
caught up in his net the fragile ball of her life.
The handsome, devil-may-care Julius Fenchurch-Streete applied to Lord
Ffraddle for a secretaryship, which was ultimately granted to him.
Imagine the situation--this rake, this dark-eyed ne'er-do-well,
notorious all down Cheapside for his relentless dalliance with the fair,
placed in intimate proximity with one of England's most glorious
specimens of ripening womanhood. It was, Sheepmeadow writes, like the
meeting of flint and tinder--these two so widely different in the
essentials and yet so akin in their physical beauty. As was inevitable,
from the first they loved--he with the flaming passion of a hell-rake,
she with the sweet, appealing purity of one whose whole life had been
peculiarly virginal. There followed swiftly upon their ardent
confessions the determination to elope together. The night they bade
adieu to Ffraddle and all it held is well known to young and old of
every generation. They crept from their rooms at midnight and met at the
top of the grand staircase, down which they proceeded to crawl on all
fours. A few moments later they were on a sturdy mare, she riding
pillion, he riding anyhow. Not a sound had been heard, not a dog had
barked, not a bird had called. Once, Sheepmeadow informs us, Lady
Ffraddle turned over in her sleep.[12] Poor, unsuspecting mother! On and
on through the snow rode the feckless couple. Once Sarah rested her hand
lightly on her lover's arm. "Whither are we bound?" she inquired. "Only
the mare knows that," Julius replied, and in shaken silence they rode
on.
History is not very enlightening as to how long Julius Fenchurch-Streete
lived with Sarah Twig--poor Sarah, the bubble of her romance soon was to
be pricked. For three weeks they lived gloriously, radiantly, at the old
sign of "The Cod and Haddock" in Egham. "My heart is a pool of ecstasy,"
she wrote in her diary. Pitiful pool, so soon to be drained of its joy!
Then the storm-clouds gathered, the sun withdrew its gold. Julius rode
away--Sarah was alone, alone in Egham, her love unblessed by any sort of
church, no name for the child to come--a sorry, sorry plight. The buxom
proprietress of "The Cod and Haddock," little dreaming her real
identity, set her to work. Work! for those fair hands, those
inexpressibly filbert nails!
Was it the sudden relenting of malleable fate that caused the Merry
Monarch to come riding blithely through sleepy Egham, followed by his
equerry, Lord Francis Tunnell-Penge, and several of his suite? Halting
outside the inn, Bloodworthy relates that his Majesty was immediately
struck by a winsome face at an upper window. "Lud!" he cried
laconically, and dismounted, taking several dogs from his hat as he did
so, and one from his pocket; for he was devoted to animals, Bloodworthy
goes on to say, and often spent days stroking their soft ears
abstractedly. Then, seized by a sudden inspiration, he inquired of the
landlady as to whose was the face he had seen. In a trice the story was
told--the King waved his hand imperiously and took a pinch of snuff.
"Send her to me," he said.
When Sarah entered, all hot from her manual labours, Charles started to
his feet. Here was no scullion, no plaything of an idle hour. Here was
breeding, dignity and beauty. Ah! Beauty! Probably these cold shores
will never again shelter beauty like Sarah Twig's. On seeing the King
she curtsied low. He bowed with the stately elegance for which he was
famed.
"Your name?" he asked.
The glorious vision veiled her eyes.
"I have no name, sire--now." With these words, spoken from a heart
surcharged with bitterest sorrow, the poor woman swooned away.
"Lud!" remarked the King irritably, "the girl must have a name. You must
marry her, Francis--she shall be Lady Tunnell-Penge." Then the impulsive
monarch stooped, and, opening a locket on the unconscious woman's
breast, read the name Sarah in blue diamonds on an opaque background.
"But," he added softly under his breath, "I shall know her only as
'Winsome Sal'!"
Thus Sarah Twig, so nearly an outcast through her own girlish folly,
became possessor of a name honoured and even adored throughout England.
