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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
VOL. IV.--SEPTEMBER, 1859.--NO. XXIII.
THE LIFE AND WORKS OF ARY SCHEFFER.
No painter of this age has made so deep an impression on the popular
mind of America as Ary Scheffer. Few, if any other contemporary artists
are domesticated at our firesides, and known and loved in our remotest
villages and towns. Only a small number, indeed, of his original works
have been exhibited here,--yet engravings from them are not only
familiar to every person of acknowledged taste and culture, but are dear
to the hearts of many who scarcely know the artist's name. Young maidens
delight in their tender pathos, and the suffering heart is consoled and
elevated by their pure and lofty religious aspiration. An effect so
great must have an adequate and peculiar cause; and we shall not have
far to seek for it, but shall find it in the aim and character of the
artist. Scheffer has two prominent qualities, by which he has won his
place in the popular estimation. The first is his sentiment. His works
are full of simple, tender pathos. His pictures always tell their story,
first to the eye, next to the heart and soul of the beholder. His
admirable knowledge of composition is always subordinate to expression.
His meaning is not merely historical or poetical, but is true to life
and every-day experience. "Mignon regrettant sa Patrie" is felt and
appreciated by those who have never sung,
"Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen
blühen,"--
and "Faust" and "Margaret" tell their story to all who have felt life's
struggles and temptations, whether they have read them in Goethe's
version or not. Added to this power of pathos and sentiment is the deep
religious feeling which pervades every work of his pencil, whatever be
its outward form. His religion is of no dogma or sect, but the inflowing
of a life which makes all things holy and full of infinite meaning.
Whether he paint the legends of the Catholic Church, as in "St.
Augustine" and "St. Monica," or illustrate the life-poem of the
Protestant Goethe, or tell a simple story of childhood, the same
feelings are kindled, in our heart's faith in God, love to man, the sure
hope of immortality. It is this genuine and earnest religion of humanity
which has made his works familiar to every lover of Art and sentiment,
and given us a feeling of personal love and reverence for the made
artist.
It is now nearly a year since his labors on earth terminated, and yet no
adequate account of his life and labors has appeared. It is very
difficult to satisfy the craving desire to know more of the personal
life and character of him who has been a household friend so long. Yet
it is rather the privilege of succeeding generations, than of
contemporaries, to draw aside the veil from the sanctuary, and to behold
the works of a man in his greatest art,--the art of life. But the cold
waters of the Atlantic, like the river of Death, make the person of a
European artist sacred to us; and it is hard for us to realize that
those whom we have surrounded with a halo of classic reverence were
partakers of the daily jar and turmoil of our busy age,--that the good
physician who tended our sick children so faithfully had lived in
familiar intercourse with Goethe, and might have listened to the first
performance of those symphonies of Beethoven which seem to us as eternal
as the mountains. Losing the effluence of his personal presence, which
his neighbors and countrymen enjoyed, we demand the privilege of
posterity to hear and tell all that can be told of him. We can wait
fifty years more for a biography of Allston, because something of his
gracious presence yet lingers among us; but we can touch Scheffer only
with the burin or the pen. So we shall throw in our mite to fill up this
chasm. A few gleanings from current French literature, a few anecdotes
familiarly told of the great artist, and the vivid recollection of one
short interview are all the aids we can summon to enable our readers to
call up in their own minds a living image which will answer to the name
that has so long been familiar to our lips and dear to our hearts.
Ary Scheffer was born about the year 1795, in the town of Dordrecht, in
Holland; but, as at that period Holland belonged to the French Empire,
the child was entitled by birth to those privileges of a French citizen
which opened to him important advantages in his artistic career. French
by this accident of birth, and still more so by his education and long
residence at Paris, he yet always retained traces of his Teutonic origin
in the form of his head, in his general appearance, and in his earnest
and religious character. He always cherished a warm affection for his
native land.
Many distinguished artists have been the sons of painters or designers
of superior note. Raffaello, Albert Dürer, Alonzo Cano, Vandyck, Luca
Giordano are familiar instances. It seems as if the accumulation of two
generations of talent were necessary to produce the fine flower of
genius. The father of Ary Scheffer was an artist of considerable
ability, and promised to become an eminent painter, when he was cut off
by an early death. He left a widow, many unfinished pictures, and three
sons, yet very young. The character of the mother we infer only from her
influence on her son, from the devoted affection he bore to her, and
from the wisdom with which she guided his early education; but these
show her to have been a true woman,--brave, loving, and always loyal to
the highest. The three sons all lived to middle age, and all became
distinguished men. Ary, the eldest, very early gave unequivocal signs of
his future destiny. His countrymen still remember a large picture
painted by him at Amsterdam when only twelve years old, indicating
extraordinary talent, even at that early age. His mother did not,
however, overrate this boyish success, as stamping him a prodigy, but
regarded it only as a motive for giving him a thorough artistic
education. He went, accordingly, to Paris, and entered the _atelier_ of
Guérin, the teacher then most in vogue.
It was in the latter days of the Empire that Ary Scheffer commenced his
studies,--a period of great stagnation in Art. The whole force of the
popular mind had for many years been turned to politics and war; and if
French Art had striven to emancipate itself from slavish dependence on
the Greek, it still clung to the Roman models, which are far less
inspiring. "The autocrat David, with his correct, but soulless
compositions, was more absolute than his master, the Emperor." Only in
the Saloon of 1819 did the Revolution, which had already affected every
other department of thought and life, reach the _ateliers_. It commenced
in that of Guérin. The very weakness of the master, who himself halted
between two opinions, left the pupils in freedom to pursue their own
course. Scheffer did not esteem this a fortunate circumstance for
himself. His own nature was too strong and living to be crushed by a
severe master or exact study, and he felt the want of that thorough
early training which would have saved him much struggle in after life.
He used to speak of Ingres as such a teacher as he would have chosen for
himself. From the pupil of David, the admirer of Michel Angelo, the
conservator of the sacred traditions of Art, the student might learn all
the treasured wisdom of antiquity,--while the influences around him, and
his own genius, would impel him towards prophesying the hope of the
future. His favorite companions of the _atelier_ at this time were
Eugène Delacroix and Géricault. Delacroix ranks among the greatest
living French artists; and if death early closed the brilliant career of
Géricault, it has not yet shrouded his name in oblivion. The trio made
their first appearance together in the Saloon of 1819. Géricault sent
his "Wreck of the Medusa," Delacroix "The Barque of Dante," and Ary
Scheffer "The Citizens of Calais."[1]
The works of these friends may be considered as the commencement of the
modern French school of Art, still so little known, and so ill
appreciated by us, but which is really an expression of the new ideas of
Art and Humanity which have agitated France to its centre for half a
century. Their hour of triumph has not yet come; but as the poet sings
most touchingly of his love, neither when he rejoices in its happy
consummation, nor in the hour of utter despair, but when doubt still
tempers hope,--so does the artist labor with prophetic zeal to express
those sentiments of humanity and brotherhood which are not yet organized
into institutions. A careless eye might have perceived little departure
from the old models in these pictures, but a keener one would have
already discovered that Scheffer and his friends worked with a different
aim from that of their predecessors. Not merely to paint a well-composed
picture on a classical theme, but to give expression to thought and
feeling, was now the object. "The Wreck of the Medusa" of Géricault is
full of earnest, if niggling life. Delacroix has followed his own bent
with such independent zeal as has made him the object of intense
admiration to some, of bitter hatred to others. But Ary Scheffer has
taken his rank at the head of the Spiritualist school, and has awakened
a wider love and obtained a fuller appreciation than either of them. The
spirit which found in them its first expression is continually
increasing in power, and developing into richer life. The living artists
of France are the exponents of her genuine Christian democracy.
"The entire collection of Rosa Bonheur's works," says a French writer,
"might be called the Hymn to Labor. Here she shows us the ploughing,
there the reaping, farther on the gathering in of the hay, then of the
harvests, elsewhere the vintage,--always and everywhere labor." Edouard
Frère, in his scenes from humble life, which the skilful lithographer
places within the means of all, represents the incidents of domestic
existence among the poor. "The Prayer at the Mother's Knee," "The Woman
at her Ironing Table," "The Child shelling Peas," "The Walk to School
amid Rain and Sleet," are all charming idyls of every-day life. With yet
greater skill and deeper pathos does the peasant Millet tell the story
of his neighbors. The washerwomen, as the sun sets upon their labors,
and they go wearily homeward; the digger, at his lonely task, who can
pause but an instant to wipe the sweat from his brow; the sewing-women
bending over their work, while every nerve and muscle are strained by
the unremitting toil; the girl tending her geese; the woman her
cows:--such are the subjects of his masterly pencil. Do not all these
facts point to the realization of Christian democracy? If the king is
now but the servant of the people, so the artist who is royal in the
kingdom of the mind finds his true glory in serving humanity. What a
change from the classic subjects or monkish legends which occupied the
pencils of David and his greater predecessors, Le Sueur and Poussin!
And yet those students of the antique have done French Art good service;
they have furnished it with admirable tools, so that to them we are
indebted for the thorough drawing, the masterly knowledge, which render
Paris the great school for all beginners in Art. Such men as we have
named do not scorn the past, but use it in the service of the present.
While Scheffer always subordinated the material part of Art to its
expression, he was never afraid of knowing too much, but often regretted
the loss of valuable time in youth from incompetent instruction.
Encouraged by the success of his first essay, Scheffer continued to
paint a series of small pictures, representing simple and affecting
scenes from common life, some of which are familiar to all. "The
Soldier's Widow," "The Conscript's Return," "The Orphans at their
Mother's Tomb," "The Sister of Charity," "The Fishermen before a Storm,"
"The Burning of the Farm," and "The Scene of the Invasion in 1814," are
titles which give an idea of the range of his subjects and the tenor of
his thoughts at this time. The French have long excelled in the art of
composition. It is this quality which gives the greatest value to the
works of Le Sueur and Poussin. Scheffer possessed this power in a
remarkable degree, but it was united to a directness and truth of
feeling which made his art the perfection of natural expression. A very
charming little engraving, entitled "The Lost Children," which appeared
in "The Token" for 1830, is probably from a picture of this period. A
little boy and girl are lost in a wood. Wearied with their fruitless
attempts to find a path, the boy has at length sunk down upon a log and
buried his face in his hands; while the little girl, still patient,
still hopeful, stands, with folded hands, looking earnestly into the
wood, with a sweet, sad look of anxiety, but not of despair. The
contrast in the expression of the two figures is very touching and very
true to Nature;--the boy was hopeful so long as his own exertions
offered a chance of escape, but the courage of the girl appears when
earthly hope is most dim and faint. The sweet unconsciousness of this
early picture has hardly been surpassed by any subsequent work.
"Naturalness and the charm of composition," says a French critic, "are
the secrets of Scheffer's success in these early pictures, to which may
be added a third,--the distinction of the type of his faces, and
especially of his female heads,--a kind of suave and melancholy ideal,
which gave so new a stamp to his works."
These small pictures were very successful in winning popular favor; but
this success, far from intoxicating the young artist, only opened his
eyes to his own faults. He applied himself diligently to repairing the
deficiencies which he recognized in his work, by severe studies and
labors. He knew the danger of working too long on small-sized pictures,
in which faults may be so easily hidden. About the year 1826 he turned
resolutely from his "pretty jewels," as he called them, and commenced
his "Femmes Suliotes," on a large canvas, with figures the size of life.
M. Vitet describes the appearance of the canvas when Scheffer had
already spent eight days "in the fire of his first thought." It seemed
to him rather like a vision than a picture, as he saw the dim outlines
of those heroic women, who cast themselves from the rock to escape
slavery by death. He confesses that the finished picture never moved him
as did the sketch. Three years earlier Scheffer had sent to the Saloon
of 1824, in company with three or four small pictures, a large picture
of Gaston de Foix after the Battle of Ravenna. It was a sombre picture,
painted with that lavish use of pigment and that unrestrained freedom
which distinguished the innovators of that day. The new school were in
raptures, and claimed Scheffer as belonging to them. The public judged
less favorably; "they admired the noble head of Gaston de Foix, but,
uninterested in the remainder of the picture, they turned off to look at
'The Soldier's Widow.'" Scheffer did not listen to his flatterers; but,
remembering Michel Angelo's words to the young sculptor, "The light of
the public square will test its value," he believed in the verdict of
the people, and never again painted in the same manner. It was one of
his peculiar merits, that, although open to conviction, and ready to try
a new path which seemed to offer itself, he was also ready to turn from
it when he found it leading him astray. "Les Femmes Suliotes" did not
seem to have been designed by the same hand or with the same pencil as
the "Gaston de Foix." The first sketch was particularly
pleasing,--already clear and harmonious in color, although rather low in
tone. Many counselled him to leave the picture, thus. "No," said
Scheffer, "I did not take a large canvas merely to increase the size of
my figures and to paint large in water-colors, but to give greater truth
and thoroughness to my forms." In 1827 this picture was exhibited with
ample success, and the critics were forced to acknowledge the great
improvement in his style, although he had not entirely escaped from the
influence of his companions, and some violent contrasts of color mar the
general effect. The picture is now in the Luxembourg Gallery.
M. Vitet divides Scheffer's artistic life into three portions: that in
which he painted subjects from simple life; that devoted to poetic
subjects; and the last, or distinctively religious period. These
divisions cannot, of course, be very sharply drawn, but may help us to
understand the progress of his mind; and "Les Femmes Suliotes" will mark
the transition from the first to the second period. Turning from the
simple scenes of domestic sorrow, he now sought inspiration in
literature. The vigorous and hearty Northern Muse especially won his
favor; yet the greatest Italian poet was also his earnest study. Goethe,
Schiller, Byron, Dante, all furnished subjects for his pencil. The story
of Faust and Margaret took such hold of his imagination that it pursued
him for nearly thirty years. Their forms appeared before him in new
attitudes and situations almost to his last hour, so that, in the midst
of his labors on religious pictures, he seized his pencils to paint yet
another Faust, another Margaret. Nor can we wonder at this absorbing
interest, when we reflect on the profound significance and touching
pathos of this theme, which may wear a hundred faces, and touch every
chord of the human heart. It is intellect and passion, in contrast with
innocence and faith; it is natural and spontaneous love, thwarted by
convention and circumstance; it is condemnation before men, and
forgiveness before God; it is the ideal and the worldly; it is an
epitome of human life,--love, joy, sorrow, sin,--birth, life, death, and
the sure hope of resurrection. How pregnant with expression was it to a
mind like Scheffer's, where the intellectual, the affectional, and the
spiritual natures were so nicely blended! He first painted "Margaret at
her Wheel," in 1831,--accompanied by a "Faust tormented by Doubt." These
were two simple heads, each by itself, like a portrait, but with all the
fine perception of character which constitutes an ideal work. Next he
painted "Margaret at Church." Here other figures fill up the canvas; but
the touching expression of the young girl, whose soul is just beginning
to be torn by the yet new joy of her love and the bitter consciousness
of her lost innocence, fills the mind of the spectator. This is the
most inspired and the most touching of all the pictures; it strikes the
key-note of the whole story; it is the meeting of the young girl's own
ideal world of pure thought with the outward world. The sense of guilt
comes from the reflection in the thoughts of those about her; and where
all before was peace and love, now come discord and agony;--she has
eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and is already cast out
of her paradise. "Margaret on the Sabbath," "Margaret going out of
Church," and "Margaret walking in the Garden," are all charming idyls,
but have less expression. The last picture, painted just before
Scheffer's death, and soon to be engraved, represents "Margaret at the
Fountain." "It is full of expression, and paints the joy and pain of
love still struggling in the young girl's heart, while conscience begins
to make its chiding voice heard."
