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LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
OF
_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE_.
JULY, 1878.
VOLUME XXII.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878, by J.B.
LIPPINCOTT & Co., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington.
HERE AND THERE IN OLD BRISTOL.
[Illustration: GRAVE OF HANNAH MORE AT WRINGTON, NEAR BRISTOL.]
The streets of Bristol are, in a modern point of view, narrow and
uninviting, yet if the visitor have a liking for the picturesque he will
find much to interest him. There are plenty of streets crammed with
old-time houses, thrusting out their upper stories beyond the lower, and
with their many-gabled roofs seeming to heave and rock against the sky.
If they lack anything in interest, it is that no local Scott has arisen
to throw over them a glamour of romance which might make more tolerable
the odors wherein they vie with the Canongate of sweet memory.
[Illustration: CHATTERTON AS DOORKEEPER IN COLSTON'S SCHOOL.]
Nor is the throng which fills the Bristol streets wholly prosaic in its
aspect, for the quaint garb of ancient charities holds its own against
the modern tailor. Such troops of charity-children taking their solemn
walks! Such long lines of boys in corduroy, such streams of girls in pug
bonnets, stuff gowns and white aprons, as pour forth from the schools
and almshouses to be found in every quarter of the city! The Colston
boys are less frequently seen, because the school has been removed to
one of the suburbs, yet now and then one of their odd figures meets the
eye. They wear a muffin cap of blue cloth with a yellow band around it
and a yellow ball on its apex; a blue cloth coat with a long plaited
skirt; a leathern belt, corduroy knee-breeches and yellow worsted
stockings. Just such, in outside garb, was Chatterton a century ago, and
thus he is represented on his monument near Redcliff church.
[Illustration: CHATTERTON CENOTAPH.]
You are perhaps gazing skyward at some lordly campanile when a sudden
rush of feet and hum of voices comes around the corner, and the dark
street is all aglow. These are the Red Maids, who walk the earth in
scarlet gowns, set off by white aprons: they owe the bright hues of
their existence to Alderman Whitson, who died in 1628, leaving funds to
the mayor, burgesses and commonalty of the city of Bristol, "to the use
and intent that they should therewith provide a fit and convenient
dwelling-house for the abode of one grave, painful and modest woman of
good life and conversation, and for forty poor women-children (whose
parents, being freemen and burgesses of the said city, should be
deceased or decayed); that they should therein admit the said woman and
forty poor women-children, and cause them to be there kept and
maintained, and also taught to read English and to sew and do some other
laudable work toward their maintenance; ... and should cause every one
of the said children to go and be apparelled in red cloth, and to give
their attendance on the said woman, to attend and wait before the mayor
and aldermen, their wives and others their associates, to hear sermons
on the Sabbath and festival days, and other solemn meetings of the said
mayor and aldermen and their wives," etc. etc. These maids are admitted
between the ages of eight and ten, and at eighteen are placed at
service.
Other aspects of Bristol are brought out in Pope's description of it in
a letter to Mrs. Martha Blount.[1] After describing his drive from Bath
and his crossing the bridge into Bristol, he continues: "From thence you
come to a key along the old wall, with houses on both sides, and in the
middle of the street, as far as you can see, hundreds of ships, their
masts as thick as they can stand by one another, which is the oddest and
most surprising sight imaginable. This street is fuller of them than the
Thames from London Bridge to Deptford, and at certain times only the
water rises to carry them out; so that at other times a long street full
of ships in the middle and houses on both sides looks like a dream." ...
"The city of Bristol is very unpleasant, and no civilized company in it;
only, the collector of the customs would have brought me acquainted with
merchants of whom I hear no great character. The streets are as crowded
as London, but the best image I can give you of it is, 'tis as if
Wapping and Southwark were ten times as big, or all their people ran
into London. Nothing is fine in it but the square, which is larger than
Grosvenor Square, and well builded, with a very fine brass statue in the
middle of King William on horseback; and the key, which is full of
ships, and goes round half the square. The College Green is pretty and
(like the square) set with trees. There is a cathedral, very neat, and
nineteen parish churches."
[Illustration: STEEP STREET, NOW PULLED DOWN.]
It is quite as curious to note what Pope omits as what he mentions. He
is much taken with a commonplace square, and with the mingling of ships
and houses (which is truly effective), but the modern traveller would
find the chief beauty of the city in its Gothic architecture, to which
Pope gives one line--"a cathedral, very neat, and nineteen parish
churches." Let the visitor ascend any one of the hills which overhang
Bristol, and a beautiful scene at once bursts upon his view: this is due
to the pre-eminent beauty of the church-towers, the great stone lilies
of the fifteenth century soaring above the dingy town; each,
For holy service built, with high disdain
Surveys this lower stage of earthly gain;
and a hard struggle they have to hold their own against the menacing
chimney-stacks of manufacturing England. All the poetry and aspiration
of the past seems contending, shoulder to shoulder, in thick air with
the material interests of the present.
Strolling about through the grimy streets, one's eye is caught by the
sign "Quakers' Friars," and following up the narrow court to seek the
meaning of this odd combination of opposing ideas, one comes to the
Friends' school, occupying the remnant of a former priory of Black
Friars. It is a spot intimately associated with recollections of the
early Friends. In 1690 the father of Judge Logan of Pennsylvania was
master of this school. Adjoining the school is the Friends'
meeting-house, built in 1669 on what was then an open space near the
priory, where George Fox often preached; and within the walls of the
meeting-house this Quaker father took upon himself the state of
matrimony. A local bard is inspired to sing:
Many years ago, six hundred or so,
The Dominican monks had a praying and eating house
Just on the spot where a little square dot
On the Bristol map marks the old Quakers' meeting-house.
A different scene it was once, I ween:
No monk is now heard his prayers repeating;
And the singers and chaunters and black gallivanters
Had never a thought of "a silent meeting."
[Illustration: "TIMES AND MIRROR" PRINTING-OFFICE, NOW PULLED DOWN.]
The streets near by, called Callowhill, Philadelphia and Penn streets,
recall the residence here of William Penn in 1697, after his marriage
with Hannah, daughter of Thomas Callowhill and granddaughter of Dennis
Hollister, prominent merchants of _Bristol_. These streets are believed
to have been laid out and named by Penn on land belonging to Hollister.
Another Friend was Richard Champion, the inventor of Bristol china and
the friend of Burke. Champion's manufactory was not commercially a
success, but his ware is now highly prized, and some few remaining
pieces of a tea-service, presented by Mr. and Mrs. Champion to Mrs.
Burke at the time the latter's husband was returned member for Bristol,
have brought thrice their weight in gold.
In Castle street, not far from Quakers' Friars, stands a profusely
ornamented mansion, now St. Peter's Hospital. The eastern portion is of
considerable antiquity: the western was rebuilt in 1608. In the
fifteenth century the older portion was the residence of Thomas Norton,
a famous alchemist, who, according to Fuller, "undid himself and all his
friends who trusted him with money, living and dying very poor about the
year 1477."[2] Norton's ill-success was, however, in his own belief, the
success of others. He declared that a merchant's wife of Bristol had
stolen from him the _elixir of life_. "Some suspect her" (says Fuller)
"to have been the wife of William Cannings, contemporary with Norton,
who started up to so great and sudden wealth--the clearest evidence of
their conjecture." The person here intended is no other than the great
Bristol merchant William Canynge the younger, who was five times mayor
and one of the rebuilders of Redcliff church. His ships, which crowded
the quays of Bristol, were a more evident source of wealth than any
cunningly devised elixir except in the eyes of a disappointed dreamer.
The reflection that in this quaint old house was enacted a history like
to that of Balthazar Claes lends to it a strange fascination.
The church of St. Mary Redcliff is, as ever, intimately associated with
the name and genius of Chatterton: no saint in the calendar could have
shed over it such an interest; and beautiful as it is, "the pride of
Bristowe and the Westerne Land," how many visit it for its beauty alone?
This is rather hard for the clericals: they are unwilling to forget that
Chatterton was an impostor and a suicide; and to have their church
surrounded by a halo from such a _source_! bah! They have done what they
could by removing his monument from _consecrated_ ground and depriving
it of its inscription.
