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LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE.
_SEPTEMBER, 1885._
Copyright, 1885, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
ON THIS SIDE.
IX.
Among the inhabitants of the United States there are none that stand so
firmly on the national legs as the Virginians,--though it would be more
correct to contract this statement somewhat, substituting "State" for
"national," since it has never been the habit of Virginians to make
themselves more than very incidentally responsible for thirty-eight
States and ten Territories occupied by persons of mixed race, numerous
religions, objectionable politics, and no safe views about so much as
the proper way to make mint-juleps. When Sir Robert presented himself
one day at the door of a fine old house belonging to the golden age of
ante-bellum prosperity in Caroline County, he was received by two of the
most English Englishmen to be found on this planet, in the persons of
Mr. Edmund and Mr. Gregory Aglonby, brothers, bachelors, and joint-heirs
of the property he had come to look at. These gentlemen received him
with a dignity and antique courtesy irresistibly suggestive of bag-wigs,
short swords, and aristocratic institutions generally, a courtesy
largely mingled with restrained severity and unspoken suspicion until
his identity had been fully established by the letters of introduction
he had brought, his position defined, and his mission in Caroline
clearly set forth. An Englishman out of England was a fact to be
accounted for, not imprudently accepted without due inquiry; but, this
done, the law and traditions of hospitality began to alleviate the
situation and temper justice with mercy. The lady of the house was sent
for, and proved to be a wonderfully pretty old lady, who might have just
got out of a sedan-chair, whose manner was even finer and statelier than
that of her brothers (diminutive as she was in point of mere inches),
and who executed a tremendous courtesy when Sir Robert was presented.
"An English gentleman travelling in this country for pleasure, and
desirous of seeing 'Heart's Content,' Anne Buller," explained the elder
brother. Miss Aglonby's face, which had worn a look of mild interest
during the first part of this speech, clouded perceptibly at its close.
She murmured some mechanical speech of welcome in an almost inaudible
voice, and sat down in a rigid and uncompromising fashion, while her
heart contracted painfully. A gentleman to look at the place: there had
been several such in the last year, who had come, and seen, and objected
to the price, and ridden away again; but perhaps this one might not ride
away, and the uneasy thought tormented her throughout the conversation
that followed. The brothers, meanwhile, had quite accepted Sir Robert,
and had insisted, with a calm, authoritative air, on sending for his
"travelling impedimenta," which had been deposited at the hotel in a
neighboring town, and had expressed a lofty hope that he would do them
the honor to consider himself their guest.
"The _res angusta domi_ will not permit us to entertain you in a manner
befitting your rank and in consonance with our wishes," said Mr. Edmund
Aglonby, in his representative capacity as head of the family, "but,
that consideration waived, I need not say that we shall esteem it an
honor and a pleasure to have you domesticated beneath this roof as long
as you find any satisfaction in remaining."
"It was not my idea, certainly, to intrude upon you here, but rather to
treat with your solicitor in this matter; but if you find it more
agreeable to set him aside, which between gentlemen is usually
altogether more satisfactory, and will, in addition, allow me to become
your guest for a few days, I can only say that I shall be delighted to
accept your kind hospitality," replied Sir Robert.
"Brother Gregory, will you see that our guest's effects are at once
transferred to his room here?" said Mr. Aglonby, half turning in his
chair and giving a graceful wave with one of his long, shapely hands
toward the door, after which he bowed with dignified grace to Sir
Robert, and said, "Your decision gives us great satisfaction, sir." Mr.
Gregory Aglonby confirmed this statement in Johnsonian periods before he
left, and tiny Miss Aglonby expressed herself as became a lady who had
been receiving guests in that very room for fifty years with stiff but
genuine courtesy. The atmosphere was so familiar to Sir Robert that he
could scarcely believe himself to be in an American household. Could
this be the American type of his dreams? Was there ever a country in
which the scenes shifted so completely with a few hours or days of
travel? "If this goes on, America will mean everything, anything, to
me," he thought. "When I hear of a Frenchman, or German, or Italian, I
have some idea of what I shall find; but it is not so here at all. This
Mr. Aglonby is quite evidently a gentleman, and a high-bred one; but so
was Porter in Boston, and Colonel De Witt, and those Baltimore fellows;
yet how different they all are! These men remind me more of my
grandfather and my great-uncles than any Englishman of the present day.
Perhaps they are English. I'll ask. Who would ever suppose them to be
countrymen of Ketchum's?"