The "Mignons" are the best known of all Scheffer's works of this period.
The youngest one, "Mignon regrettant sa Patrie," is the most
satisfactory in its simple, unconscious expression. The wonderful child
stands in the most natural attitude, absorbed in her own thought, and
struggling to recall those dim memories, floating in beauty before her
mind, which seem almost to belong to a previous state of existence.
There is less of the weird and fantastic than Goethe has given to
her,--but the central, deep nature is beautifully reproduced. "Mignon
aspirant au Ciel," although full of spiritual beauty, is a little more
constrained; the longing after her heavenly home is less naturally
expressed than her childish regret; the pose is a little mannered; and
the feeling is more conscious, but less deep. "Mignon with the Old
Harper" is far less interesting; the old man's head does not express
that mixture of inspiration and insanity, the result of a life of love,
misery, and wrong, which Goethe has portrayed in this strange character.
A very different picture, painted at this period, is peculiarly
interesting to us as our first acquaintance among Scheffer's works. An
excellent copy or duplicate of it belongs to the Boston Athenæum. The
original is in the Luxembourg at Paris. The subject is taken from
Schiller's ballad of "Count Eberhard." After the victory in which his
son has fallen, though the old Count has said to those who would have
paused to mourn his death, "My son is like another man; on, comrades, to
the foe!"--yet now he sits alone in his tent and looks upon the dead
body of his child. The silent grief of the stern old man is very
touching. This sorrow, so contrary to Nature, when old age stands by the
grave of youth, always moves the deepest feeling; and Scheffer, in the
noble old man and the brave and beautiful boy before him, has given it
its simplest and most appropriate expression. This picture was painted
in 1834. At that period Scheffer was engaged in some experiments in
color, and this sad subject led him to employ the dark tints of
Rembrandt. In 1850 he painted a duplicate of it, lighter and more
agreeable in tone. He painted "The Giaour" and "Medora," from Byron,
which pictures we have never seen. The wayward and morbid Muse of the
English Lord does not seem to us a fit inspiration for the pure pencil
of Scheffer.
The well-known composition of "Francesca da Rimini" may well conclude
our brief notice of the pictures of this second epoch. M. Vitet regards
it as the most harmonious and complete of all his works; but we think it
has taken less hold on the popular heart than the "Mignons" and
"Margaret." Yet it is a work of great skill and beauty. The difficult
theme is managed with that moderation and good taste which recognize the
true limits of the art. The crowd of spirits which Dante so powerfully
describes as driven by the wind without rest are only dimly seen in the
background. The horrors of hell are shown only in the anguish of those
faces, in the despairing languor of the attitude, which not even mutual
love can lighten. The love which made them one in guilt, one in
condemnation, is stronger than death, stronger than hell; but it cannot
bring peace and joy to these souls shut out from heaven and God.
"Se fosse amico il Re dell' universo,
Noi pregheremmo."
But even prayer is denied to him who feels that he has not God for a
friend. There is no mark of physical torture; it is pure spiritual
suffering,--restless, aimless weariness,--the loss of hope; it is
death,--and love demands life. How strangely appropriate is this
punishment of spirits driven hither and thither by the winds, with no
hope of rest, to those who reject the firm anchorage of duty and
principle, and allow themselves to float at the mercy of their impulses
and passions! The overpowering compassion and sympathy of the poets is
shown in their earnest faces. Neither here, nor in the well-known "Dante
and Beatrice," which is too familiar to need description, does Scheffer
quite do justice to our ideal of the sublime poet of Heaven and Hell;
but neither do the portraits which remain of him. The picture was first
exhibited in 1835. As it had suffered very much in 1850, Scheffer
painted a repetition of it, with a few slight alterations, in which,
however, his progress in his art during twenty years was very evident.
This copy is very far superior to the engraving.
About this period Scheffer seems to have wandered a little from the true
mission of Art, and to have esteemed it her province to represent
abstract theological truths. His religious feeling seems to have become
morbid, and his natural melancholy intensified. The death of his wife,
and consequent loneliness, may have given this ascetic tinge to his
feelings. But we must acknowledge, if it were so, that the sorrow which
oppressed did not embitter his heart, and that a brave and humane spirit
appears even in those works which have the least artistic merit to
recommend them. The "Christus Consolator" is the best known of this
class of pictures. It is cold, abstract, and inharmonious; but its
religious spirit and the beautiful truth which it expresses have won for
it a welcome which it seems hardly to merit. Yet it has touching beauty
in the separate figures. The woman who leans so trustingly on her
Saviour's arm has a very high and holy face, whose type we recognize in
more than one of his pictures; and the mother and her dead child form a
very touching group. But the various persons are not connected by any
common story or mutual relation, and we feel a want of unity in the
whole work. Perhaps the strongest tribute to its power of expression is
the story, that religious publishers found it necessary to blot out the
figure of the slave who takes his place among the recipients of Christ's
blessing, in order to fit their reprint for a Southern market. As a
companion to it, he painted the "Christus Remunerator," which is less
interesting. To this same class of pictures we should probably refer
"The Lamentations of Earth to Heaven," which we have never seen, but
which is thus described by M. Anatole de la Lorge:--
"There are also treasures of disappointed pleasure and of bitterness in
this picture of 'The Lamentations of Earth to Heaven,'--dim symbol of
human suffering. How does one, in the presence of this poem, feel filled
with the spirit of St. Augustine, the nothingness of what we call joy,
happiness, glory, here below,--delights of a moment, which at most only
aid us to traverse in a dream this valley of tears! Certain pages of
'The City of God,' funeral prayers of Bossuet, can alone serve us for a
comparison, in order to express the effect produced upon those who have
visited this _chef d'oeuvre_ in Ary Scheffer's _atelier_. Before
producing it, the artist must have thought long, suffered long; for each
stroke of the pencil seems to hide a grief, each figure speaks to you in
passing, and utters a complaint, a sigh, a prayer,--sad echoes of the
despair of life! The religious tendency of the thinker is here fully
shown; his poetic sympathy, his aspirations, his dreams, have found a
free course. We must mark, also, with what freedom his lamentations
spring from the ground, to carry even to the feet of the Creator the
overwhelming weight of earthly woe. Ary Scheffer's picture is like the
epitaph destined some day for the obsequies of the world; it breathes of
death, and has the sombre harmony of the Miserere. And nevertheless,--a
strange thing!--this dreaming painter, who seizes and afflicts us, is
the same man who at the same time reassures and consoles us,--without
doubt, because by dint of spiritualizing our thoughts he raises them
above our sufferings, by showing the consoling light of eternity to
those whom he would sever from the deceitful joys of earth."
If the picture be not overcolored by the critic's eye, we must believe
this to be the culmination of the morbidly spiritualistic tendency which
we meet in Scheffer's works. Yet it never exists unrelieved by redeeming
qualities. Many will remember the original picture of the "Dead Christ,"
which was exhibited here by an Art Union about ten years ago. The
engraving gives but a faint idea of the touching expression of the whole
group. The deathly pallor of the corpse was in strange harmony with the
face of the mother which bent over it, her whole being dissolved in
grief and love. No picture of this scene recalls to us more fully the
simple account in the Gospels. The cold, wan color of the whole scene
seems like that gray pall which a public grief will draw across the sky,
even when the meridian sun is shining in its glory. We have seen such
days even in Boston. No wonder that darkness covered the land to the
believing disciples even until the ninth hour.
His "St. Monica," which appeared in 1846, met with great success. "Ruth
and Naomi" is yet unknown to us, but it seems to be a subject specially
adapted to his powers. Of those works which he produced within the last
twelve years, very few are yet engraved. When thus placed before the
public, we believe the popular estimate of Scheffer will be raised even
higher than at present.
His pictures of Christ are of very superior merit. His representation of
the person of Jesus was not formal and conventional, but fresh in
expression and feeling, and full of touching pathos and sentiment. He
has neither the youthful beauty with which the Italians represent him,
nor the worn and wasted features which the early Germans often gave him,
but a thoughtful, earnest, tender beauty. The predominant expression is
the love and tenderness born of suffering. Three of his finest
representations of the life of Jesus of Nazareth are, "The Christ
weeping over Jerusalem," the "Ecce Homo," and "The Temptation." The last
is as original in design and composition; it is noble in expression. The
two figures stand on the summit of a mountain, and the calm, still air
around them gives a wonderful sense of height and solitude. You almost
feel the frost of the high, rare atmosphere. Satan is a very powerful
figure,--not the vulgar devil, but the determined will, the unsanctified
power. The figure of Christ is simple and expressive,--even the flow of
the drapery being full of significance and beauty. Another composition
of great beauty represents a group of souls rising from earth, and
soaring upwards to heaven. The highest ones are already rejoicing in the
heavenly light, while those below seem scarcely awakened from the sleep
of death. The whole picture is full of aspiration; everything seems
mounting upwards.
Scheffer also painted a few pictures which can hardly be called his own.
Such are "The Battle of Tolbiac," and "Charlemagne dictating his
Statutes." These were painted by the command of Louis Philippe, who was
his constant friend and patron. The young princes were his pupils; and
Scheffer was careful to form them to better taste than that of the
citizen monarch who has lined Versailles with poor pictures. For the
King he painted "The Battle of Tolbiac," and we can only regret the time
which was thus wasted; _but for his pupils_ he designed "Francesca da
Rimini" and the "Mignons."
A few masterly portraits by Scheffer's hand indicate his power of
reproducing individual character. Among these we may name that of his
mother, which is said to be his finest work,--one of the Queen,--a
picture of Lamennais,--and another of Emilia Manin, to which we shall
again refer. He occasionally modelled a bust, and sometimes engaged in
literary labor, contributing some valuable articles on Art to "La Revue
Française."
It would be impossible for us to analyze or even enumerate all of
Scheffer's works. They are scattered throughout France and Holland, and
a few have found their way to this country. Most of the engravings from
his pictures are too well known to require description; and we feel that
we have said enough to justify our placing Scheffer in the high rank
which we claim for him. Engravings give us a juster idea of the French
than of the Dutch or Italian artists; for their merit is rather in
design and composition than in color. We agree with M. Vitet, that color
need not be a prominent excellence in a work of high spiritual beauty,
and that it should always be toned to a complete harmony with the
prevailing feeling of the picture. In this aspect we look upon the cold
color of the "Dead Christ" as hardly a defect; it is in keeping with the
sad solemnity of the scene. But if color should not be so brilliant as
to overpower the expression of form and sentiment, still less should it
be so inharmonious as to distract the mind from it, as is sometimes the
case with Scheffer. The "Dante and Beatrice" is a familiar instance. We
can see no reason why Beatrice should be dressed in disagreeable pink,
and Dante in brick-red. Surely, such color is neither agreeable to the
eye nor harmonious with the expression of the scene. This defect in
color has led many to prefer the engravings to Scheffer's original
pictures; but no copy can quite reproduce the nice touches of thought
and feeling given by the master's hand. Color is supposed by many to
belong mainly to the representation of physical beauty; but has not
Allston proved to us that the most subtile and delicate harmonies of
color may be united with ethereal grace and spiritual beauty? Compare
his "Beatrice" with that of Scheffer. But, in truth, the whole spiritual
relation of color is yet but dimly understood; and there are, perhaps,
influences in the climate and organization of the French nation which
have rendered them inferior in this department of Art. Allowing this
deduction--a great one, certainly,--still, if the expression of the
highest thoughts in the most beautiful forms be the true aim of Art,
Scheffer must rank among the very first painters of his age. Delaroche
may surpass him in strength and vigor of conception, and in thorough
modelling and execution; but Scheffer has taken a deeper hold of the
feelings, and has risen into a higher spiritual region.
It has been reproachfully said that Scheffer is the painter for pretty
women, for poets, and for lovers. The reproach is also a eulogium, since
he must thus meet the demand of the human soul in its highest and finest
development. Others have accused him of morbid sensibility. There is
reason for the charge. He has not the full, round, healthy, development
which belongs to the perfect type of Art. Compare the "St. Cecilia" of
Scheffer--this single figure, with such womanly depth of feeling, such
lofty inspiration, yet so sad--with the joyous and almost girlish grace
of Raphael's representation of the same subject, and we feel at once the
height and the limitation of Scheffer's genius. There is always pathos,
always suffering; we cannot recall a single subject, unless it be the
group of rising spirits, in which struggle and sorrow do not form the
key-note.
"In all your music, one pathetic minor
Your ears shall cross;
And all fair sights shall mind you of diviner,
With sense of loss."
This is one view of human life, but it is a transitional and imperfect
one,--neither that of the first healthy unconsciousness of childhood,
nor of the full consciousness of a soul which has risen to that height
of divine wisdom which feels the meaning of all suffering, of all life.
The music of Beethoven expresses the struggle, the contest, the
sufferings of humanity, as Art has never done before; but it always
contains an eternal prophecy, rather than a mournful regret,--and in the
last triumphant symphony it swells onward and upward, until at last it
bursts forth in all the freedom and gush of song, and its theme is "The
Hymn to Joy." How much the fatherless home of Scheffer's childhood, how
much his own desolated life, when his beloved companion was so early
taken from his side, may have had to do with this melancholy cast of
thought, or how far it belonged to his delicate physical constitution,
we are not prepared to say. It becomes less prominent in his later
compositions, "as faith became stronger and sight clearer"; and perhaps
in those pictures yet unknown to us we may find still brighter omens of
the new life of rest and joy into which he has entered.
If we turn from Scheffer's works to his life, our task is no less
grateful and pleasing. The admiration and affection which his countrymen
express for his character surpass even what they feel for his works. He
was a noble, generous, active, benevolent friend of humanity. He gave
freely to all who were in need, counsel, money, advice, personal care,
and love. Young artists found him ever ready to help them. "He gave
them," says M. Vitet, "home, _atelier_, material, sympathy,--whatever
they needed." Another writer, M. Anatole de la Lorge, said of him, while
yet living,--"Ary Scheffer has the rare good luck not to be exclusive.
His heart can pity every suffering as fully as his pencil can portray
it. A faithful and intimate friend of a now fallen dynasty, (that of
Orléans,) proud, even distrustful towards men in power, indifferent to
their opinion, inaccessible to their offers, Ary Scheffer, in his
original individuality, is one of the most independent and most
honorable political men of our country. His studio is the rendezvous of
all opinions, provided they are honest,--of all religions, provided they
are sincere. There each one is received, not according to the habit
which he wears, as the ancient proverb says, but according to the mind
(_esprit_) which he has shown. We say mind, but it is heart that we
should say; for Ary Scheffer seems to us to estimate the latter more
highly than the former. His whole life proves it." Always an ardent
friend of liberty, he was also a lover of law and order, and he rendered
good service in their preservation in the capital during the Revolution
of 1848, for which, he received honorable distinction.
