LOST AND NOW FOUND.
In bringing up Alick tied tight to her apron-strings, feeding him on
moral pap, putting his mind into petticoats, and seeking to make him
more of a woman than a man, Mrs. Corfield had defeated her design and
destroyed her own influence. During his early growth the boy had yielded
to her without revolt, because he was more modest than
self-assertive--had no solid point of resistance and no definite purpose
for which to resist; but after his college career he developed on an
independent line, and his soul escaped altogether from his mother's
hold. Had she let him ripen into manhood in the freedom of natural
development, she would have been his chosen friend and confidante to the
end: having invaded the most secret chambers of his mind, and sought to
mould every thought according to the pattern which she held best, when
the reaction set in the pendulum swung back in proportion to its first
beat; and as a protest against his former thraldom he now made her a
stranger to his inner life and shut her out inexorably from the holy
place of his sorrow.
The mother felt her son's mind slipping from her, but what could she do?
Who can set time backward or reanimate the dead? Day by day found him
more silent and more suffering, the poor little woman nearly as
miserable as himself. But the name of Leam, standing as the spectre
between them, was never mentioned after Mrs. Corfield's first outburst
of indignation at her flight--indignation not because she was really
angry with Leam, but because Alick was unhappy.
After Alick's stern rejoinder, "Mother, the next time you speak ill of
Leam Dundas I will leave your house for ever," the subject dropped by
mutual consent, but it was none the less a living barrier between them
because raised and maintained in silence.
"Oh, these girls! these wicked girls!" Mrs. Corfield had said with a
mother's irrational anger when speaking of the circumstance to her
husband. "We bring up our boys only for them to take from us. As soon
as they begin to be some kind of comfort and to repay the anxiety of
their early days, then a wretched little huzzy steps in and makes one's
life in vain."
"Just so, my dear," said Dr. Corfield quietly. "These were the identical
words which my mother said to me when I told her I was going to marry
you."
"Your mother never liked me, and I did like Leam," said Mrs. Corfield
tartly.
"As Leam Dundas, maybe; but as Leam the wife of your son, I doubt it."
"If Alick had liked it--" said Mrs. Corfield, half in tears.
"You would have been jealous," returned her husband. "No: all girls are
only daughters of Heth to the mothers of Jacobs, and I never knew one
whom a mother thought good enough for her boy."
"You need not discredit your own flesh and blood for a stranger," cried
Mrs. Corfield crossly; and the mute man with an aggravating smile
suddenly seemed to repent of his unusual loquacity, and gradually
subsided into himself and his calculations, from which he was so rarely
aroused.
Alick, ceasing to make a confidante of his mother, began to make a
friend of Mr. Gryce. Perhaps it ought rather to be said that Mr. Gryce
began to make a friend of him. The old philosopher, with that corkscrew
mind of his, knew well enough what was amiss with the poor lank-visaged
curate. Being of the order of the benevolent busybodies fond of playing
Providence, how mole-like soever his method, he had marked out a little
plan of his own by which he thought he could make all the crooked roads
run straight and discord flow into harmony. But he too fell into the
mistake common to busybodies, benevolent and otherwise--treating souls
as if they were machines to be wound up and kept going by the clockwork
of an extraneous will and neatly manipulated by well-arranged
circumstance.
One day he joined Alick in his walk to an outlying cottage of the
parish, where the husband was sick and the wife and children short of
food, and the Church sent its prayer-book and ministers as the best
substitute it knew for a wholesome dwelling and sufficient wages.
Theology was not much in the way of an old heathen who reduced all
religions save Mohammedanism to the transmuted presentation of the
archaic solar myth, and who thought Buddhism far ahead of every other
creed; but he liked the man Alick, if the parson bored him, and he was
caressing a plan which he had in his pocket.
"You find your life here satisfying, I suppose?" he began, his blue eyes
looking into the wayside banks for creatures.
"Is any life?" answered Alick, his eyes turned to the vague distance.
"Not fully: the spirit of progress, working by discontent, forbids the
social stagnation of rest and thankfulness; but we can come to something
that suffices for our daily wants if it does not satisfy all our
longings. Work in harmony with our nature, and doing good here and there
when we can, both these help us on. But the work must be harmonious and
the good we do manifest."
"So far as that goes, Church-work is pleasant to me--all, indeed, I care
for or am fit for; but North Aston is stony ground," said Alick.
"Can you wonder? When the husbandman-in-chief is such a man as Mr.
Birkett, you must make your account with stones and weeds. The spiritual
cannot flourish under the hand of the unspiritual; and, considering the
pastor, the flock is far from bad."
"That may be, but we do not like to live only in comparatives," said
Alick. "I confess I should be happier in a cure where I was more of one
mind with my rector than I am here, and not decried or ridiculed on
account of every scheme for good that I might propose. Parish-work here
is shamefully neglected, but Mr. Birkett will not let me do anything to
mend it."
"Ah!" said Mr. Gryce, catching a luckless curculio by the way, "that is
bad. A more harmonious one would certainly be, as you say, far more
agreeable. Or a little parish of your own--a parish, however small,
which would be all your own, and you not under the control of any one
below your diocesan? How would that do? That would be my affair if I
were in the Church."
Alick's face lightened. "Yes," he said, "that is my dream--at least one
of them. I would not care how small the place might be, if I had supreme
control and might work unhindered in my own way."
"It will come," said Mr. Gryce cheerily. "All things come in time to him
who knows how to wait."
"Ah, if I could believe that!" sighed Alick, thinking of Leam.
"Take my word for it," returned Mr. Gryce. "It will do you no harm to
have a dash of rose-color in your rather sombre life; and Hope, if it
tells flattering tales, does not always tell untrue ones."
"I fear my hope has flattered me untruly," said Alick, his faithful
heart still on Leam.
Mr. Gryce captured a caterpillar wandering across the road. "Conduct is
fate," he said. "If this poor fellow had not been troubled with a fit of
restlessness, but had been content to lie safely hidden among the
grass-roots where he was born, he would not have been caught. Yes,
conduct is fate for a captive caterpillar as well as for man."
"And yet who can foresee?" said Alick. "We all walk in the dark
blindfold."
"As you say, who can foresee? That makes perhaps the hardship of it, but
it does not alter the fact. Blindly walking or with our eyes wide open,
our steps determine our destiny, and our goal is reached by our own
endeavors. We ourselves are the artificers of our lives, and mould them
according to our own pattern."
"But that part of our lives which is under the influence of another? How
can we manipulate that?" said Alick. "Love and loss are twin powers
which create or crush without our co-operation."
"I only know one irreparable manner of loss--that by death," said Mr.
Gryce steadfastly. "For all others while there is life there is hope,
and I hold nothing, beyond the power of the will to remedy."
"I wish I could believe that," Alick sighed again; and again Mr. Gryce
said cheerily, "Then take that too on trust, and believe me if you do
not believe in your own inborn elasticity, your own power of doing and
undoing."
"There are some things which can never come right when they have once
gone wrong," said Alick.
"You think so? I know very few," his companion answered in the hearty,
inspiriting manner which he had used all through the interview, talking
with a broader accent and lisping less than usual, looking altogether
more manly and less cherubic than his wont. "I am a believer myself in
the power of the will and holding on." After a pause he added suddenly,
"You would be really glad of a small living, no matter where situated,
nor how desolate and unimportant, where you would be sole master?"
"Yes," said Alick. "If I could win over one soul to the higher life, I
should count myself repaid for all my exertions. We must all have our
small beginnings."
"I am an odd old fellow, as you know, Mr. Corfield," laughed Emmanuel
Gryce. "Give me your hand: I can sometimes see a good deal of the future
in the hand."
