"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree."
_Coleridge._
I am the owner of great estates. Many of them lie in the West; but the
greater part are in Spain. You may see my western possessions any
evening at sunset when their spires and battlements flash against the
horizon.
It gives me a feeling of pardonable importance, as a proprietor, that
they are visible, to my eyes at least, from any part of the world in
which I chance to be. In my long voyage around the Cape of Good Hope
to India (the only voyage I ever made, when I was a boy and a
supercargo), if I fell home-sick, or sank into a reverie of all the
pleasant homes I had left behind, I had but to wait until sunset, and
then looking toward the west, I beheld my clustering pinnacles and
towers brightly burnished as if to salute and welcome me.
So, in the city, if I get vexed and wearied, and cannot find my wonted
solace in sallying forth at dinner-time to contemplate the gay world
of youth and beauty hurrying to the congress of fashion,--or if I
observe that years are deepening their tracks around the eyes of my
wife, Prue, I go quietly up to the housetop, toward evening, and
refresh myself with a distant prospect of my estates. It is as dear to
me as that of Eton to the poet Gray; and, if I sometimes wonder at
such moments whether I shall find those realms as fair as they appear,
I am suddenly reminded that the night air may be noxious, and
descending, I enter the little parlor where Prue sits stitching, and
surprise that precious woman by exclaiming with the poet's pensive
enthusiasm;
"Thought would destroy their Paradise,
No more;--where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise."
Columbus, also, had possessions in the West; and as I read aloud the
romantic story of his life, my voice quivers when I come to the point
in which it is related that sweet odors of the land mingled with the
sea-air, as the admiral's fleet approached the shores; that tropical
birds flew out and fluttered around the ships, glittering in the sun,
the gorgeous promises of the new country; that boughs, perhaps with
blossoms not all decayed, floated out to welcome the strange wood from
which the craft were hollowed. Then I cannot restrain myself, I think
of the gorgeous visions I have seen before I have even undertaken the
journey to the West, and I cry aloud to Prue:
"What sun-bright birds, and gorgeous blossoms, and celestial odors
will float out to us, my Prue, as we approach our western
possessions!"
The placid Prue raises her eyes to mine with a reproof so delicate
that it could not be trusted to words; and, after a moment, she
resumes her knitting and I proceed.
These are my western estates, but my finest castles are in Spain. It
is a country famously romantic, and my castles are all of perfect
proportions, and appropriately set in the most picturesque situations.
I have never been to Spain myself, but I have naturally conversed much
with travellers to that country; although, I must allow, without
deriving from them much substantial information about my property
there. The wisest of them told me that there were more holders of real
estate in Spain than in any other region he had ever heard of, and
they are all great proprietors. Every one of them possesses a
multitude of the stateliest castles. From conversation with them you
easily gather that each one considers his own castles much the largest
and in the loveliest positions. And, after I had heard this said, I
verified it, by discovering that all my immediate neighbors in the
city were great Spanish proprietors.
One day as I raised my head from entering some long and tedious
accounts in my books, and began to reflect that the quarter was
expiring, and that I must begin to prepare the balance-sheet, I
observed my subordinate, in office but not in years, (for poor old
Titbottom will never see sixty again!) leaning on his hand, and much
abstracted.
"Are you not well, Titbottom!" asked I.
"Perfectly, but I was just building a castle in Spain," said he.
I looked at his rusty coat, his faded hands, his sad eye, and white
hair, for a moment, in great surprise, and then inquired,
"Is it possible that you own property there too?"
He shook his head silently; and still leaning on his hand, and with an
expression in his eye, as if he were looking upon the most fertile
estate of Andalusia, he went on making his plans; laying out his
gardens, I suppose, building terraces for the vines, determining a
library with a southern exposure, and resolving which should be the
tapestried chamber.
"What a singular whim," thought I, as I watched Titbottom and filled
up a cheque for four hundred dollars, my quarterly salary, "that a man
who owns castles in Spain should be deputy book-keeper at nine hundred
dollars a year!"