In an old chest left to moulder in a room over the north porch of this
church Chatterton professed to find the Rowley manuscripts. In this
room, "here, in the full but fragile enjoyment of his brief and illusory
existence, he stored the treasure-house of his memory with the thoughts
that, teeming over his pages, have enrolled his name among the great in
the land of poetry and song. Happy here, ere his first joyous
aspirations were repressed--ere the warm and genial emotions of his
heart were checked--before time had dissipated his idle dreams, and
neglect, contempt and distress had fastened on his mind, and hurried him
onward to his untoward destiny."[3]
This church is one of the finest examples of the Perpendicular Gothic:
it has been carefully restored, the work extending over thirty years.
The most interesting monuments are those of William Canynge the younger,
the great Bristol merchant, who lies buried here with his wife, his
almoner, his brewer, his cook and other servants--a goodly family party:
the cook is indicated by a knife and skimmer rudely cut upon a flat
stone. There are two effigies of Canynge--one in his robes as mayor, the
other in priest's robes; for in his latter years, after the death of his
wife, he took orders, and died in 1474 dean of Westbury.
[Illustration: MUNIMENT-ROOM, ST. MARY REDCLIFF.]
The memorial of Admiral Sir William Penn, father of the founder of
Pennsylvania, is a conspicuous object in the nave--a mural tablet
decorated with his helmet, cuirass, gauntlets, sword, and tattered
banners taken from the Dutch. Near it--a singular object in a church--is
the rib of a whale which is believed to date from the year 1497, there
being an entry in the town records of that year: "Pd. for settynge upp
ye bone of ye bigge fyshe," etc.;[4] and as Sebastian Cabot had then
just discovered Newfoundland, it may have been one of the trophies of
his voyage. But it long had a very different history: its origin being
forgotten, there grew up a legend that it was the rib of a dun cow of
gigantic build who gave milk to the whole parish of Redcliff, and whose
slaughter, by Guy, earl of Warwick, threw all the milkmaids out of
employment. It was in Redcliff church that both Southey and Coleridge
were married.
[Illustration: ADMIRAL PENN'S MONUMENT IN ST. MARY REDCLIFF.]
The cathedral, "very neat," as Pope expresses it, would be a great
treasure in New York, but in England, where Gothic structures so abound,
it is far surpassed by several in its vicinity. It has suffered much
from iconoclasts, both those who destroy and those who restore. The
completion of the nave is now being rapidly pushed forward, and will be
followed by that of the towers--good evidence that the Gothic revival in
England has not yet spent its force. In its present condition the
general effect of the building is disappointing, although there are many
admirable details. The chapter-house and the archway below the church
are fine relics of its Norman period. In the choir is the tomb of Bishop
Butler, author of the _Analogy_, for twelve years bishop of this
diocese. There is also a tablet to his memory, erected in 1834, with an
inscription by Southey. Among the monuments one finds two names which
shine, it may be said, by reflected light--that of Mrs. Draper, Sterne's
"Eliza," and Lady Hesketh, Cowper's devoted friend and cousin. A bust
of Southey finds a place here as a tribute of respect in his native
town; and the name of Sydney Smith comes to mind, who was a prebendary
of this cathedral.
The city of Bristol, although essentially a manufacturing and commercial
centre, is not deficient in names which have enjoyed a widespread
literary reputation. All through the first half of the present century
Bristol was associated with the colossal fame of Hannah More, but the
idol is long since forgotten, and now, a little more than forty years
after her death, many might ask, Who was Hannah More? She was the
daughter of the schoolmaster at Stapleton, near Bristol, and was born on
the 2d of February, 1745. She was one of five daughters, who by the
education received from their father were enabled to set up in Bristol a
boarding-school for young ladies which had the luck to become
_fashionable_. Hannah's literary reputation began at the age of
seventeen with a pastoral drama, the _Search after Happiness_, written
for, and performed by, the young ladies of the boarding-school. On this
slender basis she visited London, was so fortunate as to attract the
attention of Garrick, and was by him introduced into his brilliant
circle. She must have been at that time both witty and pretty, for Mrs.
Montagu and the Reynoldses were delighted with her, Dr. Johnson gave her
pet names, and Horace Walpole called her Saint Hannah. Her next great
success was her tragedy of _Percy_, in which Garrick sustained the
principal character, and in which Mrs. Siddons afterward appeared. Later
on, Mrs. More published some _Sacred Dramas_, but after the death of
Garrick she abandoned dramatic writing, her views leading her to take up
what was called, in her day, "strict behavior," of which she now became
the apostle. On her literary profits she retired to Cowslip Green, near
Bristol, and later on to Barley Wood, where she was joined by her
sisters, who were enabled to retire on the handsome profits of their
school. But neither "strict behavior" nor anything else could weaken
Hannah's hold on her day and generation: her _Estimate of the Religion
of the Fashionable World_ went off like hot cakes, and her _Thoughts on
the Manners of the Great_ were scrambled for by both great and
small--seven large editions in a few months, the second in a week, the
third in _four hours_! How many people now-a-days have read _Coelebs_,
of which twelve editions were printed in the first year, and in all
thirty thousand copies of disposed of in America alone? _Corinne_
appeared when Lucilla, the heroine of _Coelebs_, was at the height of
her popularity, and much animated comparison was instituted between
Corinne and the rival she has long survived.
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL]
The first opposition which Hannah More encountered arose from her
efforts to improve the condition of the poor in her neighborhood by
education and the formation of benefit societies. The impulse to this
movement came from Mr. Wilberforce, who, being on a visit at Barley
Wood, was taken on an excursion to Cheddar Cliffs, then, as now, one of
the "sights" of the vicinity. Mr. Wilberforce, while admiring the
scenery, chanced to fall into conversation with one of the inhabitants,
and learned, to his dismay, that the whole beautiful region was sunk in
ignorance and vice. This discovery was discussed in full conclave on
their return to Barley Wood, and Mrs. More undertook to have a school
opened in Cheddar. The school proved a success, and by the aid of the
subscriptions which her name brought from far and near she eventually
extended the system over nine of the neighboring parishes, sunk in the
barbarism of English village-life of that day, of which Cowper's village
of Olney was an example. But this work did not go on as smoothly as the
sale of _Coelebs_: it at once aroused opposition from the large class
who do not like to see old ruts abandoned, and was branded as
_Methodism_--an epithet that was then freely used as an extinguisher for
anything novel, and was a "bugaboo" of whose terrors we can have in this
day little conception. Hannah was accused of endeavoring to spread
toleration, and a favorite charge against her was that she had partaken
of "bread and wine in a meeting-house." In vain her sister Martha
explained that she sinned in good company, for many "High-Church people
did the same, and one gentleman and lady with ten thousand pounds a
year, who have always the Church prayers performed morning and evening
in their family." Although the bishop excused her, it was determined
that Hannah was to be crushed by a review; but all was of no more avail
than in the case of Miss Martineau, which has been recently recalled by
her autobiography. Hannah survived it all, and stuck through thick and
thin to her triumphant schools and her "strict behavior." A less harmful
shaft was hurled by a Bristol wit on an occasion when her clothes took
fire and she was saved by the stout quality of her gown:
Vulcan to scorch thy gown in vain essays:
Apollo strives in vain to fire thy lays.
Hannah! the cause is visible enough:
Stuff is thy raiment, and thy writings--_stuff_.
[Illustration: BARLEY WOOD, HANNAH MORE'S RESIDENCE.]
