From his sixth year, my brother Davie manifested undeniable symptoms
of the divine afflatus, but it was not until fifteen that he commenced
his immortal poem, “The Vengeance of Bernardo Caspiato.” He was a
delicate, pretty, fair boy, with a spiritual countenance, a noble brow,
and abundance of silky brown hair; quite the poet to look at, and very
like my dear mother, as we all daily observed. It was expected that
he would cover the name of Cleverboots with a halo of glory: unlike
some families, we were the first to believe in our hero, and the most
constant in our faith in his splendid future. At the epoch referred to,
Davie began to tie his collar with a black ribbon, to wear his white
throat exposed, and his beautiful hair very long; his appetite did not
fail him in private, but at our little réunions he always partook of
dry toast and strong green tea; was very silent, abstracted, and averse
to men’s society: the women petted him, and called him “all soul.” He
was very kind-hearted and sweet-tempered, and rather vain, which was
nothing more than natural, considering how he was flattered.
He had a little room at the top of the house which looked over the town
to Milverston mere, where the immortal poem was commenced. I remember
he began it on a wet evening, and it opened dismally, with a storm; he
had me up there with my plain sewing to listen to the first stanzas;
and he consulted me about one or two difficult rhymes: he was not
sure whether “horror” and “morrow” were correct. I thought not; and,
his birthday falling three days after, I presented him with a rhyming
dictionary. Subsequently, the poem made rapid progress.
Cousin John had just gone up to London to study law, and my father
wished Davie to be articled to Mr. Briggs, the solicitor at Milverston.
This did not chime in with his taste at all; he stated that it was his
wish to follow the profession of letters. We did not quite understand
this at the time. Cousin Jack said it meant that he wanted to be
the idle gentleman. I had my doubts on the matter. Davie brought my
mother over to his way of thinking. “I shall be very poor, but very
happy, mother,” he used to say; “if you put me to anything else, I
shall be miserable and do no good.” So Davie got his own way; and, as
a preparation for his profession of letters, he stayed at home and
finished “Bernardo Caspiato.” It was a splendid work. I have wept over
it often. The heroine having been executed for witchcraft, her lover,
Bernardo, devotes his life to avenge her; and, after committing a
catalogue of murders, ends by disappearing mysteriously in a flash
of blue lightning to rejoin her in heaven. My mother objected to the
morality of the conclusion; but she acknowledged herself, at the same
time, ignorant of the laws and licence of poetry.
With this great work, and some minor pieces of equal if not superior
merit, my brother Davie went up to London on foot, with ten pounds in
his pocket, and seventeen years of experience on his head. Cousin Jack
had taken comfortable lodgings for him at a small baker’s shop, kept by
a widow woman with a daughter named Lucy. The dear lad wrote us word
that he was quite suited, and that, after a few days to look about
him, he should carry his immortal poem to a publisher. His hopes were
sanguine; his visions of fame magnificent.
To our surprise and grief, Bernardo Caspiato was declined with thanks.
Nobody was inclined to publish it unless the author would bear all the
expenses. Davie would not suffer my father to do this--he would earn
money for himself. We wondered how he could do it; but Cousin Jack
lent him a hand, and somebody who had something to do with a newspaper
bought his minor pieces. He lived, at all events, by his own exertions.
At this time, Lucy began to figure in letters to me marked “private.”
It would be impossible to give the whole story as therein developed,
but I will epitomise it as afterwards heard from his own lips.
He fell enthusiastically in love with Lucy, whose beauty he raved about
as ethereal, heavenly, unsophisticated: before I heard of her at all he
was evidently far gone in the tender passion; and Lucy had listened so
often, and with such a graceful interest, to his literary struggles,
that he fancied he had every reason to believe that his affection was
returned. One morning, however, all these sunny hopes were rudely
dispelled. He had seen once or twice a young man of rustic appearance
in the shop, he had also known him to take tea in the back parlour
with Mrs. Lawley and her daughter, without attaching any significance
to his visits. As Davie sat at breakfast on this particular day, this
individual drove to the door in a gig, and was pleasantly received by
the landlady. He wore quite a festal appearance, and for the first time
a suspicion entered Davie’s mind which changed quickly to a certainty.