The first few years of her life at Court were more or less
uneventful--she saw little of her husband and lots of the King. He and
she used to wander along the river side, simply loaded with different
dogs. Whenever there were theatricals given, Sheepmeadow tells us, Sarah
invariably appeared as Diana or Minerva, preferring these parts on
account of their suitability to her youth and figure. All these events
took place long after Punter's portrait, though several others were done
latterly. Her wit and gaiety were of course world-famed, and her
political treatises are preserved to this day.[13]
On one dramatic occasion her brilliant political knowledge and presence
of mind were the means of saving England from turmoil or worse. Hearing
that the people were hungry and restless, Sarah rushed to the King.
"What's to do?" she cried breathlessly.
"God knows," replied Charles, adding "Lud!" as an afterthought. Then he
went on fondling the long silky ears of one of his lap-dogs with which
the room was strewn.
Heartbroken, Sarah left the room and rushed out of Whitehall as fast as
her legs could carry her, heeding not the jeers of the crowd. She made
for Tower Hill, from the summit of which she delivered her world-famous
political speech, ending with the stirring words, "Sift your corn
through sieves!"
How that speech sends a throb to one's heart--the defiance of it, the
subtlety of it, and yet the intense womanliness of it! The people
cheered her back to the palace. She went straight to the King's room--he
was feeding his dogs.
"I've saved England!" cried Sarah exultantly.
"Lud!" replied the King, and handed her some cat's-meat. No wonder women
loved him!
Incidents like these went to make up the multi-coloured mosaic of Sarah,
Lady Tunnell-Penge's life. Her children were many--Arthur, later on Lord
Crumpingfax; Muriel, later the Duchess of Dripp; and various others.
She died at the age of seventy-nine,[14] thus outliving her Royal
paramour. A beautiful life, a noble life, a gentle life--yet was there
something missing? Sometimes I gaze at her portrait and wonder.
JABEZ PUFFWATER
[Illustration: JABEZ PUFFWATER, OF OGGSVILLE, KENTUCKY]
Jabez Puffwater might have been so much physically, mentally and
publicly and has been so little any way that a tattered moral must hang
sadly upon the gaunt tree of his career.
He might have been many things--he might have been a successful
theatrical manager, or only an artistic one--he might have been a naval
commander, or a psychoanalyst, or a Christian Science healer--he might
have imparted to the United States Senate that infinitesimal something
which would probably have proved to be the greatest comfort, especially
in the cold weather.
If Mr. Belasco had not preferred Mr. David Warfield, Jabez Puffwater
might have made an enormous success in "The Return of Peter Grimm"--had
he but possessed an aptitude for histrionic achievement. He might have
sung at the Metropolitan year after year without ceasing if Miss
Geraldine Farrar had not taken an instantaneous dislike to him at
sight--and had he but possessed a flamboyant temperament and an
elementary knowledge of Puccini. In fact there is almost nothing he
couldn't have been if only Fate had but weaned him at the breast of
opportunity instead of ordaining his life drama to be played out in
lonely dignity in the drab but intensely political village of Oggsville,
Ken.
Oggsville, Ken. has been for many years a hotbed of occasionally
seditious, but always subtle intrigue, the constructive and progressive
policy of the upper part of the town, near the railway bridge, being in
direct opposition to the destructive statesmanship and constitutional
conventionality of the lower residential quarter embracing the
timber-yard, Elijah Square, and Aunt Martha's Soda Fountain. Naturally
Jabez Puffwater, whose modest store stood figuratively and literally at
the crossing of the ways, was always in a somewhat uncertain state of
mind as to which side he should ultimately pin his colours. Perhaps on
a Tuesday St. John Eddle, a staunch upholder of the C. and P.P., would
enter Jabez's store and hit him in the face because he'd sent a tin of
sardines to the Furdlehoe Mansion on the other side of the River. And
maybe on a Friday Moses Whortleberry, a leading light of the D. S. and
C. C. would belabour him with one of his own hams for daring to acquaint
old Hiram Holdit, the station master, with the result of the cocoa
coupon competition.