A curious incident in Hannah More's life was her encounter with Ann
Yearsley, the Bristol Milkwoman, of whom some account is given in
Southey's _Essay upon the Uneducated Poets_. A gossiping writer briefly
states the case as follows: "This poor woman, as is well known, sold
milk, and, from going to water it each morning at the Pierian font,
caught at length the poetic fervor. Mrs. Hannah More, whom she served
with cream, was struck by the _superior_ merit of her verses, and became
her patroness. Mrs. More's name was enough to sell worse poetry, or even
worse milk, than Ann Yearsley's. Milton had no such friend, and could
not get twenty pounds for _Paradise_; but Ann Yearsley's book brought
her some three hundred guineas. Hannah More, as she was the artificer,
wanted also to become the manager, of the milkwoman's little fortune;
but the milkwoman thought she was competent to take care of it herself,
and wanted to bind her boys out to trades. The lady-patroness was
offended at the independence of the _protégée_, who had been taken from
under the milk-pails; Ann Yearsley dared to differ _from_ her
benefactor, and was denounced as an ungrateful woman; all Mrs. More's
idolaters _declared against_ her, and the whole religious world opened
on her in full cry."[5] Lactilla (for so the Mores and Montagus called
her) loudly remonstrated: she accused Hannah of being envious of her
talents, and announced a new edition of her poems _freed from Mrs.
More's corruptions_. She carried her point, but, deprived of Mrs. More's
favor, she quickly sank back into misfortune and obscurity.
[Illustration: WINE STREET, THE BIRTHPLACE OF ROBERT SOUTHEY.]
The parents of Lord Macaulay were intimate friends of Mrs. More, and in
her later years Hannah watched with tender interest the brilliant
promise of that extraordinary youth. Young Macaulay was a not infrequent
visitor at Barley Wood, and Mrs. More at one time devised her library to
him, but afterward withdrew the bequest, owing to her doubts of the
"strictness" of Macaulay's views. Poor Macaulay! He failed to win the
esteem of two great female writers: the one feared he had no "religion;"
the other declared he had no "heart."
As the Misses More began to get on in the seventies, one after the other
died, and Barley Wood (or _Mauritania_, as wags called it) grew
desolate. Then occurred the last great event of Hannah's life--her
_flight_ from Barley Wood. It suddenly transpired that for three years
her eight servants had been in full enjoyment of high life below stairs
It was discovered that they had given large orders to tradesmen in her
name; they had intercepted sums of money intended for charity, and when
the whole household was supposed to be at rest they were supping on
presents of game sent to Mrs. More; they had secretly harbored in the
house one of their relatives who had lost her place for disreputable
conduct: in short, Mrs. Jellaby's household would have been a paradise
in comparison with this one. What did Hannah do? She left for ever the
home of her life: she _ran away_! A house was secretly taken at Clifton,
and after she had fled the servants received a quarter's wages in
advance with immediate dismissal. It must be said for Mrs. More that
during her sisters' lifetime she had had nothing to do with the
housekeeping; further, she was in very ill health, and had not been down
stairs for seven years; but, with all the palliations that may be
offered, is it not startling to find that this woman's influence had
pervaded the civilized world with the exception of that little corner of
it which was to be found under her own roof? This incident, together
with the quarrel with Lactilla, suggests that Mrs. More did not exert
_personally_ a very strong influence. In regard to her servants she
relied upon the deathbed harangue with which Mrs. Martha had consigned
her to their care, and her confidence was kept up by the texts of
Scripture which they each night carefully repeated to her before
retiring to eat her game.
In the heyday of Hannah More's popularity there were living in Bristol
or its vicinity three young men who were to bring in the new literary
epoch by which Hannah has been forgotten--Coleridge, Southey and
Wordsworth. Both Southey and Coleridge were introduced to Mrs. More by
Cottle. Southey was invited to pass a day at Cowslip Green: he pleased
equally all five of the sisters, and Hannah pronounced him "one of the
most elegant and intellectual young men they had seen." In 1814, Cottle
conferred a like favor on Coleridge: they went down to Barley Wood,
where for the space of two hours Coleridge delighted the five-leaved
clover with his brilliant talk, but, unluckily, a titled visitor coming
in, the poor philosopher was left to finish his soliloquy alone.
Southey was born in Bristol, at No. 9 Wine street, now the sign of the
Golden Key. His father, a draper, carried on his business under the sign
of a hare: although all his life a shopkeeper, he had been brought up in
the country, and was passionately fond of country sports. He related of
his first experience of city life in London that, happening to look out
at the shop-door just as a porter was passing with a hare in his hands,
it brought the country so vividly before him that he burst into tears,
and the impression was so lasting that years after, when opening a shop
in Bristol, he took the hare for a sign, having it painted on a pane in
the window on each side of the door and printed on the shop-bills. Of
Robert Southey's recollections of Bristol there is his own very charming
account in the first volume of his _Life_ by his son.
We return to Pope's letter to Mrs. Martha Blount for his description of
Clifton: "Passing still along by the river, you come to a rocky way on
one side, overlooking green hills on the other: on that rocky way rise
several white houses, and over them red rocks; and as you go farther
more rocks above rocks, mixed with green bushes, and of different
colored stone. This, at a mile's end, terminates in the house of the Hot
Well, whereabouts lie several pretty lodging-houses, open to the river
with walks of trees. When you have seen the hills seem to shut upon you
and to stop any farther way, you go into the house, and looking out at
the back door, a vast rock of an hundred feet high, of red, white,
green, blue and yellowish marbles, all blotched and variegated, strikes
you quite in the face; and, turning on the left, there opens the river
at a vast depth below, winding in and out, and accompanied on both sides
with a continued range of rocks up to the clouds, of an hundred colors,
one behind another, and so to the end of the prospect, quite to the sea.
But the sea nor the Severn you do not see: the rocks and river fill the
eye, and terminate the view much like the broken scenes behind one
another in a play-house.
"Upon the top of those high rocks by the Hot Well, which I have
described to you, there runs on one side a large down of fine turf for
about three miles. It looks too frightful to approach the brink and look
down upon the river; but in many parts of this down the valleys descend
gently, and you see all along the windings of the stream and the opening
of the rocks, which turns close in upon you from space to space for
several miles in toward the sea. There is first, near Bristol, a little
village upon this down called Clifton, where are very pretty
lodging-houses, overlooking all the woody hills, and steep cliffs and
very green valleys within half a mile of the Wells, where in the summer
it must be delicious walking and riding, for the plain extends, one way,
many miles: particularly, there is a tower that stands close at the edge
of the highest rock, and sees the stream turn quite round it; and all
the banks, one way, are wooded in a gentle slope for near a mile high,
quite green; the other bank all inaccessible rock, of an hundred colors
and odd shapes, some hundred feet perpendicular."
[Illustration: SUSPENSION BRIDGE AT CLIFTON.]
The reputation of the Hot Well, whose waters Pope was sent to drink, has
utterly collapsed. The Hot Well house was long ago removed to admit a
widening of the river, and the well itself is now inaccessible. There is
no spa, once of great reputation, that has sunk into such complete
oblivion as the Clifton Hot Well: this may be due, in part, to the
exaggerated estimate that was formed of the virtue of the water, and to
the blamable practice which prevailed of sending patients here at their
last gasp as a forlorn hope. Of too many it might be said as in these
lines from the epitaph on his wife by the poet Mason in Bristol
cathedral:
To Bristol's fount I bore with trembling care
Her faded form: she bowed to taste the wave,
And died.
The little village of Clifton has now become a handsome suburb, where
reside the wealthy successors of the merchant-venturers of Bristol. It
is continuous with Bristol, and where the one begins or the other ends
is not evident except to the parish authorities. The downs are what they
were in Pope's time, with the exception of what is now their most
striking feature--the suspension bridge across the chasm. As early as
1753, Mr. Vick, an alderman of Bristol, bequeathed one thousand pounds,
to be kept at interest until they should reach ten thousand, when the
amount was to be expended upon a stone bridge across the Avon. Nearly
eighty years after, in 1830, the fund had reached eight thousand pounds,
and it was determined to form a company to push forward the project: a
plan for a suspension bridge by Mr. Brunel was accepted at an estimated
cost of fifty-seven thousand pounds, and subscriptions were vigorously
solicited. On the 27th of August, 1836, the foundation-stone was laid in
the presence of the members of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science, then holding its sixth annual meeting in
Bristol. The work went on slowly for seven years, at the end of which it
was abandoned for want of funds, forty-five thousand pounds having been
expended, including the legacy of eight thousand. For nearly twenty
years the towers and abutments stood, unsightly objects in a lovely
scene, until in 1860 the Hungerford suspension bridge in London was
taken down, and it was found that its chains might be made use of to
carry out the uncompleted plan at Clifton. A new company was formed
with a capital of thirty-five thousand pounds, in ten-pound shares, and
at length, in December, 1864, the bridge was thrown open to the public.