After dinner,--and you may be sure the dinner was a good one, for Miss
Aglonby was one of a generation of women whose knowledge of housewifely
arts was such that, shut up in a lighthouse or wrecked on a desert
island, they would have made shift to get a nice meal somehow, even if
they could not have served it, as she did, off old china and graced it
with old silver,--after dinner, then, a long and pleasant evening set
in, with no thought or talk of business-matters. Sir Robert was charmed
with his new acquaintances, and not less by the matter than by the
manner of their conversation. Did they talk of travels, Mr. Aglonby
"liked to read books of adventure," but had never been out of the State
of Virginia, and had no wish to go anywhere. He deplored his fate in
being compelled at his age to leave it permanently and take up his
residence in Florida, where his physician was sending him. He talked of
"Mr. Pope" and "Mr. Addison," quoted Milton and the Latin classics, and
had chanced upon "a modern work lately, by a writer named Thackeray,"
"Henry Esmond," which had pleased him extremely. On hearing this, Sir
Robert took occasion to ask him whether he liked any of the writings of
this and that New-England author of the day, about whom he had been
hearing a great deal since his arrival in the country, and Mr. Aglonby
replied, with perfect truth, that he had "never heard of them," though
he added that Irving and Cooper, the latest additions to his library,
were, in his opinion, "writers of merit." In politics Mr. Aglonby
declared himself the champion of a defunct party,--the "old-line
Whigs,"--and explained "the levelling, agrarian tendencies of Tom
Jefferson" and the result of his policy, which had been "to eliminate
the gentleman from politics." Mr. Gregory Aglonby spoke with regretful
emotion of that period of the history of Virginia in which her local
magistrates had managed county affairs in such a way as to secure her
"safety, honor, and welfare," when universal suffrage had not "cursed
the country with ignorance and incompetence, legally established at
present, indeed, but sure to be supplemented by a property or
educational test eventually." In religion they were what "the Aglonbys
had always been,--attached adherents of the Episcopal Church in this
country, as of the Establishment in England." Quite early in the evening
Sir Robert had propounded his question as to their nationality. "Are you
an American?" he had asked the elder of the two gentlemen, and both had
replied, "We are Virginians," in accents that were eloquent of love and
pride.
"Upon my word, if I were asked what your nationality was, I should say
that you were English," remarked Sir Robert, feeling that he was making
what they must see was a handsome concession. But he was not talking to
a Sam Bates now. Mr. Edmund Aglonby regarded him with a reserved air, as
if he had said something rather flippant.
Mr. Gregory said gravely, "You doubtless mean it kindly, but we would
prefer to be thought what we are,--Virginians. Not that we are ashamed
of our parent stock, but Anne Buller here is the seventh of the name
born in this country, and it is only natural that we should be
completely identified with it. Unworthy as we are to represent it, we
are Virginians." That anybody could be _more_ than a Virginian had never
crossed Mr. Aglonby's mind; but it should be said, in defence of what
many regard as an exaggerated State pride, that to such, men to be
_less_ than a Virginian (that is, an embodiment of the virtues
represented to them by the title) is equally impossible.
Whist was now proposed, and played by the light of two candles in
old-fashioned candlesticks, that towered high enough to allow mild
yellow rays to illuminate a vast expanse of bald head belonging to Mr.
Gregory, and made the dark sheen of the polished mahogany table dimly
visible beneath. An oil-lamp on the high mantel-shelf enabled Sir Robert
to get a ghostly impression of the large, bare room in which they were
sitting,--the high ceilings, the black-looking floors fading away into
grewsome corners, the spindle-legged furniture that had no idea of
accommodating itself to a lolling, mannerless generation, and loomed up
in some occasional piece in a threatening sort of way,--solid, massive,
dignified furniture, conscious of its obligations to society and ready
to fulfil them to the very end, however little a frivolous and
degenerate world might be worthy of such accessories. More than once in
the pauses of the game Sir Robert's eyes wandered to the pictures, of
which there were a number, all portraits, two being half discernible,--a
young matron in ruby velvet and pearls, with hair dressed in a pyramid,
a coach-and-six in court-plaster stuck on a snowy forehead, and eyes
that would have laughed anybody into a good humor; and, opposite, a
gentleman of the pursiest, puffiest, most prosperous description, the
husband of the young matron, and so evidently high-tempered, dull, and
obstinate, that he must have brought many a tear into the laughing eyes.
"A handsome woman, that," he said, after one of these moments of
inattention, "and a good picture."
"It is an ancestress of ours on the distaff side,--Lady Philippa
Vane,--and is accounted a Lely.--Brother Gregory, if you will have the
kindness to cut the cards we can proceed with our game.--The other is
her husband and cousin, a man of rank and large property but incurably
vicious propensities, to whom we are rather fond of attributing certain
follies and weaknesses in his descendants, and who we could wish had
laid to heart the maxim, '_Nobilitatis virtus non stemma character_.'
They were of the Vanes of Huddlesford," said Mr. Aglonby.
"Ah," said Sir Robert, "you suppose yourself to have some connection
with the Huddlesford Vanes?"
Mr. Aglonby's white tufted brows arched themselves in surprise above his
dark eyes at the question, and there was a little more dignified reserve
than before in his voice and manner as he said, "Descent and alliance
are not matters of _supposition_ in Virginia, but of record.--Anne
Buller, I beg your forgiveness for having inadvertently revoked. My
memory is really growing too treacherous to permit of my long enjoying
this diversion, however great the horrors of an old age without cards
may be."