The same writer quoted above gives an interesting description of his
meeting with Ary Scheffer in the sick-room and by the death-bed of an
Italian refugee, Emilia Manin. A young Venetian girl, full of devotion
to her country and her proscribed father, she supported her exile with
all a woman's courage, buoyed up by the hope of returning to her
country, redeemed from its misery. She is described as possessing
extraordinary powers of mind and great beauty of person. There were no
questions, however sublime or abstract, which she did not treat with a
surprising depth and sagacity. "Her speech, ordinarily timid and feeble,
became emphatic and stirring; her great, dreamy eyes suddenly acquired
unequalled energy; she spoke of the misfortunes of her country in terms
so moving as to draw tears from our eyes." But the body which contained
this burning soul was very frail, "and the poor Emilia, the silent
martyr, turned her head upon her pillow, and took her first hour of
repose. When no longer able to speak, she had traced with a trembling
hand on a paper these last words,--'Oh, Venice! I shall never see thee
more!' She yet retained the position in which she drew her last breath,
when Ary Scheffer came, as Tintoret formerly came to the bedside of his
daughter, to retrace, with a hand unsteady through emotion, the features
of Emilia Manin. This holy image, snatched by genius from death, is one
of the most admirable works we have ever seen. She lies there, extended
and cold,--the poor child!--in that peace unknown to the life which she
had lived in the body. It is, indeed, the intelligent brow from which
the inspiration of her soul seemed to speak. It is the delicate mouth
and the pale lips, which, never uttering a murmur, betrayed the
celestial goodness of her heart. In truth, it would have been difficult
to hide our emotion, in recognizing--thanks to the pure devotion of the
painter--the touching features of this innocent victim, whom we had
known, loved, and venerated during her life. Some hours later, we again
found Ary Scheffer sustaining with us the tottering steps of Manin upon
the freshly removed earth which was soon to cover the coffin of his
child."
By the same loving and faithful hand were traced the features of the
Abbé de Lamennais, a name so dear to those who live in the hope of new
progress and liberty for humanity. "At the moment," says M. de la Lorge,
"when death was yet tearing this great genius from the earth, the pencil
of the artist restored him, in some sense alive, in the midst of us all,
his friends, his disciples, his admirers. Hereafter, thanks to the
indefatigable devotion of Ary Scheffer, we shall be permitted to see
again the meagre visage, the burning eyes, the sad and energetic
features of the Breton Apostle."
Into the domestic life of Scheffer it is not at present our privilege to
enter. Some near friend--the brother, the daughter, the wife--may,
perhaps, hereafter, lift the veil from the sacred spot, and reveal him
to us in those relations which most deeply affect and most truly express
a man's inmost nature. We close this notice with some slight sketch of
his life in the _atelier_.
None could enter this room without a feeling of reverence and
sacredness. In the failing light of a November afternoon, all was
subdued to a quiet and religious tone. Large and commodious in size, it
was filled with objects of the deepest interest. Nothing was in
disorder; there was no smoke, no unnecessary litter; yet everywhere
little sketches or hints of pictures were perceptible among the casts,
which one longed to bring forth into the light. A few portraits
especially dear to him--best of all, that of his mother--were on the
walls; a few casts of the finest statues--among others, that of the
Venus de Milo--around the room. His last copy of the "Francesca da
Rimini," and the original picture of "The Three Marys," and the yet
unfinished "Temptation on the Mount," were all there. On the easel stood
the picture of the "Group of Spirits ascending to Heaven." Such was the
aspect of this celebrated _atelier_, as we saw it in 1854. But "the
greatest thing in the room was the master of it." Ary Scheffer was then
about sixty years of age, but was still healthy and fresh in appearance.
His face was rather German than French, and bore the stamp of purity and
goodness in every line; but the eyes especially had the fire of genius
tempered by gentleness and love. It was a face which satisfied you at
once, answering to all you could ask of the painter of "Mignon," and the
"Christus Consolator." His manner was quiet and reserved, but courteous.
Unconscious modesty was the peculiar charm of his appearance. One of our
party said that he reminded him strongly of Allston. It was a reverend
presence, which forbade common topics, and strangers thus meeting had
few words to say. As we turned away, we knew that we should never meet
again on earth; but we had gained a new life, and we had beheld, as it
were, the face of an angel.
Two American artists stood with us in that room: one a fair young girl,
whose purity of soul was mirrored in her beautiful face, who had gone to
Paris to continue her studies in an art which she loved as she did her
life; the other, a man of mature age, whose high and reverent genius has
always met with a loving and faithful appreciation among his countrymen,
which does them as much honor as it did him. The young girl lay down to
die amid her labors, and her frail body rests amid the flowers and trees
of Montmartre; the grown man came home but to bid farewell to home,
friends, and life; the great artist whom we met to honor has gone home
too. A threefold halo of sanctity rests on that room to us.
To those who shared the privilege of Scheffer's friendship this room was
endeared by hours of the richest social enjoyment. His liberal
hospitality welcomed all ranks and all classes. It is related that Louis
Philippe once sat waiting for him in the _atelier_, and answered a knock
at the door. The visitor was delivering his messages to him, when the
artist returned, and was somewhat surprised to find his royal friend
playing the part of _concierge_. "It was not rare to meet in this
_atelier_ the great men of finance, who counted themselves among his
most passionate admirers." Here was conversation, not without gayety,
but without loud laughter or revelry. Scheffer was very fond of music of
the highest order. He was a generous patron of musicians, and loved to
listen to music while he was engaged in painting. His friends sometimes
held an extemporaneous concert in his room, without preparation,
programme, or audience. Think of listening to an _andante_ of Mozart's,
played in that room! "Music doubled her power, and painting seemed
illuminated." Beethoven was his favorite composer; his lofty genius
harmonized with, and satisfied the longings of, Scheffer's aspiring
nature.
Ary Scheffer was a personal friend of the Orléans family. He was,
however, an ardent lover of liberty; and his hospitalities were free to
all shades of opinion. He did not forsake this family when their star
went down. Hearing of the death of Hélène, the Duchess of Orléans, he
hastened to England, to pay a last tribute of love and respect to her
memory. The English climate had always been ungenial to him. He took a
severe cold, which proved fatal in its results. He died soon after his
return to Paris, on the 16th of June, 1858. Sadly as the news of his
death struck upon our hearts, it seemed no great change for him to die.
So pure and holy was his life, so spiritual his whole nature, so lofty
his aspirations, that it seemed as if
"He might to Heaven from Paradise go,
As from one room to another."
Ary Scheffer was twice married. His first wife died early. Many years
after her death he again married,--very happily, as we have heard. He
leaves behind him one daughter, who is also an artist. Under her loving
care, we trust every relic of his artistic labors and every trait of his
personal life will be faithfully preserved.
Both his brothers lived to middle age. One, of whom we know little but
that M. Vitet calls him "a distinguished man," died in 1855. The only
surviving brother, Henri, is also a painter, of considerable reputation.
He is a thorough and accomplished draughtsman, and a superior teacher.
His _atelier_ is one of the few in Paris which are open to women, and
several American ladies have enjoyed its advantages.
We have spoken of Scheffer's love for his native country. By his will he
bequeathed to his native town of Dordrecht "the portrait of Sir J.
Reynolds, by Scheffer; a dog lying down, life-size, by the same; a copy
of the picture of the 'Christus Remunerator,' on pasteboard, of the size
of the original in England; a copy of the 'Christus Consolator,'--both
by himself: also, his own statue, in plaster; his own bust, by his
daughter; and the Virgin and Infant Jesus, by himself." The town of
Dordrecht proposes to erect a statue in commemoration of the fame of the
great artist.
It is too early to assign to Ary Scheffer the rank which he will finally
occupy in the new era of French Art which is coeval with his labors. He
will always stand as the companion of Ingres and Delaroche and
Géricault; and if his successors surpass him even in his own path, they
will owe much to him who helped to open the way. He lived through times
of trouble, when a man's faith in humanity might well be shaken, yet he
remained no less a believer in and lover of mankind. Brighter days for
France may lead her artists to a healthier and freer development; but
they can never be more single-hearted, true, and loving than Ary
Scheffer.
[1] This picture is now in the Louvre. It is a composition of
great dramatic power. Mrs. Stowe gives a graphic description of the
effect it produced upon her, in her "Sunny Memories of Sunny Lands."
A VISIT TO MARTHA'S VINEYARD.
We have all, in our days of atlases and "the use of the globes," been
made aware of the fact, that off the southern shore of Massachusetts
lies a long and narrow island, called Martha's Vineyard, one of the many
defences thrown out by the beleaguered New England coast against its
untiring foe, the Atlantic.
But how many are those who know more than this? How many have visited
it, inquired into its traditions, classified its curiosities, mineral,
saline, and human? How many have seen Gay Head and the Gay-Head Indians?
Not many, truly; and yet the island is well worth a visit, and will
repay the tourist better for his time and labor than any jaded, glaring,
seaside watering-place, with its barrack of white hotel, and its crowd
of idle people.
In the first place, the delicious suggestiveness of the name,--Martha's
Vineyard! At once we ask, Who was Martha? and how did she use her
vineyard? Was she the thrifty wife of some old Puritan proprietor of
untamed acres?--and did she fancy the wild grapes of this little island,
fuller of flavor, and sweeter for the manufacture of her jellies and
home-made wine, than those which grew elsewhere?--and did she come in
the vintage season, with her children and her friends, to gather in the
rich purple clusters, bearing them back as did the Israelitish spies, to
show the fatness of the promised land?
It was one of the fairest days of the Indian summer, when Caleb, Mysie,
and the Baron (a young gentleman four years old) set gayly forth to
explore this new and almost unknown region.
The first stage of their journey was New Bedford; and at the neat and
quiet hotel where they spent the night, Caleb ascertained that the
steamer "Eagle's Wing" would leave its wharf, bound to the Vineyard.
Pending this event, the trio wandered about the quiet wharves,
inspecting the shipping, and saturating themselves with nautical odors
and information. They discovered that whaleships are not the leviathans
of the deep which Mysie had supposed them, being very rarely of a
thousand tons, and averaging five hundred. They were informed that
whaling has ceased to be a profitable occupation to any but the officers
of the ships, the owners frequently making only enough to repay their
outlay from a voyage which has brought the captain and first mate
several thousand dollars each.
Every member of a whaleship's crew, from the captain down to the
cabin-boy, is paid, not fixed wages, but a "lay," or share of the
profits of the voyage. Formerly, these "lays" were so graduated, that
the chief advantage of the expedition was to the owners; but, of late
years, matters have altered, so that now it is not uncommon for the
captain to receive a twelfth, tenth, or even eighth of the entire
profit, and the other officers in proportion.
The attention of our travellers was now directed to numerous squares and
plateaus of great black objects buried in seaweed; these, they were
informed, were casks of oil, stored in this manner instead of in
warehouses, as less liable to leakage.
It was also asserted, as a fact, that the sperm whale, alarmed at the
untiring rigor of his assailants, has almost disappeared from the
navigable waters, retreating to the fastnesses of the Frozen Ocean,
where he is still pursued, although at the greatest peril, by the
dauntless New Bedford, Nantucket, and Vineyard whalemen, who, as the
narrator proudly stated, have, time and again, come out unscathed from
the perils under which Franklin and his crew succumbed. Many a man now
walks the streets of these seaports who has conversed with the Esquimaux
last in company with that ill-fated crew.
Full-fed with maritime and oleaginous lore, our travellers at last
embarked upon the "Eagle's Wing," bound down the Vineyard Sound. As the
steamer gained its offing, the view of New Bedford was very picturesque,
reminding one of Boston seated at the head of her beautiful bay. The
passage through the islands, though not long, is intricate, requiring
skilful pilotage; and as the boat passed through the channel called
Wood's Hole, certain feeble-minded sisters were positive that all on
board were bound to immediate destruction; and, in truth, the reefs,
between which the channel lies, approach too closely to leave much room
for steering. The perils of the vasty deep, however, were finally
surmounted, and the steamer made fast to its wharf at Holmes's Hole, one
of the two principal ports of Martha's Vineyard.
Our trio disembarked, and found themselves at once the subjects of
fierce contention to no less than three aspirants for the honor of
conveying them and their luggage to their point of destination. One of
these, called Dave, was a grave, saturnine Yankee, his hands in the
pockets of his black trousers, his costume further exhibiting the
national livery of black dress coat, black satin waistcoat and necktie,
cow-hide boots, and stiff, shiny hat, very much upon the back of his
head. The languid and independent offers of this individual were,
however, quite drowned by the flood of vociferous overtures from his two
rivals,--an original youth, about eighteen years old, and a man, or
rather mannikin, who, judging by his face, might be in his fiftieth,
and, by his back, in his tenth year.
Mannikin first succeeded in gaining the attention of Caleb,--the efforts
of Mysie, meanwhile, barely sufficing to restrain the Baron from
plunging over the side of the wharf, in his anxiety to witness the
departure of the steamboat. Mannikin, asserting earnestly that he had a
"good conveyance" close at hand, danced around the group with vehement
gesticulations, intended to strike despair into the souls of his two
adversaries, who, nevertheless, retained their ground,--Dave lounging in
the middle distance, a grim smile of derision upon his face, and Youth
dodging in with loud offers of service, wherever Mannikin left a point
undefended.
Caleb, at last, demanding to see the "good conveyance," was led away to
the head of the wharf, when Youth at once seized the opportunity to rush
in, and breathlessly inquire of Mysie,--
"Wher' ye goin', Ma'am? Wher' ye want to be kerried?"
"We are going to Gay-Head Light-house; but my"--
"Ga'ed Light? I kin kerry ye there fust-rate, and cheap too;--kerry ye
there for two dollars!"
"My husband has already spoken"--
"Wat! t' ole Ransom? Wy, he a'n't got nothin' but a weelbarry." And
Caleb, returning at the same moment with a somewhat perplexed air,
corroborated this statement by saying,--
"This man has no carriage, but will get us one in a short time."
"But this boy," retorted Mysie, "says he has a carriage, and will carry
us to Gay Head for two dollars."
"You hear that, ole feller?--they're a-goin' with me!" crowed triumphant
Youth at disconcerted Mannikin, who nevertheless rapidly proceeded to
pile the luggage upon his barrow and trundle it away.
This _coup d'état_ was checked by Caleb, but afterward allowed, upon
discovering that Youth's carriage was still reposing in his father's
stable, "jist up here"; and Mannikin was consoled by being allowed to
earn a quarter of a dollar by transporting the luggage to that
destination. The procession at once set forth, including Dave, who
strolled in the rear, softly whistling, and apparently totally
unconcerned, yet all the while alive with feline watchfulness.
Arrived at the stable, the travellers were requested to wait there while
Youth went to find his father and "borry a wip."
