ELSIE VENNER.
The _Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table_ was followed in 1859 by _The
Professor_, a series of similar essays, in which we are introduced to
"Iris" and "Little Boston," and begin to realize Doctor Holmes'
inimitable skill in dramatic effect as well as in character painting.
_The Story of Iris_ has been printed by itself in Rossiter Johnson's
_Little Classics_, and reads like an exquisite prose poem; but after
all, we like best to follow the delicate thread of narrative just as the
professor himself has introduced it--a dainty aria whose harmony runs
under and over and all through the deep philosophy and sparkling table
talk of the book.
It prepares us, too, for _Elsie Venner_, the "Professor's Story"--a
novel whose weird conception holds us spell-bound from beginning to
end, in spite of the sadness--"the pity of it." At the very first
introduction to Elsie we have a hint of the strange hereditary curse
that throws its blight over her whole nature:
"Who and what is that," asks the new master, "sitting a little apart
there--that strange, wild-looking girl?"
The lady teacher's face changed; one would have said she was frightened
or troubled. She looked at the girl doubtfully, as if she might hear the
master's question and its answer. But the girl did not look up; she was
winding a gold chain about her wrist, and then uncoiling it, as if in a
kind of reverie.
Miss Dailey drew close to the master and placed her hand so as to hide
her lips.
"Don't look at her as if we were talking about her," she whispered
softly, "that is Elsie Venner."
The more we read of her, the more her sad beauty fascinates us.
"She looked as if she might hate, but could not love. She hardly smiled
at anything, spoke rarely, but seemed to feel that her natural power of
expression lay all in her bright eyes, the force of which so many had
felt, but none perhaps had tried to explain to themselves. A person
accustomed to watch the faces of those who were ailing in body or mind,
and to search in every line and tint for some underlying source of
disorder, could hardly help analyzing the impression such a face
produced upon him. The light of those beautiful eyes was like the lustre
of ice; in all her features there was nothing of that human warmth which
shows that sympathy has reached the soul beneath the mask of flesh it
wears. The look was that of remoteness, of utter isolation. There was in
its stony apathy the pathos which we find in the blind who show no film
or speck over the organs of sight; for Nature had meant her to be
lovely, and left out nothing but love."
The mother of Elsie, some months before the birth of her child, had been
bitten by a rattlesnake. The instant use of powerful antidotes seemed to
arrest the fatal poison, but death ensued a few weeks after the birth of
her little girl.
"There was something not human looking out of Elsie's eyes.... There
were two warring principles in that superb organization and proud soul.
One made her a woman, with all a woman's powers and longings. The other
chilled all the currents of outlets for her emotions. It made her
tearless and mute, when another woman would have wept and pleaded. And
it infused into her soul something--it was cruel to call it
malice--which was still and watchful and dangerous--which waited its
opportunity, and then shot like an arrow from its bow out of the coil of
brooding premeditation."
But the cloud--"the ante-natal impression which had mingled an alien
element in Elsie's nature"--is mercifully lifted just before her death.
She had fallen into a light slumber, and when she awoke and looked up
into her father's face, she seemed to realize his tenderness and
affection as never before.
"Elsie dear," he said, "we were thinking how much your expression was,
sometimes, like that of your sweet mother. If you could but have seen
her so as to remember her!"
The tender look and tone, the yearning of the daughter's heart
for the mother she had never seen, save only with the unfixed,
undistinguishable eyes of earliest infancy, perhaps the understanding
that she might soon rejoin her in another state of being,--all came upon
her with a sudden overflow of feeling which broke through all the
barriers between her heart and her eyes, and Elsie wept. It seemed to
her father as if the malign influence--evil spirit it might almost be
called--which had pervaded her being, had at least been driven forth or
exorcised, and that these tears were at once the sign and pledge of her
redeemed nature. But now she was to be soothed and not excited. After
her tears she slept again, and the look her face wore was peaceful as
never before.
While "Elsie Venner" is a purely imaginary conception, the author tells
us that after beginning the story he received the most striking
confirmation of the possibility of the existence of such a character.
The reader is awakened to new views of human responsibility in the
perusal of Elsie's life, and with good old pastor Honeywood learns a
lesson of patience with his fellow creatures in their inborn
peculiarities and of charity in judging what seem to him wilful faults
of character.
