take a wife out of his proper sphere; and to hint that if he marries
against our will, her husband will be a beggar. The fact of her
withholding her consent to marry him until we approve of her, shows me
she is quite able to look after her own interests.’
Mr Abbot, who knew his wife’s skill in social diplomacy, offered no
valid objections; so the horses were ordered, and Mrs Abbot drove to
Clifton.
The mistress of Chewton Hall was a woman of about fifty-five; tall and
stately, noticeably but not attractively handsome. Rising in intellect
far above the level of the family into which she had married, she had
started by endeavouring to mould her husband’s mind to the capacities
of her own. In the early days of their married life, she had urged him
unceasingly to strive for a higher position in the world than that of
a mere country gentleman. She wished him to enter the political arena;
to contest a borough; in fact, to change his way of living entirely.
But she found the task a hopeless one. A docile husband in most things,
nothing could move William Abbot from the easy groove in which his
forefathers had always placidly slidden. The husband and wife were of
very different natures. Perhaps the only common ground between them
was their family pride and the sense of their importance. Yet while
the gentleman was quite contented with the latter as it now stood, and
always had stood, the lady was ambitious, and wished to augment it.
But her efforts were of no avail; so at last, with a feeling touching
dangerously near to contempt, she gave up attempting to sway her
husband in this direction, and centred all her hopes in her only son,
on whom she flattered herself she had bestowed some of her superior
intellect. He should play an important part in the world. At the first
opportunity, he should enter parliament, become a distinguished member
of society, and, so far as possible, satisfy her ambition. Of course
he must marry, but his marriage should be one to strengthen his hands
both by wealth and connections. Now that he was on the threshold of
man’s estate, she had turned her serious attention to this subject, and
had for some time been considering what heiresses she knew who were
worthy of picking up the handkerchief which she meant to let fall on
his behalf. She had postponed her decision until his return from the
contemplated tour. Then she would broach the subject of an advantageous
matrimonial alliance to him. By broaching the subject, Mrs Abbot meant
laying her commands upon her son to wed the lady she had chosen for him.
As she drove along the twelve miles of road to Clifton, and reflected
on all these things, is it any wonder that her frame of mind was an
unpleasant one; that her eyes grew hard, and she felt little disposed
to be merciful to the owner of that pretty face which threatened to
come between her and the cherished schemes of years?
The carriage stopped at the address given her by her son—a quiet
little house in a quiet little street, where the arrival of so grand
an equipage and so fine a pair of horses was an event of sufficient
rarity to make many windows open, and maid-servants, even mistresses,
crane out and wonder what it meant. Mrs Abbot, having ascertained that
Miss Keene was at home, and having made known her wish to see her, was
shown into a room plainly but not untastefully furnished. A piano,
an unfinished drawing, some dainty embroidery, gave evidence of more
refinement than Mrs Abbot expected, or, to tell the truth, hoped to
find in her enemy’s surroundings. A bunch of flowers, artistically
arranged, was in a glass vase on the table; and the visitor felt more
angry and bitter than before, as she recognised many a choice orchid,
and knew by this token that the Chewton hothouses had been robbed for
Miss Keene’s sake. Mrs Abbot tapped her foot impatiently as she awaited
the moment when her youthful enemy should appear and be satisfactorily
crushed.
The mistress of Chewton-Abbot had somehow conceived the idea that the
girl who had won her son’s heart was of a dollish style of beauty.
She may have jumped at this conclusion from the memories of her own
young days, when she found the heart of man was more susceptible to
attractions of this type than to those of her own severer charms.
Pretty enough, after a fashion, she expected to find the girl, but
quite crushable and pliant between her clever and experienced hands.
She had no reason for this impression. She had coldly declined to
look at the portrait which her son, that morning, had wished to show
her. Having formed her own ideal of her would-be successor at Chewton
Hall, she regulated her actions accordingly. Her plan was to begin by
striking terror into the foe. She wished no deception; the amenities of
social warfare might be dispensed with on this occasion. Knowing the
advantage usually gained by a sudden and unexpected attack, she had not
revealed her name. She simply desired the servant to announce a lady to
see Miss Keene.