At these last words, a "subtle smile, foreboding triumph," broke over
Dave's composed features, as he muttered,--
"Reckin you'll need one 'fore you reach Ga'ed Light."
The coast clear, Dave became a little more communicative, expatiated
upon the dangers and discomforts of the road, the incapacity of Youth's
horse, and the improbability that his father would ratify the bargain,
concluding by offering to "do the job himself in good shape for four
dollars," which offer was held in abeyance until we should learn the
result of Youth's interview with his father.
In the mean time, a matron suddenly made her appearance in the barn,
with a hospitable entreaty that "the woman and child" would come up to
the house and warm themselves; and Caleb strongly advocating the Idea,
Mysie and the Baron proceeded houseward.
About half-way they encountered Paterfamilias, hastening with Youth
toward the barn, and to him Matron at once recapitulated the affair,
concluding with mentioning the stipulated price. At this Pater turned,
with thunderous brow, toward Youth; but Matron interposed, with womanly
tact,--
"You can do jest as you like, you know, about lettin' him go; but Dave's
in the barn."
"Dave in my barn! Wat in thunder's he doin' there? Yes, go, boy,--go for
nothin', if they ask you to, sooner than let that"--
The rest of the sentence was lost in the distance. But Mysie, following
her guide to the house, felt quite sure of their conveyance; and, in
fact, barely sufficient time elapsed for the hostess to possess herself
of the leading facts in her guests' history, before the carriage was
announced, and our travellers hastened down the lane, and found there
awaiting them the evident model of the Autocrat's "One-Hoss Shay," in
its last five years of senility;--to this was attached a quadruped who
immediately reminded Mysie of a long-forgotten conundrum.
"What was the first created animal?"
_Ans._ "Shay-'oss."
Holding him ostentatiously by the head stood Youth, the "borried" whip
flourished in his right hand, as he invited his passengers to seat
themselves without reference to him.
This being done and the seat pretty thoroughly filled, Youth perched
himself upon a bag and valise, which filled the front of the vehicle,
and the journey commenced.
That ride! The first mile was not passed before the meaning of Dave's
malicious smile, at mention of a whip, became painfully apparent; for
never was weapon more perseveringly used, or with so little result, the
cunning old beast falling into a jog-trot at the commencement, from
which no amount of vociferation or whipping could move him.
"I wouldn't hurry him so much," interposed Mysie, her compassion
aroused both for beast and Youth. "I don't like to see a horse whipped
so much."
"Oh, you see, Ma'am, he's so used to it, he won't go noways without it;
feels kind o' lonesome, I 'xpect. It don't hurt him none, nuther; his
skin's got so thick an' tough, that he wouldn't know, if you was to put
bilin' tar on him."
"Do you feed your horse on oats, much?" inquired Caleb, gravely, after a
long and observant silence.
"No, Sir, we darsn't give him no oats, 'cause he'd be sure to run away;
doos sometimes, as it is."
"I don't think you need fear it to-day," replied Caleb, quietly, as he
settled himself into the corner, in the vain hope of a nap; but Youth
was now loquaciously inclined.
"Reck'n Dave was disappinted," said he, with a chuckle. "He meant to
kerry ye himself; but soon's I see him round, I says to myself, says I,
'Ole Chick, you sha'n't come it this time, if I go for nothin'.'"
"Competition is the soul of trade," drowsily murmured Caleb; but as
Youth turned to inquire, "Whossay?" the bag upon which he was seated,
and upon which, in the enjoyment of his triumph, he had been wriggling
somewhat too vivaciously, suddenly gave way, and a pair of snow-white
hose came tumbling out. They were at once caught and held admiringly up
by Youth, with the ingenuous remark,--
"How wite them looks! An' if you'll blieve it, mine was jest as clean
yis'day mornin',--an' now you look at 'em!" To facilitate which
inspection, the speaker conscientiously drew up his corduroys, so as
fully to display a pair of home-knit socks, which certainly had wofully
deteriorated from the condition ascribed to them "yis'day mornin'."
"You see, I went clammin' las' night," pursued Youth; "an' that's death
on clo's."
"What's clammin'?" inquired the Baron, changing the subject with
unconscious tact, and quite surprised at the admiring kiss bestowed upon
him by his mother, while Youth, readjusting his corduroys, replied with
astonishment,--
"Clammin'? Wy, clammin's goin' arter clams; didn't ye never eat no
clam-chowder?"
"N-o, I don't think I ever did," replied the Baron, reflectively. "Is it
like ice-cream?"
"Well, I never eat none o' that, so I dunno," was the reply; and Youth
and Child, each regarding the other with wondering pity, relapsed into
silence.
Having now passed from the township of Holmes's Hole into Tisbury, the
road lay through what would have been an oak forest, except that none of
the trees exceeded some four feet in height,--Youth affirming this to be
their mature growth, and that no larger ones had grown since the forest
was cleared by the original settlers. A few miles more were slowly
passed, and Mysie began to look hopefully from every eminence for a
sight of the light-house, when she was stunned by the information, that
they were then entering Chilmark, and were "'bout half-way."
Caleb, with an exclamation of disgust, leaped from "the shay," and
accomplished the remaining ten miles, wrathfully, on foot,--while Mysie,
wrapping her feminine patience about her as a mantle, resigned herself
to endurance; but Youth, noticing, perhaps, her weary and disconsolate
expression, applied himself sedulously to the task of entertaining her;
and, as a light and airy way of opening the conversation, inquired,--
"Was you pooty sick aboard the boat?"
"Not at all."
"That's curous! Women 'most alluz is,--'specially wen it's so ruffly as
it is to-day. Was bubby sick any?"
"No."
"Wa-al, that's very fortnit, for I don't blieve he'll be sick wen he
grows up an' goes walin'. It's pooty tryin', the fust two or three weeks
out, ginerally. How young is he a-goin' to begin?"
"I do not think he will ever go to sea."
"Not a-goin' to sea? Wy, his father's a captain, I 'xpect; a'n't he?"
"No."
"Mate, then, a'n't he?"
"He is not a sailor at all."
"Ha'n't never ben to sea?"
"Never."
Oh, the look of wide-mouthed astonishment which took possession of
Youth's hitherto vacant features, at thus encountering a strong-looking
man, in the prime of life, who had never been to sea, and a healthy,
sturdy boy, whose parents did not mean that he ever should! He had no
more to say; every faculty was, for at least an hour, devoted to the
contemplation of these _lusus naturæ_, thus presented to his vision.
At last, the road, which had long been in a condition of ominous
second-childhood, suddenly died a natural death at the foot of a steep
hill, where a rail-fence presented itself as a barrier to farther
progress. The bars were soon removed by Youth, who triumphantly
announced, as Cha-os walked slowly through the opening thus presented,--
"Now we're on Ga'ed, an' I'll run along and take down the next bars, if
you kin drive. Git along, Tom,--you ha'n't got nothin' but two feathers
ahind you now."
"How far is it to the Light-house?" inquired Mysie, faintly.
"Ony 'bout four mild," was the discouraging reply, as Youth "loped" on
in advance.
"Four mild!" and such miles! The only road, a faint track in the grass,
now undiscernible in the gathering gloom, now on the slope of steep
hills marked by deep gullies worn by the impetuous autumn rains, and
down which the poor old "shay" jerked along in a series of bumps and
jolts threatening to demolish at once that patriarchal vehicle and the
bones of its occupants.
At last, however, from the top of one of these declivities, the
brilliant, flashing light of the long-watched-for Pharos greeted Mysie's
despairing eyes, and woke new hopes of warmth, rest, and shelter. But
never did bewildering _ignisfatuus_ retire more persistently from the
pursuit of unwary traveller than did that Light-house from the occupants
of that creaking "shay"; and it was not till total darkness had settled
upon the earth that they reached its door, and discovered, by the
lamplight streaming out, that Caleb stood in the entrance, awaiting
their arrival.
As the chaise stopped, he came forward and lifted the stiff and weary
forms of "the woman and child" to the ground, and delivered them to the
guidance of the hostess.
The first aspect of affairs was somewhat discouraging,--the parlor into
which they were ushered being without fire and but dimly lighted, the
bedroom not yet prepared for toilet purposes, and the hostess, as she
averred, entirely unprepared for company.
Left alone in the dreary parlor, Caleb subsided into moody silence, and
Mysie into tears, upon which the Baron followed suit, and produced such
a ludicrous state of affairs, that the sobs which had evoked his changed
to an irrepressible laugh, in which all parties soon joined. This
pleasant frame of mind was speedily encouraged and augmented, first, by
water and towels _ad libitum_, and then by an introduction to the
dining-room, in whose ample grate now roared a fire, of what our
travellers were informed was peat,--an article supplying, in the absence
of all other indigenous fuel, nearly every chimney upon the island.
A good cup of tea and a substantial supper prepared the trio to accept
the invitation of the excellent Mr. F. (the chief keeper, and their
host) to go up with him "into the Light."
And now our travellers suddenly found that they had made a pilgrimage
unawares. They had come to the island for sea-air and pebbles, to shoot
ducks, see the Indians, and find out who Martha was, and had come to the
Light-house, as the only "white" dwelling upon the Head,--the rest
being all occupied by the descendants of the red men,--and now found
themselves applauded by their host for having "come so far to see our
Light;--not so far as some, either," continued he, "for we have had
visitors from every part of the Union,--even from Florida; every one who
understands such things is so anxious to see it."
"Why, is it different from common light-houses?" carelessly inquired
Caleb.
"Don't you know? Haven't you come on purpose to see it?" asked the
keeper, in astonishment,--and then proceeded to explain, that this is
the famous Fresnel light, the identical structure exhibited at the great
Exposition at Paris, bought there by an agent of the United States, and
shipped by him to America.
Owing, however, to some inexplicable blunder, its arrival was not made
known to the proper authorities,--and the papers which should have
accompanied it being lost or not delivered, no one at the custom-house
knew what the huge case contained. It was deposited in a bonded
warehouse during the legal interval, but, never having been claimed, was
then sold, still unexamined, to the highest bidder. He soon identified
his purchase, and proceeded to make his own profit out of it,--the
consequence being that government at last discovered that the Fresnel
light had been some two years in this country, and was then upon
exhibition, if the President and cabinet would like to take a peep. The
particulars of the bargain which ensued did not transpire, but it
resulted in the lantern being repacked and reshipped to Gay Head, its
original destination.
While hearing this little history, the party were breathlessly climbing
three steep iron staircases, the last of which ended at a trap-door,
giving admittance to the clock-room, where the keeper generally sits;
from here another ladder-like staircase leads up into the lantern.
Arrived at the top, the Baron screamed with delight at the gorgeous
spectacle before him.
The lamp (into the four concentric wicks of which a continual and
superabundant supply of oil is forced by a species of clock-work,
causing a flame of dazzling brilliancy) is surrounded by a revolving
cover, about eight feet high by four or five in diameter, and in shape
like the hand-glasses with which gardeners cover tender plants, or the
shades which one sees over fancy clocks and articles of _bijouterie_.
This cover is composed of over six hundred pieces of glass, arranged in
a complicated and scientific system of lenses and prisms, very difficult
to comprehend, but very beautiful in the result; for every ray of light
from that brilliant flame is shivered into a thousand glittering arrows,
reflected, refracted, tinted with all the rainbow hues, and finally
projected through the clear plate-glass windows of the lantern with all
the force and brilliancy of a hundred rays. If any one cares to
understand more clearly the why and the how, let him either go and see
for himself or read about it in Brande's Encyclopædia. Mysie and the
Baron were content to bask ignorantly in the glittering, ever-changing,
ever-flowing flood of light, dreaming of Fairy Land, and careless of
philosophy. Only so much heed did they give to the outer world as always
to place themselves upon the landward side of the lantern, lest
unwittingly their forms should hide one ray of the blessed light from
those for whose good it was put there.
Caleb, meanwhile, sat with his host in the clock-room, smoking many a
meerschaum, and listening to the keeper's talk about his beautiful
charge,--a pet as well as a duty with him, obviously.
With the same fond pride with which a mother affects to complain of the
care she lavishes upon her darling child would the old man speak of the
time necessary to keep his six hundred lenses clear and spotless, each
one being rubbed daily with softest doeskin saturated with _rouge_, to
keep the windows of the lantern free from constantly accumulating saline
incrustations,--of the care with which the lamp, when burning, must be
watched, lest intrusive fly or miller should drown in the great
reservoir of oil and be drawn into the air-passages. This duty, and the
necessity of winding up the "clock" (which forces the oil up into the
wick) every half-hour, require a constant watch to be kept through the
night, which is divided between the chief and two assistant keepers.
The morning after their arrival, our travellers, strong with the vigor
of the young day, set forth to explore the cliffs, bidding adieu to
original Youth, who, standing ready to depart, beside his horse, was
carolling the following ditty in glorification of his native town:--
"Ga'ed Light is out o' sight,
Menemshee Crik is sandy,
Holmes's Hole's a pooty place,
An' Oldtown Pint's onhandy."
(Oldtown being synonymous with Edgartown, the rival seaport.)
Leaving this young patriot to his national anthem, a walk of a few
hundred feet through deep sword-edged grass brought our explorers to the
edge of a cliff, down which they gazed with awe-hushed breath. Below
them, at a depth of a hundred and fifty feet, the thunderous waves beat
upon the foot of the cliff over whose brink they peered, and which,
stern and impassive as it had stood for ages, frowned back with the mute
strength of endurance upon the furious, eager waves, which now and again
dashed themselves fiercely against its front, only to be flung back
shattered into a thousand glittering fragments.
The cliffs themselves are very curious and beautiful, being composed of
red and black ochre, the largest cliff showing the one color on its
northern and the other on its southern face. The forms are
various,--some showing a sheer descent, with no vestige of earth or
vegetation, their faces seamed with scars won in the elemental war which
they have so long withstood. In other spots the cliff has been rent into
sharp pinnacles, varied and beautiful in hue.
One spot, in particular, which became Mysie's favorite resort, was at
once singular and beautiful in its conformation. About three feet above
the water's edge lay a level plateau, its floor of loose, sandy, black
conglomerate, abounding in sparkling bits of quartz and sulphate of
iron; beneath this lay a bed of beautifully marbled and variegated clay,
its edge showing all along the black border of the plateau like the
brilliant wreath with which a brunette binds her dusky hair. Blocks of
this clay, fallen upon the beach, and wet with every flowing wave, lay
glistening in the sunlight and looking like--
"Castile soap, mamma," suggested the Baron, as Mysie was describing the
scene in his presence, and hesitated for a simile.
At the back of the terrace, which, in its widest part, measured some
fifty feet, rose suddenly and sharply the pinnacled cliffs, some snowy
white, some black, some deep red, and others a cold gray. At either hand
they extended quite down to the water's edge, so that, seated upon the
plateau, nothing met the eye but ocean, sky, and cliffs; no work of man
struck a discordant note in the grand harmony of these three simple,
mighty elements of creation.