One thing stood out firmly amid the turmoil of Jabez's environment--and
that was his idealistic and almost fanatical admiration of the exploits
of Buffalo Bill as depicted on the screen and retailed in small
paper-bound books. Indeed so struck was he by the verve and virility of
this astounding man that he took to attiring his lower limbs--which
seldom showed above the counter--in the breeches, leggings, belt and
pistol so well known to all lovers of the limitless prairie. The
infinite pathos of Jabez Puffwater's blind devotion to one whom he had
never seen will not fail to strike home to the stoniest heart. The
tragedy of this man whose dauntless spirit so far outgrew his physical
appearance--being compelled to sell cheeses, hams, molasses, etc, in
order to live, is far more pitiful to me than the stern virginity of
Queen Elizabeth, or even the nose of Cyrano de Bergerac.
It was when Jabez Puffwater had just reached his forty-third birthday
that he first became seriously implicated in that political bombshell,
the Goodge-Keewee Treaty made out with masterful cunning by Albert
Goodge and Nicholas Keewee, with the sole motive of undermining the
transcontinental railroad system to a devastating degree. The various
reasons both for and against this daring policy are so excellently and
clearly put forward in Vernon Treeby's "When Southern Blood is Dripping"
that I will not attempt to go into it here. Enough that it caused an
unparalleled sensation in Oggsville, Ken. and was indirectly the means
of introducing into the heart of Jabez Puffwater the secret fear which
was destined to grow ever larger and larger until eventually its black
wings beat his battered soul into eternity. "The fear of a Black
Rising!" Jabez was undoubtedly a man of more than average courage but
after reading the Goodge-Keewee Treaty he went back to his store a
harassed man. What did it all mean? Nobody knew. Ah, God! If only Jabez
Puffwater had possessed the inspiring rhetoric of a Bernard Proon, or
the imposing presence of a Freddie Hooter, what a lot he could have
done. As it was he just went home--aching--yet withal as yet
subconsciously--for the ability to be of use in some way, the
opportunity of distinguishing himself and saving his beloved home town
from the awful effects of the fear that was fated from now onward to be
with him always--the dreaded Black Rising.
For many years after that fateful conference Jabez was to be seen every
evening seated outside his store with a horse pistol in his hand ever
pointed in the direction of the wooded hills to the Southward. Little
boys on their way home from school would throw mud at him, but he never
heeded them; little girls would make rude noises quite near him with
their rubber overshoes, but he ignored them utterly. I often wonder on
looking back what Douglas Bogtoe would have been had he but possessed
one half of Puffwater's concentrated repose. That celebrated appeal for
the Louisiana Canal installation would have been worded very differently
and as for his world-famed piscatorial argument with Olaf Campbell in
the Brooke Club--that would have probably been approached from an
entirely opposite angle.
To analyse and compare Bogtoe's electrical psychology with the
phlegmatic determination and boyish zeal of Puffwater would take, alas,
too long; so I will not seek to say more than that had the two widely
differentiated spirits but been combined within the same material
tissues--that a quainter nor a more peculiar juxtaposition of entities
it would have been hard to find, search where you may.
I try occasionally to picture to myself the lonely horror-stricken
nights Jabez Puffwater must have endured with that appalling fear always
crouching within him, egging him on towards the culminating tragedy of
his sad career.
There had been talk of a lynching in New Orleans and of a shooting in
Old Virginia and there were even whispers of a slapping in Alabama.
Jabez was priming his pistol one morning while he hastily scanned the
elevating disclosures--social and otherwise--of the New York American,
when a breathless woman rode up to the store on a tricycle. She
delivered a note to Jabez and waited while he read it.
"Come at once--am exceedingly ill--Aunt Topsy."
Jabez thought for a moment--then crushing down his rising apprehensions
he mounted his mare Buffalo Babs and made for the hills.
Ten miles there and ten miles back, and the fear always with him--the
fear of the Black Rising.