Alick blushed and looked awkward, but he gave his bony, ill-shaped hand
all the same.
After a little while, during which Mr. Gryce had bent this finger this
way and that finger another way, had counted the lines made by the
bended wrist, and had talked half to himself of the line of Jupiter and
the line of Saturn, the line of life and that of Venus, he said quietly,
"You will have your wish, and soon. I see a most important change of
residence at about this time, which in conjunction with this," pointing
to a small cross at the root of the fourth finger, "will be certainly to
your advantage."
"How strange!" said Alick. "One scarcely knows whether to laugh at it
all as old wives' fables or to believe in the mysterious forewarnings of
fate, the foremarkings of the future."
"There are more things in heaven and earth--" said Mr. Gryce. "And we
know so little we may well believe a trifle more."
The fact was, all this was founded on these circumstances: He had at
this moment a letter in his pocket from his sister Keziah telling him
that old Priest Wilson had been found dead in his bed last night; the
bishop's chaplain was a friend of his, both having been at the same
station in India; and the perpetual curacy of Monk Grange was one which,
if offices went according to their ratio of unpleasantness, a man should
have been paid a large income to take. Hence there was no chance of a
rush for the preferment, and the bishop would be grateful for any
intimation of a willing martyr. Through all of which chinks whereby to
discover the future Mr. Gryce founded his prophecy; and through them,
too, it came about that he proved a true prophet. In three days' time
from this the post brought a letter to Alick Corfield from the bishop
offering him the perpetual curacy of Monk Grange, income seventy pounds
a year and a house.
Before speaking even to his mother, Alick rushed off with this letter to
Mr. Gryce. The old leaven of superstition which works more or less in
all of us--even those few who think proof a desirable basis for belief,
and who require an examination conducted on scientific principles before
they accept supernaturalism as "only another law coming in to modify
those already known"--that superstition which belongs to most men, and
to Alick with the rest, made this letter a matter of tremendous
excitement to him. He saw in it the hand of God and the finger of Fate.
It was impossible that Mr. Gryce, living at North Aston, should know
anything of a small country incumbency in the North. It was all that
study made of his poor parched and knuckly hand. And what had been seen
there was manifestly the thing ruled for him by Providence and destiny.
"How could you possibly tell?" he cried, looking at his own hand as if
he could read it as his clever friend had done.
"That is my secret," said Emmanuel, smiling at the credulity on which he
traded. Then, thinking a flutter outward of the corners of his cards the
best policy in the circumstances about them at the moment, he added,
"And when you get there you will understand more than you do now. For
you will go?"
"Surely," said Alick: "it would be unfaithful in me to refuse."
"But see if you cannot make arrangements to take the place on trial for
a few months. I know very little of your ecclesiastical law, but grant
even that it is as devoid of common sense as I should suppose--seeing
who are the men who make, administer and obey it--still, I should think
that a temporary incumbency might be arranged."
"I should think so, and I will take your advice," said Alick, over whom
Emmanuel Gryce was fast establishing the power which belongs to the
stronger over the weaker, to the more astute over the more dense.
"You will find an adopted daughter of mine in the neighborhood," then
said Mr. Gryce with the most amiable indifference. "She lives with my
sister at our old home on the fell-side: Windy Brow the place is called.
You must tell me how she looks and what you think of her altogether when
you write to me, as I suppose you will do, or when you come home, if you
elect not to take the cure even on trial."
"I am not much in the way of criticising young ladies," said Alick
sadly.
"She is rather a remarkable girl, all things considered," returned Mr.
Gryce quietly. "Her name is Leonora Darley. You will remember--Leonora
Darley. Ask for her when you go up to Windy Brow: Leonora Darley," for
the third time.
"All right: Miss Leonora Darley," repeated Alick, suspecting nothing;
and again Mr. Gryce smiled as he dug his fingers into the earth of a
chrysalis-box. How pleasant it was to pull the strings and see his
puppets dance!
Of course, Mr. Birkett's consent was a necessary preliminary to Alick's
departure, but there was no difficulty about it. The military rector was
tired to death, so he used to say, of his zealous young aide-de-camp,
and hailed the prospect of getting rid of him handsomely with a frank
pleasure not flattering to poor Alick's self-love. "Certainly, my dear
boy, certainly," he said. "It will be better for you to have a place of
your own, where you can carry out your new ideas. You see I am an old
man now, and have learnt the value of letting well alone. You are in all
the fever-time of zeal, and believe that vice and ignorance are like the
walls of Jericho, to fall down when you blow your trump. I do not. But
on the whole, it is as well that you should learn the realities of life
for yourself, and carry your energies where they may be useful."
"Then you do not mind?" asked Alick boyishly.
The rector gave a loud clear laugh. "Mind! a thousand times no," he
said, rubbing his plump white hands. "I can manage well enough alone,
and if I cannot there are dozens of young eligibles ready to jump at the
place. Mind! no. Go in Heaven's name, and may you be blessed in your
undertaking!"
The last words came in as grace-lines, and with them Alick felt himself
dismissed.
If the rector had been facile to deal with, Mrs. Corfield was not. When
she heard of the proposed arrangement, and that she was to lose her boy
for the second time out of her daily life, and more permanently than
before, her grief was as intense as if she had been told of his
approaching death. She wept bitterly, and even bent herself to entreaty;
but Alick, to whom North Aston had become a dungeon of pain since Leam
went, held pertinaciously to his plan--not without sorrow, but surely
without yielding. He was fascinated by the idea of a cure where he might
be sole master, not checked by rectorial ridicule when he wished to
establish night schools or clothing clubs, penny savings banks, or any
other of the schemes in vogue for the good of the poor; thinking too,
not unwisely, that the best heal-all for his sorrow was to be found in
change of scene and more arduous work together. Also, he thought that if
his vague tentative advertisements in the papers, which he dared not
make too evident, had as yet brought nothing, some more satisfactory
way of discovering Leam's hiding-place might shape itself when he was
alone, freer to act as he thought best. On all of which accounts he
resisted his mother's grief, and his own at seeing her grieve, and
decided on going down to Monk Grange the next day.
Had not Dr. Corfield been ailing at this time, the mother would have
accompanied her son. The possibility of damp sheets weighed heavy on her
mind; and landladies who filch from the tea-caddy, with landladies'
girls, pert and familiar, preparing insidious gruel and seductive cups
of coffee, were the lions which her imagination conjured up as prowling
for her Alick through the fastnesses of Monk Grange. Circumstances,
however, were stronger than her desire; and, happily for Alick, she was
perforce obliged to remain at home while her darling went out from the
paternal nest to shake those limp wings of his, and bear himself up
unassisted in a new atmosphere in the best way he could.
It was on the cold and rainy evening of a cold and rainy summer's day
that Alick arrived at Monk Grange--an evening without a sunset or a
moon, stars or a landscape; painful, mournful, as those who dwell in the
North Country know only too well as the tears on its face of beauty. He
had driven in a crazy old gig from Wigton, and the nine miles which lay
between that not too brilliant town and the desolate fell-side hamlet
which he had been so fain to make his own spiritual domain had not been
such as disposed him to a cheerful view of things. The rain had fallen
in a steady, pitiless downpour, which seemed to soak through every outer
covering and to penetrate the very flesh and marrow of the tired
traveler as it pattered noisily on the umbrella and streamed over the
leather apron; and the splash of the horse's hoofs through the liquid
mud and broad tracts of standing water was as dreary as the "splash,
splash" of Bürger's ballad. And when all this was over, and they drew up
at the Blucher, with its handful of desolate gray hovels round it, the
heart of the man sank at the gloomy surroundings into the midst of which
he had flung himself. But the zeal of the churchman was as good a tonic
for him as the best common sense, and he waited until to-morrow and
broad daylight before he allowed himself to even acknowledge an
impression. The warm fireside at the Blucher cheered him too, and his
supper of eggs and bacon and fresh crisp havre-bread satisfied such of
his physical cravings as, unsatisfied, make a man's spiritual
perceptions very gaunt.