Mysie sometimes took a book here with her, but it was not a place to
read in; the scene crushed and dwarfed human thoughts and words to
nothingness; and to repeat to the ocean himself what had been said of
him by the loftiest even of poets seemed tame and impertinent.
These cliffs extend about a mile along the shore, and then suddenly give
place to a broad sandy beach, behind which lies a level, desolate moor,
treeless, shrubless, and barren of all vegetation, save coarse grass and
weeds, and a profusion of stunted dog-roses, which, in their season,
must throw a rare and singular charm over their sterile home.
The beach, though smooth and even, is not flat, like those of Nantasket,
Nahant, and Newport, but shelves rapidly down; and there is a belief
among the islanders, that a short distance out it terminates suddenly at
the brow of a submarine precipice, beyond which are no soundings.
Owing to the sharp declivity of the beach, the rollers break with great
force, and the surf is very high. At one point is grouped a cluster of
rocks, half in the water, half on the beach, among which, as the tide
comes in, the waves break with furious force, dashing high over the
outermost barrier, and then plunging and leaping forward, like a troop
of wild horses, their white manes flung high in air, as they leap
forward over one and another of the obstacles in their path.
Perched upon the crest of one of these half-submerged rocks, watching
the mad waves fling themselves exhausted at her feet, it was Mysie's
delight to sit, enjoying the half danger of her position, and retreating
only when the waters had many times closed behind her throne, leaving,
in their momentary absence, but a wet and slippery path back to the
beach.
Along this beach, too, lay the road to Squipnocket, a pond famed for its
immense flocks of wild geese and ducks,--fame shared by Menemshee Creek
and Pond, as well as several others of similar aboriginal titles.
To these repaired, almost daily, Caleb, accompanied by one or another of
his host's five sons; and the result of their efforts with the gun was
no inconsiderable addition to the table at Ga'ed Light.
But greatest of all the wonders at the Head are the Fossil Cliffs.
A short time after the arrival of our travellers, their hostess inquired
if they had yet found any fossils. Mysie frankly confessed that they did
not know there were any to find, which was evidently as great a surprise
to Mrs. F. as their ignorance of the Fresnel light had been to her
husband. She at once offered the services of her daughter Clarissa as
guide and assistant, and gave glowing accounts of the treasures to be
found. The offer was gladly accepted; and Clarissa, a merry little romp,
about twelve years old, soon made her appearance, armed with a pickaxe,
hoe, and basket.
Thus laden, and in the teeth of a shrewd northeast wind, the little
barefooted pioneer led the way directly over the brow of a cliff, which,
had Mysie been alone, she would have pronounced entirely impracticable.
Now, however, fired with a lofty emulation, she silently followed her
guide, grasping, however, at every shrub and protection with somewhat
convulsive energy.
"Here's a good place," announced Clarissa, pausing where a shelf of
gravelly rock afforded tolerable foothold. "Professor Hitchcock told
father that in here were strata of the tertiary formation, and there's
where we get the fossils."
"But how do you come at the tertiary formation through all this sand and
gravel?" asked Mysie, aghast at the prospect.
"Oh, dig; that's why I brought the pick and hoe; we must dig a hole
about a foot deep, and then we shall come to the stuff that has the
fossils in it. You may have the hoe, and I'll take the pick, 'cause
that's the hardest."
"Then let me have it; I am stronger than you," exclaimed Mysie, suddenly
roused to enthusiasm at the idea of "picking" her way into the tertiary
formation of the earth, and exhuming its fossilized remains.
Seizing the pickaxe, she aimed a mighty blow at the clay and gravel
conglomerate before her; but the instrument, falling wide of its
intended mark, struck upon a rock, and sent such a jarring thrill up
both her arms and such a tingle to her fingers' ends as suddenly
quenched her antiquarian zeal, and reminded her of a frightful account
she once read of a convent of nuns captured by some brutal potentate,
who forced them to mend his highways by breaking stones upon them with
very heavy hammers; and the historian mentioned, as a common
occurrence, that, when any sister dislocated her shoulder, one of her
comrades would set it, and the sufferer would then resume her labors.
Mysie, having this warning before her eyes, and being doubtful of
Clarissa's surgical abilities, concluded to postpone her researches, and
proposed to her companion to fill the basket with shells and pebbles
from the beach, to which cowardly proposition Clarissa yielded but a
reluctant consent.
The next day, however, Mr. F. and Caleb, learning the result of the
fossil-search, offered to apply their more efficient skill and strength
to a new attempt in the same direction; and, with high hopes for the
result, Mysie, still accompanied by Clarissa, proceeded to another
portion of the cliffs, where a low, wedge-shaped promontory, shadowed by
beetling crags, was, as Mr. F. confidently stated, "sure for teeth."
The pickaxe, in the sinewy arms of its owner, soon dislodged great cakes
of the upper deposit and laid bare a stratum of olive-green clay, which
was announced to be a fossil-bed. Lumps of this clay being broken off
and crumbled up, proved indeed rich in deposit. They found sharks'
teeth, the edges still sharply serrated, firmly set in pieces of the
jawbone,--whales' teeth,--vertebrae of various species,--fragments of
bone, great and small,--several species of shell-fish, among which
chiefly abounded a kind called quahaug,--and many nondescript fragments,
not easily classified. One of these was a little bone closely resembling
the tibia of a child's leg, and may have belonged to some antediluvian
infant lost at sea, (if Noah's ancestors were mariners,) or perhaps
drowned in the Deluge,--for Mr. F. quoted an eminent geologist who has
visited the Vineyard, and who supposed these remains to have been
brought here by that mighty Flood-tide. Another _savant_, however,
supposes the island to have been thrown up from the sea by volcanic
action; and that the fossils, now imbedded in cliffs a hundred feet
high, were once deposited upon the bed of the ocean. There is certainly
a great amount of conglomerate, which has evidently been fused by
intense heat; and masses of rock, sea-pebbles, sand, and iron-ore are
now as firmly integrated as a piece of granite.
However, the fossils came; here they certainly are; many of them perfect
in form, and light and porous to the eye, but all hard and heavy as
stone to the touch. Teeth, which are considered the most valuable of all
the remains, are sometimes found as wide as a man's hand, and weighing
several pounds; but Mysie was quite content with the more insignificant
weight of those which filled her basket, especially when an immense
reticulated paving-stone was added, which Mr. F. pronounced to be a
whale's vertebra. She then was induced to trust the precious collection
to Caleb's care, the more willingly that the ascent of the cliffs was
now to be attempted. This was easily and quickly accomplished by Mr. F.
and his little son, by going to the right spot before beginning to
climb; but Mysie declaring that the ascent was quite practicable where
they were, Caleb and Clarissa felt bound in honor to accompany her. For
some distance, all went very well,--the face of the cliff presuming
slight inequalities of surface, which answered for foot-and hand-holds,
and not being very steep; but suddenly Mysie, the leader of the group,
arriving within about three feet of the top, found the rock above her so
smooth as to give no possible foothold by which she might reach the
strong, coarse grass which nodded tauntingly to her over the brink.
Clinging closely to the face of the cliff, she turned her head to
announce to Caleb that she could not go on, and, in turning, looked
down. Before this she had felt no fear, only perplexity; but the sight
of those cruel rocks below,--the hollow booming of the waves, as they
lashed the foot of the cliff,--the consciousness that a fall of a
hundred feet awaited her, should she let go her hold,--all this struck
terror to Mysie's heart; and while a heavy, confused noise came
throbbing and ringing through her head, she shut her eyes, and fancied
she had seen her last of earth.
In an instant Caleb was beside her,--his arm about her, holding her
safely where she was; but to continue was impossible for either.
"Ho! Mr. F.!" shouted Caleb; "come this way, will you, and give my wife
your hand? She is a little frightened, and can't go on."
Presently a stout arm and hand appeared from among that nodding, mocking
grass, and a cheery voice exclaimed,--
"Here, my dear lady, take right hold, strong;--you can't pull me
over,--not if you try to."
Unclasping, with some difficulty, her fingers from the rock, into which
they seemed to have grown, Mysie grasped the proffered hand, and the
next moment was safe upon the turf.
"Oh, my good gracious!" muttered the kind old man; but whether the
exclamation was caused by Mysie's face, pale, no doubt, by the effort
necessary to raise her half-fainting figure, or by the idea of the peril
in which she had been, did not appear.
Clarissa, calm and equable, was next passed up by Caleb, who, declining
the proffered hand, drew himself up, by a firm grasp upon the rocky
scarp of the cliff.
"Guess you was scart some then, wa'n't you?" inquired Clarissa, as the
party walked homeward.
"Oh, no!" replied Mysie, quickly. "But I could not get over the top of
the cliff alone,--it was so steep."
"Oh, that was the matter?" drawled the child, with a sidelong glance of
her sharp black eyes.
The northeast wind which went fossilizing with Mysie and Clara on their
first excursion was the precursor of a furious storm of rain and wind,
ranking, according to the dictum of experienced weatherseers, as little
inferior to that famous one in which fell the Minot's Ledge Light-house.
As the gale reached its height, it was a sight at once terrible and
beautiful, to watch, standing in the lantern, the goaded sea, whose
foam-capped waves could plainly be seen at the horizon line, breaking
here and there upon sunken rocks, over which in their playful moods they
scarcely rippled, but on which they now dashed with such white fury as
to make them discernible, even through the darkness of night. One long,
low ridge of submarine rocks, around which seethed a perpetual caldron,
was called the Devil's Bridge; but when erected, or for what purpose,
tradition failed to state.
Never, surely, did the wind rave about a peaceful inland dwelling as it
did about that lonely light-house for two long nights. It roared, it
howled, it shrieked, it whistled; it drew back to gather strength, and
then rushed to the attack with such mad fury, that the strong, young
light-house, whose frame was all of iron and stone, shrunk trembling
before it, and the children in their beds screamed aloud for fear. But
through all and beyond all, the calm, strong light sent out its
piercing, warning rays into the black night; and who can tell what
sinner it may that night have prevented from crossing the Devil's Bridge
to the world which lies beyond?
There was but one wreck during the storm, so far as our travellers
heard; and in this the lives were saved. Two men, caught out in a
fishing-smack, finding that their little vessel was foundering, betook
themselves to their small boat; but this filled more rapidly than they
could bale it; and they had just given themselves up for lost, when
their signals of distress were observed on board the light-ship
stationed near Newport, which sent a life-boat to their assistance, and
rescued them just as their little boat went to pieces.
When Mysie heard this occurrence mentioned, as they were journeying
homeward, it recalled to her mind a little incident of the day
succeeding the storm.
Walking with Clara upon the beach, they saw borne toward them, on the
crest of a mighty wave, a square beam of wood, bent at an obtuse angle,
which Clara at once pronounced to be the knee from some large boat, and,
rushing dauntlessly into the water, the energetic little maid battled
with the wave for its unwieldy toy, and finally dragged it triumphantly
out upon the beach, and beyond the reach of the wave, only wishing that
she had "a piece of chalk to make father's mark upon it." Failing the
chalk, she rushed off home for "father and one of the boys," who soon
bestowed the prize in a place of safety.
Mysie at first wondered considerably that persons should take so much
trouble for a piece of wood, but ceased to do so when she remembered
that on the whole island could not probably be found a tree of a foot in
diameter, and that everything like board or joist at the light-house
must be brought by sea to Holmes's Hole, Edgartown, or Menemshee, and
thence carted over _that_ road to Gay Head, becoming, by the time it
reached "the Light," not a common necessary, but an expensive luxury.
She was not, therefore, surprised at being accompanied in her next walk
along the beach by quite a little party of wreckers, who, joyfully
seizing every chip which the waves tossed within their reach,
accumulated at last a very respectable pile of drift-wood.
"It would be a good thing for you, if the schooner "Mary Ann" should go
to pieces off here," remarked Mysie to Clara, who had become her
constant attendant.
"Why?" inquired she, expectantly.
"On account of her cargo. When hailed by another ship, and asked his
name, the captain replied,--
'I'm Jonathan Homer, master and owner
Of the schooner Mary Ann;
She comes from Pank-a-tank, laden with oak plank,
And bound to Surinam.'"
"Did he _really_ say so?" asked Clara, sharply.
"I don't know," said Mysie, laughing; "but that's what I heard about it
when I was a little girl."
While the storm continued too violent for out-of-door exercise, Mysie
cultivated an acquaintance with a remarkably pleasant and intelligent
lady who fortunately was making a visit at the light-house. She had been
for many years a resident of the Vineyard, and had taken great interest
in its history, both past and present. From her Mysie derived much
curious and interesting information.
It seems that the island was first discovered by a certain Thomas
Mayhew, who, voyaging with others to settle in the Plymouth Colony
during its early days, was driven by stress of weather into a safe and
commodious bay, now Edgartown harbor, but then seen and used for the
first time by white men. The storm over, his companions prepared to
resume their voyage; but Mayhew, seeing the land fair and pleasant to
look upon, decided to remain there, and landed with whoever in the ship
belonged to him.
He, of course, found the land in the hands of its original possessors, a
small and peaceful tribe of Indians, living quietly upon their own
island, and having very little communication with their neighbors. With
them Thomas Mayhew bargained for what land he wanted, selecting it in
what is now the town of Chilmark, and paying for it, to the satisfaction
of all parties, with an old soldier's coat which happened to be among
his possessions.
In process of time, one of his sons, named Experience, having been
educated for the purpose in England, returned to his father's home as a
missionary to the kind and hospitable savages among whom he dwelt. So
prosperous were the labors of himself, and afterward of his son
Zachariah, that in a journal, kept by the latter, it is mentioned that
there were then upon the island twelve thousand "praying Indians."
Experience Mayhew is still spoken of as "the great Indian missionary,"
and the house in which he lived was still standing a few years since
upon the farm of Mr. Hancock in Chilmark.
The island is to this day full of Mayhews of every degree,--so far, at
least, as distinctions of rank have obtained among this isolated and
primitive people.
When Massachusetts erected herself into a State, and included the
Vineyard within her bounds, it was divided into the townships of
Edgartown, (or Oldtown,) Holmes's Hole, Tisbury, and Chilmark, and the
district of Gay Head, which last, with the island of Chip-a-quid-dick,
off Edgartown, and a small tract of land in Tisbury, named
Christian-town, were made over in perpetuity to the Indians who chose to
remain. They have not the power of alienating any portion of this
territory, nor may any white man build or dwell there. If, however, one
of the tribe marry out of the community, the alien husband or wife may
come to live with the native spouse so long as the marriage continues;
and the Indians have taken advantage of this permission to intermarry
with the negroes, until there is not one pure-blooded descendant of the
original stock remaining, and its physiognomy and complexion are in most
cases undistinguishable in the combination of the two races.
Gay Head contains eleven hundred acres, seven of which are the
birthright of every Indian child; but it is not generally divided by
fences, the cattle of the whole tribe grazing together in amicable
companionship. Much of the value of the property lies in the
cranberry-meadows, which are large and productive, and in the beds of
rich peat. A great deal of the soil, however, is valuable for
cultivation, although but little used, as the majority of the men follow
the example of their white co-islanders, and plough the sea instead of
the land. They make excellent seamen, and sometimes rise to the rank of
officers, although few white sailors are sufficiently liberal in their
views to approve of being commanded by "a nigger," as they persist in
calling these half-breeds.