Hearing a light step approaching the door, Mrs Abbot drew herself up to
her full height and assumed the most majestic attitude she could. It
was as one may imagine a fine three-decker of the old days turning her
broadside, with sixty guns run out and ready for action, upon some puny
foe, to show her that at a word she might be blown out of the water. Or
it was what is called nowadays a demonstration in force.
The door opened, and Millicent Keene entered. Mrs Abbot bowed slightly;
then, without speaking a word, in a deliberate manner looked the
newcomer up and down. She did not for a moment attempt to conceal the
object of her visit. Her offensive scrutiny was an open declaration of
war, and the girl was welcome to construe it as such.
But what did the great lady see as she cast that hostile, but, in spite
of herself, half-curious glance on the girl who came forward to greet
her unexpected visitor? She saw a beautiful girl of about nineteen;
tall, and, making allowances for age, stately as herself. She saw a
figure as near perfection as a young girl’s may be. She saw a sweet
calm face, with regular features and pale pure complexion, yet with
enough colour to speak of perfect health. She saw a pair of dark-brown
truthful eyes—eyes made darker by the long lashes—a mass of brown hair
dressed exactly as it should be. She saw, in fact, the exact opposite
to the picture she had drawn: and as Millicent Keene, with graceful
carriage and a firm but light step, advanced towards her, Mrs Abbot’s
heart sank. She had entirely miscalculated the strength of the enemy,
and she felt that it would be no easy matter to tear a woman such as
this from a young man’s heart.
The girl bore Mrs Abbot’s offensive glance bravely. She returned her
bow, and without embarrassment, begged her to be seated. Then she
waited for her visitor to explain the object of her call.
‘You do not know who I am, I suppose?’ said Mrs Abbot after a pause.
‘I have the pleasure of knowing Mrs Abbot by sight,’ replied Millicent
in a perfectly calm voice.
‘Then you know why I have called upon you?’
The girl made no reply.
Mrs Abbot continued, with unmistakable scorn in her voice: ‘I have
called to see the young lady whom my son tells me he is resolved,
against his parents’ wish, to make his wife.’
‘I am sorry, Mrs Abbot, you should have thought it needful to call and
tell me this.’
‘How could you expect otherwise? Frank Abbot bears one of the oldest
names, and is heir to one of the best estates in the county. When he
marries, he must marry a wife in his own position. What has Miss Keene
to offer in exchange for what he can bestow?’
The girl’s pale face flushed; but her brave brown eyes met those of her
interrogator without flinching. ‘If I thought you would understand me,
Mrs Abbot, I should say that I have a woman’s true love to give him,
and that is enough. He sought me, and won that love. He asked for it,
and I gave it. I can say no more.’
‘In these days,’ said Mrs Abbot contemptuously, ‘persons in our station
require more than love—_that_, a young man like Frank can always have
for the asking.—Of what family are you, Miss Keene?’
‘Of none. My father was a tradesman. He was unfortunate in his
business, and has been many years abroad trying to redeem his fortunes.
With the exception of an education which, I fear, has cost my poor
father many privations, I have nothing to boast of. I live with an
aunt, who has a small income of her own.—Now you know my history.’
Mrs Abbot had soon seen that crushing tactics failed to meet the
exigencies of the case. She put on an appearance of frankness. ‘You are
candid with me, Miss Keene, and it appears to me you have plenty of
common-sense. I put it to you; do you think that Mr Abbot or myself can
lend our sanction to this ill-advised affair?’
The girl’s lip curled in a manner which was particularly galling to Mrs
Abbot. A tradesman’s daughter, whose proper place was behind a counter,
had no right to be able to assume such an expression! ‘That was for
Frank, not for me, to consider, Mrs Abbot.’
‘But surely you will not marry him against our wishes?’
The girl was silent for a minute. An answer to such a question
required consideration. ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘We are both too young.
But if, in after-years, Frank Abbot wishes me to be his wife, I
will share his lot, let it be high or low.’ She spoke proudly and
decisively, as one who felt that her love was well worth having, and
would make up for much that a man might be called on to resign in order
to enjoy it.
