I told him that Prue was well--that she was always remarkably
well. Mr. Bourne shook me warmly by the hand.
"Thank you," said he. "Good morning."
I knew why he thanked me; I knew why he thought that I lived
altogether upon my Spanish estates; I knew a little bit about those
bridal bouquets. Mr. Bourne, the millionaire, was an old lover of
Prue's. There is something very odd about these Spanish castles. When
I think of them, I somehow see the fair-haired girl whom I knew when I
was not out of short jackets. When Bourne meditates them, he sees Prue
and me quietly at home in their best chambers. It is a very singular
thing that my wife should live in another man's castle in Spain.
At length I resolved to ask Titbottom if he had ever heard of the best
route to our estates. He said that he owned castles, and sometimes
there was an expression in his face, as if he saw them. I hope he
did. I should long ago have asked him if he had ever observed the
turrets of my possessions in the West, without alluding to Spain, if I
had not feared he would suppose I was mocking his poverty. I hope his
poverty has not turned his head, for he is very forlorn.
One Sunday I went with him a few miles into the country. It was a
soft, bright day, the fields and hills lay turned to the sky, as if
every leaf and blade of grass were nerves, bared to the touch of the
sun. I almost felt the ground warm under my feet. The meadows waved
and glittered, the lights and shadows were exquisite, and the distant
hills seemed only to remove the horizon farther away. As we strolled
along, picking wild flowers, for it was in summer, I was thinking what
a fine day it was for a trip to Spain, when Titbottom suddenly
exclaimed:
"Thank God! I own this landscape."
"You," returned I.
"Certainly," said he.
"Why," I answered, "I thought this was part of Bourne's property?"
Titbottom smiled.
"Does Bourne own the sun and sky? Does Bourne own that sailing shadow
yonder? Does Bourne own the golden lustre of the grain, or the motion
of the wood, or those ghosts of hills, that glide pallid along the
horizon? Bourne owns the dirt and fences; I own the beauty that makes
the landscape, or otherwise how could I own castles in Spain?"
That was very true. I respected Titbottom more than ever.
"Do you know," said he, after a long pause, "that I fancy my castles
lie just beyond those distant hills. At all events, I can see them
distinctly from their summits."
He smiled quietly as he spoke, and it was then I asked:
"But, Titbottom, have you never discovered the way to them?"
"Dear me! yes," answered he, "I know the way well enough; but it would
do no good to follow it. I should give out before I arrived. It is a
long and difficult journey for a man of my years and habits--and
income," he added slowly.
As he spoke he seated himself upon the ground; and while he pulled
long blades of grass, and, putting them between his thumbs, whistled
shrilly, he said:
"I have never known but two men who reached their estates in Spain."
"Indeed!" said I, "how did they go?"
"One went over the side of a ship, and the other out of a third story
window," said Titbottom, fitting a broad blade between his thumbs and
blowing a demoniacal blast.
"And I know one proprietor who resides upon his estates constantly,"
continued he.
"Who is that?"
"Our old friend Slug, whom you may see any day at the asylum, just
coming in from the hunt, or going to call upon his friend the Grand
Lama, or dressing for the wedding of the Man in the Moon, or receiving
an ambassador from Timbuctoo. Whenever I go to see him, Slug insists
that I am the Pope, disguised as a journeyman carpenter, and he
entertains me in the most distinguished manner. He always insists
upon kissing my foot, and I bestow upon him, kneeling, the apostolic
benediction. This is the only Spanish proprietor in possession, with
whom I am acquainted."
And, so saying, Titbottom lay back upon the ground, and making a
spy-glass of his hand, surveyed the landscape through it. This was a
marvellous book-keeper of more than sixty!
"I know another man who lived in his Spanish castle for two months,
and then was tumbled out head first. That was young Stunning who
married old Buhl's daughter. She was all smiles, and mamma was all
sugar, and Stunning was all bliss, for two months. He carried his head
in the clouds, and felicity absolutely foamed at his eyes. He was
drowned in love; seeing, as usual, not what really was, but what he
fancied. He lived so exclusively in his castle, that he forgot the
office down town, and one morning there came a fall, and Stunning was
smashed."
Titbottom arose, and stooping over, contemplated the landscape, with
his head down between his legs.
"It's quite a new effect, so," said the nimble book-keeper.
"Well," said I, "Stunning failed?"
"Oh yes, smashed all up, and the castle in Spain came down about his
ears with a tremendous crash. The family sugar was all dissolved into
the original cane in a moment. Fairy-times are over, are they?
Heigh-ho! the falling stones of Stunning's castle have left their
marks all over his face. I call them his Spanish scars."