The deferential courtesy paid to Miss Aglonby by her brothers was the
most remarkable feature of the game to Sir Robert, and, when it was
over, the first thought of both was to place a chair for her in the
corner she generally occupied. They were not in haste,--it was
impossible to associate the idea of hurry or flurry with either of
them,--but somehow there was a little collision between them in doing
this, followed by formal bows and elaborate mutual apologies, which were
broken in upon by Miss Aglonby's low voice, saying, "Brother Edmund, I
feared that you had slipped again.--He sustained a grave injury in that
way last winter" (this to Sir Robert), "and I am always afraid that the
disastrous experience may be repeated.--Brother Gregory, I thank you. I
am entirely comfortable, and I beg that you will be seated now. Perhaps
our guest will do us the favor to resume the very instructive and
entertaining discourse with which he was beguiling us earlier in the
evening."
Thus adjured, Sir Robert proceeded to instruct and entertain, with such
success that all three of his companions were charmed, though they gave
no frivolous evidences of it, such as laughing heartily, interrupting
him to interject phrases or opinions into the "discourse," or replying
in an animated strain. They listened with intelligent seriousness to
what he had to say, weighed it apparently, replied to it with gravity,
responded to some jest with a smile; but, although they were not people
to approve of crackling thorns under a pot, or any form of folly, they
were, in their way, appreciative of the culture, humor, and insight he
showed. Mr. Aglonby begged to be favored with his "observations" on
America, and added that "the dispassionate reflections of an intelligent
foreigner should be esteemed of the utmost value by all judicious
patriots and enlightened political economists, calling attention, as
they often did, to evils and dangers whose existence had not been
previously suspected." Mr. Gregory Aglonby wished to hear more of his
travels among "that God-forsaken people the French." Miss Aglonby was
eager to know more of the England of "Bracebridge Hall."
When bedtime came at last ("the proper season for repose," dear old Anne
Buller called it, when she rose to "retire"), another courtesy was
executed in front of Sir Robert by the châtelaine of "Heart's Content,"
who said, "How truly it has been remarked that we owe some of our
keenest pleasures in life to strangers! You must permit me to thank you
again for your improving and pleasing conversation, which I shall often
recall, and always with lively satisfaction. May your slumbers be
refreshing and your awakening devoid of all pain! I wish you a very good
night, sir." With this Miss Aglonby took up one of the top-heavy
candlesticks, and glided, like the shade she was and ghost of a past
period, up the stairs.
While Mr. Gregory was looking to bolts and bars, Sir Robert strayed
about the room with his hands behind him, looking at the pictures,
followed by Mr. Aglonby, who made no extensive comment on them, but gave
a word of explanation occasionally when his guest halted longer than
usual before a canvas, such as, "The First Edmund, who came here in
1654;" "Edmund the Second;" "Edmund the Third, in his Oxford cap and
gown;" "Gregory Aglonby, a colonel in the Revolutionary forces;"
"Red-haired Edmund, as we call him, because the others are all dark;"
"Colonel Everard Buller Aglonby, who represented this county in the
House of Burgesses for thirty years, and his wife, who was a Calvert,--a
great-aunt, a woman of extraordinary piety, who reduced herself from a
condition of affluence to comparative poverty by the manumission of her
three hundred slaves."
When he had shaken hands with his host at the door of his bedroom (which
was emphatically the room of a bed, a huge, be-stepped, pillared,
testered contrivance that waited at one end of the large apartment to
murder sleep), Sir Robert fell to winding his watch with what looked
like interest, but all his thoughts were with the Aglonbys.
"English gentlefolks of the eighteenth century preserved in Virginian
amber. What a curious survival! 'Gentlemen of a period of manners,
morals.' Remarkably interesting! Delightful types of a society as
extinct as the dodo," he was saying to himself. "There is but one mould
for the gentleman; but nature changes its shape with every century, I
suppose,--though I sometimes think she has gone out of the business
altogether in utter disgust. We have got a lot of plutocrats that are
tailors' blocks, and nobles that talk like stable-boys and act like
blackguards, and both fancy themselves gentlemen; but when I contrast
them with the men of my father's day even--And this dainty, charming old
bit of Chelsea-ware, Anne Buller! Her brothers treat her as though she
were a reigning princess. I wonder what she would say if she could see,
as I did the other day, a group of Nuneham girls calling each other by
their last names and smoking cigarettes with a half-dozen Cambridge men,
who chaffed them and treated them exactly as though they were so many
boys in petticoats. Well, well, the world moves, I know, and I am an
old fogy; but I shall not make myself hoarse shouting 'Huzza' until I
find out whether we are going to the devil or not. I hope I am not
getting as cynical as old Caradoc, who declares that he can always tell
a countess from an actress nowadays by the superior modesty and
refinement of--the actress."