It was this independence, the value the tradesman’s daughter set upon
herself, that annoyed Mrs Abbot, and led her into the mistake of firing
her last and, as she hoped, fatal shot. ‘You are not perhaps aware,’
she said, ‘that the estate is unentailed?’
Millicent, who did not at once catch the drift of her words, looked
inquiringly.
‘I mean,’ explained Mrs Abbot, ‘that my husband may leave it to whom he
likes—that if you marry my son, you will marry a beggar.’
The girl rose. With all her practice, Mrs Abbot herself could not have
spoken or looked more scornfully. ‘How little you know me, madam, to
insult me like that! Have you so poor an opinion of your son as to
fancy I cannot love him for himself? Did you marry Mr Abbot for his
wealth?’—Mrs Abbot winced mentally at the question.—‘Do you think I
wish to marry Francis Abbot only for the position I shall gain? You are
wrong—utterly wrong!’
‘Then,’ said Mrs Abbot with the bitterness of defeat, ‘I suppose you
will persist in this foolish engagement, and the only chance I have is
an appeal to my son?’
‘I have promised to be his wife. He alone shall release me from that
promise. But it may be long before he can claim it, and so your anxiety
may rest for some time, Mrs Abbot. I have this morning received a
letter from my father. He wishes me to join him in Australia. Next
month, I shall sail, and it will probably be three or four years before
I return. Then, if Frank wishes me to be his wife—if he says to me: “I
will risk loss of lands and love of parents for your sake,” I will bid
him take me, and carve out a way in the world for himself.’
A weight was lifted from Mrs Abbot’s mind. She caught the situation at
once. Three or four years’ separation! What might not happen! Although
she strove to speak calmly as a great lady should, she could not keep a
certain eagerness out of her voice. ‘But will you not correspond during
that time?’
This was another important question. Again Millicent paused, and
considered her answer. ‘I will neither write nor be written to. If,
eventually, I marry your son—if his love can stand the test of absence
and silence—at least you shall not say I did not give him every
opportunity of terminating our engagement.’
Mrs Abbot rose and assumed a pleasant manner—so pleasant that,
considering the respective positions of herself and Miss Keene, it
should have been irresistible. ‘I am compelled to say that such a
decision is all I could expect. You must forgive me if, with my views
for my son’s career, I have said anything hasty or unjust. I will
now wish you good-morning; and I am sure, had we met under other
circumstances, we might have been great friends.’
Whatever of dignity and majesty Mrs Abbot dropped as she put on this
appearance of friendliness was taken up by the girl. She took no notice
of her visitor’s outstretched hand. She rang the bell for the servant,
and bowed coldly and haughtily as Mrs Abbot swept from the room.
But bravely as she had borne herself under the eyes of her inquisitor,
when the rumble of the carriage wheels died away from the quiet street,
Millicent Keene threw herself on the sofa and burst into a flood of
tears. ‘O my love!’ she sobbed out. ‘It is hard; but it is right. It
will never be, I know! It is too long—too long to wait and hope. Can
you be true, when everything is brought to bear against me? Will you
forget? Will the love of to-day seem but a boy’s idle dream? Shall _I_
ever forget?’
EPISODES OF LITERARY MANUSCRIPTS.
A great deal might be said on the subject of manuscripts. From the
carefully illuminated specimens of old, preserved in our public
museums, down to the hastily scribbled printer’s ‘copy’ of to-day,
each bears a history, and could contribute to unfold some portion of
the life of the author whose hand had wrought it. Indeed, were it
possible for each written sheet to tell its own story—we here refer
to manuscripts of more modern date—what a picture of intellectual
endurance, disappointments, poverty, and ofttimes despair, would be
brought to light; what tales of huntings amongst publishers, rebuffs
encountered, and hardships undergone, would be added to literary
biography.
Thackeray has himself told us how his _Vanity Fair_ was hawked about
from publisher to publisher, and its failure everywhere predicted. For
a long period, Charlotte Brontë’s _Jane Eyre_ shared the same fate.