"But, my dear Titbottom," said I, "what is the matter with you this
morning, your usual sedateness is quite gone?"
"It's only the exhilarating air of Spain," he answered. "My castles
are so beautiful that I can never think of them, nor speak of them,
without excitement; when I was younger I desired to reach them even
more ardently than now, because I heard that the philosopher's stone
was in the vault of one of them."
"Indeed," said I, yielding to sympathy, "and I have good reason to
believe that the fountain of eternal youth flows through the garden of
one of mine. Do you know whether there are any children upon your
grounds?"
"'The children of Alice call Bartrum father!'" replied Titbottom,
solemnly, and in a low voice, as he folded his faded hands before him,
and stood erect, looking wistfully over the landscape. The light wind
played with his thin white hair, and his sober, black suit was almost
sombre in the sunshine. The half bitter expression, which I had
remarked upon his face during part of our conversation, had passed
away, and the old sadness had returned to his eye. He stood, in the
pleasant morning, the very image of a great proprietor of castles in
Spain.
"There is wonderful music there," he said: "sometimes I awake at
night, and hear it. It is full of the sweetness of youth, and love,
and a new world. I lie and listen, and I seem to arrive at the great
gates of my estates. They swing open upon noiseless hinges, and the
tropic of my dreams receives me. Up the broad steps, whose marble
pavement mingled light and shadow print with shifting mosaic, beneath
the boughs of lustrous oleanders, and palms, and trees of unimaginable
fragrance, I pass into the vestibule, warm with summer odors, and into
the presence-chamber beyond, where my wife awaits me. But castle, and
wife, and odorous woods, and pictures, and statues, and all the bright
substance of my household, seem to reel and glimmer in the splendor,
as the music fails.
"But when it swells again, I clasp the wife to my heart, and we move
on with a fair society, beautiful women, noble men, before whom the
tropical luxuriance of that world bends and bows in homage; and,
through endless days and nights of eternal summer, the stately revel
of our life proceeds. Then, suddenly, the music stops. I hear my
watch ticking under the pillow. I see dimly the outline of my little
upper room. Then I fall asleep, and in the morning some one of the
boarders at the breakfast-table says:
"'Did you hear the serenade last night, Mr. Titbottom.'"
I doubted no longer that Titbottom was a very extensive
proprietor. The truth is, that he was so constantly engaged in
planning and arranging his castles, that he conversed very little at
the office, and I had misinterpreted his silence. As we walked
homeward, that day, he was more than ever tender and gentle. "We must
all have something to do in this world," said he, "and I, who have so
much leisure--for you know I have no wife nor children to work
for--know not what I should do, if I had not my castles in Spain to
look after."
When I reached home, my darling Prue was sitting in the small parlor,
reading. I felt a little guilty for having been so long away, and upon
my only holiday, too. So I began to say that Titbottom invited me to
go to walk, and that I had no idea we had gone so far, and that----
"Don't excuse yourself," said Prue, smiling as she laid down her book;
"I am glad you have enjoyed yourself. You ought to go out sometimes,
and breathe the fresh air, and run about the fields, which I am not
strong enough to do. Why did you not bring home Mr. Titbottom to tea?
He is so lonely, and looks so sad. I am sure he has very little
comfort in this life," said my thoughtful Prue, as she called Jane to
set the tea-table.
"But he has a good deal of comfort in Spain, Prue," answered I.
"When was Mr. Titbottom in Spain," inquired my wife.
"Why, he is there more than half the time," I replied.
Prue looked quietly at me and smiled. "I see it has done you good to
breathe the country air," said she. "Jane, get some of the blackberry
jam, and call Adoniram and the children."
So we went in to tea. We eat in the back parlor, for our little house
and limited means do not allow us to have things upon the Spanish
scale. It is better than a sermon to hear my wife Prue talk to the
children; and when she speaks to me it seems sweeter than psalm
singing; at least, such as we have in our church. I am very happy.
Yet I dream my dreams, and attend to my castles in Spain. I have so
much property there, that I could not, in conscience, neglect it. All
the years of my youth, and the hopes of my manhood, are stored away,
like precious stones, in the vaults; and I know that I shall find
everything convenient, elegant, and beautiful, when I come into
possession.
As the years go by, I am not conscious that my interest diminishes. If
I see that age is subtly sifting his snow in the dark hair of my Prue,
I smile, contented, for her hair, dark and heavy as when I first saw
it, is all carefully treasured in my castles in Spain. If I feel her
arm more heavily leaning upon mine, as we walk around the squares, I
press it closely to my side, for I know that the easy grace of her
youth's motion will be restored by the elixir of that Spanish air. If
her voice sometimes falls less clearly from her lips, it is no less
sweet to me for the music of her voice's prime fills, freshly as ever,
those Spanish halls. If the light I love fades a little from her eyes,
I know that the glances she gave me, in our youth, are the eternal
sunshine of my castles in Spain.