The wigwams, which, no doubt, were at first erected here, have given
place to neat and substantial frame buildings, as comfortable,
apparently, as those in many New England villages. There is also a
nice-looking Baptist church, of which denomination almost every adult is
a member. Near this is a parsonage, occupied until lately by a white
clergyman; but the spirit of Experience Mayhew is not common in these
days; and his successor, finding the parish lonely and uncongenial,
removed to a pleasanter one,--his pulpit being now filled by a preacher
from among the Indians themselves.
Mysie took occasion to call at one of these _quasi_ wigwams, soon after
her arrival, but could discern only one aboriginal vestige in either
inhabitants or customs. This existed in the shape of a dish of
succotash, (corn and beans boiled together,) which the good woman was
preparing for breakfast,--very possibly in ignorance that her ancestors
had cooked and eaten and named the compound ages before the white
intruders ever saw their shore.
Mysie pursued her morning walk in a somewhat melancholy mood. It is a
sad and dreary sight to behold a nation in decay; saddest when the fall
is from so slight an elevation as that on which the savage stood. Greece
and Rome, falling into old age, proudly boast, "Men cannot say I did not
_have_ the crown"; each shows undying, unsurpassable achievements of her
day of power and strength,--each, if she live no longer in the sight of
the world, is sure of dwelling forever in its memory. But the
aboriginal, when his simple routine of life is broken up by the
intrusion of a people more powerful, more wicked, and more wise than
himself, is incapable of exchanging his own purely physical ambitions
and pursuits for the intellectual and cultivated life belonging to the
better class of his conquerors, while his wild and sensuous nature
grasps eagerly at the new forms of vice which follow in their train.
Civilization to the savage destroys his own existence, and gives him no
better one,--destroys it irremediably and forever. The life sufficient
for himself and for the day is not that which stretches its hand into
the future and sets its mark on ages not yet born; it dies and is
forgotten,--forgotten even by the descendants of those who lived it.
Some of the Indian names still survive; and Mysie's indignation was
roused, when a descendant of the Mayhews, pointing out the hamlets of
Menemshee and Nashaquitsa, (commonly called Quitsy,) added,
contemptuously,--
"But them's only nicknames given by the colored folks; it's all Chilmark
by rights."
"I suppose they are the names used by the ancestors of these Indians,
before a white man ever saw the island,--are they not?" inquired she,
somewhat dryly.
"Like enough, like enough," replied the other, carelessly, and not in
the least appreciating the rebuke.
From the lady before referred to Mysie received an answer to her
oft-repeated question,--
"Is there any tradition how the island received its name?"
"Oh, yes," was the unexpected and welcome answer. "All the islands near
here were granted by the King of England to a gentleman whose name is
forgotten; but he had four daughters, among whom he divided his new
possessions.
"This one, remarkable then, as now, in a degree, for its abundance of
wild grapes, he gave to Martha as her Vineyard.
"The group to the north, consisting of Pennikeese, Cuttyhunk, Nashawena,
Naushon, Pasqui, and Punkatasset, are called the Elizabeth Islands, from
the daughter who inherited them.
"That little island to the southwest of us was Naomi's portion. It is
now called Noman's Land, and is remarkable only for the fine quality of
the codfish caught and cured there.
"The strangest of all, however, was the name given to the island
selected by Ann, which was first called Nan-took-it, and is now known as
Nantucket."
"Thank Heaven, that I at last know something about Martha!" ejaculated
Mysie.
* * * * *
At length, every corner filled with _specimens_, every face deeply
imbrowned by sun and wind, and the Baron with only the ghost of a pair
of shoes to his feet, our travellers set their faces homeward,--Caleb
resolving to renew his acquaintance with the birds at some future
period, his imagination having been quite inflamed by the accounts of
plover and grouse to be found here in their season. The latter, however,
are very strictly protected by law during most of the season, on account
of the rapidity with which they were disappearing. They are identical
with the prairie-fowl, so common at the West, and are said to be
delicious eating.
Desirous to improve their minds and manners by as much travel as
possible, the trio resolved to leave the island by the way of Edgartown,
the terminus of the steamboat route. Bidding adieu to their kind and
obliging host and hostess, the twelve children, and the pleasant new
friend, they set out, upon the most charming of all autumn days, for
Edgartown, fully prepared to be dazzled by its beauty and confounded by
its magnificence.
"Edgartown is a much finer place than Holmes's Hole, I understand,"
remarked Caleb to their driver.
"Well, I dunno; it's some bigger," was the reply.
"But it is a better sort of place, I am told; people from Edgartown
don't seem to think much of Holmes's Hole."
"No, nor the Holmes's Hole folks don't think much of Oldtown; it's
pretty much according to who you talk to, which place is called the
handsomest, I reckon."
"Athens or Rome, London or Paris, Oldtown or Holmes's Hole, Mysie,"
murmured Caleb, as their driver stopped to reply to the driver of "a
team," who was anxious to know when he was "a-goin' to butcher agin."
Edgartown proved to be a pretty little seaside town, with some handsome
wooden houses, a little bank, and a very nice tavern, at which the
travellers received very satisfactory entertainment. The next day,
reembarking upon the "Eagle's Wing," they soon reached New Bedford.
OCTOBER TO MAY.
The day that brightens half the earth
Is night to half. Ah, sweet!
One's mourning is another's mirth;--
You wear your bright years like a crown,--
While mine, dead garlands, tangle down
In chains about my feet.
The breeze which wakes the folded flower
Sweeps dead leaves from the tree;--
So partial Time, as hour by hour
He tells the rapid years,--cheu!
Brings bloom and beauty still to you,
But leaves his blight with me.
The rain which calls the violet up
Out of the moistened mould
Shatters the wind-flower's fragile cup;--
For even Nature has her pets,
And, favoring the new, forgets
To love and spare the old.
The shower which makes the bud a rose
Beats off the lilac-bloom.
I am a lilac,--so life goes,--
A lilac that has outlived May;--
You are a blush-rose. Welladay!
I pass, and give you room!
THE ELEUSINIA.
What did the Eleusinia mean? Perhaps, reader, you think the question of
little interest. "The Eleusinia! Why, Lobeck made that little matter
clear long ago; and there was Porphyry, who told us that the whole thing
was only an illustration of the Platonic philosophy. St. Croix, too,--he
made the affair as clear as day!"
But the question is not so easily settled, my friend; and I insist upon
it that you _have_ an interest in it. Were I to ask you the meaning of
Freemasonry, you would think _that_ of importance; you could not utter
the name without wonder; and it may be that there is even more wonder in
it than you suspect,--though you be an arch-mason yourself. But in sight
of Eleusis, freemasonry sinks into insignificance. For, of all races,
the Grecian was the most mysterious; and, of all Grecian mysteries, the
Eleusinia were _the_ mysteries _par excellence_. They must certainly
have meant something to Greece,--something more than can ever be
adequately known to us. A farce is soon over; but the Eleusinia reached
from the mythic Eumolpus to Theodosius the Great,--nearly two thousand
years. Think you that all Athens, every fifth year, for more than sixty
generations, went to Eleusis to witness and take part in a sham?
But, reader, let _us_ go to Eleusis, and see, for ourselves, this great
festival. Suppose it to be the 15th of September, B.C. 411, Anno Mundi
3593 (though we would not make oath to that). It is a fine morning at
Athens, and every one is astir, for it is the day of assembling together
at Eleusis. Then, for company, we shall have Plato, now eighteen years
old, Sophocles, an old man of eighty-four, Euripides, at sixty-nine, and
Aristophanes, at forty-five. Socrates, who has his peculiar notions
about things, is not one of the initiated, but will go with us, if we
ask him. These are the _élite_ of Athens. Then there are the Sophists
and their young disciples, and the vast crowd of the Athenian people.
Some of the oldest among them may have seen and heard the "Prometheus
Vinctus"; certainly very many of them have seen "Antigone," and
"Oedipus," and "Electra"; and all of them have heard the Rhapsodists.
Great wonders have they seen and heard, which, in their appeal to the
heart, transcend all the wonders of this nineteenth century. Not more
fatal to the poor Indian was modern civilization, bringing swift ruin to
his wigwam and transforming his hunting-grounds into the sites of
populous cities, than modern improvements would have been to the Greek.
Modern strategy! What a subject for Homer would the siege of Troy have
been, had it consisted of a series of pitched battles with rifles!
Railways, steamboats, and telegraphs, annihilating space and time, would
also have annihilated the Argonautic expedition and the wanderings of
Ulysses. There would have been little fear, in a modern steamship, of
the Sirens' song; one whistle would have broken the charm. A modern
steamship might have borne Ulysses to Hades,--but it would never have
brought him back, as his own ship did. And now do you think a ride to
Eleusis by railway to-day would strike this Athenian populace, to say
nothing of the philosophers and poets we have along with us?
But they are thinking of Eleusis, and not of the way to Eleusis; so that
we may as well keep our suggestion to ourselves,--also those pious
admonitions which we were just about to administer to our companions on
heathenish superstitions. A strange fascination these Athenians have;
and before we are aware, _our_ thoughts, too, are centred in Eleusis,
whither are tending, not Athens only, but vast multitudes from all
Greece. Their movement is tumultuous; but it is a tumult of natural
enthusiasm, and not of Bacchic frenzy. If Athens be, as Milton calls
her, "the eye of Greece," surely Eleusis must be its heart!
There are nine days of the festival. This first is the day of the
_agurmos_, ([Greek: agyrmos],) or assembling together the flux of
Grecian life into the secret chambers of its Eleusinian heart. To-morrow
is the day of purification; then, "To the sea, all ye that are
initiated!" ([Greek: Alade, mystai!]) lest any come with the stain of
impurity to the mysteries of God. The third day is the day of
sacrifices, that the heart also may be made pure, when are offered
barley from the fields of Eleusis and a mullet. All other sacrifices may
be tasted; but _this_ is for Demeter alone, and not to be touched by
mortal lips. On the fourth day, we join the procession bearing the
sacred basket of the goddess, filled with curious symbols, grains of
salt, carded wool, sesame, pomegranates, and poppies,--symbols of the
gifts of our Great Mother and of her mighty sorrow. On the night of the
fifth, we are lost in the hurrying tumult of the torch-light
processions. Then there is the sixth day, the great day of all, when
from Athens the statue of Iacchus (Bacchus) is borne, crowned with
myrtle, tumultuously through the sacred gate, along the sacred way,
halting by the sacred fig-tree, (all sacred, mark you, from Eleusinian
associations,) where the procession rests, and then moves on to the
bridge over the Cephissus, where again it rests, and where the
expression of the wildest grief gives place to the trifling farce,--even
as Demeter, in the midst of her grief, smiled at the levity of Iambe in
the palace of Celeus. Through the "mystical entrance" we enter Eleusis.
On the seventh day, games are celebrated; and to the victor is given a
measure of barley,--as it were a gift direct from the hand of the
goddess. The eighth is sacred to Aesculapius, the Divine Physician, who
heals all diseases; and in the evening is performed the initiatory
ritual.
Let us enter the mystic temple and be initiated,--though it must be
supposed that a year ago we were initiated into the Lesser Mysteries at
Agræ. ("_Certamen enim,--et præludium certaminis; et mysteria sunt quæ
præcedunt mysteria_.") We must have been _mystæ_ (veiled) before we can
become _epoptæ_ (seers); in plain English, we must have shut our eyes to
all else before we can behold the mysteries. Crowned with myrtle, we
enter with the other _mystæ_ into the vestibule of the temple,--blind as
yet, but the Hierophant within will soon open our eyes.
But first,--for here we must do nothing rashly,--first we must wash in
this holy water; for it is with pure hands and a pure heart that we are
bidden to enter the most sacred inclosure. Then, led into the presence
of the Hierophant, he reads to us, from a book of stone, things which we
must not divulge on pain of death. Let it suffice that they fit the
place and the occasion; and though you might laugh at them, if they were
spoken outside, still you seem very far from that mood now, as you hear
the words of the old man (for old he always was) and look upon the
revealed symbols. And very far indeed are you from ridicule, when
Demeter seals, by her own peculiar utterances and signals, by vivid
coruscations of light, and cloud piled upon cloud, all that we have seen
and heard from her sacred priest; and when, finally, the light of a
serene wonder fills the temple, and we see the pure fields of Elysium
and hear the choirs of the Blessed;--then, not merely by external
seeming or philosophic interpretation, but in real fact, does the
Hierophant become the Creator and Revealer of all things; the Sun is but
his torch-bearer, the Moon his attendant at the altar, and Hermes his
mystic herald. But the final word has been uttered: "_Conx Ompax_." The
rite is consummated, and we are _epoptæ_ forever!
One day more, and the Eleusinia themselves are completed. As in the
beginning by lustration and sacrifices we conciliated the favor of the
gods, so now by libation we finally commend ourselves to their care.
Thus did the Greeks begin all things with lustration and end with
libation, each day, each feast,--all their solemn treaties, their
ceremonies, and sacred festivals. But, like all else Eleusinian, this
libation must be _sui generis_, emptied from two bowls,--the one toward
the East, the other toward the West. Thus is finished this Epos, or, as
Clemens Alexandrinus calls it, the "mystical drama" of the Eleusinia.
Now, reader, you have seen the Mysteries. And what do they mean? Let us
take care lest we deceive ourselves, as many before us have done, by
merely _looking_ at the Eleusinia.
Oh, this everlasting staring! This it is that leads us astray. That old
stargazer, with whom Aesop has made us acquainted, deserved, indeed, to
fall into the well, no less for his profanity than his stupidity. Yet
this same star-gazing it is that we miscall reflection. Thus, in our
blank wonder at Nature, in our naked analysis of her life, expressed
through long lists of genera and species and mathematical calculations,
as if we were calling off the roll of creation, or as if her depth of
meaning rested in her vast orbs and incalculable velocities,--in all
this we fail of her real mystery.
To mere external seeming, the Eleusinia point to Demeter for their
interpretation. To _her_ are they consecrated,--of her grief are they
commemorative; out of reverence to her do the _mystæ_ purify themselves
by lustration and by the sacrifice that may not be tasted; she it is who
is symbolized, in the procession of the basket, as our Great Mother,
through the salt, wool, and sesame, which point to her bountiful
gifts,--while by the poppies and pomegranates it is hinted that she
nourishes in her heart some profound sorrow: by the former, that she
seeks to bury this sorrow in eternal oblivion,--by the latter, that it
must be eternally reiterated. The procession of the torches defines the
sorrow; and by this wild, despairing search in the darkness do we know
that her daughter Proserpine, plucking flowers in the fields of light,
has been snatched by ruthless Pluto to the realm of the Invisible. Then
by the procession of Iacchus we learn that divine aid has come to the
despairing Demeter; by the coming of, Aesculapius shall all her wounds
be healed; and the change in the evening from the _mystæ_ to _epoptæ_ is
because that now to Demeter, the cycle of her grief being accomplished,
the ways of Jove are made plain,--even his permission of violence from
unseen hands; to _her_ also is the final libation.