Many psychoanalysts have endeavoured to discover the exact motive for
Jabez Puffwater's sudden and unexpected slaying of his old Aunt
Topsy--whose coal-black arms had fondled him as a baby. Many theories
have been put forward, but none of them--with the exception, perhaps, of
Herman Pipper--possess the ring of truth. Pipper's deduction of the
circumstantial evidence is that it was all the outcome of a naughty
practical joke played by little Michael Drisher who appeared suddenly
during Jabez's interview with his Aunt and burst the awful news upon
them that there had been a fearful Black Rising in Oggsville, Ken. and
that debauch--murder--and worse were going on all over the globe.
"With a great cry," Pipper tells us, "Jabez smote his brow. 'At last!'
he moaned in deep anguish. 'At last it has come!' Then he turned, and
seizing a large milk bottle he battered the head of Aunt Topsy, crying
the while in the voice of a fanatic, 'For my home town! For my home
town! This is a just reprisal!!!' Then with a last look at the havoc he
had wrought he went out of the house and into the wilderness--"
Pipper's imaginative description ends too abruptly to be really
satisfactory; but one fact about the life of Jabez Puffwater will remain
emblazoned on America's history for time immemorial--that if he had only
possessed the rhetoric of a Proon--the presence of a Hooter--the
education of a Floop--the racial understanding of a Bogtoe and the
mentality of a Snurge--he would not only have proved himself invaluable
to the home constituency of Oggsville, Ken. but have been an entirely
different man altogether.
FURSTIN LIEBERWURST ZU SCHWEINEN-KALBER
[Illustration: GRETCHEN LIEBERWURST ZU SCHWEINEN-KALBER
_From the famous etching by Grobmeyer_]
How strange it seems that she of whom we write is dust and less than
dust below the fertile soil of her so beloved Prussia--Furstin
Lieberwurst zu Schweinen-Kalber! Can you not rise from the grave once
more to charm us with the magic of your voice? Are those deep, mellowed
tones, so sonorous and appealing, never to be heard again? Ah, me! Why,
indeed, should such divinity be so short lived? Who could play Juliet as
she could? Nobody! Her enemies laughed and said that her chronic
adenoids utterly destroyed all the beauty of the part. Jealousy! Vile
jealousy! Genius always has that to contend with. Every one has
failings. Gretchen Lieberwurst zu Schweinen-Kalber made of Juliet a
woman--a pulsating, human woman, with failings like the rest of us, the
chief of which happened to be adenoids.[15]
To trace this soul-stirring actress to her obscure birth has indeed been
a labour--but withal, a labour of love! For who could help experiencing
exquisite joy at unearthing trinkets and miniatures and broken memories
of such a radiant being?
Nuremburg, red-roofed and gleaming in the sunlight, was the place
wherein she first saw the light of day. Her father, Peter Schmidt, was
by trade a sausage-moulder, for in those far-off days there was not the
vast machinery of civilisation to wield the good meat into the requisite
shape. Gretchen, when a girl, often used to watch her father as he plied
his trade and recite to him verses she had learnt at her dame
school--fragments from the Teutonic masterpieces of the time--"Kruschen
Kruschen," and--
"Baby white and baby red,
Like a moon convulsive
Rolling up and down the bed,
Utterly repulsive!"--
a beautiful little lullaby of Herman Veigel's. Gretchen used to recite
it with the tears pouring down her cheeks, so poignantly affected was
she by the sensitive beauty of it. Her father also used to weep
hopelessly--also her mother, if she happened to be near; and Heinrich,
the cat, invariably retreated under the sofa, unutterably moved.
Life dragged on with some monotony for Gretchen. She often used to help
her mother in the kitchen--and occasionally in the sitting-room. One day
she became a woman! Every one noticed it. Neighbours used to meet her
mother in the _strasse_ and say, "Frau Schmidt, your Gretchen is a
woman." Frau Schmidt would nod proudly and reply, "Yes, we have seen
that; my Peter and I--we are very happy." Thus Gretchen left her
girlhood behind her. It was her habit, so Grundelheim tells us, to walk
out in the forest with one Hans Breitel, an actor at the municipal
theatre. He used to teach her to talk to the birds, and when she
besought him ardently to tell her stories of the theatre, he would
relate to her the parts he had nearly played. Gretchen's heart
thrilled--oh to be an actress, an actress! On her twenty-fourth birthday
von Bottiburgen[16] tells us, Gretchen left home, and went to Berlin.