He went to bed, slept, and the next day woke up to a glory of sun and
sky, a brilliancy of coloring, a photographic sharpness and clearness of
form, a suggestion of beauty beyond that which was seen, which
transformed the place as if an angel had passed through it in the night.
As he tramped about the sordid hamlet he forgot the rude uncouthness of
men and place for a kind of ecstasy at the loveliness about him. Every
jutting rock of granite shone in the sun like polished jasper, and the
numberless little rills trickling down the fell-sides were as threads of
silver, now concealed in the gold of the gorse, and now whitening the
purple of the heather. The air was full of blithesome sounds. Overhead
the sky-larks sang in jocund rivalry, mounting higher and higher as if
they would have beaten their wings against the sun: the bees made the
heather and the thyme musical as they flew from flower to flower, and
the tinkling of the running rills was like the symphony to a changeful
theme. It was in real truth a transformation, and the new-comer into the
fitful, seductive, disappointing North felt all its beauty, all its
meaning, and gave himself up to his delight as if such a day as
yesterday had never been.
After he had done what he wished to do in the village, he went up the
fell-side road to Windy Brow, and, obeying his instructions, asked when
he got there "if Miss Leonora Darley was at home."
"Na, she bain't," said Jenny, eying poor innocent Alick as a colley
might eye a wolf sniffing about the fold. "T' auld mistress is."
"Say Mr. Corfield, please," said Alick; and Jenny, telling him to "gang
intilt parlor," scuffled off to Keziah, pottering over some pickled red
cabbage, which made the house smell like a vinegar-cask.
"I've heard tell of you," said Miss Gryce as she came in wiping her
hands on a serviceable and by no means luxurious cloth: "Emmanuel wrote
me a letter about you. You're kindly welcome to Monk Grange, but you're
only a haverel to look at. Take a seat, and tell me--how's Emmanuel, my
brother?"
"He was well when I saw him the day before yesterday: at least he said
nothing to the contrary," answered Alick with his conscientious
literalness.
"I like that," said Keziah, also eying him, but as a colley might have
eyed a strange sheep, not a wolf. "A random rory would have made no
difference between now and two days back, and believing and being. You
cannot be over-particular in the truth, I take it."
Alick blushed, shifted his place and looked uneasy. And again, as so
often before, it came across him: had he done right, judged by the
highest law, to conceal the truth as he knew it about Leam?
"Hoot, man! there's no call for you to sit on pins and needles in that
fashion," said Keziah. "It's a daft body that cannot hear a word of
praise without turning as red as a turkey-cock and fidging like a
parched pea on a drum-head. I've not turned much of you over yet, and
maybe I'll come to what I'll have no mind to praise; so keep your fidges
till you are touched up with the other end of the stick. And so you are
to be our new priest, are you?"
"I am going to offer myself for a time," said Alick.
"For a time? That's a thing as has two sides to it. If you are not to
our minds, that's its good side: if you are, and we are not to yours,
that's its bad. I doubt if our folk will care to be played Jumping Joan
with in that fashion."
"I will be guided by the will of the Lord," said Alick reverently.
"Humph! I like the words better nor the chances in them," returned
Keziah, taking a pinch of snuff. "But maybe things'll work round as one
would have them; and whether you stay or you do not, the Lord's will be
done, amen! and His grace follow you, young man!"
"Thank you," said Alick with emotion, getting up and shaking the
pickle-stained and snuff-discolored hand.
"I have a message for Miss Leonora Darley," he then said after a pause.
"Mr. Gryce told me I was to be sure and tell him how she was looking."
"Eh, poor bairn! she is not very first-rate," the old woman answered
tenderly. At least it was tenderness in her: in another person her voice
and manner might have been taken for crabbedness and impatience. "She's
up by there, on the fell somewhere. She a'most lives on the fell-side,
but it don't make her look as brisk as I should like. Have you seen the
view from our brow-top? It is a real bonny one; and you'll maybe find
Leonora not far off. I don't think she wanders far."
"I should like to see it," said Alick. "The country altogether looks
splendid to-day."
"Ay, it's a bonny day enough if it would but last. Come your ways with
me and I'll set you out by the back door. You can come in again the same
road if you've a mind."
On which she bustled up, and Alick, escorted by her, went through the
house and on to the fell-side.
It was, if possible, grander now than it had been in the earlier part of
the day. The hot sun had cleared away the lingering mist, and the
cloudless sky was like one large perfect opal, while the earth beneath
shone and glistened as if it were a jewel set with various-colored gems.
There was not a mean or sordid thing about. Touched by the splendid
alchemy of the sun, the smallest circumstance was noble, the poorest
color glorious. Alick stood on the fell-brow entranced: then turning, he
saw slowly coming across the pathless green a young slight figure
dressed in gray. He looked as it came near, and his heart beat with a
force that took all power from him. It was absurd, he knew, but there
was such a strange look of Leam about that girl! He stood and watched
her coming along with that slow, graceful, undulating step which was
Leam's birthright. Was he mad? Was he dreaming? What was this mocking
trick of eyesight that was perplexing him? Surely it was madness; and
yet--no, it could be no one else. Supreme, beloved, who else could
personate her so as to cheat him?
She came on, her eyes always fixed on the distance, seeing nothing of
Alick standing dark against the sky. She came nearer, nearer, till he
saw the glory of her eyes, the curve of her lip, and could count the
curling tresses on her brow. Then he came down from the height and
strode across the space between them.
She lifted up her eyes and saw him. For an instant the sadness cleared
out of them as the mists had cleared from the sky: her pathetic mouth
broke into a smile, and she held out both her hands. "Alick, dear Alick!
my good Alick!" she cried in a voice of exquisite tenderness.
"My queen!" he said kneeling, his honest upturned face wet with tears.
"Lost and now found!"
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
THE ITALIAN MEDIÆVAL WOOD-SCULPTORS.
More or less during the whole of this century, and ever more during the
recent years of it, the love of art, especially in what have been called
the "industrial" manifestations of it, has been becoming a passion in
Germany and in France, as well as in England and America. Museums for
the collection and preservation of the works produced by the artists of
those centuries which were the palmy days of art have been established
in all these countries, and private amateurs have vied with them in
enriching their respective countries with specimens of all the many
kinds of art-industry which remain to us from those times when religion
encouraged and surrounded itself with the beautiful and the cultivation
of the beautiful was a religion. And it is mainly--indeed, almost
entirely--to Italy that the lovers and admirers of mediæval art come in
search of those remains of it which, it is hoped, will be (or rather are
being) the means of producing a second art _renaissance_. The quantity
of objects, more or less genuinely representing the mediæval art in all
its many branches, which has been carried out of Italy within the last
quarter of a century is something perfectly astounding, and far exceeds
what any one would believe who has not remained in Italy long enough to
observe the process. A considerable portion, no doubt, of the articles
thus carried home with them by the lovers of art has consisted of modern
imitations of ancient workmanship, but the quantity of genuine mediæval
articles--pottery in its various kinds, furniture, carving in wood, in
marble, in stone and in ivory, lace, bronzes, embroidery, metal-work,
brocaded stuffs, etc.--has been so enormous as to reveal in a very
striking manner the extraordinary wealth of the country in the days when
it was the mistress of Europe in civilization, and the all-pervading
love of the beautiful which caused so very large a portion of that
wealth to be expended for the gratification of a refined taste.