But the story of the stolen Proserpina is itself an afterthought, a
fable invented to explain the Mysteries; and, however much it may have
modified them in detail, certainly could not have been their ground. Nor
is the sorrowing Demeter herself adequate to the solution. For the
Eleusinia are older than Eleusis,--older than Demeter, even the Demeter
of Thrace,--certainly as old as Isis, who was to Egypt what Demeter was
to Greece,--the Great Mother[2] of a thousand names, who also had _her_
endlessly repeated sorrow for the loss of Osiris, and in honor of whom
the Egyptians held an annual festival. Thus we only remove the mystery
back to the very verge of myth itself; and we must either give up the
solution or take a different course. But perhaps Isis will reveal
herself, and at the same time unveil the Mysteries. Let us read her
tablet: "I am all that, has been, all that is, all that is to be; and
the veil which is over my face no mortal hand hath ever raised!" Now,
reader, would it not be strange, if, in solving _her_ mystery, we should
also solve the Sphinx's riddle? But so it is. This is the Sphinx in her
eldest shape,--this Isis of a thousand names; and the answer to her
ever-recurring riddle is always the same. In the Human Spirit is
infolded whatsoever has been, is, or shall be; and mortality cannot
reveal it!
Not to Demeter, then, nor even to Isis, do the Eleusinia primarily
point, but to the human heart. We no longer look at them; henceforth
they are within us. Long has this mystic mother, the wonder of the
world, waited for the revelation of her face. Let us draw aside the
veil, (not by mortal hand,--it moves at your will,) and listen:--
"I am the First and the Last,--mother of gods and men. As deep as is my
mystery, so deep is my sorrow. For, lo! all generations are mine. But
the fairest fruit of my Holy Garden was plucked by my mortal children;
since which, Apollo among men and Artemis among women have raged with
their fearful arrows. My fairest children, whom I have brought forth and
nourished in the light, have been stolen by the children of darkness. By
the Flood they were taken; and I wandered forty days and forty nights
upon the waters, ere again I saw the face of the earth. Then, wherever I
went, I brought joy; at Cyprus the grasses sprang up beneath my feet,
the golden-filleted Horæ crowned me with a wreath of gold and clothed me
in immortal robes. Then, also, was renewed my grief; for Adonis, whom I
had chosen, was slain in the chase and carried to Hades. Six months I
wept his loss, when he rose again and I triumphed. Thus in Egypt I
mourned for Osiris, for Atys in Phrygia, and for Proserpina at
Eleusis,--all of whom passed to the underworld, were restored for a
season, and then retaken. Thus is my sorrow repeated without end. All
things are taken from me. Night treads upon the heels of Day, the
desolation of Winter wastes the fair fruit of Summer, and Death walks in
the ways of Life with inexorable claims. But at the last, through Him,
my First-begotten and my Best-beloved, who also died and descended into
Hades, and the third day rose again,--through Him, having ceased from
wandering, I shall triumph in Infinite Joy!"
_That_, reader, is not so difficult to translate into human language.
Thus, from the beginning to the end of the world, do these Mysteries,
under various names, shadow forth the great problem of human life, which
problem, as being fundamental, must be religious, the same that is
shadowed forth in Nature and Revelation, namely: man's sin, and his
redemption from sin,--his great loss, his infinite error, and his final
salvation.
Sorrow, so strong a sense of which pervaded these Mysteries that it was
the name (Achtheia) by which Demeter was known to her mystic
worshippers,--_human_ sorrow it was which veiled the eyelids; toward
which veiling (or _muesis_) the lotus about the head of Isis and the
poppy in the hand of Demeter distinctly point. Hence the _mystæ_, whom
the reader must suppose to have closed their eyes to all without
them,--even to Nature, except as in sympathy she mirrors forth the
central sorrow of their hearts. But this same sorrow and its mighty
work, veiled from all mortal vision, shut out by very necessity from any
sympathy save that of God, is a preparation for a purer vision,--a
second initiation, in which the eyes shall be reopened and the _mystæ_
become _epoptæ_; and of such significance was this higher vision to the
Greek, that it was a synonyme for the highest earthly happiness and a
foretaste of Elysium.
As this vision of the _epoptæ_ was the vision of real faith, so the
_muesis_, or veiling of the _mystæ_, was no mere affectation of
mysticism. Not so easily could be set aside this weight of sorrow upon
the eyelids, which, notwithstanding that, leading to self, it leads to
wandering, leads also through Divine aid to that peace which passeth
all understanding. Thus were the Hebrews led out of Egyptian bondage
through wanderings in the Wilderness to the Promised Land. Even thus,
through rites and ceremonies which to us are hieroglyphics hard to be
deciphered, which are known only as shrouded in infinite sorrow,--as
dimly shadowing forth some wild search in darkness and some final
resurrection into light,--through these, many from Egypt and India and
Scythia, from Scandinavia and from the aboriginal forests of America,
have for unnumbered ages passed from a world of bewildering error to the
heaven of their hopes. To the eye of sense and to shallow infidelity,
this may seem absurd; but the foolishness of man is the wisdom of God to
the salvation of His erring children. Happy, indeed, are the initiated!
Blessed are the poor in spirit, the Pariah, and the slave,--all they
whose eyes are veiled with overshadowing sorrow! for only thus is
revealed the glory of human life!
There are many things, kind reader, which, in our senseless staring, we
may call the signs of human weakness, but which, by a higher
interpretation, become revelations of human power. The gross and
pitiable features of the world are dissolved and clarified, when by an
impassioned sympathy we can penetrate to the heart of things. We are
about to pity the ragged vesture, the feeble knees, and the beseeching
hand of poverty, and the cries of the oppressed and the weary; but, at a
thought, Pity is slain by Reverence. We are ready to cry out against the
sluggish movement of the world and its lazy flux of life; but before the
satire is spoken, we are fascinated by an undercurrent of this same
world, earnest and full toward its sure goal,--of which, indeed, we only
dream; but "the dream is from God,"[3] and surer than sight. There is a
profounder calm than appears to the eye, in the quiet cottages scattered
up and down among the peaceful valleys; the rest of death is more
untroubled than the marble face which it leaves as its visible symbol;
and sleep, "the minor mystery of death," ([Greek: hypnos ta mikra tou
thanutou mystêria][4]) has a deeper significance than is revealed in any
external token. So what is sneeringly called the credulity of human
nature is its holy faith, and, in spite of all the hard facts which you
may charge upon it, is the glory of man. It introduces us into that
region where "nothing is unexpected, nothing impossible."[5] It was the
glory of our childhood, and by it childhood is made immortal. Myth
herself is ever a child,--a genuine child of the earth, indeed,--but
received among men as the child of Heaven.
Upon the slightest material basis have been constructed myths and
miracles and fairy-tales without number; and so it must ever be. Thus
man asserts his own inherent strength of imagination and faith over
against the external fact. Whatsoever is facile to Imagination is also
facile to Faith. Easy, therefore, in our thoughts, is the transition
from the Cinder-wench in the ashes to the Cinderella of the palace; easy
the apotheosis of the slave, and the passage from the weary earth to the
fields of Elysium and the Isles of the Blessed.
This flight of the Imagination, this vision of Faith,--_these_, reader,
are only for the _epoptæ_. It matters not, that, by naked analysis, you
can prove that the palaces of our fancy and the temples of our faith are
but the baseless fabric of a dream. It may be that the greater part of
life is made up of dreams, and that wakefulness is merely incidental as
a relief to the picture. It may be, indeed, in the last analysis, that
the _ideal_ is the highest, if not the only _real_.
For the sensible, palpable fact can, by the nature of things, exist for
us only in the Present. But, my dear reader, it is just here, in this
Present, that the tenure by which we have hold upon life is the most
frail and shadowy. For, by the strictest analysis, _there is no
Present_. The formula, _It is_, even before we can give it utterance, by
some subtile chemistry of logic, is resolved into _It was_ and _It
shall be_. Thus by our analysis do we retreat into the ideal. In the
deepest reflection, all that we call external is only the material basis
upon which our dreams are built; and the sleep that surrounds life
swallows up life,--all but a dim wreck of matter, floating this way and
that, and forever evanishing from sight. Complete the analysis, and we
lose even the shadow of the external Present, and only the Past and the
Future are left us as our sure inheritance. This is the first
initiation,--the veiling of the eyes to the external. But, as _epoptæ_,
by the synthesis of this Past and Future in a living nature, we obtain a
higher, an ideal Present, comprehending within itself all that can be
real for us within us or without. This is the second initiation, in
which is unveiled to us the Present as a new birth from our own life.
Thus the great problem of Idealism is symbolically solved in the
Eleusinia. For us there is nothing real except as we _realize_ it. Let
it be that myriads have walked upon the earth before us,--that each race
and generation has wrought its change and left its monumental record
upon pillar and pyramid and obelisk; set aside the ruin which Time has
wrought both upon the change and the record, levelling the cities and
temples of men, diminishing the shadows of the Pyramids, and rendering
more shadowy the names and memories of heroes,--obliterating even its
own ruin;--set aside this oblivion of Time, still there would be
hieroglyphics,--still to us all that comes from this abyss of Time
behind us, or from the abyss of Space around us, must be but dim and
evanescent imagery and empty reverberation of sound, except as, becoming
a part of our own life, by a new birth, it receives shape and
significance. Nothing can be unveiled to us till it is born of us. Thus
the _epoptæ_ are both creators and interpreters. Strength of knowledge
and strength of purpose, lying at the foundation of our own nature,
become also the measure of our interpretation of all Nature. Therefore
in each successive cycle of human history, as we realize more completely
the great Ideal, our appreciation of the Past increases, and our hope of
the Future. The difference lies not in the _data_ of history, but in
what we make of the _data_.
We cannot see too clearly that the great problem of life, in Philosophy,
Art, or Religion, is essentially the same from the beginning. Like
Nature, indeed, it repeats itself under various external phases, in
different ages and under different skies. History whispers from her
antediluvian lips of a race of giants; so does the earth reveal mammoths
and stupendous forests. But the wonder neither of Man nor of Nature was
greater then than now. We say much, too, of Progress. But the progress
does not consist in a change of the fundamental problem of the race; we
have only learned to use our material so that we effect our changes more
readily, and write our record with a finer touch and in clearer outline.
The progress is in the facility and elaboration, and may be measured in
Space and Time; but the Ideal is ever the same and immeasurable. Homer
is hard to read; but when once you have read him you have read all
poetry. Or suppose that Orpheus, instead of striving with his mythic
brother Cheiron, were to engage in a musical contest with Mozart, and
you, reader? were to adjudge the prize. Undoubtedly you would give the
palm to Mozart. Not that Mozart is the better musician; the difficulty
is all in your ear, my friend. If you could only hear the nice
vibrations of the "golden shell," you might reverse your decision.
So in Religion; the central idea, if you can only discern it, is ever
the same. She no longer, indeed, looks with the bewildered gaze of her
childhood to the mountains and rivers, to the sun, moon, and stars, for
aid. In the fulness of time the veil is rent in twain, and she looks
beyond with a clearer eye to the surer signs that are visible of her
unspeakable glory. But the longing of her heart is ever the same.
What remains to us of ancient systems of faith is, for the most part,
mere name and shadow. It is even more difficult for us to realize to
ourselves a single ceremony of Grecian worship,--for instance, a dance
in honor of Apollo,--in its subtile meaning, than it would be to
appreciate the "Prometheus" of Æschylus. This ignorance leads oftentimes
to the most shocking profanation; and from mere lack of vision we
ridicule much that should call forth our reverence.
Thus many Christian writers have sought to throw ridicule upon the
Eleusinia. But we must remember, that, to Greece, throughout her whole
history, they presented a well-defined system of faith,--that,
essentially, they even served the function of a church by their inherent
idea of divine discipline and purification and the hope which they ever
held out of future resurrection and glory. Why, then, you ask, if they
were so pure and full of meaning, why was not such a man as Socrates one
of the Initiated? The reason, reader, was simply this: What the
Eleusinia furnished to Greece, that Socrates furnished to himself. That
man who could stand stock-still a whole day, lost in silent
contemplation, what was the need to him of the Eleusinian veil? The most
self-sufficient man in all Greece, who could find the way directly to
himself and to the mystery and responsibility of his own will without
the medium of external rites, to whom there were the ever-present
intimations of his strange Divinity,--what need to him of the Eleusinian
revealings or their sublime self-intuition ([Greek: autopsia])? He had
his own separate tragedy also. And when with his last words he requested
that a cock be sacrificed to Æsculapius, that, reader, was to indicate
that to him had come the eighth day of the drama, in which the Great
Physician brings deliverance,--and in the evening of which there should
be the final unveiling of the eyes in the presence of the Great
Hierophant!
Such were the Eleusinia of Greece. But what do they mean to us? We have
already hinted at their connection with the Sphinx's riddle. It is
through this connection that they receive their most general
significance; for this riddle is the riddle of the race, and the problem
which it involves can be adequately realized only in the life of the
race. To Greece, as peculiarly sensitive to all that is tragical, the
Sphinx connected her questions most intimately with human sorrow, either
in the individual or the household.
"Who is it," thus the riddle ran, "who is it that in the morning creeps
upon all-fours, touching the earth in complete dependence,--and at noon,
grown into the fulness of beauty and strength, walks erect with his face
toward heaven,--but at the going down of the sun, returns again to his
original frailty and dependence?"
This, answered Oedipus, is Man; and most fearfully did he realize it in
his own life! In the mysteries of the Eleusinia there is the same
prominence of human sorrow,--only here the Sphinx propounds her riddle
in its religious phase; and in the change from the _mystæ_ to the
_epoptæ_, in the revelation of the central self, was the great problem
symbolically realized.
Greece had her reckoning; and to her eye the Sphinx long ago seemed to
plunge herself headlong into precipitate destruction. But this strange
lady is ever reappearing with her awful alternative: they who cannot
solve her riddle must die. It is no trifling account, reader, which we
have with this lady. For now her riddle has grown to fearful
proportions, connecting itself with the rise and fall of empires, with
the dim realm of superstition, with vast systems of philosophy and
faith. And the answer is always the same: "That which hath been is that
which shall be; and that which hath been is named already,--and it is
known that it is Man."
What is it that shall explain the difference between our map of the
world and that of Sesostris or Anaximander? Geological deposits, the
washing away of mountains, and the change of river-courses are certainly
but trifling in such an account. But an Argonautic expedition, a Trojan
siege, a Jewish exodus, Nomadic invasions, and the names of Hanno,
Cæsar, William the Conqueror, and Columbus, suggest an explanation. It
is the flux of human life which must account for the flowing outline of
the earth's geography. As with the terrestrial, so with the celestial.
The heavens change by a subtiler movement than the precession of the
equinoxes. In Job, "Behold the height of the stars, how high they are!"
but to Homer they bathe in the Western seas; while to us, they are again
removed to an incalculable distance,--but at the same time so near,
that, in our hopes, they are the many mansions of our Father's house,
the stepping-stones to our everlasting rest.