When I went home I ate my dinner silently, and afterward sat for a
long time upon the roof of the house, looking at my western property,
and thinking of Titbottom.
It is remarkable that none of the proprietors have ever been to Spain
to take possession and report to the rest of us the state of our
property there. I, of course, cannot go, I am too much engaged. So is
Titbottom. And I find it is the case with all the proprietors. We
have so much to detain us at home that we cannot get away. But it is
always so with rich men. Prue sighed once as she sat at the window
and saw Bourne, the millionaire, the President of innumerable
companies, and manager and director of all the charitable societies in
town, going by with wrinkled brow and hurried step. I asked her why
she sighed.
"Because I was remembering that my mother used to tell me not to
desire great riches, for they occasioned great cares," said she.
"They do indeed," answered I, with emphasis, remembering Titbottom,
and the impossibility of looking after my Spanish estates.
Prue turned and looked at me with mild surprise; but I saw that her
mind had gone down the street with Bourne. I could never discover if
he held much Spanish stock. But I think he does. All the Spanish
proprietors have a certain expression. Bourne has it to a remarkable
degree. It is a kind of look, as if, in fact, a man's mind were in
Spain. Bourne was an old lover of Prue's, and he is not married,
which is strange for a man in his position.
It is not easy for me to say how I know so much, as I certainly do,
about my castles in Spain. The sun always shines upon them. They stand
lofty and fair in a luminous, golden atmosphere, a little hazy and
dreamy, perhaps, like the Indian summer, but in which no gales blow
and there are no tempests. All the sublime mountains, and beautiful
valleys, and soft landscape, that I have not yet seen, are to be found
in the grounds. They command a noble view of the Alps; so fine,
indeed, that I should be quite content with the prospect of them from
the highest tower of my castle, and not care to go to Switzerland.
The neighboring ruins, too, are as picturesque as those of Italy, and
my desire of standing in the Coliseum, and of seeing the shattered
arches of the Aqueducts stretching along the Campagna and melting into
the Alban Mount, is entirely quenched. The rich gloom of my orange
groves is gilded by fruit as brilliant of complexion and exquisite of
flavor as any that ever dark-eyed Sorrento girls, looking over the
high plastered walls of southern Italy, hand to the youthful
travellers, climbing on donkeys up the narrow lane beneath.
The Nile flows through my grounds. The Desert lies upon their edge,
and Damascus stands in my garden. I am given to understand, also, that
the Parthenon has been removed to my Spanish possessions. The
Golden-Horn is my fish-preserve; my flocks of golden fleece are
pastured on the plain of Marathon, and the honey of Hymettus is
distilled from the flowers that grow in the vale of Enna--all in my
Spanish domains.
From the windows of those castles look the beautiful women whom I have
never seen, whose portraits the poets have painted. They wait for me
there, and chiefly the fair-haired child, lost to my eyes so long ago,
now bloomed into an impossible beauty. The lights that never shone,
glance at evening in the vaulted halls, upon banquets that were never
spread. The bands I have never collected, play all night long, and
enchant the brilliant company, that was never assembled, into silence.
In the long summer mornings the children that I never had, play in the
gardens that I never planted. I hear their sweet voices sounding low
and far away, calling, "Father! Father!" I see the lost fair-haired
girl, grown now into a woman, descending the stately stairs of my
castle in Spain, stepping out upon the lawn, and playing with those
children. They bound away together down the garden; but those voices
linger, this time airily calling, "Mother! mother!"
But there is a stranger magic than this in my Spanish estates. The
lawny slopes on which, when a child, I played, in my father's old
country place, which was sold when he failed, are all there, and not a
flower faded, nor a blade of grass sere. The green leaves have not
fallen from the spring woods of half a century ago, and a gorgeous
autumn has blazed undimmed for fifty years, among the trees I
remember.
Chestnuts are not especially sweet to my palate now, but those with
which I used to prick my fingers when gathering them in New Hampshire
woods are exquisite as ever to my taste, when I think of eating them
in Spain. I never ride horseback now at home; but in Spain, when I
think of it, I bound over all the fences in the country, barebacked
upon the wildest horses. Sermons I am apt to find a little soporific
in this country; but in Spain I should listen as reverently as ever,
for proprietors must set a good example on their estates.