Before proceeding to the more special subject of this article--certain
interesting and recently-discovered notices of some of the most famous
of the old carvers in wood--it may be well to say a word or two on the
subject of the commerce in imitations of the mediæval works so
extensively carried on in Italy. Of course, a trade based on deception
is in every way to be condemned and regretted. It is not only immoral,
but it generates demoralization. But it is to be observed that in very
many cases--especially in those branches where art-industry approaches
the most nearly to art proper--the artist or artisan who produced the
works in question has neither co-operated with the fraud we are speaking
of, nor has worked with any view to the perpetration of such by others.
In the next place, it is to be noted that the mortification and
humiliation which many purchasers are conscious of when it is brought
home to them that they have been taken in, and have purchased as old
that which is in truth of recent production, may well be spared to them.
I do not mean, of course, as regards the money they may have been
cheated of, but as regards the slight put upon their own
connoisseurship. The art of imitating the old works in question has been
brought to such a pitch of perfection that it needs a very special
education of the eye and large practice to detect the imposture. A
circumstance occurred a few years ago at Florence which curiously
illustrates both the facts I have mentioned--the frequent innocence of
the producer of the imitation and the extreme difficulty of detecting
the modern origin of the work. The facts are very little known, because
it was the interest of many persons to misrepresent and conceal them.
They ought, nevertheless, to be known, and I do not see any good reason
why I should not tell them here.
A young man at Florence of the name of Bastianini--it must be at least
ten years ago now, or perhaps more--of very humble origin had shown a
remarkable talent for modeling busts in terra-cotta. Having formed his
taste for himself, not by means of any academical teaching, but by
imbuing his mind with the examples of mediæval art which meet the eye on
all sides in his native city, his works assumed quite naturally the
manner and style of the artists who (in more or less direct line) were
his ancestors. One day it happened to him to see a man--he was a common
workman in the tobacco manufactory--whose head struck him as specially
marked by the old Florentine mediæval type and as a remarkably good
subject for a characteristic bust. From this man he made a terra-cotta
bust which few could have pronounced to be other than a _cinque-cento_
work, and a very fine one. Bastianini, then quite unknown and much in
need of wherewithal to live, sold this bust as the work of his hands to
a speculative dealer for, if I remember rightly, five hundred francs.
The man who bought it carried it to a dealer in antiquities--a very
well-known man in Florence whose name I could give were it of any
interest to do so--and proposed to sell it to him for a large sum.
Eventually, a bargain was struck on this basis: The dealer, with perfect
knowledge of the origin and authorship of the work, was to pay one
thousand francs for the bust, and to pay the seller another thousand if
and whenever he, the dealer, should succeed in reselling it for more
than a certain price named. Thereupon, in accordance with the usual
practice in such cases, the bust disappeared from sight. It was stored
in the secret repositories of the _antiquario_ till the circumstances
attending its creation should be a little forgotten, and dust and dirt
should have corrected the brand-new rawness of its surface, ready to be
produced with much mystery as a recent _trouvaille_ when a likely
purchaser should loom over the Apennine which encircles "gentile
Firenze." In due time, one of the largest and brightest of those comets
whose return is so accurately calculated and eagerly expected by the
Florentine dealers in ancient art made his appearance in the Tuscan
sky--no less than a buyer for the Louvre. Those were the halcyon days of
the Empire, and money was plenty. Poor Bastianini's bust was brought out
with all due mystery, duly admired by the infallible French connoisseur,
and eventually purchased by him for the imperial collection for, I
think, five thousand francs--at all events, for a sum sufficiently large
to give the man who had bought the bust from the poor artist the right
to demand his supplementary payment. He did so. But the greed of the
dealer prevailed over his prudence, and he refused to give his
accomplice in the fraud the promised share in the plunder. Of course
that ensued which might have been expected. The defrauded rogue "split."
The bust sold to the Frenchman was easily identified with that which
Bastianini had made, and which had been known to all artistic Florence,
and the authorities at the Louvre were duly certified by many a
loud-tongued informer that they had been gulled. The information, as is
usually the case with information of the kind, came too late to be of
service to the buyers, but not too late to give them serious annoyance.
The bust had been exhibited at the Louvre in a prominent place; it had
excited considerable notice; none of the savants presiding over that
establishment had conceived the smallest suspicion of its genuineness;
and it was excessively disagreeable to have to admit that they had all
been deceived by a work made the other day by an unknown Florentine
artist. It was so disagreeable that the gentlemen in question had not
the courage to face the truth. They pooh-poohed their informants,
professed to adhere without a doubt to their own first opinions, and the
bust, to the great amusement of all the Florentine art-world, remained
in its place of honor at the Louvre, exhibited as a cinque-cento
terra-cotta for a long time after all Florence was perfectly cognizant
of its real history, and after the young artist had produced three or
four other busts all equally marked by unmistakable cinque-cento
characteristics. One of these was a really remarkable bust of
Savonarola, which may be seen any day in the (now public) gallery of St.
Mark's at Florence. The original _teterrima causa belli_ has, I believe,
disappeared from the Louvre Gallery. Poor Bastianini died shortly
afterward, and it is due to his memory and undoubtedly great talent that
it should be distinctly understood that from first to last he was no
party to or profiter by the frauds to which his special talent had given
rise.
To return, however, to what I was saying about that large portion of the
works of art and art-industry every year exported from Italy, mainly by
individual buyers for the gratification of their own taste, which
consists of _imitations_. It may be remarked, especially as regards the
objects belonging to the latter category, that these imitations, if
bought as such, are not undesirable purchases. In many instances,
particularly in those of iron- and bronze-work, intarsia, and carving in
wood, the modern Italian artists, who began as imitators, have attained
a degree of excellence which entitles them to take rank as the founders
of a new artistic _renaissance_, while their familiarity with
cinque-cento art and the loving study of it have led them to produce
work in each of the above-named branches which is calculated to improve
the taste of both workers and purchasers in countries beyond the Alps.
As regards metal-work, whether in iron or bronze, avowedly modern, but
of the true cinque-cento type and style, the amateur would do well to
visit the foundries and workshops of Venice; for intarsia he may go to
Milan; for wood-carving to Florence, Siena and Perugia; to the last also
for intarsia. He will find in Perugia work both in carving and intarsia
on which he might spend his money very much more advantageously than in
buying second-rate bits of really old wood-work, or indeed any such bits
as he is at all likely to meet with. And it is not surprising that the
little Umbrian hill-city should have become a special home for this
particular branch of art; for it contains some of the most remarkable
works of the kind extant, the product of some of the most renowned
masters of the craft in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is a
mistake to suppose, as many persons do, that the fine works of this kind
which we still admire were the product of men who were considered in
their day as mere artisans, and whose names were not known beyond the
boundaries of their native provinces. They were recognized as true
artists, whose names were known from one end of the Peninsula to the
other, and who were sent for from distant cities to execute works of
importance. In many cases their names have perished: in more they are
unknown to the present generation of art-lovers--_caruerunt quia vate
sacro_. And in some cases--as a very notable instance, to be mentioned
presently, will show in a remarkable manner--the higher portion of the
merit which was wholly their own--the conception of their designs, with
all the grace of fancy and cultured knowledge of the principles of the
beautiful which it implies--has been assigned to others to whom the
modern world has exclusively given the title of artists. But the
increased and still increasing attention which the world is paying to
all the details and all the branches of cinque-cento art--to good
purpose, for it is due to it that we have emerged or are emerging from
the eighteenth-century depths of ugliness in all our surroundings--has
induced the useful Dryasdusts, whose nature and function it is to burrow
in corporation and conventual muniment-rooms and the like promising
covers, to search out with a very considerable degree of success a mass
of facts, not only as to the real authorship of the work in question,
but curiously illustrative of the status these artists held and the
manner in which they lived and worked. Among the principal of these
archive-hunters is the learned Professor Adam Rossi, the corporation
librarian at Perugia, and it is mainly to his researches that the facts
I am about to lay before the reader are due.