In the next few days Sir Robert carefully inspected the rambling,
substantial old house, which, to Miss Aglonby's chagrin, he pronounced
"quite modern;" though he smiled when she informed him that "Heart's
Content" had been "refurnished quite recently,--in '48." He also went
over the land, only about four hundred acres, put the most searching
questions as to its practical value and uses, filled a tin box with the
earth, meaning to have it analyzed by "a respectable chemist," and went
into details generally with much energy. Nor had he anything to complain
of in the way of unfair dealing in Mr. Gregory Aglonby, who accompanied
him and gave him the fullest and frankest particulars about the
property, which he pointed out was going to rack and ruin, or rather had
gone there. Every broken gate and stony field was dear to his heart, and
it was a melancholy pilgrimage to him; but had not Mr. Aglonby said to
him that morning, "Brother Gregory, the place must go,--there is no help
for it,--and this gentleman seems likely to become a purchaser. Will you
see that the disadvantages of the property are set before him clearly,
especially such as a stranger would certainly overlook? I cannot
entertain a proposition of any kind looking to its ultimate purchase
until I know that this has been done, anxious as I am to have this
matter definitely concluded. I had thought to die here. But it has been
otherwise ordered by an overruling and all-wise Providence."
It did not escape Sir Robert that he was not likely to be overreached in
his bargain, however much he might repent of it; and when Mr. Gregory
pointed across the road and said, "The 'Little England' farm lies over
there, but produces less and less every year. The land is exhausted,"
Sir Robert thought, "The fellow is either quixotic or doesn't wish to
sell. I rather think the first: there has certainly been no shuffling
and pretending." Aloud he said, "The soil can't be exhausted. It is
virgin still compared to that of England, and all that it needs is
careful cultivation. It seems to me that what Virginia needs is
immigration."
Mr. Gregory looked displeased. It was as though Sir Robert had
criticised Anne Buller's dress. "On the contrary, we wish to keep
Virginia for Virginians," he said slowly. "We have no desire to see it
overrun by a horde of Irish and Dutch, and heaven knows what besides.
The proper place for that kind of people is the West and Northwest. If
we could get _the right class_ of English emigrants, that would be
another matter. But it is scarcely likely that they will come here in
any considerable number, now that the poor old commonwealth offers so
little remunerative return to the most honorable enterprise."
When Sir Robert had quite made up his mind that he would like to possess
the place, he telegraphed imperatively for Mr. Heathcote, who joined him
most reluctantly. Together they walked all over the county, saw a great
many people, and, having bought two hundred acres that marched with,
and, indeed, had formerly been a part of, the Aglonby estate, Sir Robert
made a liberal offer for Heart's Content, expressed his thanks for the
kind and honorable treatment he had received there, and, his terms being
accepted, paid the purchase-money, and begged that the family would suit
their own convenience entirely in giving it up. This settled, he went
his way to the Natural Bridge, which he considered should rank second
only to Niagara in this country in point of interest, and then went on
to Lexington, to visit General Lee's tomb, and from there to see
Stonewall Jackson's grave, which, to his intense astonishment and
indignation, he found half covered with visiting-cards,--the exquisite
tribute of the sentimental tourist to the stern soldier. He could do
nothing until he had cleared the last bit of pasteboard (with "Miss
Mollie Bangs, Jonesville," printed on it) away from the mound. This he
did energetically with his umbrella, after which he sat down quietly to
think of his favorite hero, who seemed to be "resting under the shade of
the trees over the river" rather than there, and fell to repeating
"Stonewall Jackson's Way,"--a very favorite lyric, which he knew by
heart. "'Appealing from his native sod In _forma pauperis_ to God,'
ought to be his epitaph. I think he would like that," he said. "I am
glad England can claim such a son, however indirectly. Fancy 'Miss
Mollie Bangs' leaving a card--and such a card--on old Blue-Light! A
decent one might do for Beau Brummel's grave, but Jackson's--!"
Mr. Heathcote was with him, and, after one careless glance, had strolled
up and down, absorbed in his own thoughts, which were not of war or
death. He only half listened to his uncle's praise of the great soldier,
and presently said, _à propos_ of nothing that had happened that day,
"Uncle, what would you say if I should ask you to let me live at
'Heart's Content'?"
"Eh? What's that?" asked Sir Robert, forgetting in his surprise to blow
out the lighted match he had just applied to the offending cards. "You
live in America? What idea have you got in your head, my boy?"
Mr. Heathcote could not tell his uncle that Edith had said that she
would never marry an Englishman, never! but that if she ever did, she
should insist upon his living in America, for to go away from mamma and
papa and the boys and everybody she cared for was a thing she could not
and would not do, not if she adored the man that demanded such a
sacrifice of her. What he did say was that he was tired of his aimless
life in London, and liked his uncle too well to look forward with any
pleasure to succeeding him, and that he should like to have a small
property to manage without aid of bailiff, steward, agent, or factotum
of any kind. "I could go over whenever I liked, or you needed me, and
you could come to me to see that I wasn't making ducks and drakes of the
property," he said. "And it is an experiment, I grant; but you have
always been awfully generous and kind to me, and I have something laid
by that would cover the possible losses my inexperience might cause, for
the first year at least. I am sure I can learn the trade, and am willing
to pay for my apprenticeship, if you will only let me try my hand at
farming."
"The boy is thinking of marrying," was Sir Robert's mental comment; but
he only said that he had bought the place with a very different idea,
but that he would think the matter over.