Its span is seven hundred and two feet; height from low water, two
hundred and eighty-seven feet. An inscription on one of the piers thus
epitomizes its story: "Suspensa vix via fit."
There are many reflections which may be called up by a glance over the
brink of the chasm at Clifton. Down this muddy ditch dropped the little
Matthew, with the Cabots in command, bound for the discovery of America;
borne on the surface of this liquid mud, the Great Western (built at
Bristol) found its way to the sea and demonstrated the practicability of
steam traffic with America; and if you ask why Bristol now has so little
share in that traffic, although reasons as plenty as blackberries will
be showered upon you, perhaps you will find as convincing a reason as
any in the sight of this narrow and tortuous channel. Now, at last,
docks are being built at the mouth of the Avon, and one adapted to the
largest vessels was opened on the 24th of February, 1877. The prospects
of present success cannot be brilliant in the prevalent depression of
the Atlantic trade, yet, to have heard the wild talk in February, one
would have thought that the dock had only to open its mouth (or gate) to
have the great plums of trade at once fall into it. The company is too
wise to expect to catch birds simply by hanging out a cage: every one
waits to see what _bait_ they will offer. It is claimed that the passage
from New York to Avonmouth may be made in a day less than to the Mersey,
and mails and passengers forwarded thence to London in three hours. May
we soon have the pleasure of welcoming American friends on Avonmouth
Dock!
ALFRED S. GIBBS.
AN ATELIER DES DAMES.
[Illustration: TABLEAU VIVANT.]
After years of patient endeavor, of hope deferred and heart oftentimes
made sick, Paletta found herself at last in Paris. Behind her were years
of anxious calculations and shabby economies, a chequered pathway of
brilliant ambitions and sombre discouragements. Before her was another
vista of several years of art-study in the great capital--a vista
arched, she could not but know, by as heavy clouds as had ever darkened
her path. Yet she _felt_, even although she could not see its end, that
the forward vista climbed ever upward toward glorious heights, upon
which the storms of despair never beat, and where she could more nearly
touch upon the divine ideals that ever elude the grasp of even the
loftiest of earth's climbers.
And thus she was content. Paletta was yet a little young, it must be
said, yet in that blessed youthfulness when the loins are girded with
the strength that reduces mountains to molehills and forces the Apollyon
of dismay to flee from out every dark valley.
Behold Paletta--twenty-three years of age, with a winy color upon her
lips, the faintest perceptible shadow of fading upon the roses of her
cheeks, a little anxious wrinkle between her earnest gray eyes, a slight
nasal twang in her New England voice, and a fresh flounce upon her old
black alpaca dress--the first morning of her experience in an _atelier
des dames_ in Paris! She had come down the hill from her dark little
room on Montmartre, fancying that the gray December day was crystalline,
that the dingy Rue Germain Pillon--with its dirty gamins of both sexes
in cropped hair and blouses or white caps and black gowns, its frowsy
women slouching in doorways, its succession of odorous _cuisines
bourgeoises_, vile-smelling _lavoirs_, cheap fruit-shops and plebeian
_crémeries_, its slimy cobblestones, its gutters running _not_ with
laughing waters, and sending up scents _not_ of spicy isles ensphered
by sun-illumined seas--was a rainbow arch over which she passed with
airy tread toward the Krug studio. For had she not at last finished for
ever the detestable photograph-coloring which had been a daily
crucifixion of all her artistic feelings for years? Had she not at last
reached the Enchanted Land for which she had labored and pined for half
her life? Had she not clothes enough to last her with patient mendings
and persistent remakings for two years? Had she not a thousand dollars
at the Crédit Lyonnais? And did not that stately entrance before her
lead into a spacious courtyard, and that courtyard open upon the famous
_Atelier des Dames_, where, at the feet of celebrated masters of form
and color, she was to learn some of the mysteries of the art to which
she had vowed her life?
[Illustration: "JE VIEN ME PROPOSER COMME MODÈLE, MESDAMES."]
Within the court, before the handsome building whose story after story
of immense north windows showed it to be a collection of artists'
studios, she found an interesting _tableau vivant_. A group of
chattering models came laughing across the sunny court. In one corner
loomed a huge square object surmounted by the conical crown of a
Tyrolean hat. Nothing else was visible except a pair of gaitered feet
mixed among the legs of a sketching-easel, making the whole seem some
queer phenomenal creature which science had not yet classified or named.
Before this phenomenon stood--or rather fidgeted--a beautiful Arabian
horse with flashing eyes, and limbs clean cut as if by Doric chisel in
marble of Pentelicus. This superb animal was held by two grooms, one at
his head, the other holding first one foot, then another, as the order
to pose the unwilling model fractionally in the attitude of a prancing,
curveting Bucephalus came from the square, five-legged, unnamed creature
in the corner.
"Ah!" thought Paletta as she followed her shadow over the sunny
pavement, "the famous animal-painter Jacques is behind that great square
canvas, I know, for I saw him there yesterday painting a struggling
sheep."
The large room was closely packed with easels--so closely, indeed, that
an inadvertent motion of hand or foot often sent a wave of excitement
through the whole atelier. Heads of every color, from youthful flaxen to
venerable gray, were bent over their labors. Hecubas and Helens worked
side by side; maulsticks everywhere gave the scene the appearance of a
winter-denuded thicket; plaster hands, feet and torsos hung upon the
walls; bull-headed Nero swelled upon a shelf beside the mutilated Venus
which is a revelation of the glory that merely human beauty can attain
without a gleam borrowed from the divine; fat Vitellius seemed to snore
open-eyed beside lean and wakeful Julius Cæsar; a mask of Medusa leaned
lovingly upon the shoulder of Dante; Apollo Belvedere smiled upon an
_écorché_--in atelier parlance "skun man;" finished and unfinished
studies of heads, bodies and detached sections of bodies hung from nails
in every possible and impossible place. Upon a slightly elevated
platform sat the model in his usual street-costume, with oily hair,
parted in the middle, falling in long waves upon his shoulders. A spiky
circle rested upon his brow, and upon his face was such a stupendous yet
futile effort after an expression of divine sweetness and resignation as
caused maulsticks to separate themselves every now and then from the
denuded thicket and to wabble vaguely about his mouth or play wildly in
his hair, accompanied by the commands, "Posez la bouche!" "Posez les
yeux!" or, in good American accents, accompanied with a sniff of wrath,
"Call _him_ a good Christ? Umph! He'd pose better as a first-class
Cheshire cat."
[Illustration: "THE BEST CHRIST IN PARIS."]
The model's divine smile broadened suddenly into a very human grin.
"Do you understand English, monsieur?" demanded Miss New Haven
suspiciously, remembering the freedom with which the personal merits and
defects of the French and Italian models were usually discussed in their
presence in the Anglo-Saxon tongue.
"A leetle, mademoiselle: I have lived in Londres during two years."
"As artists' model?"
"Oui, mademoiselle. I have made the Jesuses, the St. Johns and the
Judases for the great English artists teel I have ennuied myself
énormement."
"Why?"
"Because ze artists Anglaise are ze masters vairy difficile, not comme
les artists Français. Zey demand zat ze model pose during two hours sans
repose, and zey nevvair give of to drink to ze model."
"Did you return to Paris when you ennuied yourself so énormement?" asked
a yellow-haired English girl who had painted countless vaporous and
ravishing Eurydices and filmy Echoes from broad-waisted, pug-nosed
Cockney models, and who always declared that she would recognize a
"professional" even among the shining hosts of heaven.
"Non, mademoiselle. I rested at Londres to make la musique."
"The music?"
"Comme ça;" and the Italian made sundry rotary motions of the arm, as if
grinding an invisible hand-organ.
[Illustration: THE ELDER SWEDE AND ARAMINTA SHODDY.]