One of the finest specimens of cinque-cento wood-work extant in
Italy--perhaps I might safely say the finest--is the choir of the
monastic church of St. Peter at Perugia. The monks of St. Peter were
Benedictines of Monte Cassino, and, like most of the families of that
order, they were very wealthy and were liberal patrons of art. On the
9th of April, 1525, having determined to refit the choir of their church
in a magnificent manner, they came to an agreement with a
master-carpenter of Perugia for the execution of the work, and a
detailed contract was signed by the parties. (I have called this
cinque-cento work, and it will be observed that it was executed in the
sixteenth century. It may be necessary, therefore, to explain to those
who are unacquainted with the Italian mode of speaking in this respect
that the Italians always speak of what we should call the fourteenth
century as the "trecento," what we should call the fifteenth, as the
"quattrecento," and so on. The period at which art in all its branches
culminated in Italy was, in our language, the sixteenth century.)
Maestro Bernardino di Luca, the artist with whom the convent contracted
for the fitting of the choir, is styled in the instrument _legnaiuolo_
(a "carpenter"). And no doubt Maestro Bernardino--or "Bino," for short,
as he is called in the instrument when once at the beginning he has been
named formally at full length--practiced all the more ordinary business
of his trade. But there must have been carpenters _and_ carpenters, as
to the present day there are painters _and_ painters, the same word
indicating the calling of a Landseer and of a house-painter. This simple
modesty of designation was a characteristic of the epoch. We find
sculptors whose works are to the present day admired and studied as
masterpieces styling themselves simply "stone-cutters." The contract is
a long document, consisting of twenty-one clauses, the greater number of
which are occupied with the most minute and detailed specification of
the work to be done. It is to be executed "according to the model made
by the said Bino, changing it or keeping it as it is according to the
will of the fathers" (the monks of St. Peter's), "so as not to change
the form and substance of the model." The prices agreed to be paid for
each stall in the choir, with its arch above it, is ten golden ducats,
which, allowing for the change in the value of the precious metals, may
be considered to be about equal to three hundred and seventy-five
dollars at the present day. The price does not seem by any means a small
one. But Signor Rossi's researches have elsewhere shown that it is a
mistake to suppose that the renowned professors of any branch of art
were poorly paid in those days. The very reverse was the case. It would
not be interesting to the reader to give him the details of the work
which Maestro Bino bound himself to execute, but some of the
stipulations must be mentioned, because they curiously illustrate the
life of the times. The convent is to furnish all the wood--that which is
required for the work itself, as well as all that may be needed, planks,
scaffolding and the like, for the putting of it in its place. "_Item._
We give him rooms to work in and to sleep in and to cook in, as well as
beds furnished with bedclothes. _Item._ Maestro Bino binds himself not
to undertake any other work till the choir is wholly finished and put
up, and he engages to do all the work within the walls of the convent.
He is bound to keep four men at work under him, and more if necessary."
The work is to be completed within two years should no impediment
intervene by death or grave and manifest illness. The convent undertakes
to furnish money from time to time as needed for the pay of the
journeymen, and fifty ducats beforehand for the hiring of assistants and
other necessary expenses.
Maestro Bino went to work at once, and on the 15th of that same April
had from the convent what seems the very large sum of ten florins and
eight soldi for glue. But, after all, this Maestro Bernardino di Luca
was not the author of the exquisite carvings which people go to Perugia
to look at at the present day. A very "grave and manifest infirmity" did
intervene to prevent the execution of the work, for on the 19th of the
following August, Maestro Bino discharged his workmen on account of the
plague, which had begun to devastate Perugia; and there is reason to
think that the maestro himself perished by it, for after that last entry
the name of Bernardino di Luca vanishes into the abyss of darkness, and
is no more heard of, and shortly afterward we find the convent entering
into a new bargain with another maestro for the execution of the work.
This was Maestro Stefano de Antoniolo da Zambelli of Bergamo, who agreed
with the monks in July, 1533, to execute the required works in the choir
for the price of thirty golden crowns each stall. It will be observed
that this price is about fifty per cent. higher than that for which
Maestro Bino had contracted to do the work, which is an indication of
the then rapidly-falling value of the precious metals. But this
increased price was still insufficient, for on the 17th of July, 1534,
the monks enter into an amended contract with Maestro Stefano, in which
the terms of the original contract are rehearsed, and it is then
declared that Maestro Stefano having shown and proved to the abbot's
satisfaction that those terms could not stand, and that he should be
greatly the loser by the bargain, and it being by no means the wish of
the fathers that Maestro Stefano should be deprived of a fair reward for
his work, but rather that he should make a suitable profit by the job,
it was now agreed that the maestro should undertake to labor
uninterruptedly and with all possible diligence, that the convent should
find all materials and tools, and should maintain Maestro Stefano and
his wife and a journeyman, and should pay sixty golden crowns a year as
long as the work was in progress. Further, the convent undertakes to pay
half a golden crown monthly to the wife of the said Maestro Stefano, "on
the understanding that the said wife of the maestro shall serve and cook
and wash clothes for all the family engaged on the work of the choir;"
and further, half a golden crown monthly to the journeyman. Under this
arrangement it was of course the interest of the convent that the work
should be completed as quickly as possible. And we find, accordingly,
the abbot commissioning Antonio of Florence to carve six of the backs
of the stalls; Battista of Bologna and Ambrose, a Frenchman, to carve
the reading-desk; and Fra Damiano of Bergamo, who was then at Bologna,
to execute the four sculptures in bas-relief which adorn the door. This
Fra Damiano, who signs himself on his work "Fr. Damianus de Bergamo,
Ordinis Predicatorum," seems to have been a brother of the principal
artist, Maestro Stefano. But a curious peep at the manners of that time
is afforded by the fact of a professed monk working for hire as a
wood-carver. The main portion of the work, however, and the general
design, were due to Maestro Stefano da Zambelli of Bergamo, and just two
years and half from the signing of the contract the work was completed
and signed in intarsia, as we see it to this day, "Hoc opus fecit M^{r.}
Stephanus di Bergamo."
For a long time it was supposed that the very beautiful designs for the
entirety and for each detail of this noble work was due to Raphael. The
guide-books all copied the statement one after the other; and they were
indeed excusable in doing so, for the large and magnificent folio which
was published at Rome by the abbot and monks in 1845, containing
engravings of every detail of the celebrated carvings, declares on the
title-page that the work was executed "by Stefano da Bergamo after the
designs of Raffaelle Santi di Urbino." The celebrated and learned
Montfaucon, who was a member of the same order, seems to have been the
first who made this mistaken statement. Once made on such authority, it
was accepted and repeated without further investigation till the
undeniable evidence of the archives of the convent, dragged to light
from under the dust of centuries by the industry of Professor Rossi,
showed that in truth the conception and design, as well as the
execution, of this beautiful masterpiece, which has for so long been
thought worthy of Raphael, was the work of the "carpenter, Maestro
Stefano da Bergamo."