The Professor's story while centring the interest upon Elsie, gives
numerous side glances of New England village life; and old Sophy, Helen
Darley, Silas Peckham, Bernard Langdon, Dick Venner, and the good Doctor
are portrayed in vivid colors. There is a deal of psychology throughout
the book, and not a little theology--good wholesome theology too, as the
following brief extract shows:
"The good minister was as kind-hearted as if he had never groped in the
dust and ashes of those cruel old abstractions which have killed out so
much of the world's life and happiness. 'With the heart man believeth
unto righteousness;' a man's love is the measure of his fitness for good
or bad company here or elsewhere. Men are tattooed with their special
beliefs like so many South Sea Islanders; but a real human heart, with
divine love in it, beats with the same glow under all the patterns of
all earth's thousand tribes!"
The pathos of poor Elsie's story is relieved now and then by humorous
descriptions of country manners and customs. The Sprowles' party and the
Widow Rowen's "tea-fight" give a vein of light comedy that rests the
sympathetic reader as a sudden merry smile upon a grave and troubled
face.
_The Guardian Angel_, the second novel of Doctor Holmes, was not
published until 1867, but it is interesting to compare the two stories,
for there is a strong family likeness between them. Both show the power
of inherited tendencies, though Myrtle Hazard, the heroine of _The
Guardian Angel_, has no alien element in her blood like that which
tormented poor Elsie. With Myrtle "it was as when several grafts,
bearing fruit that ripens at different times, are growing upon the same
stock. Her earlier impulses may have been derived directly from her
father and mother, but various ancestors came uppermost in their time
before the absolute and total result of their several forces had found
its equilibrium in the character by which she was to be known as an
individual. These inherited impulses were therefore many, conflicting,
some of them dangerous. The World, the Flesh, and the Devil held
mortgages on her life before its deed was put in her hands; but sweet
and gracious influences were also born with her; and the battle of life
was to be fought between them, God helping her in her need, and her own
free choice siding with one or the other."
The scene opens in a quiet New England village which is roused from its
usual lethargy by the startling announcement in the weekly paper of a
lost child. This is none other than the little orphan, Myrtle Hazard,
who after a few dreary years in the dismal Wither's homestead, escapes
by night in her little boat, is rescued by a young student from a
frightful death at the rapids, and brought back to her distressed Aunt
Silence by good old Byles Gridley--the true "Guardian Angel" of her
life.
When old Doctor Hurlbut "ninety-two, very deaf, very feeble, yet a wise
counsellor in doubtful and difficult cases," comes to prescribe for the
young girl, he says to his son:
"I've seen that look on another face of the same blood--it's a great
many years ago, and she was dead before you were born, my boy,--but I've
seen that look, and it meant trouble then, and I'm afraid it means
trouble now. I see some danger of a brain fever. And if she doesn't
have that, then look out for some hysteric fits that will make
mischief.... I've been through it all before in that same house. Live
folks are only dead folks warmed over. I can see 'em all in that girl's
face.--Handsome Judith to begin with. And that queer woman, the Deacon's
mother--there's where she gets that hystericky look. Yes, and the
black-eyed woman with the Indian blood in her--look out for that--look
out for that.
... Four generations--four generations, man and wife--yes, five
generations before this Hazard child I've looked on with these old eyes.
And it seems to me that I can see something of almost every one of 'em
in this child's face--it's the forehead of this one, and it's the eyes
of that one, and it's that other's mouth, and the look that I remember
in another, and when she speaks, why, I've heard that same voice
before--yes, yes--as long ago as when I was first married."
Aside from the interest of the story there is a strange fascination in
tracing the development of these various ancestral traits.
"This body in which we journey across the isthmus between the two oceans
is not a private carriage, but an omnibus," says old Byles Gridley in
his _Thoughts on the Universe_--dead book that was destined to so grand
a resurrection! Surely no one can deny the successive development of
inherited bodily aspects and habitudes, and the same thing happens, the
author avers, "in the mental and moral nature, though the latter may be
less obvious to common observation."
_The Guardian Angel_ while a deep study of the Reflex Function in its
higher sphere, is not without its lighter, more mirthful side. Says _The
London News_, "the story is exceedingly humorous and comic in the less
serious chapters. There is no such minor poet in the whole range of
fiction as the immortal Gifted Hopkins. In the character of Hopkins all
the foibles and vanities of the literary nature are exemplified in the
most mirthful manner. If Doctor Holmes has more characters like Gifted
Hopkins in his mind, the hilarity of two continents is not in much
danger of being extinguished."