"You must remember that it will not be child's play," he said. "And if
you should grow attached to it and wish to stay, you will be practically
giving up your own country, you know. But America is hardly a foreign
country. It is the representative institutions, moral ideas, social
atmosphere, and mental habits that make a people, not the mere physical
features of the country, and in character the Americans are, as Mr.
Aglonby would say, 'Englishmen once removed'--across the Atlantic. You
might be quite happy and content among them. Just so."
"Oh, yes, I am sure I shall. You are quite in the right in what you say
of them," Mr. Heathcote eagerly replied.
And Sir Robert, who had purposely laid this trap for him, thought to
himself, "The boy is certainly in love. I must find out all about it,
unless he has the grace to tell me himself."
Much as she liked Niagara, Miss Noel was not sorry, after long delay, to
get a letter from Sir Robert, asking her to join him in Chicago, and
telling her of a delightful visit he had made to Richmond, where he had
been received "with particular kindness" and had met a great number of
agreeable people, most of them Virginians of the modern type and
scarcely so interesting, in a way, as the Aglonby family, who, as he saw
from other individuals, were survivals of a generation rapidly
disappearing, to be found only occasionally here and there now,--"a
class of aristocrats long a curious anomaly in a republican state,
hardly to be matched in Europe to-day outside of Austria, and never to
be reproduced."
It did not take Parsons long to do the necessary packing; but Miss Noel
consumed a whole day in putting up her carefully-labelled "specimens of
the flora of New York;" and Ethel had to settle with Mr. Bates, who
would doubtless rather have been rejected by an English-woman than
accepted by any American, and was not denied that luxury.
From Chicago the reunited forces went off almost immediately to Salt
Lake City, having only three days to give to a little hurried
sight-seeing in the "marvellous Sphinx city," as they called it in their
letters home.
At Salt Lake Mrs. Sykes was awaiting their arrival, and betrayed a
radiant satisfaction at the first glance.
"You can't think how busy I have been and what a lot I have
accomplished," she related exultantly. "I have found a whole village of
Thompsons with a _p_, and went and boarded there, and have got up a book
that Bentley will give me a hundred pounds for. And I have done a lot of
sketches to illustrate it, and, so far from being out of pocket, shall
have made by my American tour. It has been the greatest fun imaginable,
poking about in their houses and dishing them up afterward. And, only
fency, I've got a lock of Brigham Young's hair, _well authenticated_. I
palmed myself off on a person that I met as being a very great admirer
of his, and she gave me it. When I get home I'm going to have a ring
made of it, like the one Lady Bottsford has got made of King John of
Abyssinia's wool, which has been so talked of. People have taken to
noticing my rings very much ever since I had that tooth of darling
Bobo's polished and mounted in brilliants; and this will be
unique,--there will not be another like it in all England. I told the
person of whom I got it what I meant to do with it, and she said that I
must revere him deeply; and, do you know, I quite forgot my part that I
was playing, and said that I didn't care a fig for the old sinner, but
that it was a great curiosity. And she was so engry, quite fiawrious,
and wanted it back; but of course she didn't get it. When do we leave
this?"
They left as soon as Sir Robert had satisfied himself on certain points,
and Miss Noel bad been sufficiently shocked by a service in the
Tabernacle, and Mr. Heathcote had indulged in a bath in the lake, which
he persisted in taking, and in the course of which he went through any
number of antics in addition to his usual feats, in themselves
remarkable, for he was a vigorous and powerful swimmer. The
ex-Devonshire Elder (whom Mrs. Sykes had seen more than once slinking
about the streets, she said, but who had not come near her) was pleased
to be very polite to Sir Robert, or would have been if he had been
allowed; but, not wishing to conduct a Salt Lake campaign _à la_ Sykes,
Sir Robert was content to see the place in his own way, got a phial of
water from the lake, which Miss Noel said reminded her of Sodom and
Gomorrah and was "very suited to the odious place," looked at and into
such things as could be seen in a short stay, and made temperate,
careful records of the same in his note-book.
The next point of interest to the party was "'Frisco and the Yosemite,"
toward which they pushed as fast as steam could take them, Sir Robert
and Miss Noel being vividly interested in many things _en route_, Ethel
and Mr. Heathcote pleased by a few, Mrs. Sykes grumbling ceaselessly
about the length, monotony, bareness, aridity, stupidity, and general
hideousness of the journey. The only thing that really amused her was a
quarrel that she got up with a lady who sat near her. The acquaintance
promised to be friendly enough for a while, for the lady was an amiable
soul,--the wife of "a dry-goods merchant in Topeka," she told Mrs.
Sykes. The latter was pleased to ask her a great many questions and to
patronize her quite extensively in default of other amusement, so that
all went well at first. But the second stage of Mrs. Sykes's friendship
was not apt to be so pleasant as the first, and accordingly she much
astonished her neighbor one morning by saying to her curtly, "Why don't
you speak English?"
"Why, I do. I talk it all the time, don't I?" replied the lady.
"No, you don't. Just look here. I have made a list of the things you
say. They are not English at all. I don't know what you mean, often."