She wanted to get an interview with Goethe. One day, after she had been
in Berlin a little while, she found him. Brampenrich describes the scene
for us, so beautifully and with such truly exquisite rotundity of
style:--
"The Great Goethe ate at his lunch. What was that noise? He swiftly put
down his knife: the door bursts open; Gretchen Schmidt enters, her
lovely hair awry, her cheeks flushed. 'I will act!' she cries in
bell-like tones. '_Ach, ach!_' cries Goethe. Then Gretchen, with a
superb gesture, hangs her hat on the door handle, and recites to the
amazed man his beloved 'Faust,' word for word, syllable for syllable!"
Thus Brampenrich shows us, with his supreme word imagery, what really
happened.
Gretchen never saw Goethe again; he left Berlin almost immediately for
the Black Forest. Gretchen, alone in the great capital, alone and a
woman, what could she do? Grundelheim, in his celebrated "Toilers who
have Toiled," relates how desperately hard she worked with her mangle in
the Konigstrasse. Then one day, when things seemed at their blackest,
Romance, with its multi-coloured finger, poked a hole in the bubble of
her existence. The King of Prussia drove along the Konigstrasse, bowing
to right and left. Gretchen stepped lightly over her mangle and dropped
a curtsey. The King was immediately captivated, and a few hours later
the happy girl found herself in the Royal Palace. After that events
moved rapidly. At the lax German Court Gretchen soon forgot her austere
upbringing, and entered into the round games and charades with untold
abandon! Alas! the fickle heart of the King was soon turned from her.
Realising this Gretchen seized upon a noble much enamoured of her, Furst
Lieberwurst zu Schweinen-Kalber, and married him one spring morning in
the Chapel Royal. For three months they lived together in the Austrian
Tyrol; then Gretchen, heeding at last the persistent call of her art,
left him, and fled back to Berlin, where she obtained an engagement to
play Juliet. It was from that moment that her real passion for her part
developed. It grew to be an obsession--she was feted, lauded, mentioned
in several public speeches. For sixty-five years she played it all over
Germany, never tiring, never weakening. People gibbered over her; then
came her tragic death at the age of ninety-two in the balcony scene. She
stumbled forward, Grundelheim says, then backward, then forward, then
backward again, and then forward for the last time. The balcony gave
way, and she fell at Romeo's feet (it was the great Fritz Schnotter,
with whom she had been playing for two years: in private life he was, of
course, her lover--she always insisted on that).
History tells us that he caught her in his arms--Bottiburgen contests
that he caught her in the middle of his chest; anyhow, the house is said
to have risen and cheered, thinking it was a new scene suddenly
interpolated. Then the curtain slowly fell, and they realised the
truth--they would never see their idolised Gretchen again.
In passing, it would perhaps be as well to mention some of the famous
Romeos who played opposite this bewitcher of all sexes. There was
Reginald Bug, a young Englishman, who loved her passionately for a few
years; then the renowned Pierre Dentifrice from the Comedie Francaise;
then Angelo Carlini, and Basto Caballero (founder of the Shakespearean
Theatre in Barcelona); then Dimitri Chuggski, a very temperamental,
highly strung Russian (it is in Volume VIII. of Edgar Sheepmeadow's
"Beds and their Inmates" that he relates the story of Chuggski's
desertion of Gretchen; he contends that he left her because she always
slept with her mouth open).
Her last and most famous lover on and off the stage was the
aforementioned Fritz Schnotter; he is treated lavishly in three volumes
of Bottiburgen.
Her portrait on page 100 is a reproduction of Grobmeyer's etching. The
original could formerly be viewed, I believe, by applying to the Kaiser
for permission and paying 18,000 marks.
JAKE D'ANNUNZIO SPOUT
[Illustration: JAKE D'ANNUNZIO SPOUT, WORLD-FAMED WRITER]
Why is it that to some are vouchsafed such supreme gifts while other
have perforce to drag out their lives in the hideous monotony of offices
and banks and the like?