Here is a glimpse of the young poet when racked with jealousy:
"He retired pensive from the interview, and flinging himself at his
desk, attempted wreaking his thoughts upon expression, to borrow the
language of one of his brother bards, in a passionate lyric which he
began thus:
Another's!
Another's! O the pang, the smart!
Fate owes to Love a deathless grudge--
The barbed fang has rent a heart
Which--which--
judge--judge--no, not judge. Budge, drudge, fudge--what a disgusting
language English is! Nothing fit to couple with such a word as grudge!
And an impassioned moment arrested in full flow, stopped short,
corked up, for want of a paltry rhyme! Judge--budge--drudge
nudge--oh!--smudge--misery!--fudge. In vain--futile--no use--all
up for to-night!'"
The next day the dejected poet "wandered about with a dreadfully
disconsolate look upon his countenance. He showed a falling-off in his
appetite at tea-time, which surprised and disturbed his mother.... The
most touching evidence of his unhappiness--whether intentional on the
result of accident was not evident--was a _broken heart_, which he left
upon his plate, the meaning of which was as plain as anything in the
language of flowers. His thoughts were gloomy, running a good deal on
the more picturesque and impressive methods of bidding a voluntary
farewell to a world which had allured him with visions of beauty only to
snatch them from his impassioned gaze. His mother saw something of this,
and got from him a few disjointed words, which led her to lock up the
clothes-line and hide her late husband's razors--an affectionate, yet
perhaps unnecessary precaution, for self-elimination contemplated from
this point of view by those who have the natural outlet of verse to
relieve them is rarely followed by a casualty. It may be considered as
implying a more than average chance for longevity; as those who meditate
an imposing finish naturally save themselves for it, and are therefore
careful of their health until the time comes, and this is apt to be
indefinitely postponed so long as there is a poem to write or a proof to
be corrected."
Gifted Hopkins survives the ordeal, and completes his volume of poems,
_Blossoms of the Soul_. Good old master Gridley, who foresees what the
end will be, offers to accompany the young poet in his visit to the city
publisher. What a world of pathos there is in the fond mother's
preparations for the momentous journey: She brings down from the garret
"a capacious trunk, of solid wood, but covered with leather, and adorned
with brass-headed nails, by the cunning disposition of which, also, the
paternal initials stood out on the rounded lid, in the most conspicuous
manner. It was his father's trunk, and the first thing that went into
it, as the widow lifted the cover, and the smothering shut-up smell
struck an old chord of associations, was a single tear-drop. How well
she remembered the time when she first unpacked it for her young
husband, and the white shirt bosoms showed their snowy plaits! O dear,
dear!
"But women decant their affections, sweet and sound, out of the old
bottles into the new ones--off from the lees of the past generation,
clear and bright, into the clean vessels just made ready to receive it.
Gifted Hopkins was his mother's idol, and no wonder. She had not only
the common attachment of a parent for him, as her offspring, but she
felt that her race was to be rendered illustrious by his genius, and
thought proudly of the time when some future biographer would mention
her own humble name, to be held in lasting remembrance as that of the
mother of Hopkins."
The description of the various articles that went into the trunk is
humorous enough.
"Best clothes and common clothes, thick clothes and thin clothes,
flannels and linens, socks and collars, with handkerchiefs enough to
keep the pickpockets busy for a week, with a paper of gingerbread and
some lozenges for gastralgia, and 'hot drops,' and ruled paper to write
letters on, and a little Bible and a phial with _hiera piera_, and
another with paregoric, and another with 'camphire' for sprains and
bruises. Gifted went forth equipped for every climate from the tropic to
the pole, and armed against every malady from ague to zoster."
The poet's interview with the publisher is one of the best things in the
book, but to be thoroughly enjoyed, it must be read entire.
The genial, kindly nature of Doctor Holmes is strikingly shown
throughout the whole volume. Good, quaint Byles Gridley endears himself
more and more to the reader, Gifted Hopkins finds in his heart's choice
an appreciative, admiring audience of at least one, Cyprian Eveleth and
young Doctor Hurlbut are most happily disposed of, Clement Lindsay
receives his reward, Myrtle Hazard emerges from the conflict of mingled
lives in her blood with the dross of her nature burned away, aunt
Silence throws off her melancholy, Miss Cynthia Badlam repents of her
evil manoeuvrings and dies "with the comfortable assurance that she is
going to a better world," the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker learns to
appreciate his patient wife--even Murray Bradshaw, the acknowledged
villain of the book, is not without a few redeeming traits, and we close
the volume with a sense of hearty goodwill and fervent charity toward
all mankind.