"Did you earn more money with the music or as model?" asked Mademoiselle
Émilie, the girl-artist from Madrid, with black hair dyed golden, who
always swore by Murillo's Virgins, and who did her work dreamily, as if
the motions of her hands were timed to the languorous rhythm of some
far-off, daintily-touched guitar beneath vine-wreathed balcony and
starlit sky.
"In Londres I gained more money as musician. In Angleterre zere is not
mooch love of ze Christ, ze St. John and ze Judas. It is not a Catholic
country, comme la France, and ze Anglaises aime bettaire ze gods of ze
old Greek hommes. In la France zey aime ze true religion, and I gain
mooch money, and am in ze Salon many times evairy year, because I am ze
best Christ in Paris."
A wail swept up from French, American, English, Swedish, Spanish,
Norwegian, Russian and West Indian bosoms.
"_We'll_ embrace the religion and the gods of the old Greek hommes then,
or throw ourselves into the profoundest gulfs of infidelity, while we
remain in Paris," ejaculated Bostonia in a vigorous stage-aside.
"Have you a wife?" asked Madame Deschamps, a fashionable
portrait-painter.
"Oui, madame. Ma femme is Lucreza, whom you _know_. She has made the
nymphs and goddesses for a _thousand_ pictures, but now she is so much
fat that the messieurs will have her only for the head, although she
still poses for the _ensemble_ in the ateliers des dames."
Here the best Christ in Paris grinned satanically as a polyglot howl
went up from among the students.
"That's his tit for the tat of the 'Cheshire cat,'" laughed Madame
Lafarge, a French-American Corinne with an all-French moustache.
"We won't have Lucreza again if she is too fat to pose for the nude
except in a _ladies'_ studio," snapped the elder Swede.
"Oh, I have forgotten to say zat she has upset ze pail since eight
days," chuckled the man.
"Upset the pail?" And twenty pairs of eyes looked full of
interrogation-points.
"Giggle! giggle! giggle!" came sputteringly from behind Concordia's
easel as she gasped, "Don't you understand? He has improved his English
among the Americans in Gérôme's studio, and he means she kicked the
bucket eight days ago."
"Quelle langue! quelle _langue est la langue_ Américaine!" sniffed the
elder Swede, wiping off a brushful of "turps" in her back hair.
Paletta twisted her head so as to peer through the forest of easels at
the last speaker.
"What daubs _she_ must make!" she thought, gazing at spectacled green
eyes and hay-colored hair _à la Chinoise_ with her fixed idea that "an
artistic nature always wrought a semblance of its own beauty upon its
outward form."
"What _was_ the Greek religion?" questioned a girlish voice.
Paletta twisted her neck again. "What _lovely_ ideals must blossom upon
_her_ _canvases_!" she thought as she saw a fair vision of rose-tints,
creamy texture and sculptured lines ensphered in a halo of golden hair.
"Who is that poor woman who has so mistaken her vocation?" she asked
with compassionate gesture toward the coiffure _à la Chinoise_.
"That? Oh, that's the celebrated Swedish artist, Miss Thingumbobbia, of
whom you have heard, of course. She returns to Stockholm next week to
paint the king's portrait. Mon Dieu! but I would give all my hair for
the genius of her little finger!" answered pretty Mademoiselle Hubert,
scraping her palette viciously, as if it were responsible for her
artistic inferiority to the gifted Thingumbobbia.
"O-o-o-h!" gasped Paletta. "But who is the sweet creature with golden
hair, who looks infused with fair ideals to her very finger-tips?"
[Illustration: AN AMIABLE MADONNA!]
"She? Oh, she's Miss Araminta Shoddy from Michigan Avenue, Chicago, who
is finishing her education in Paris. She comes here twice a week for
drawing-lessons from the antique, and also in pursuit of general
information, I should think, judging from her questions. Only yesterday
she said, 'Ladies, who can tell me the costume of the Venus de Melos? I
have an idea that it would be stunning for my next fancy-dress ball!'"
"Ladies," cried Miss San Francisco, invisible among the easels, "has
Professor Manley given out the subject of our composition for next
week?"
"Yes," answered a dozen voices--"'The Flight into Egypt.'"
"Oh, Miss Shoddy, Miss Shoddy, _will_ you pose for my Virgin Mother?"
cried another dozen.
[Illustration: THE MORNING LESSON.]
[Illustration: "HE'S GONE, GIRLS!"]
"Oh, Mees Shoddy, if you will pose for my Madonna I will pose for
yours," echoed the Raphaelesque Thingumbobbia.
Just before noon the forest of easels swayed slightly beneath a breeze
of excitement. A masculine step was heard at the door. The model's
expression became if not divine, at least superhuman. The ladies ceased
their chatter, and plied their brushes and crayons with increased
diligence. The morning professor entered, and passed from easel to
easel, commending this, criticising that, rebuking something else,
making a few touches of the brush upon several canvases, crossing others
with a network of charcoal-lines to prove inaccuracy of drawing,
distributed _très biens_ and _pas mals_ judiciously, and then with a
pleasant "Bon jour, mesdames," passed away, leaving behind him about an
equal measure of delight and dismay.
[Illustration: "H-E-A-VENLY CHEESE FOR A FRANC A POUND?"]
"I hope his bed-clothes will always come up at the foot!" growled
Austina, whose canvas looked like a map of a humming-bird's flight done
in charcoal.
"Let's all subscribe and buy The Angel a bouquet for Christmas," gushed
enthusiastically the British blonde Godsalina, upon whom one of the _pas
mals_ had fallen, and who had the true faith of her nation in the
efficacy of "tips" for sovereign or beggar.
[Illustration: "JE SUIS À VOUS."]
Then the model stretched his legs, returned to his normal and carnal
expression of countenance, and disappeared to return no more till the
morrow, leaving the platform vacant awaiting the nude female model who
was engaged for the afternoon. The atelier was abandoned to Sophie, the
_femme de ménage_, who stirred the fires, gathered stray brushes from
the floor, changed the background drapery for the afternoon model,
rearranged the easels into afternoon position, and brought out glasses
and plates for the ladies, who lunched in the anteroom. And then a
looker-on in a Parisian atelier des dames would readily have understood
the words, "He's gone, girls!" even were that looker-on deafer than the
deafest old woman who ever mistook a thunder-clap for one of her lord's
champion snores. In the anteroom conversation ran during lunch in
various channels. Some of the ladies discussed the ever-absorbing topic
of the price of living, and boasted of marvellous exploits in the way of
economy. Other and fewer students, to whom money was as the dust upon
the bust of Pallas over the studio-door, talked of the last "first
representations" at the Français, of Croisette's rapidly amplifying
figure, of Sarah Bernhardt's unnecessary immodesty in dressing Racine's
Andromaque, of the Grant reception at Healy's, of Lefevre's slipperiness
of texture, of the lack of the true sentiment of piety in Bouguereau's
religious pictures, of the harum-scarum amusements among the Americans
at Bonnât's atelier, and the latest gossip of the private studios.
[Illustration: SATURDAY EVE.]
"Want to know where you can buy just _h-e-a-venly_ cheese for a franc a
pound?" mumbles young Madame New Jersey with her mouth full of Gruyère.
"Where?" from several excited listeners.
"Over in the Latin Quarter, close by the Rue Jacob Brasserie, where so
many American students hold daily symposia."
"I'll go and buy a quarter of a pound this very evening," said Miss
Providence energetically.
"I too! I too! et moi aussi!" cried others of the many who lived _à la
Bohémienne_ in lofty mansards of _maisons meublées_, dining at cheap
restaurants, breakfasting by aid of spirit-lamps from corners of
dressing-tables and lunching on _charcuterie_ in the anteroom of the
Krug studio, searching high and low for "cheapness" as for a pearl of
great price.
"And pay twelve sous for your omnibus fare!" cried the practical little
Illinois maiden, Dixonia.
"Je suis à vous, mesdames," said the favorite model, Alphonse, at the
door.
"Alas, sweet Adonis! we have engaged our people for the next three
weeks."
"And I am desolé, mesdames, that you have not want of me;" and the
graceful Alphonse melted away like a snow-wreath in a south wind.