"Do you mean to say that you never heard anybody talk like me?" asked
the lady indignantly, as she fumbled in her bag for her glasses.
"Oh, I didn't say that. I've heard _some_ of the words among our
lodging-house-keepers; but you have invented others, and your
pronunciation is abominable. You should really mend it, if you can,"
replied Mrs. Sykes, with decision.
The list which had been so civilly put in the Topekan lady's hands was a
long one, and ran as follows: "Chawcolate, pawk, hawrid, cawd, squrl,
stoopid, winder, lemmy, gimmy, years (for ears), 'cute, edgercation,
conchienchous," etc., etc.
The fingers that held it trembled with rage long before it was finished,
for the Topekan lady had wealth and social aspiration, if not
"edgercation;" and when Mrs. Sykes broke in with, "Well, what do you say
to that?" she had a good deal to say, and said it very forcibly, in such
English as she could command, after which she swelled in speechless
anger opposite for the remainder of their journey.
"There it is again. If I say the least thing to these Americans they fly
out like that," complained Mrs. Sykes to Miss Noel.
But for sheer ill humor nothing could have surpassed her conduct when
they had "done" San Francisco, which she declared to be "a dull, dirty,
windy place, with a harbor of which entirely too much is
made,--ridiculously over-praised, in fact," and got under way for the
Yosemite. The roads, the rough vehicle, the country, could not be
sufficiently abused. However, when the spot was reached, she relented,
as she had done at Niagara, and, looking up at the giant trees,
graciously conceded that they also were "quite up to the mark."
It was a pleasant spectacle to see Sir Roberts enthusiasm. Such gazing
and neck-craning and measuring and speculating! Such critical inspection
of bark, leaves, soil, lichens! Such questioning of the guides! Such
keen delight, wonder, remeasuring, recraning, theories, calculations,
endless contemplation! The enjoyment of the others was as nothing,
compared to his,--for if there was a thing that he loved it was a fine
tree, and had he not some of the best timber in England, which he knew
as some generals have known their soldiers and some shepherds their
sheep? "Stupendous! Prodigious! Wonderful!" burst from his lips as he
walked slowly around them and rode between them as in a dream, perfectly
entranced. He could scarcely be dragged away, and at last was only moved
by the thought that there was so much that he "must positively see" in
the surrounding country which was waiting to be considered volcanically,
botanically, geologically, and otherwise. It was one of his vexations
that nature, art, science, history, commerce, were so long, and time and
a voraciously intelligent but mortal and limited baronet so fleeting. He
would have liked to spend several months on the Pacific coast, looking
into a thousand things with unflagging zeal and interest. It was really
afflicting to turn his back upon the early Spanish settlers, the Jesuit
missions, the grape and olive production, mining interests, earthquake
statistics, the Chinese problem, annual rainfall on the great plateau,
study of the Sierra Nevada range, and last, most alluring of all, that
of the Santa Barbara Islands, described by a companion of Drake as
densely populated by a white race with light hair and ruddy cheeks. When
Sir Robert thought of that people and of all the bliss of investigation,
he almost decided to make a winter of it in California and solve that
mystery or perish. But he had still much to accomplish, and he had fixed
the day for sailing before leaving England. So back the party came to
St. Louis, where they found a mountain of mail-matter from the four
quarters of the globe. There were five voluminous epistles from Mrs.
Vane to Miss Noel, and others from that household; a simple domestic
chronicle from Mabel, describing her daily round and stating her fears
and anxieties about "Boy," who was getting "sadly wilful and unruly,"
and, like a youthful Ajax, had lately "defied husband;" and one of Mr.
Ketchum's characteristic epistles:
"I send you a letter of introduction to my friend Fry in New
Orleans (to whom my double-and-twisted), since you will go
there. He will put you through all right. But I warn you that
you will be nobody and won't be able to hold up your head there
at all. No one can after an epidemic, unless he has lost half
of his relations and had the other half given up by the doctors
and prepared for burial. This reminds me that Brown's
scapegrace of a brother has turned up here with a handsome
Mexican wife and a million, and has deodorized his reputation
by giving large sums to the yellow-fever sufferers, while I am
thinking of colonizing all the mothers-in-law of these United
there before another season opens, unless business improves.
Fairfield has a Benedicts' Club now, and I chose the motto for
it, 'Here the women cease from troubling and the wicked are at
rest:' so when you want a little peace and comfort you will
know where to come. My wife will have nothing less than her
love sent you; but I am all the same your friend, J. K."