I do not believe that it is any longer possible to obtain a complete
copy of the above-mentioned work. Many years ago I found the separate
sheets of it lying about in the sacristy in a manner which gave one a
vivid idea of the reckless carelessness which is so marked a
characteristic of Italians. Bundles of the different plates, some
containing forty or fifty copies, some twenty or so, and some not more
than four or five, were thrust into cupboards with wax candles for the
altar, tattered choir-books and old candlesticks. And here was the whole
remaining stock of the work! I was at that time able, by the exercise of
much patience, trouble and persuasion with the old sacristan--who seemed
to consider the sale of the plates a very insufficient recompense for
the trouble of looking for them--to get together a complete copy of the
work; but when I was there the other day not more than twenty of the
plates out of nearly twice that number were to be found. In the mean
time, however, a complete set of photographs of every portion of the
sculpture has been made in a smaller size, but sufficiently large to
give a very satisfactory representation of the extreme beauty and
elegance of the work. It is indeed impossible to doubt that this Master
Stephen of Bergamo, the carpenter, whose wife was to have half a crown a
month for doing the washing and cooking for all the family living in the
rooms assigned to them in the monastery for a workshop and living-rooms,
was a man of education and culture, and in every sense of the word an
_artist_. The difference between his social position and that of any
artist of corresponding eminence in our day would seem to consist wholly
in that greater degree of personal and material luxury which
civilization and increased wealth have brought with them. The payment
which he was to receive for his year's work, besides having been
maintained, lodged and fed at the cost of the monastery during the time,
may, I take it, be considered equivalent to about twenty-two thousand
five hundred dollars.
In 1494, on the 5th of April, Maestro Mariotto di Paola, "called
Torzuolo," contracts with the canons of the cathedral to make a range of
cupboards in the sacristy. Such masses of wood-work, very frequently
richly carved and ornamented, are found in the sacristies of most of the
larger churches in Italy. They generally consist of a range of deep
drawers below, up to about the height of an ordinary table, and above
this a series of cupboards reaching to the ceiling of the apartment, so
much less deep than the drawers as to leave a large space of table on
the top of the latter. The drawers are used mainly for the keeping of
the sacred vestments; the table for the spreading out of such of these
as are about to be or have just been used; and the cupboards above for
the holding of all the treasures of the church--chalices for the altar,
monstrances for the exposition of the sacrament, reliquaries of all
sorts of shapes and sizes for the preservation of the relics of saints,
ornamental candlesticks, and such like. In the richer and more important
churches these objects are generally of the precious metals, and
frequently richly adorned with gems, so that the amount of treasure
stored in these repositories is often very considerable. Sometimes such
a range of wood-work as has been described will be found filling one
side only of the sacristy, but in many cases it runs round the whole
apartment. And this piece of ecclesiastical furniture therefore
presented a great field for the taste and ingenuity of the old _maestri_
in wood-carving to exhibit their skill both in design and in execution.
At the Benedictine monastery of St. Peter, of the choir of which we have
been speaking, this fitting up of the sacristy had been done previously;
and it is accordingly much less rich in carving than the work in the
choir. But some of the doors of the cupboards are still more preciously
ornamented by some very finely-painted heads from the hand of the great
Perugino.
Such as it is, however, this sacristy at St. Peter's was handsome enough
to excite the emulation of the canons of the cathedral, for the contract
made with Maestro Mariotto--who was nicknamed Torzuolo--specifies that
the work is to be entirely of walnut wood, after the fashion of the
sacristy at St. Peter's, and is to be executed "in the manner of a
good, loyal and expert master." It is to be all done by his own hand, or
at least in his presence and under his superintendence. The work is to
be completed in one year, and the canons are to pay for it at the rate
of ten florins every square braccio, Florentine measure. This was in
1494; and it will here again be observed that the price, as compared
with that to be paid to Maestro Stefano by the monks of St. Peter's for
their choir, even fully allowing for the greater richness of the latter,
indicates the very rapid alteration in the value of money which took
place at the beginning of the sixteenth century. But the canons, it
would seem, were very careful hands at a bargain, for we find that it is
provided in the contract that when the work shall have been completed it
shall be examined by two experts, and that if it shall be found to be
worth less than the price named, Maestro Torzuolo shall receive so much
less; but that if it shall be found by the said experts and appraisers
to be worth more, the maestro shall stand to his bargain and not receive
more than the price named--an agreement which is frequently found in the
contracts made about that period. When the work was completed it was
accordingly examined and appraised by Maestro Mattia of Reggio and
Maestro Pietro of Florence. The latter was brought from Città di
Castello, a little city in the Apennines some twenty-five miles distant,
express for the purpose. We do not find any statement of their award.
But it would seem that Maestro Torzuolo did not keep to his contract in
one respect, but was as unpunctual as the carpenters of the present
generation, for the above experts were not called to appraise the work
till the year 1497.
Maestro Pietro of Florence was evidently a man at the head of his
profession, for at Città di Castello, when he was summoned to Perugia to
appraise the work of Maestro Torzuolo, he was engaged in making for the
canons there a wooden ceiling for the nave of their church, which was,
by a contract dated 1499, to be ornamented with large roses similar to
the ornamentation of the ceiling of the council-hall in the Palazzo
Vecchio at Florence; giving us thus another indication of the degree of
general interest and attention which these works excited in those days.
The communication between city and city was difficult and comparatively
unfrequent, yet the fame of any fine work of the sort we are talking of
evidently not only reached far and wide among other cities, but
forthwith excited their rivalry and led to the production of other
_chefs-d'oeuvre_. Maestro Pietro was to receive for the ceiling of the
nave at Città di Castello no less a sum than five hundred golden ducats,
equal to at least seventeen thousand five hundred dollars at the present
day. We find him also employed as architect to direct the construction
of a cupola of the church of Calcinaio. This carpenter was, then, an
architect also; and Professor Rossi remarks that it is by no means the
only case of the kind.
Maestro Mattia, the other expert called to appraise the work done by
Maestro Torzuolo for the canons of the cathedral of Perugia, was already
well and favorably known in that city, for he had been employed in 1495
to appraise some work which had been done for the choir of the monks of
St. Lorenzo; in that same year we find him executing some very elaborate
work for the convent of St. Augustine; and on the 20th of December there
was read at a meeting of the municipal council a petition from Maestro
Mattia to be admitted to the freedom of the city of Perugia; which
request the masters of the guilds, "taking into consideration the
industry, the mode of life and the moral character" of the petitioner,
were pleased to grant, on the condition that he, together with two other
persons admitted to citizenship at the same time, should make a present
to the corporation of a silver dish and forty pounds' weight of copper
money, and, further, that he should give the masters and treasurers of
his own guild a dinner.
The notices which Professor Rossi has collected from the various
collections of archives explored by him show in a remarkable manner how
much the best patron of art and artists in those days was the Church.