At one o'clock came the sallow Frenchwoman, with the face of a Gorgon
and the figure of a Juno, who posed for the _ensemble_. She stood
against the dark crimson background, outlined pure and white like a
marvel of Phidian sculpture upon which the Spirit of Life had slightly
breathed. So still, so white, so coldly, purely statuesque she seemed,
that one sometimes entirely forgot that she was else than the fair
statue born from the block of marble at the command of a divine genius,
till the chiselled arms were seen to quiver and the sculptured knees to
almost bend. Then a reproachful cry ran through the atelier: "Shame!
shame! We have forgotten that she was a woman and not a statue, and
have kept her posing two hours without a repose."
"How much do you earn by this wearisome business?" asked Paletta
pityingly as the tired model, wrapped in a threadbare waterproof,
cowered over the stove during "the repose."
"If I pose for a half day of each week like this in an atelier des
dames, I earn twenty-five francs a week, but what I earn by posing for
artists in private studios depends much upon chance. Sometimes I am
needed only for a leg or arm or bust, or even hand: then I earn less of
course, for it makes broken hours. I would demand much more from the
ateliers des dames had I a handsome face, but always my ensemble is
painted with the head of a prettier model where there is any purpose of
using me in a picture."
"Do you become often as fatigued as you are now?" continued Paletta.
"Often more so. I have posed for nearly an hour upon one foot with
extended arms in a dance of bacchantes, till I have fainted. Oftentimes
I am kept in a running position upon one foot, with the other far behind
me, in Atalanta's race; sometimes suspended by cords from the ceiling,
with arms and legs in horribly uncomfortable positions, till everything
seems to spin before me."
"Do you dislike to pose for male artists?" asked Paletta.
"Dislike? Why should I with so fine a figure as this?" answered the
woman, throwing off her cloak to resume her pose. "I'd like it better if
I had a handsome face, but I'd like it much worse if I had flabby flesh
or buniony feet."
Paletta saw that no question of modesty entered the model's mind, and
she went back to her easel to paint the rounded limbs and marble
huelessness of fair Dian, chastest of all Olympia's deities, wondering
if, after all, what is called modesty does not come as much of habit as
of nature--if the veiled face of the Oriental is not as immodest as the
unclothedness of the artist's model.
MARGARET B. WRIGHT.
"AUF DEM HEIMWEG."
Thy light streams far, thou gladdening star,
O'er vale and forest, tower and town:
From land and sea men look to thee,
In every clime, as night comes down.
But ah! were all the eyes that mark
Thy rising, closed in endless dark,
Undimmed would glitter still
Thy bright unpitying spark!
I heed thee not. In yonder cot,
As home I haste, from toil set free,
Through dusk and damp the casement-lamp
Shines clear across the fields for me.
Dear light! dear heart! how well I know,
If bitter Death should lay me low,
Dark would that casement be,
And quenched your winsome glow!
MARY KEELY BOUTELLE.
THROUGH WINDING WAYS.
CHAPTER I.
"I can't reach it," declared Georgy. "You boys are all growing so tall
that a girl has to mount on stilts in order to go about with you."
"I will find a log," said I, looking about us.
"Come!" struck in Jack Holt, laughing, "make a footstool of me, Georgy;"
and without another word he flung himself flat on his face. She was
never loath to put her foot upon any of our necks, figuratively
speaking, and now, with a burst of laughter, she took Jack at his word,
and planting herself on his shoulders peered down through the coils of
Virginia creeper into the cunningly devised bird's nest in the hollow of
an oak tree. There were five delicately tinted eggs, and she tried in
vain to squeeze her slim hand through the aperture and possess herself
of them.
"Getting tired, Jack?" she asked presently.
"No," he answered, his face still kissing the moss: "I don't tire so
easily in your service, Georgy."
I felt rather bitter against them both. I would have died to serve this
girl, I told myself, yet such an opportunity left me dull and cold. I
was always dreaming of doughty deeds to please her, yet if she dropped
her handkerchief I could hardly stoop to pick it up.
"Oh, get up, Jack!" cried Harry Dart, whose lip had been curling in
angry scorn as he watched the performance: "you are by far too good to
be trodden under foot by any girl, let alone Georgy Lenox."
Georgy tripped down from her temporary throne and made Harry a little
courtesy. "Do you mean to say that you would not be glad to be trodden
under foot by Georgy Lenox?" she asked, laughing and tossing her curls.
He gave a contemptuous shrug: "Wait until I give you an opportunity.
Floyd and I don't make fools of ourselves for any girls."
"Come, come, Harry!" said Jack, who had risen from the ground and was
now wiping off the earth-stains from his clothes, "don't spoil our day
by being disagreeable.--Shall we go on, Georgy?" He gave her a peculiar
glance in which there was less of humility than gentle command, and she
sprang after him and put her hand within his arm. He did not serve her
for rewards as yet, and was used to as many blows as smiles, and this
was a rare condescension on her part.
Georgy was fifteen--of the same age as Harry, but considerably younger
than Jack, who was two years older than his cousin, while I was the
youngest of the three. We had been playmates all our lives, and had each
of us found in Georgy Lenox the only girl-friend of our boyhood. She had
been a beauty from her infancy, and her wiles had grown with her growth
and strengthened with her strength; and now her myriad tricks of
mischief, caprice and cruelty were too closely identified with what was
most bewitching in her not to have become additional charms for us. In
those days, while we were still hobbledehoys, she pleased us the more
that she had, with the precocity of her sex, quite outstripped us where
all subtle social forces are concerned. Although she could be a hoyden
still, it was quite as easy for her to assume the part of an elegant
young lady, equipped for society with charming manners, a fastidious
taste and indifferent ease. We occasionally laughed at her airs, but
inwardly admired her superb assumptions of careless superiority: had she
become timid, docile, admiring toward us, I dare say her reign would not
have lasted the day out.
Harry flung his arm about me, and we followed Jack and Georgy deeper and
deeper into the wood. It was the last Saturday in May, and the fairest
day of the year. The thickets were full of mysterious sounds, and one
could almost feel the beating of the delicate pulses of the springing,
expanding life about us. I knew all the secrets of this forest, and
loved no place half so well in Belfield outside of my own home. Nature,
too, seemed tenderer of it than of other wildnesses, and had set the
seal of her choice upon it with every gift of fern and vine and moss and
lichen. No axe had invaded these solitudes for years except to prune
away a too riotous undergrowth along the cart-path: the trees grew in
grand natural aisles, and to look through the noble colonnade into
mysterious vistas of copsewood gloom and stillness was for me to thrill
with that blissful agony of youthful emotion which is our first
premonition of the unreachable secret that underlies the universe.
"Did you ever think," said Harry to me earnestly, "that you would like
to leave the world behind you for ever and live altogether in the woods,
with only the trees and birds for company?"
But, dearly although I loved the woods, I could not answer him that I
should be willing to resign my home, my mother, my friends and social
joys for the life of a hermit.
"It's pleasant to see people," I suggested.
"I'm not sure of that," Harry rejoined with sudden misanthropy. "See
what a hard world it is! I feel to-day like Achilles in his tent."
"But I don't like Achilles: he was only sullen because he had lost
Briseis. Surely, Harry, you don't mind it that Georgy has gone on with
Jack?"
Harry laughed loud and long: "That would be a good joke! As if I cared
for Georgy Lenox! But it does make me angry to see Jack so taken up with
her. Did you see her new shoes?"
There could be no question of that.
"Jack bought them for her," said Harry with angry emphasis. "He spends
all his money on her, and I think it is a shame. She told him at first
she could not come to-day, because she had nothing to wear on her feet
except thin slippers. What does Jack do but post off to John Edwards and
buy her a pair of boots at once!" He paused a moment, then burst out:
"Just look at them!"
Georgy had flung her flowers at Jack, and having jumped across the
little brook which meandered through the wood, now nodded at him
defiantly, tossing her long curls, while her eyes sparkled and her color
rose. He too sprang over the stream, with pretended anger, and she gave
a little shriek and flew down the path, with him in pursuit. Jack was
clumsy and not built for speed, while Georgy had the spring of a fawn;
but I suspect she was willing to be caught, for when we next gained a
glimpse of them she was sitting on a stump fanning herself with her
broad-brimmed hat, which had fallen off, while he was leaning against a
tree looking at her.