Plays are insufferable to me here--Prue and I never go. Prue, indeed,
is not quite sure it is moral; but the theatres in my Spanish castles
are of a prodigious splendor, and when I think of going there, Prue
sits in a front box with me--a kind of royal box--the good woman,
attired in such wise as I have never seen her here, while I wear my
white waistcoat, which in Spain has no appearance of mending, but
dazzles with immortal newness, and is a miraculous fit.
Yes, and in those castles in Spain, Prue is not the placid,
breeches-patching helpmate, with whom you are acquainted, but her face
has a bloom which we both remember, and her movement a grace which my
Spanish swans emulate, and her voice a music sweeter than those that
orchestras discourse. She is always there what she seemed to me when
I fell in love with her, many and many years ago. The neighbors
called her then a nice, capable girl; and certainly she did knit and
darn with a zeal and success to which my feet and my legs have
testified for nearly half a century. But she could spin a finer web
than ever came from cotton, and in its subtle meshes my heart was
entangled, and there has reposed softly and happily ever since. The
neighbors declared she could make pudding and cake better than any
girl of her age; but stale bread from Prue's hand was ambrosia to my
palate.
"She who makes every thing well, even to making neighbors speak well
of her, will surely make a good wife," said I to myself when I knew
her; and the echo of a half century answers, "a good wife."
So, when I meditate my Spanish castles, I see Prue in them as my heart
saw her standing by her father's door. "Age cannot wither her." There
is a magic in the Spanish air that paralyzes Time. He glides by,
unnoticed and unnoticing. I greatly admire the Alps, which I see so
distinctly from my Spanish windows; I delight in the taste of the
southern fruit that ripens upon my terraces; I enjoy the pensive shade
of the Italian ruins in my gardens; I like to shoot crocodiles, and
talk with the Sphinx upon the shores of the Nile, flowing through my
domain; I am glad to drink sherbet in Damascus, and fleece my flocks
on the plains of Marathon; but I would resign all these for ever
rather than part with that Spanish portrait of Prue for a day. Nay,
have I not resigned them all for ever, to live with that portrait's
changing original?
I have often wondered how I should reach my castles. The desire of
going comes over me very strongly sometimes, and I endeavor to see how
I can arrange my affairs, so as to get away. To tell the truth, I am
not quite sure of the route,--I mean, to that particular part of Spain
in which my estates lie. I have inquired very particularly, but nobody
seems to know precisely. One morning I met young Aspen, trembling with
excitement.
"What's the matter?" asked I with interest, for I knew that he held a
great deal of Spanish stock.
"Oh!" said he, "I'm going out to take possession. I have found the
way to my castles in Spain."
"Dear me!" I answered, with the blood streaming into my face; and,
heedless of Prue, pulling my glove until it ripped--"what is it?"
"The direct route is through California," answered he.
"But then you have the sea to cross afterward," said I, remembering
the map.
"Not at all," answered Aspen, "the road runs along the shore of the
Sacramento River."
He darted away from me, and I did not meet him again. I was very
curious to know if he arrived safely in Spain, and was expecting every
day to hear news from him of my property there, when, one evening, I
bought an extra, full of California news, and the first thing upon
which my eye fell was this: "Died, in San Francisco, Edward Aspen,
Esq., aged 35." There is a large body of the Spanish stockholders who
believe with Aspen, and sail for California every week. I have not yet
heard of their arrival out at their castles, but I suppose they are so
busy with their own affairs there, that they have no time to write to
the rest of us about the condition of our property.
There was my wife's cousin, too, Jonathan Bud, who is a good, honest,
youth from the country, and, after a few weeks' absence, he burst into
the office one day, just as I was balancing my books, and whispered to
me, eagerly:
"I've found my castle in Spain."
I put the blotting-paper in the leaf deliberately, for I was wiser now
than when Aspen had excited me, and looked at my wife's cousin,
Jonathan Bud, inquiringly.
"Polly Bacon," whispered he, winking.