Having seen a certificate that New Orleans was entirely free from fever,
"signed by all the medical men of eminence in the city," Sir Robert was
determined not to be frightened out of his visit there altogether. But
it was only November, and he did not wish to run any foolish risks, and
the ladies were very nervous on this score. He was still undecided what
course to take, when he one day picked up a paper and read an account of
the Indian Territory that interested him beyond measure. In an hour he
had got out his maps and time-tables and arranged to "put in a week" at
Tahlequah, the Falls of St. Anthony, and the Mammoth Cave. As none of
the party cared for the first except himself, he went there alone, and
felt fully repaid for the effort. Great was his joy at finding "a purely
Indian legislative body" and assisting at their deliberations, his
lorgnon glued now to one chief and now to another. And then to talk to
them, to get their "views," to sketch them, to have a copy of their
constitution and laws and a newspaper in their own tongue and characters
in which an affinity to the Egyptian, Arabic, Chinese, or any other
might perhaps be traced! And then how full his letters to his friends in
England were of his "visit to a Choctaw gentleman's plantation,--a most
deeply interesting, well-educated man;" "the first-fruits of the new
civilization;" "the opinion of a Seminole person on the Indian policy of
the American government;" "the beauty of a young Chickasaw female" whom
he had seen at one of the schools, and "the extraordinary progress made
by some of the other scholars, showing that there is absolutely no limit
to the intellectual development of the once-despised savage;" "the
crystal clearness of the beautiful rivers, the lovely, fertile plains,
framed by the Mozark Mountains, the balmy, delightful climate, and the
brutality and wicked greed of an American of the lower class," who had
told him that "the country was a million times too good for redskins,
who ought all to be exterminated, as 'Indians was p'ison wherever
found.'" And then, while the glow of this interest still flushed his
mind, he took up the Mississippi River, which was a career in itself and
beckoned him on to fresh conquests. He went up to the Falls of St.
Anthony, which, after Niagara and the Yosemite, was accounted "tame and
overrated" by Mrs. Sykes, but over which he pondered deeply. Before he
left there the river had got a strong hold on his imagination that grew
ever greater and greater. He spent all his time on the boat studying it.
He talked to the pilot about it,--or rather made the pilot talk, and
listened with all his ears; he took up the methods now practised for
preventing the banks from caving in and forcing the Great Father to lie
in the bed he has made, instead of driving honest folk out of theirs by
scurvy turns and bends that break up thousands of homes. He drew
diagrams of the pile-driving and wattling and willow mattrasses in the
diary, with the improvements he thought advisable, and some very
scientific suggestions by which the river could be made to checkmate
itself, like an automaton chess-player. He hung over the guards
continually, observing all that was to be observed, and recorded the
same under separate headings, such as "currents," "velocity,"
"flood-rises," with statistics without end showing that the
carrying-trade of the great water highway would amount in 1950 to
something so colossal that there is no room for it here, while a future
for the cities that stud its banks was predicted that would satisfy
their most ambitious citizens.
His heart was not in Louisville nor in the Mammoth Cave, though he went
over the first religiously and examined the latter carefully, collected
specimens, and even thrilled faintly over an eyeless fish, which aroused
considerable enthusiasm in Mr. Heathcote. He was not really himself
until he was again on the river, doing a little dredging and sounding on
his own account. At Cairo he expanded almost as much as his subject, and
for a long while afterward was never weary of tracing the blue and
yellow currents that fuse so reluctantly and imperfectly that out in the
Gulf of Mexico, it is said, one comes upon patches of the Missouri of
the most jaundiced, angry hue.
The sombre majesty of the stream was quite lost upon Mrs. Sykes, who saw
in it only "an ugly, wicked-looking river, with a lot of dirty-white
villages along its mud banks." Her attention was given to the passengers
and the clerk,--especially the latter. "A clerk that talks to the ladies
in the cabin about literature and the dramar! Only fency!" she said to
Miss Noel. "And such comical blackies, that the ladies call 'aunty,' and
that call me 'honey' and 'child.' As like as not you'll see a snag
coming up through the bottom of the boat presently, and you had better
try one of the life-preservers on and see how it works; though, after
all, we may be blown up instead. Of course we are racing. I am sure of
it."
"Dear, dear! How _very_ dreadful! How did you discover that? It should
really be made known. I shall speak to the captain. I really can't
consent to being _raced_ with," replied Miss Noel, who did not make
sufficient allowance for Mrs. Sykes's love of the sensational. "Robert
must call a meeting and protest, or something."
She went to look for Sir Robert, whom she found walking about on deck.
He had been reading all the afternoon, and his mind was full of La
Salle, and De Soto, and poor Evangeline, so cruelly near to Gabriel and
happiness once, only to drift away from both forever. So large was his
grasp of any subject that the imaginative phases of a situation appealed
to him as powerfully as the practical, and he was not the man to take
the Mississippi without its associations, any more than he would have
done the Hudson or the Sierras without Irving and Bret Harte. So now he
was pacing backward and forward under the stars, thinking of these
things, and in no mood for bearding the captain in his cabin; and,
having calmed Miss Noel's fears, he stayed on deck until very late,
enjoying his cigar and surroundings.