"He has kissed her--I know he has," Harry whispered to me with a bitter
look. "I would die before I would kiss her when she behaved like that!"
I was in a sort of tremor. I was too young to be in love in the ordinary
sense of the phrase, but I was aghast at the thought of the bloom of her
cheeks and lips being plucked like roses in a hedgerow. She was precious
to my imagination, yet, for all her every-day reality, scarcely nearer
to my aspirations than Lady Edith Plantagenet or Ellen, Lady of the
Lake.
"I don't care," muttered Harry doggedly--"I don't care. I dare say he
means to marry her when he grows up, but I don't care."
"Floyd," called out Georgy, "can't you show me another bird's nest?"
Now I knew at least a hundred birds' nests in these woods. All Wednesday
afternoon I had nestled here in the thickets and watched the little
builders hopping from moss to bough and twig, and had learned all their
secrets. I knew that by the great rock just behind where she was sitting
was a ledge with shelving sides overhung with moss, and that there, so
cunningly wrought and hidden that none but a trained eye could ever have
discovered it, was an exquisite nest formed of lichens. Half ashamed of
disclosing such a sacred confidence, I led Georgy up to it. Last
Wednesday it was barely finished: now there were three eggs in it. It
was a wood-pewee's nest, and while I let her peep the mother-bird flew
toward us with a shrill pathetic cry.
"Hush, you horrid thing!" cried Georgy to the alarmed bird, that circled
about us with cries growing every moment more piercing.--"Is not that
perfectly sweet? I never saw anything prettier."
I had only consented that she should give one glance, and I now tried to
coax her away; but nothing would content her but to hold two of the eggs
in her hand, and while she held them her foot slipped and they fell to
the ground, and she trod upon them.
"Oh, Georgy!" I cried angrily, "that is too horribly careless of you: I
cannot forgive you."
"The idea!" she returned, laughing. "Do look at him, boys!--as white as
a ghost just because I broke those wretched eggs! Look at that furious
little bird! I declare it is ready to peck my eyes out! There, madam!
now you may go to work and lay some more eggs;" and she took the sole
remaining egg from the nest and flung it with wanton cruelty into the
thicket.
I was cut to the heart. Both Jack and Harry came up to me, but I shook
them off and sat down upon a fallen trunk, and would not say a word in
answer to their inquiries or consolations. Presently they wandered down
the woods together, and left me there alone. The owners of the despoiled
nest kept up a loud, emphatic chirping for a time, which drew all the
other birds to discover its cause. I felt as if they looked at me with
wonder and resentment in their innocent eyes. But after a time the
tumult of sorrow passed and the usual forest sounds returned: the whir
of partridge-wings smote the air, and I heard the tender coo of the
mother-hen; then the wind rose and blew through the tree-tops, and the
blossoming boughs moved restlessly, no longer filtering green sunshine
through their transparent leaves, but disclosing a gathering storm in
the glimpses I gained of the sky above. I knew a short cut through the
wood which led to the hill at the back of my mother's house, and when I
heard Harry's voice calling me I sprang like a deer into the covert, and
before the rain came had reached home.
Georgy's wanton cruelty had wounded me deeply, but my allegiance to our
girl-queen was not easily thrown off; and seizing an umbrella I flew
back to the woods to offer it to Georgy, who received it kindly, glad of
shelter from the sudden shower. I was as proud of her smile and
good-natured thanks as a dog is proud of his master's scant caress after
a sound beating.
The fair May day ended in rain, and, as usual on Saturdays, my three
mates finished the afternoon with me. Jack took his books and went
sturdily at his Greek; Harry drew pictures by the dozen; Georgy was
reading _Queechy,_ nestled in my mother's chair by the bay-window; and I
was deep in one of the _Waverley_ novels. Banners streamed, bugles blew,
spears gleamed, knights jostled in my world. Oh for a wet afternoon
again like that twenty-five years ago, with the monotonous patter of
rain in my ears, to go back to Coeur de Lion and Edith and Saladin! And
not alone the time and the books, and the old high heart with the old
longings and resolves, and the old fearless eyes to look out upon the
world, but the old companions as well, with their glorious boy-faces,
untouched then by any imprint of the base emotions and aims sure almost,
a little later, to enter in and defile! The rain pattered ceaselessly;
the heavy scent of the lilacs came in through the open windows; the
martins screamed about their boxes under the eaves of the stable, and I
could hear the twitter of innumerable birds; but with the consciousness
of all this I had no thought except of my rapture for Kenneth when the
dog sprang at the throat of Conrad.
"Floyd," said Georgy, putting her hand on my arm, "don't you hear the
door-bell? Ann went out an hour ago."
Our service was not numerous, and if Ann had gone out, as was her wont
when she found a moment's leisure, there was no one to answer the bell
but myself. I rose heavily and unwillingly, and walked along the little
hall, my eyes still glued upon the page, hardly raising them when I
opened, the door until I saw, instead of some indifferent neighbor, a
tall gentleman, quite strange to Belfield, who was shutting his dripping
umbrella. He was very tall, stately, broad-shouldered, with an impassive
but handsome face, and a glance at once quiet and commanding. He
regarded me with an amused smile, as if he knew me very well, and
something about him gradually renewed a sort of recollection in me.
"How do you do?" he asked as I stood squarely in the doorway staring at
him.
"I am quite well, sir," I returned gravely.
"What is your name?" he inquired, laughing.
"James Floyd Randolph," I answered.
"I am James Floyd," said he. "Suppose you invite me in?"
I led the way silently back to the dull, chilly sitting-room, where Jack
and Harry still sat at the table, while Georgy was peeping out to catch
a glimpse of the new arrival. Mr. Floyd, having put his umbrella in the
rack and taken off his hat and overcoat, followed me, casting a look
about the room as he entered, as if he missed somebody he expected to
see.
"My mother is not at home, sir," I observed, sitting down stiffly on the
edge of a chair: "she has gone to spend the afternoon with a sick lady."
"She will return presently?"
"Oh, she will certainly be at home to tea, sir," I answered; and then,
remarking that he gave a shrug as he glanced at the wide-open casements,
I closed both windows, went to the closet, brought wood and kindlings
and built a fire on the hearth.
"You are a boy of much nice discrimination," remarked Mr. Floyd. "Now
that you have a temperature not altogether conducive to lumbago, I will
venture to sit down. Do you know who I am?"
"Oh yes, sir: you are Mr. James Floyd, the gentleman I was named after."
"Has your mother often spoken of me?"
"Oh yes, sir," I said again, and at once observed that his face
brightened up.
"And who are these young people?" he inquired, apparently noticing the
group by the table for the first time.
I introduced them, and Mr. Floyd shook hands with Jack, put his hand
under Harry's chin and looked keenly into his chiselled, beautiful face;
then gave another glance at Georgy, to whom he had first bowed.
"Miss Lenox?" he repeated. "Any relation of George Lenox?"
"Oh yes, sir: I am his daughter," cried Georgy, blushing and dimpling.
"I am third cousin to your little girl: Mr. Raymond at The Headlands is
my great-uncle."
"Yes, of course. How is your father?"
"Papa is pretty well."
"He was first cousin of my wife," said Mr. Floyd, "and I have met him, I
believe."
The door-bell rang again.
"That is Antonio Thorpe," observed Mr. Floyd--"a young friend of mine
for whom I want to get board and lodging in Belfield. Can any of you
recommend a place? He is a lad of eighteen or nineteen, and will
probably study under your own masters."
"Mamma would be very glad to have a boarder," struck in Georgy
earnestly. "There is a nice large room for him."
I ushered in the new-comer, a slim fellow of my own height, but looking
immeasurably older, with a delicate black moustache and a coat which
fitted in a way to shame anything in Belfield.
"Well, well, Tony!" said Mr. Floyd: "you followed quickly upon my
footsteps; but all the better, perhaps, as I have already heard of a
suitable place for you to settle. This young lady, Miss Lenox, thinks
her mother may be able to accommodate you: perhaps she will be good
enough to take you home now and introduce you, referring her family to
me."