By far the greatest number of the contracts cited are made by
ecclesiastics, either monks or collegiate bodies of canons or the like,
for the ornamentation of their churches and sacristies. The next best
patrons are the different trade-guilds of the cities. Each of these had
its place of meeting for the _priori_--masters or wardens, as we should
say, of the company--and many of them a contiguous chapel. The sort of
furniture needed for these places was generally a range of seats running
round the principal room, a back of wainscoting behind them, a kind of
pulpit for those who addressed the meeting, a raised and prominent seat
for the "consuls" of the guild, and a large table or writing-desk for
the transaction of business. All this, as will be readily perceived,
afforded fine opportunities for the display of rich carvings and
intarsia; and there was much rivalry between the guilds in the splendor
and adornment of their places of meeting. Some of these works still
remain intact, as in the case of the meeting-room and chapel of the
company of exchange-brokers, which is celebrated wherever art is valued
for the magnificent frescoes by Perugino which adorn the upper part of
the walls above the wood-work. I think, however, that the Church was
more liberal and magnificent in her orders. I have seen much fine
wood-work in the different guild-halls and town-halls in various cities
of Italy, but in no lay building, not even in wealthy and magnificent
Venice itself, with all the splendor of its ducal palace and its Scuole,
have I ever seen anything of the kind at all comparable to the wood-work
in the choirs of the monastery of St. Peter at Perugia and of the
cathedral at Siena. There is in the cathedral of Bergamo some intarsia,
perhaps the finest things extant in that special description of work,
but for carving the choirs I have mentioned are pre-eminent.
But there are a great number of beautiful works of this sort lurking in
places where the traveler, however eager a lover of art, would hardly
think of looking for them. The central districts of Italy are full of
such. There is in the mountains to the south of Perugia, overhanging
the valley of the Tiber, a little city, the very name of which will
probably be new to many even of those who have traveled much in Italy.
Still less likely is it that they have ever been at Todi, for that is
the name of the place I am alluding to. It lies high and bleak among the
Apennines, and possesses nothing to attract the wanderer save some
notable remains of mediæval art which strikingly show how universal, how
ubiquitous, art and artists were in those halcyon days. Todi has,
moreover, the misfortune of being situated on no line of railway, and of
not being on the way to any of the great modern centres. It is,
therefore, completely out of the modern world, and nobody knows anything
about it save a few lovers of ancient art, who will not be beat in their
explorations by want of communications and bad hostelries. But the
little hill-city possesses two churches, whose choirs well deserve a
visit by the admirers of cinque-cento wood-work, I have mentioned it
here, however, mainly because one of these, the choir of the cathedral,
offers not so much in what may still be seen there, as in its records, a
very curious example of the spirit of anti-ecclesiastical freethinking
which was widely spread at that time through the artist-world, whose
best patron was the Church. I mentioned some months ago, in the pages of
this Magazine, some curious facts showing the real sentiments of the
great Perugino on this subject while he was painting Madonnas and
miracles for his ecclesiastical patrons. And the following singular
extract from the archives of the cathedral church of Todi may be added
to what was there written as a proof of the somewhat unexpected fact.
The wood-work of the choir was begun by Maestro Antonio Bencivieni of
Mercatello, in the duchy of Urbino, and was completed in 1530 by his son
Sebastian, who finished his work by inserting in it a singularly haughty
inscription in intarsia. The Latin of the original may be Englished
thus: "Begun by the art and genius of Ant^{o} Bencivieni of Mercatello.
This work was finished by his son Sebastian. Having kept faith and
maintained his honor, he did enough." The worthy canons, however,
discovered just one and forty years afterward that Maestro Sebastiano
had done somewhat too much. For he had on the fourth stall, counting
from the bishop's seat, on the right-hand side of the choir, inserted
amid the ornamentation certain Latin words, inscribed over a carving of
three vases intended to represent reliquaries, which may be translated
thus: Over the first vase, "The shadow of the ass ridden by our Lord;"
over the second, "The feet of the Blessed Virgin as she ascended into
heaven;" over the third, "Relics of the Holy Trinity." These strange
inscriptions remained where Maestro Sebastiano had so audaciously placed
them till the May of 1571. At that date we find a record in the
cathedral archives which, after rehearsing the words in question, and
describing the position of them, proceeds: "Which words, placed there
and written scandalously, and in a certain sort derisive of the
veneration for holy relics, and in contempt of the Christian religion,
the very reverend canons" (So-and-So--names rehearsed) "ordered to be
removed and entirely canceled, so that they should no longer be seen or
read." Can it be supposed that this very extraordinary inscription in a
choir frequented daily by the canons of the church had entirely escaped
notice for more than forty years? Surely this is impossible. Should we
not rather see in the fact that the chapter of 1530 noticed the mocking
words with probably a shrug and a smile, whereas the chapter of 1571
took care that they were removed, an interesting and curious commentary
on the change which the intervening years had brought about in the
spirit of the Church, and another unexpected indication of the
difference between the Church of the worldly, pagan-minded Clement VII.
and that of the energetic, earnest bigot Pius IV. That such a difference
existed we know full well, but this passage of the Todi archives is a
very curious proof of it.
T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.
REST.
In deepest weariness I lay so still
One might have thought it death,
For hush of motion and a sleep of will
Gave me but soundless breath.
And yet I slept not; only knew that Rest
Held me all close to her:
Softly but firmly fettered to her breast,
I had no wish to stir.
"Oh, if," I thought, "death would but be like this!--
Neither to sleep nor wake,
But have for ages just this _conscious_ bliss,
That perfect rest I take."
The soul grows often weary, like the flesh:
May rest pervade her long,
While she shall _feel_ the joy of growing fresh
For heavenly work and song!
CHARLOTTE F. BATES.
LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA.
BY LADY BARKER.
MARITZBURG, February 10, 1876.
In the South African calendar this is set down as the first of the
autumnal months, but the half dozen hours about mid-day are still quite
as close and oppressive as any we have had. I am, however, bound to say
that the nights--at all events, up here--are cooler, and I begin even to
think of a light shawl for my solitary walks in the verandah just before
bedtime. When the moon shines these walks are pleasant enough, but when
only the "common people of the skies" are trying to filter down their
feebler light through the misty atmosphere, I have a lurking fear and
distrust of the reptiles and bugs who may also have a fancy for
promenading at the same time and in the same place. I say nothing of
bats, frogs and toads, mantis or even huge moths: to these we are quite
accustomed. But although I have never seen a live snake in this country
myself, still one hears such unpleasant stories about them that it is
just as well to what the Scotch call "mak siccar" with a candle before
beginning a constitutional in the dark.
It is not a week ago since a lady of my acquaintance, being surprised at
her little dog's refusal to follow her into her bedroom one night,
instituted a search for the reason of the poor little creature's terror
and dismay, and discovered a snake coiled up under her chest of drawers.
At this moment, too, the local papers are full of recipes for the
prevention and cure of snake-bites, public attention being much
attracted to the subject on account of an Englishman having been bitten
by a black "mamba" (a very venomous adder) a short time since, and
having died of the wound in a few hours. In his case, poor man! there
does not seem to have been a chance from the first, for he was obliged
to walk some distance to the nearest house, and as they had no proper
remedies there, he had to be taken on a farther journey of some miles to
a hospital. All this exercise and motion caused the poison to circulate
freely through the veins, and was the worst possible thing for him. The
doctors here seem agreed that the treatment of ammonia and brandy is the
safest, and many instances are adduced to show how successful it has
been, though one party of practitioners admits the ammonia, but denies
the brandy. On the other hand, one hears of a child bitten by a snake
and swallowing half a large bottle of raw brandy in half an hour without
its head being at all affected, and, what is more, recovering from the
bite and living happy ever after. I keep quantities of both remedies
close at hand, for three or four venomous snakes have been killed within
a dozen yards of the house, and little G---- is perpetually exploring
the long grass all around or hunting for a stray cricket-ball or a
pegtop in one of those beautiful fern-filled ditches whose tangle of
creepers and plumy ferns is exactly the favorite haunt of snakes. As yet
he has brought back from these forbidden raids nothing more than a few
ticks and millions of burs.