Again, Mr Kinglake’s carefully composed _Eothen_, the labour of several
years, was destined to go the weary round of publishers in vain; and
it was only when its author induced one of that cautious fraternity to
accept the classic little work as a present, that he at length enjoyed
the gratification of seeing it in print. The first chapter of _The
Diary of a Late Physician_ was offered successively to the conductors
of the three leading London magazines, and rejected as ‘unsuitable to
their pages,’ and ‘not likely to interest the public,’ until Mr Warren,
then a young man of three-and-twenty, and a law student, bethought
himself of _Blackwood_. ‘I remember taking my packet,’ he says, ‘to Mr
Cadell’s in the Strand, with a sad suspicion that I should never see
or hear anything more of it; but shortly after, I received a letter
from Mr Blackwood, informing me that he had inserted the chapter, and
begging me to make arrangements for immediately proceeding regularly
with the series. He expressed his cordial approval of that portion, and
predicted that I was likely to produce a series of papers well suited
to his magazine, and calculated to interest the public.’
Turning now for a moment to the disciples of dramatic authorship, we
discover that their experience is similar to that of many authors.
Poor Tom Robertson—that indefatigable actor and dramatist—sank into
his grave almost before he saw the establishment of his fame; and
John Baldwin Buckstone, during his struggling career, was in the habit
of pawning his manuscripts with Mr Lacy, the theatrical publisher, in
order to procure bread. Upon one occasion, when met by a sympathising
actor in the street, he appeared with scarcely a shoe to his feet, and
almost broken-hearted, declaring that all his earthly anticipations
were centred upon the acceptance of a comedy, the rejection of which
would certainly prove fatal to his existence. In the end, happily for
him, the comedy was accepted.
The following anecdote is connected with the history of the Odéon,
one of the first theatres in Paris. One day a young author came to
ascertain the fate of his piece, which, by the way, had appeared such
a formidable package upon its receipt, that the secretary was not
possessed of sufficient moral courage to untie the tape that bound
it. ‘It is not written in the style to suit the theatre,’ he replied,
handing back the manuscript. ‘It is not bad, but it is deficient in
interest.’ At this juncture, the young man smiled, and untying the
roll, he displayed some quires of blank paper! Thus convicted, the
secretary shook hands with the aspirant, invited him to dinner, and
shortly afterwards assisted him to a successful _début_ at the Odéon.
Another author once waited upon the popular manager of a London theatre
inquiring the result of the perusal of his manuscript; whereupon the
other, having forgotten all about it, carefully opened a large drawer,
exhibiting a heterogeneous mass of documents, and exclaimed: ‘There!
help yourself. I don’t know exactly which is yours; but you may take
any one of them you like!’
In this instance the manager was even more considerate towards the
feelings of an author than that other dramatic demigod who, it is
said, was regularly in receipt of so many new pieces, good, bad,
and indifferent, that he devised an ingenious method of getting rid
of them. During that particular season, the exigencies of the play
required a roll of papers—presumably a will—to be nightly burned in a
candle in full sight of the audience; and in this way he managed to
make room for the numerous manuscripts which young authors only too
eagerly poured in upon him, quite unconscious of their certain fate!
Indeed, volumes might be written upon the difficulties sometimes
encountered in climbing the literary ladder, and whilst the more
persevering have ultimately achieved the goal of their ambition,
others have been fated to see their writings consigned to oblivion,
and have themselves perhaps sunk into an early grave, consequent upon
the disappointments and privations endured. When the poet Chatterton
was found lying dead in his garret in Brook Street, his manuscripts
had been strewn upon the floor, torn into a thousand pieces. Thus
much good literature has often been lost to posterity. A number of
instances, too, might be cited wherein persons have risen from their
deathbed to destroy their manuscripts, and which task has either proved
so distressing to their sensibilities, or fatiguing to their physical
powers, that they immediately afterwards expired. It is placed upon
record how Colardeau, that elegant versifier of Pope’s Epistle of
Eloisa to Abelard, recollected at the approach of his death that he
had not destroyed what was written of a translation of Tasso; and
unwilling to intrust this delicate office to his friends, he raised
himself from his bed, and dragging his feeble frame to the place where
the manuscript was deposited, with a last effort he consumed it in the
flames. In another example, an author of celebrity directed his papers
to be brought to his bed, and there, the attendant holding a light, he
burned them, smiling as the greedy flames devoured what had been his
work for years.