When they got low enough down to come upon levees and see that the river
was actually higher than the land, the questions of inundation,
protection, blue-clay banks, dikes, sluices, crevasses, water-gates,
sediment, currents, swept in upon Sir Robert, and he was still working
at them when they reached New Orleans. Fresh interests and employments
now awaited him, in which he was soon absorbed, head over ears. Like
olives, New Orleans has a flavor of its own, so decided that it is
impossible to be indifferent to it: one must either be very fond of it
or dislike it heartily. It was soon evident that Sir Robert belonged to
the first class and Mrs. Sykes to the second. Its brilliant blue skies,
and sunshine, and warmth, the lovely flowers, the good opera and better
restaurants, the infectious gayety of the people, as light about the
heart as the heels, with enough Gallic quicksilver in their veins to
give them a genius for being and looking happy, and, lastly, the warmth
of his reception, and a hospitality as refined as limitless, delighted
this most amiable of baronets. He had brought good letters, and was
admitted to that inner Creole circle which few strangers see, and in
which he found among the elders, as he said to Miss Noel, "the
atmosphere of the Faubourg Saint-Germain,--a dignity like that of the
period to which the Aglonbys belonged, with more grace and
_savoir-faire_. And such wonderfully pretty girls, my dear Augusta,
with eyes like sloes and skins like the petals of their own
magnolia-blossoms. And I observe a sort of patriarchal tribal state of
affairs among them,--grandparents, children, grandchildren, all living
together in great numbers and perfect amity, apparently." Among the
Americans of the city Sir Robert found much to interest him, and he went
to visit their "sugar-estates," took down in black and white the
astounding number of oranges that one tree is capable of producing, held
conversations with many gentlemen about the emancipated slaves, and with
many emancipated slaves about their late masters and present condition.
And then was there not cotton, the machinery employed on rice-, sugar-,
and cotton-plantations to "go, into"? to say nothing of the swamp-flora,
the possible introduction of olives into Louisiana, and Voodooism to
trace back to the Vaudois sorcerers of the fourteenth century and
connect with the serpent-worship of some parts of Italy, where he had
himself seen the peasants make their yearly procession with snakes
wrapped about their necks, waists, and wrists? And was there not, too,
serious business to be done? How could he secure and forward to England
a few things that he must have, such as a gar alligator, a pair of
mocking-birds, a Floridian flamingo, a ruby humming-bird, "a Texan
horned frog, with a distinctly-developed tail, crustaceous, probably
antediluvian, and credibly reported to live upon air," not to mention
other treasures, and collections previously made, which must be shipped
before he left? All this he finally accomplished, and was so pleased by
his success that not even a letter from his Kalsing "solicitor," saying
that his suit against the "Eagle" had been brought to trial and he had
been awarded fifty cents damages, could greatly cloud the content he
felt.
Mrs. Sykes, meanwhile, was looking at everything through her own bit of
yellow glass or London fog, and seeing only what her prepossessions
would let her see through a medium that distorted and magnified every
object. As the spittoons at the Capitol had seemed to her far bigger and
more striking than the dome, so now the gutters of New Orleans made an
immense impression upon her and affected her most painfully, although
the Mississippi failed to impress her at all. The climate she found
odious, the people spoke neither pure French nor good English, and many
a fault besides she found, chiefly with what she politely termed "the
Creowls," whom she was never tired of ridiculing as lazy, ignorant,
effeminate, and morbidly conceited. She was not an ideal companion when
they made an expedition into the lovely pastoral Tèche country, the
Acadia of exiled Acadians and Eden of Louisiana, but her lack of
enthusiasm did not damp the ardor of Sir Robert. Miss Noel thought it a
beautiful country, but added that it looked "sadly damp, and as if it
might be malarious," and insisted on "dear Ethel's" taking ten grains
of quinine daily during their stay and wearing a potato in her
pocket,--precautionary measures adopted by herself, and known to have
nipped jungle-fever in the bud repeatedly in India, so she said. It
seemed to Sir Robert's heated fancy that even Ethel praised this ideal
spot but tepidly, and when she had started out of a revery three times
with an "I beg pardon" while he was reading "Evangeline" to her under
the shade of one of those noble oaks "from whose branches garlands of
Spanish moss floated," fit monuments of the sorrowful maiden of
ever-green memory, he put down the book impatiently, saying, "It is only
the old that are young nowadays; I am boring you,"--a speech that made
her blush guiltily, since she did not care to explain where her thoughts
had wandered. He was not bored. The bayous were a fascinating novelty to
him, the trees and fields and glades were eloquent to him, the simple
French peasants who belong to the seventeenth century and by some
miracle lead its idyllic life in the nineteenth interested him, and he
could see Basil, Gabriel, and Father Félicien at every step.
The next week found them on a steamer bound for Havana and New York,
followed by friendly faces and good claret to the last, leaving three
baskets of champagne and about a ton of flowers out of account. For an
account of Havana, Matanzas, Spanish atrocities, Cuban exports, coolie
slavery, and the like topics, the reader is respectfully referred to the
book since published by Sir Robert,--"Eight Months in the United States,
Cuba, and Canada,"--a work pronounced in critical quarters "the best
book of travels in America ever published in England" (high praise,
surely), though it attracted less general attention than a very spicy,
entertaining volume by Mrs. Arundel Sykes, called "A Britisher among the
Yankees," (to quote from another English journal) said to contain "a not
very flattering picture of the life, society, and institutions of the
Great Republic, which must be a true one, since it is so universally
resented by the American press. People will cry out when they are hit,
as every one knows."