But there is also another map, reader, more shadowy in its outline, of
an invisible region, neither of the heavens nor of the earth,--but
having vague relations to each, with a secret history of its own, of
which now and then strange tales and traditions are softly whispered in
our ear,--where each of us has been, though no two ever tell the same
story of their wanderings. Strange to say, each one calls all other
tales superstitions and old-wives' fables; but observe, he always
trembles when he tells his own. But they are all true; there is not one
old-wife's fable on the list. Necromancers have had private interviews
with visitors who had no right to be seen this side the Styx. The Witch
of Endor and the raising of Samuel were literal facts. Above all others,
the Nemesis and Eumenides were facts not to be withstood. And,
philosophize as we may, ghosts have been seen at dead of night, and not
always under the conduct of Mercury;[6] even the Salem witchcraft was
very far from being a humbug. They are all true,--the gibbering ghost,
the riding hag, the enchantment of wizards, and all the miracles of
magic, none of which we have ever seen with the eye, but all of which we
believe at heart. But who is it that weirdly draws aside the dark
curtain? Who is this mystic lady, ever weaving at her loom,--weaving
long ago, and weaving yet,--singing with unutterable sadness, as she
interweaves with her web all the sorrows and shadowy fears that ever
were or that ever shall be? We know, indeed, that she weaves the web of
Fate and the curtain of the Invisible; for we have seen her work. We
know, too, that she alone can show the many-colored web or draw aside
the dark curtain; for we have seen her revelations. But who is _she_?
Ay, reader, the Sphinx puts close questions now and then; but there is
only one answer that can satisfy her or avert death. This person,--the
only real mystery which can exist for you,--of all things the most
familiar, and at the same the most unfamiliar,--is yourself! You need
not speak in whispers. It is true, this lady has a golden quiver as well
as a golden distaff; but her arrows are all for those who cannot solve
her riddle.
Protagoras, then, was right; and, looking back through these twenty-two
centuries, we nod assent to his grand proposition: "Man is the measure
of all things,--of the possible, how it is,--of the impossible, how it
is not." In the individual life are laid the foundations of the
universe, and upon each individual artist depend the symmetry and
meaning of the constructed whole. This Master-Artist it is who holds the
keys of life and death; and whatsoever he shall bind or loose in his
consciousness shall be bound or loosed throughout the universe. Apart
from him, Nature is resolved into an intangible, shapeless vanity of
silence and darkness,--without a name, and, in fact, no Nature at all.
To man, all Nature must be human in some soul. God himself is worshipped
under a human phase; and it is here that Christianity, the flower of all
Faith, furnishes the highest answer and realization of this world-riddle
of the Sphinx,--here that it rests its eternal Truth, even as here it
secures its unfailing appeal to the human heart!
The process by which any nature is _realized_ is the process by which it
is _humanized_. Thus are all things given to us for an inheritance. Let
it be, that, apart from us, the universe sinks into insignificance and
nothingness; _to_ us it is a royal possession; and we are all kings,
with a dominion as unlimited as our desire. _Ubi Cæsar, ibi Roma!_ Rome
is the world; and each man, if he will, is Cæsar.
_If he will_;--ay, there's the rub! In the strength of his will lie
glory and absolute sway. But if he fail, then becomes evident the
frailty of his tenure,--"he is a king of shreds and patches!"
Here is the crying treachery; and thus it happens that there are slaves
and craven hearts. This is the profound pathos of history, (for the
Sphinx has always more or less of sadness in her face,) which enters so
inevitably into all human triumphs. The monuments of Egypt, the palaces
and tombs of her kings,--revelations of the strength of will,--also by
inevitable suggestions call to our remembrance successive generations of
slaves and their endless toil. Morn after morn, at sunrise, for
thousands of years, did Memnon breathe forth his music, that his name
might be remembered upon the earth; but his music was the swell of a
broken harp, and his name was whispered in mournful silence! Among the
embalmed dead, in urn-burials, in the midst of catacombs, and among the
graves upon our hillsides and in our valleys, there lurks the same sad
mockery. Surely "purple Death and the strong Fates do conquer us!"
Strangely, in vast solitudes, comes over us a sense of desolation, when
even the faintest adumbrations of life seem lost in the inertia of
mortality. In all pomp lurks the pomp of funeral; and we do now and then
pay homage to the grim skeleton king who sways this dusty earth,--yea,
who sways our hearts of dust!
But it is only when we yield that we are conquered. "The daemon shall
not choose us, _but we shall choose our daemon_."[7] It is only when we
lose hold of our royal inheritance that Time is seen with his scythe and
the heritage becomes a waste.
This is the failure, the central loss, over which Achtheia mourns. Happy
are the _epoptæ_ who know this, who have looked the Sphinx in the face,
and escaped death! They are the seers, they the heroes!
But "_Conx Ompax_!"
And now, like good Grecians, let us make the double libation to our
lady,--toward the East and toward the West. That is an important point,
reader; for thus is recognized the intimate connection which our lady
has with the movements of Nature, in which her life is mirrored,--
especially with the rising, the ongoing, and the waning of the day; and
you remember that this also was the relief of the Sphinx's riddle,--this
same movement from the rising to the setting sun. But prominently, as in
all worship, are our eyes turned toward the East,--toward the
resurrection. In the tomb of Memnon, at Thebes, are wrought two series
of paintings; in the one, through successive stages, the sun is
represented in his course from the East to the West,--and in the other
is represented, through various stages, his return to the Orient. It was
to this Orient that the old king looked, awaiting his regeneration.
Thus, reader, in all nations,--by no mere superstition, but by a
glorious symbolism of Faith,--do the children of the earth lay them down
in their last sleep with their faces to the East.
[2] The worship of this Great Mother is not more wonderful for
its antiquity in time than for its prevalence as regards space. To the
Hindu she was the Lady Isani. She was the Ceres of Roman mythology, the
Cybele of Phrygia and Lydia, and the Disa of the North. According to
Tacitus, (_Germania_, c. 9,) she was worshipped by the ancient Suevi.
She was worshipped by the Muscovite, and representations of her are
found upon the sacred drums of the Laplanders. She swayed the ancient
world, from its southeast corner in India to Scandinavia in the
northwest; and everywhere she is the "Mater Dolorosa." And who is it,
reader, that in the Christian world struggles for life and power under
the name of the Holy Virgin, and through the sad features of the
Madonna?
[3] _Iliad_, I. 63.
[4] Euripides.
[5] Archilochus.
[6] This function of Mercury, as Psycho-Pompos, or conductor of
departed souls to Hades, is often misunderstood. He was a Pompos not so
much for the safety of the dead (though that was an important
consideration) as for the peace of the living. The Greeks had an
overwhelming fear of the dead, as is evident from the propitiatory rites
to their shades; hence the necessity of putting them under strict
charge,--even against their will. (Horace, I. Ode xxiv. 15.) All
Mercury's qualifications point to this office, by which he defends the
living against the invasions of the dead. Hence his craft and
agility;--for who so fleet and subtle as a ghost?
[7] Plato's _Republic_, at the close.
THE MINISTER'S WOOING.
[Continued.]
CHAPTER XXII.
Mary returned to the house with her basket of warm, fresh eggs, which
she set down mournfully upon the table. In her heart there was one
conscious want and yearning, and that was to go to the friends of him
she had lost,--to go to his mother. The first impulse of bereavement is
to stretch out the hands towards what was nearest and dearest to the
departed.
Her dove came fluttering down out of the tree, and settled on her hand,
and began asking in his dumb way to be noticed. Mary stroked his white
feathers, and bent her head down over them till they were wet with
tears. "Oh, birdie, you live, but he is gone!" she said. Then suddenly
putting it gently from her, and going near and throwing her arms around
her mother's neck,--"Mother," she said, "I want to go up to Cousin
Ellen's." (This was the familiar name by which she always called Mrs.
Marvyn.) "Can't you go with me, mother?"
"My daughter, I have thought of it. I hurried about my baking this
morning, and sent word to Mr. Jenkyns that he needn't come to see about
the chimney, because I expected to go as soon as breakfast should be out
of the way. So, hurry, now, boil some eggs, and get on the cold beef and
potatoes; for I see Solomon and Amaziah coming in with the milk. They'll
want their breakfast immediately."
The breakfast for the hired men was soon arranged on the table, and Mary
sat down to preside while her mother was going on with her
baking,--introducing various loaves of white and brown bread into the
capacious oven by means of a long iron shovel, and discoursing at
intervals with Solomon, with regard to the different farming operations
which he had in hand for the day.
Solomon was a tall, large-boned man, brawny and angular; with a face
tanned by the sun, and graven with those considerate lines which New
England so early writes on the faces of her sons. He was reputed an
oracle in matters of agriculture and cattle, and, like oracles
generally, was prudently sparing of his responses. Amaziah was one of
those uncouth over-grown boys of eighteen whose physical bulk appears to
have so suddenly developed that the soul has more matter than she has
learned to recognize, so that the hapless individual is always awkwardly
conscious of too much limb; and in Amaziah's case, this consciousness
grew particularly distressing when Mary was in the room. He liked to
have her there, he said,--"but, somehow, she was so white and pretty,
she made him feel sort o' awful-like."
Of course, as such poor mortals always do, he must, on this particular
morning, blunder into precisely the wrong subject.
"S'pose you've heerd the news that Jeduthun Pettibone brought home in
the 'Flying Scud,' 'bout the wreck o' the 'Monsoon'; it's an awful
providence, that 'ar' is,--a'n't it? Why, Jeduthun says she jest crushed
like an egg-shell";--and with that Amaziah illustrated the fact by
crushing an egg in his great brown hand.
Mary did not answer. She could not grow any paler than she was before; a
dreadful curiosity came over her, but her lips could frame no question.
Amaziah went on:--
"Ye see, the cap'en he got killed with a spar when the blow fust come
on, and Jim Marvyn he commanded; and Jeduthun says that he seemed to
have the spirit of ten men in him; he worked and he watched, and he was
everywhere at once, and he kep' 'em all up for three days, till finally
they lost their rudder, and went drivin' right onto the rocks. When,
they come in sight, he come up on deck, and says he, 'Well, my boys,
we're headin' right into eternity,' says he, 'and our chances for this
world a'n't worth mentionin', any on us; but we'll all have one try for
our lives. Boys, I've tried to do my duty by you and the ship,--but
God's will be done! All I have to ask now is, that, if any of you git to
shore, you'll find my mother and tell her I died thinkin' of her and
father and my dear friends.' That was the last Jeduthun saw of him; for
in a few minutes more the ship struck, and then it was every man for
himself. Laws! Jeduthun says there couldn't nobody have stood beatin'
agin them rocks, unless they was all leather and inger-rubber like him.
Why, he says the waves would take strong men and jest crush 'em against
the rocks like smashin' a pie-plate!"
Here Mary's paleness became livid; she made a hasty motion to rise from
the table, and Solomon trod on the foot of the narrator.
"You seem to forget that friends and relations has feelin's," he said,
as Mary hastily went into her own room.
Amaziah, suddenly awakened to the fact that he had been trespassing, sat
with mouth half open and a stupefied look of perplexity on his face for
a moment, and then, rising hastily, said, "Well, Sol, I guess I'll go
an' yoke up the steers."
At eight o'clock all the morning toils were over, the wide kitchen cool
and still, and the one-horse wagon standing at the door, into which
climbed Mary, her mother, and the Doctor; for, though invested with no
spiritual authority, and charged with no ritual or form for hours of
affliction, the religion of New England always expects her minister as a
first visitor in every house of mourning.
The ride was a sorrowful and silent one. The Doctor, propped upon his
cane, seemed to reflect deeply.
"Have you been at all conversant with the exercises of our young
friend's mind on the subject of religion?" he asked.
Mrs. Scudder did not at first reply. The remembrance of James's last
letter flashed over her mind, and she felt the vibration of the frail
child beside her, in whom every nerve was quivering. After a moment, she
said,--"It does not become us to judge the spiritual state of any one.
James's mind was in an unsettled way when he left; but who can say what
wonders may have been effected by divine grace since then?"
This conversation fell on the soul of Mary like the sound of clods
falling on a coffin to the ear of one buried alive;--she heard it with a
dull, smothering sense of suffocation. _That_ question to be
raised?--and about one, too, for whom she could have given her own soul?
At this moment she felt how idle is the mere hope or promise of personal
salvation made to one who has passed beyond the life of self, and struck
deep the roots of his existence in others. She did not utter a
word;--how could she? A doubt,--the faintest shadow of a doubt,--in such
a case, falls on the soul with the weight of mountain certainty; and in
that short ride she felt what an infinite pain may be locked in one
small, silent breast.
The wagon drew up to the house of mourning. Cato stood at the gate, and
came forward, officiously, to help them out. "Mass'r and Missis will be
glad to see you," he said. "It's a drefful stroke has come upon 'em."
Candace appeared at the door. There was a majesty of sorrow in her
bearing, as she received them. She said not a word, but pointed with her
finger towards the inner room; but as Mary lifted up her faded, weary
face to hers, her whole soul seemed to heave towards her like a billow,
and she took her up in her arms and broke forth into sobbing, and,
carrying her in, as if she had been a child, set her down in the inner
room and sat down beside her.
Mrs. Marvyn and her husband sat together, holding each other's hands,
the open Bible between them. For a few moments nothing was to be heard
but sobs and unrestrained weeping, and then all kneeled down to pray.
After they rose up, Mr. Zebedee Marvyn stood for a moment thoughtfully,
and then said,--"If it had pleased the Lord to give me a sure evidence
of my son's salvation, I could have given him up with all my heart; but
now, whatever there may be, I have seen none." He stood in an attitude
of hopeless, heart-smitten dejection, which contrasted painfully with
his usual upright carriage and the firm lines of his face.
Mrs. Marvyn started as if a sword had pierced her, passed her arm round
Mary's waist, with a strong, nervous clasp, unlike her usual calm self,
and said,--"Stay with me, daughter, to-day!--stay with me!"
"Mary can stay as long as you wish, cousin," said Mrs. Scudder; "we have
nothing to call her home."
"_Come_ with me!" said Mrs. Marvyn to Mary, opening an adjoining door
into her bedroom, and drawing her in with a sort of suppressed
vehemence,--"I want you!--I must have you!"
"Mrs. Marvyn's state alarms me," said her husband, looking
apprehensively after her when the door was closed; "she has not shed any
tears, nor slept any, since she heard this news. You know that her mind
has been in a peculiar and unhappy state with regard to religious things
for many years. I was in hopes she might feel free to open her exercises
of mind to the Doctor."
"Perhaps she will feel more freedom with Mary," said the Doctor. "There
is no healing for such troubles except in unconditional submission to
Infinite Wisdom and Goodness. The Lord reigneth, and will at last bring
infinite good out of evil, whether _our_ small portion of existence be
included or not."
After a few moments more of conference, Mrs. Scudder and the Doctor
departed, leaving Mary alone in the house of mourning.