I defy time and change. Each year laid upon our heads, is a hand of
blessing. I have no doubt that I shall find the shortest route to my
possessions as soon as need be. Perhaps, when Adoniram is married, we
shall all go out to one of my castles to pass the honey-moon.
Ah! if the true history of Spain could be written what a book were
there! The most purely romantic ruin in the world is the Alhambra. But
of the Spanish castles, more spacious and splendid than any possible
Alhambra, and for ever unruined, no towers are visible, no pictures
have been painted, and only a few ecstatic songs have been sung. The
pleasure-dome of Kubla Khan, which Coleridge saw in Xanadu (a province
with which I am not familiar), and a fine Castle of Indolence
belonging to Thomson, and the Palace of art which Tennyson built as a
"lordly pleasure-house" for his soul, are among the best statistical
accounts of those Spanish estates. Turner, too, has done for them
much the same service that Owen Jones has done for the Alhambra. In
the vignette to Moore's Epicurean you will find represented one of the
most extensive castles in Spain; and there are several exquisite
studies from others, by the same artists, published in Rogers's Italy.
But I confess I do not recognize any of these as mine, and that fact
makes me prouder of my own castles, for, if there be such boundless
variety of magnificence in their aspect and exterior, imagine the life
that is led there, a life not unworthy such a setting.
If Adoniram should be married within a reasonable time, and we should
make up that little family party to go out, I have considered already
what society I should ask to meet the bride. Jephthah's daughter and
the Chevalier Bayard, I should say--and fair Rosamond with Dean
Swift--King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba would come over, I think,
from his famous castle--Shakespeare and his friend the Marquis of
Southampton might come in a galley with Cleopatra; and, if any guest
were offended by her presence, he should devote himself to the Fair
One with Golden Locks. Mephistophiles is not personally disagreeable,
and is exceedingly well-bred in society, I am told; and he should come
_tête-à-tête_ with Mrs. Rawdon Crawley. Spenser should escort his
Faerie Queen, who would preside at the tea-table.
Mr. Samuel Weller I should ask as Lord of Misrule, and Dr. Johnson as
the Abbot of Unreason. I would suggest to Major Dobbin to accompany
Mrs. Fry; Alcibiades would bring Homer and Plato in his purple-sailed
galley; and I would have Aspasia, Ninon de l'Enclos, and Mrs. Battle,
to make up a table of whist with Queen Elizabeth. I shall order a seat
placed in the oratory for Lady Jane Grey and Joan of Arc. I shall
invite General Washington to bring some of the choicest cigars from
his plantation for Sir Walter Raleigh; and Chaucer, Browning, and
Walter Savage Landor, should talk with Goethe, who is to bring Tasso
on one arm and Iphigenia on the other.
Dante and Mr. Carlyle would prefer, I suppose, to go down into the
dark vaults under the castle. The Man in the Moon, the Old Harry, and
William of the Wisp would be valuable additions, and the Laureate
Tennyson might compose an official ode upon the occasion: or I would
ask "They" to say all about it.
Of course there are many other guests whose names I do not at the
moment recall. But I should invite, first of all, Miles Coverdale, who
knows every thing about these places and this society, for he was at
Blithedale, and he has described "a select party" which he attended at
a castle in the air.
Prue has not yet looked over the list. In fact I am not quite sure
that she knows my intention. For I wish to surprise her, and I think
it would be generous to ask Bourne to lead her out in the bridal
quadrille. I think that I shall try the first waltz with the girl I
sometimes seem to see in my fairest castle, but whom I very vaguely
remember. Titbottom will come with old Burton and Jaques. But I have
not prepared half my invitations. Do you not guess it, seeing that I
did not name, first of all, Elia, who assisted at the "Rejoicings upon
the new year's coming of age"?
And yet, if Adoniram should never marry?--or if we could not get to
Spain?--or if the company would not come?
What then? Shall I betray a secret? I have already entertained this
party in my humble little parlor at home; and Prue presided as
serenely as Semiramis over her court. Have I not said that I defy
time, and shall space hope to daunt me? I keep books by day, but by
night books keep me. They leave me to dreams and reveries. Shall I
confess, that sometimes when I have been sitting, reading to my Prue,
Cymbeline, perhaps, or a Canterbury tale, I have seemed to see clearly
before me the broad highway to my castles in Spain; and as she looked
up from her work, and smiled in sympathy, I have even fancied that I
was already there.