As for the ticks, I am getting over my horror at having to dislodge them
from among the baby's soft curls by means of a sharp needle, and even
G---- only shouts with laughter at discovering a great swollen monster
hanging on by its forceps to his leg. They torment the poor horses and
dogs dreadfully; and if the said horses were not the very quietest,
meekest, most underbred and depressed animals in the world, we should
certainly hear of more accidents. As it is, they confine their efforts
to get rid of their tormentors to rubbing all the hair off their tails
and sides in patches against the stable walls or the trunk of a tree.
Indeed, the clever way G----'s miserable little Basuto pony actually
climbs inside a good-sized bush, and sways himself about in it with his
legs off the ground until the whole thing comes with a crash to the
ground, is edifying to behold to every one except the owner of the tree.
Tom, the Kafir boy, tried hard to persuade me the other day that the
pony was to blame for the destruction of a peach tree, but as the only
broken-down branches were those which had been laden with fruit, I am
inclined to acquit the pony. Carbolic soap is an excellent thing to wash
both dogs and horses with, as it not only keeps away flies and ticks
from the skin, which, is constantly rubbed off by incessant scratching,
but helps to heal the tendency to a sore place. Indeed, nothing
frightened me so much as what I heard when I first arrived about Natal
sores and Natal boils. Everybody told me that ever so slight a cut or
abrasion went on slowly festering, and that sores on children's faces
were quite common. This sounded very dreadful, but I am beginning to
hope it was an exaggeration, for whenever G---- cuts or knocks himself
(which is every day or so), or scratches an insect's bite into a bad
place, I wash the part with a little carbolic soap (there are two
sorts--one for animals and a more refined preparation for the human
skin), and it is quite well the next day. We have all had a threatening
of those horrid boils, but they have passed off.
In town the mosquitoes are plentiful and lively, devoting their
attentions chiefly to new-comers, but up here--I write as though we were
five thousand feet instead of only fifty above Maritzburg--it is rare to
see one. I think "fillies" are more in our line, and that in spite of
every floor in the house being scrubbed daily with strong soda and
water. "Fillies," you must know, is our black groom's (Charlie's) way of
pronouncing _fleas_, and I find it ever so much prettier. Charlie and I
are having a daily discussion just now touching sundry moneys he
expended during my week's absence at D'Urban for the kittens' food.
Charlie calls them the "lil' catties," and declares that the two small
animals consumed three shillings and ninepence worth of meat in a week.
I laughingly say, "But, Charlie, that would be nearly nine pounds of
meat in six days, and they couldn't eat that, you know." Charlie grins
and shows all his beautiful even white teeth: then he bashfully turns
his head aside and says, "I doan know, ma': I buy six' meat dree time."
"Very well, Charlie, that would be one shilling and sixpence." "I doan
know, ma';" and we've not got any further than that yet.
But G---- and I are picking up many words of Kafir, and it is quite
mortifying to see how much more easily the little monkey learns than I
do. I forget my phrases or confuse them, whereas when he learns two or
three sentences he appears to remember them always. It is a very
melodious and beautiful language, and, except for the clicks, not very
difficult to learn. Almost everybody here speaks it a little, and it is
the first thing necessary for a new-comer to endeavor to acquire; only,
unfortunately, there are no teachers, as in India, and consequently you
pick up a wretched, debased kind of patois, interlarded with Dutch
phrases. Indeed, I am assured there are two words, _el hashi_ ("the
horse"), of unmistakable Moorish origin, though no one knows how they
got into the language. Many of the Kafirs about town speak a little
English, and they are exceedingly sharp, when they choose, about
understanding what is meant, even if they do not quite catch the meaning
of the words used. There is one genius of my acquaintance, called
"Sixpence," who is not only a capital cook, but an accomplished English
scholar, having spent some months in England. Generally, to Cape Town
and back is the extent of their journeyings, for they are a home-loving
people; but Sixpence went to England with his master, and brought back a
shivering recollection of an English winter and a deep-rooted amazement
at the boys of the Shoe Brigade, who wanted to clean his boots. That
astonished him more than anything else, he says.
The Kafirs are very fond of attending their own schools and church
services, of which there are several in the town; and I find one of my
greatest difficulties in living out here consists in getting Kafirs to
come out of town, for by doing so they miss their regular attendance at
chapel and school. A few Sundays ago I went to one of these Kafir
schools, and was much struck by the intently-absorbed air of the pupils,
almost all of whom were youths about twenty years of age. They were
learning to read the Bible in Kafir during my visit, sitting in couples,
and helping each other on with immense diligence and earnestness. No
looking about, no wandering, inattentive glances, did I see. I might as
well have "had the receipt of fern-seed and walked invisible" for all
the attention I excited. Presently the pupil-teacher, a young black man,
who had charge of this class, asked me if I would like to hear them sing
a hymn, and on my assenting he read out a verse of "Hold the Fort," and
they all stood up and sang it, or rather its Kafir translation, lustily
and with good courage, though without much tune. The chorus was
especially fine, the words "Inkanye kanye" ringing through the room with
great fervor. This is not a literal translation of the words "Hold the
Fort," but it is difficult, as the teacher explained to me, for the
translator to avail himself of the usual word for "hold," as it conveys
more the idea of "take hold," "seize," and the young Kafir missionary
thoroughly understood all the nicety of the idiom. There was another
class for women and children, but it was a small one. Certainly, the
young men seemed much in earnest, and the rapt expression of their faces
was most striking, especially during the short prayer which followed the
hymn and ended the school for the afternoon.
I have had constantly impressed upon my mind since my arrival the advice
_not_ to take Christian Kafirs into my service, but I am at a loss to
know in what way the prejudice against them can have arisen. "Take a
Kafir green from his kraal if you wish to have a good servant," is what
every one tells me. It so happens that we have two of each--two
Christians and two heathens--about the place, and there is no doubt
whatever which is the best. Indeed, I have sometimes conversations with
the one who speaks English, and I can assure you we might all learn from
him with advantage. His simple creed is just what came from the
Saviour's lips two thousand years ago, and comprises His teaching of the
whole duty of man--to love God, the great "En' Kos," and his neighbor as
himself. He speaks always with real delight of his privileges, and is
very anxious to go to Cape Town to attend some school there of which he
talks a great deal, and where he says he should learn to read the Bible
in English. At present he is spelling it out with great difficulty in
Kafir. This man often talks to me in the most respectful and civil
manner imaginable about the customs of his tribe, and he constantly
alludes to the narrow escape he had of being murdered directly after his
birth for the crime of being a twin. His people have a fixed belief that
unless one of a pair of babies be killed at once, either the father or
mother will die within the year; and they argue that as in any case one
child will be sure to die in its infancy, twins being proverbially
difficult to rear, it is only both kind and natural to kill the weakly
one at once. This young man is very small and quiet and gentle, with an
ugly face, but a sweet, intelligent expression and a very nice manner. I
find him and the other Christian in our employment very trustworthy and
reliable. If they tell me anything which has occurred, I know I can
believe their version of it, and they are absolutely honest. Now, the
other lads have very loose ideas on the subject of sugar, and make
shifty excuses for everything, from the cat breaking a heavy stone
filter up to half the marketing being dropped on the road.
I don't think I have made it sufficiently clear that besides the
Sunday-schools and services I have mentioned there are night-schools
every evening in the week, which are fully attended by Kafir servants,
and where they are first taught to read their own language, which is an
enormous difficulty to them. They always tell me it is so much easier to
learn to read English than Kafir; and if one studies the two languages,
it is plain to see how much simpler the new tongue must appear to a
learner than the intricate construction, the varying patois and the
necessarily phonetic spelling of a language compounded of so many
dialects as the Zulu-Kafir.
FEBRUARY 12.