Thorpe bowed with a very finished air, and presently was walking off in
the rain with Georgy, holding his umbrella over her in a manner truly
Grandisonian. Harry and Jack also went away, and I was left alone with
my guardian; for, although I had never seen him since my father's
funeral eight years before, my guardian I knew him to be. He called me
up to him, flung his arm over my shoulder and looked into my eyes. "My
dear boy!" said he in a kind voice, and kissed me on the forehead. "You
remember me a little, don't you?" he asked.
"I remember you now very well: at first it seemed all gone from me."
"No wonder. I have been in Europe eight years. My little girl is ten
years old, and had never seen me since she was the merest baby. She was
afraid of me at first."
But not for long, I was sure of that: nobody, man, woman or child, could
look into his face and not love and trust him.
"I want to see your mother," he exclaimed with a sudden flash of
expression over his tranquil face. "Your mother is all that is left to
me of my youth: I have come back an old man."
I laughed at this, and then we fell to talking of our life in Belfield.
I was not a loquacious fellow, but something about Mr. Floyd unloosed my
tongue, and after describing our quiet household ways I spoke freely of
the Lenoxes and of Jack and Harry. The two boys were cousins, and Harry,
having neither father nor mother, lived with the Holts, who were the
rich people of our village. My two friends loved me dearly, but still
they were more to each other than I could be to either, for they shared
the same room, ate at the same table, and had grown into an intimacy
wonderful and rare even among brothers. They were Damon and Pythias,
Orestes and Pylades; but indeed I doubted if anything in poetry, history
or tradition had ever equalled this beautiful and complete friendship. I
could not be jealous of it, because each gave me all I needed; and even
if, at times, I felt the pang of being a little outside their world, my
isolation was made sacred to me by the recollection of the brother I had
lost, in whom some time, somewhere, I should regain everything.
Mr. Floyd had a way of listening which made me yearn to tell him every
insignificant detail of my life. I knew that he was a man of national
reputation, but I hardly cared for that, since he was the pleasantest
companion I had ever met. I found myself gossiping to him about our
village worthies, making him laugh heartily at their sayings passed into
tradition and fable among us boys; for our one-eyed shoemaker and our
corpulent grocer, like many other country wits to fortune and to fame
unknown, surpassed either Douglas Jerrold or Sydney Smith in quip and
drollery. And I did not omit George Lenox, for all Belfield except his
wife was in the secret of his affairs, and they were our crowning joke,
in which poor George himself joined merrily, although the story was so
against himself.
"That girl of his is remarkably pretty," said Mr. Floyd. "Is he, then,
so poor? He was well born, liberally educated, and married in a family
of high pretensions."
There could be no doubt but what George Lenox had begun better than
other men, with enough to live on comfortably in city or country,
provided he did not think too much of the necessity for showing his wife
that she had not lessened her consequence in marrying him. Nobody could
accuse poor Mr. Lenox now-a-days of ambition, or blame him if, in those
early days as now, that terrible woman had frankly regarded him as an
utter nonentity save in his association with her own destiny. She was a
handsome woman, with aquiline nose, a thin, firmly-set mouth, piercing
eyes and a magnificent carriage. She was no longer young when she had
accepted Mr. Lenox, and by what means she had encompassed his
subjugation we were never told: he always shook his head when he alluded
to his courtship. "A fellow is wax in a woman's hands," he had sometimes
remarked darkly. But after his marriage he had seemed to acquiesce in
his wife's belief in her high individual value to the world in general
and himself in particular, and had given her the best of everything.
Mrs. Lenox knew how to spend money, she had a house in New York and a
villa in Belfield; she had running accounts with tradesmen; and not only
gave dinner-parties, balls and receptions, but out-dressed her circle
with a sort of gorgeous superfluity which made her intimates experience
the ignominy of their inferiority. Mr. Lenox resigned himself to the
irresistible current of his wife's will, and if he felt inward doubts
silenced them as suggestions of morbid distrust in the discretion of a
woman whom he knew to be virtuous, and whose price was so much above
rubies that sordid calculations ought not to be mentioned in the same
breath with her. After a time, however, not even his high faith in the
necessity of agreeable issues where she was concerned could blind him to
the fact that he had many debts and but a few thousand dollars. He at
once invested these thousands in an enterprise which was shortly to make
all those interested in it millionaires. But if any one made money out
of it, it was not George Lenox, who suddenly found himself reduced to be
a pensioner upon his wife, who had twelve thousand dollars invested in
railway stock. They removed to their little Gothic cottage in Belfield,
and Mrs. Lenox lost what remained of her beauty, her spirits, her
temper, but never her ineradicable pride. Within a year her husband had
taken her railway stock, sold it and invested it in some speculation
which failed ignominiously, as any schemes of his were sure to do.
Nothing attracted him which was regulated by average laws of supply
answering a demand: all his undertakings required a miracle, an upheaval
of popular ideas, to ensure success. He never told his wife of this
embezzlement of his: when he lost her property he meditated suicide, and
merely staved off the evil day by pretending to pay her dividends
regularly; and for this he twice a year implored the assistance of his
uncle, Mr. Raymond. The railroad in which Mrs. Lenox had invested was a
prosperous one, and occasionally declared an additional stock dividend:
it was on these occasions that the reduced lady lost in a degree her
usual air of picturesque gloom--that she roused herself to talk about
her family and the glories of her youth, the éclat and brilliance of her
position, which she had never lost until after marrying her unfortunate
husband; and at such times she even regained her courage and made a
round of visits, dropping glazed and ancient cards, and retaining in her
feebleness all the traditions of her majesty. But this epoch of her
revived grandeur was set in painful contrast to poor Lenox's misery. He
was commissioned to sell the scrip, which, for him, had no existence,
and thus raise money to deck the family in transient brightness. I fancy
that at such times, without any waste of rhetoric or balancing of
expediencies, he was more in love with suicide than Hamlet or Cato, and
that if it had not been for the sympathy and aid of a golden-haired
little girl he would have swallowed his death-potion quietly. Georgy was
his firm ally against her mother, and helped him shrewdly in many a
close pinch; and his rich uncle, Mr. Raymond (Mr. Floyd's
father-in-law), rarely refused him provisional aid upon his application,
although he was wise enough to decline helping him in any of his
fantastic kite speculations.
"And what sort of a girl is this Miss Georgy?" inquired Mr. Floyd. "Has
she been injured at all by the somewhat exceptional circumstances of her
family?"
"Oh no, sir."
"Is she gentle, generous and open in her ways?"
"Gentle, sir--generous?"
"She is remarkably pretty."
I assented eagerly to this observation, and he laughed: "There is no
doubt in your mind upon that point. If she were in all respects a
suitable companion for Helen, I would request that she should be invited
to The Headlands. But Tony will find out what she is made of. He will be
a new friend for you."
And he told me about this Antonio Thorpe, who had been under his
guardianship for six years. He was the son of an Englishman who had
married a Spanish girl in the West Indies: the lad was but twelve years
old when he was thrown upon the world without parents or near relatives
or suitable provision for his maintenance. The elder Thorpe had been a
careless, good-natured person, without any distrust of his fellows, and
not knowing what to do with his son had thrust him upon Mr. Floyd, who
had at some trouble and expense looked after his education. He had
entered college the year before, but his conduct had been a little
unsatisfactory to the authorities, and his guardian had withdrawn him,
and now, in some doubt as to the best course to pursue in regard to his
future, wished him to study for a few months quietly at Belfield.
"Your mother will let him visit here, I trust," he went on. "I think he
is half a good fellow, and we must forgive the other half, because his
mother was the proudest, vainest, silliest little Castilian that ever
lived. Tony has got a good deal to contend against."
But the drawbacks to Thorpe's advancement were not so patent to my mind
on first acquaintance as his advantages. He had a slight, graceful
figure, a little under height, but carried himself with the dignity of a
grandee; his eyes were large, dark and languishing; his complexion was a
pale olive; while his moustache, black and exquisitely pencilled, was a
sign of itself of towering superiority above the rest of us callow
youths. That alone would have filled me with envy.