Few authors willingly destroy any manuscript that has cost them a
long period of toil and research, though history records numerous
examples where the loss of certain manuscripts has almost proved an
irremediable misfortune to their author. The story of Mr Carlyle
lending the manuscript of the first volume of his _French Revolution_
to his friend John Stuart Mill, and its accidental destruction by fire,
is well known. A similar disaster once happened to M. Firmin Abauzit, a
philosopher who had applied himself to every branch of human learning,
and to whom the great Newton had remarked, among other compliments:
‘You are worthy to distinguish between Leibnitz and me.’ It happened
on one occasion that he had engaged a fresh female servant, rustic,
simple, and thoughtless, and being left alone in his study for a while,
she declared to herself that she would ‘set his things to rights;’ with
which words she deliberately cleared the table, and swept the whole
of his papers into the fire, thus destroying calculations which had
been the work of upwards of forty years. Without one word, however,
the philosopher calmly recommenced his task, with more pain than can
readily be imagined. Most readers also will remember the similar
misadventure which occurred to Sir Isaac Newton.
Of manuscripts which have perished through the ignorance or malignancy
of the illiterate, there are numerous instances. The original ‘Magna
Charta,’ with all its appendages of seals and signatures, was one day
discovered, by Sir Robert Cotton, in the hands of his tailor, who with
his shears was already in the act of cutting up into measures that
priceless document, which had been so long given up as for ever lost.
He bought the curiosity for a trifle; and caused it to be preserved,
where it is still to be seen, in the Cottonian Library, with the
marks of dilapidation plainly apparent. The immortal works of Agobart
were found by Papirius Masson in the hands of a bookbinder at Lyons,
the mechanic having long been in the habit of using the manuscript
sheets for the purpose of lining the covers of his books. Similarly, a
stray page of the second decade of Livy was found by a man of letters
concealed under the parchment of his battledore, as he was amusing
himself at that pastime in the country. He at once hastened to the
maker of the battledore; but alas! it was too late—the man had used the
last sheet of the manuscript of Livy about a week before!
A treatise printed among the works of Barbosa, a bishop of Ugento, in
1649, fell into the possession of that worthy, it is said, in a rather
singular manner. Having sent out for a fish for his table, his domestic
brought him one rolled up in a piece of written paper, which excited
the bishop’s curiosity so much, that he forthwith rushed out to the
market, just in time to discover and rescue the original manuscript
from which the leaf had been torn. This work he afterwards published
under the title of _De Officio Episcopi_.
The manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci suffered greatly from the
wilful ignorance of his relatives. Once, when a curious collector of
antiquities chanced to discover a portion of his writings by the merest
accident, he eagerly carried them to one of the descendants of the
great painter; but the man coldly observed that ‘he had a great deal
more in his garret, which had lain there for many years, if the rats
had not destroyed them.’
Cardinal Granville was in the habit of preserving his letters, and
at his death, he left behind him a prodigious number, written in all
languages, and duly noted, underlined, and collated by his own hand.
These relics were left in several immense chests, to the mercy of time
and the rats; and subsequently, five or six of the chestsful were sold
to the grocers as waste paper. It was then that an examination of the
treasure was made; and as the result of the united labours of several
literary men, enough of the papers to fill eight thick folios were
rescued, and afterwards published.
Fire and shipwreck have at various periods caused considerable havoc
among manuscripts. Many of our oldest Anglo-Saxon manuscripts were
consumed some years ago by a fire in the Cottonian Library; and those
which remain present a baked and shrivelled appearance, rendering them
almost unrecognisable. Ben Jonson on one occasion sustained the loss
of the labours of twenty-one years within one short hour, by fire; and
Meninsky’s famous Persian Dictionary met with a like fate from the
effects of a bomb falling upon the roof of his house during the siege
of Vienna by the Turks.