After speaking to Mrs. Lawley for a minute or two, the young man ran
out to stop the driver of a waggon loaded with sacks of grain, and,
while holding him in talk, the poor poet from the up-stairs window took
an inventory, as it were, of his rival’s personal graces. He was of
a very tall, straight, and robust figure, with a broad, comely face,
ruddy complexion, and curly brown hair. His voice was like the roll
of an organ, and his laugh the very heartiest of guffaws--altogether,
a very proper man, as Davie, but for his jealousy, must have
acknowledged. The stranger’s rollicking air of gaiety added present
insult to previous injury; and to get out of the hearing of his rich
“ha ha,” which seemed to pervade the whole neighbourhood, Davie
snatched up his hat, intending to walk off his spleen: he pushed
halfway down the stairs, but there paused--just below, in the passage
by the back-parlour door, was the obnoxious rustic, with his arm round
bonny Lucy’s waist, and his lips seeking a kiss; while the damsel’s
hand was put up to shield her cheek, and her tongue was saying, in that
pretty accent which lovers never take as truth, “Don’t, Tom; please
don’t!” Tom caught the uplifted fingers, and held them fast till he
had taken a dozen kisses to indemnify himself for the delay. Davie,
greatly discomfited, retreated to his room, and made cautious surveys
before venturing to leave it again. He quite hated Tom, who was a fine,
single-minded young fellow, guilty of no greater sin against him than
having won blue-eyed Lucy’s heart.
When Mrs. Lawley came up-stairs to remove her lodger’s
breakfast-things, she looked glowing with importance, and, after a
short hesitation, confided to him the great family secret--Mr. Tom
Burton, of Ravenscroft Farm, had offered for Lucy, and they were to be
married that day week. “You’ll have seen him, sir, maybe?” said the
proud mother; “he’s been here as often as twice a-week; and, when I
told him it behoved him to stop at home and attend to his farm, he’d
tell me that corn would grow without watching; and I soon saw what he
meant. So, as Lucy was noways unwilling, I bade ’em have done with
all this courting and courting, and get wed out of hand. Perhaps, Mr.
David, you’ll be so good as go out for the day, and let us have your
room for breakfast--or we should be proud of your company, sir.”
The poor poet almost choked over his congratulations, but he got
them out in a way. Soon after, he saw the lovers cross the street,
arm-in-arm, spruced up for the occasion, and looking as stiff as Sunday
clothes worn on a week-day always make rustic lovers look--everybody
who met them might know what they were. Tom had a rather bashful and
surprised expression; as if he were astonished to find himself part
owner of such a fresh, modest, little daisy of a sweetheart, and were
not quite sure that it was her cottage bonnet just below his great
shoulder, for so long as Davie had them in sight he kept looking down
into it to make sure Lucy was there. Davie’s feelings were almost too
much for him, but he made a magnanimous resolve that as Lucy had been
so good and attentive to him, he would make her a present, and, that
he might endure the deepest pangs, that present should be the wedding
dress and bonnet. He went off accordingly, post haste, to a great
millinery establishment, and purchased a dove-coloured silk dress, and
the most sweetly pretty white bonnet, with orange blossoms, that could
be had for money. When Lucy and Tom returned from their walk, he called
her up-stairs and presented them to her. She contemplated them with
surprised delight, blushing and clasping her hands over them: never was
there anything so beautiful.
Davie bade her try the bonnet on, to see how it would fit, and,
without an atom of coquetry, she put it on, tied the strings under her
chin, and rose on tip-toe to peep at herself in the glass over the
chimney-piece.
“I must let” (Lucy was going to say “Tom,” but she substituted “mother”
instead); “I must let mother see it!” and she ran out of the room,
leaving the door open, with that intent. But somebody met her on the
stairs, and stopped her for examination. Davie tried to shut his ears,
but he could not help hearing that ominous “Don’t, Tom; please don’t;”
though, as balm to his wounded feelings, he also caught the echo of
a--what shall I say?--a slap? a box?--what do you call it when a pretty
maiden brings her hand sharply in contact with her lover’s cheek? Well,
no matter--it is a something which always is or ought to be avenged by
six kisses on the spot; it was condignly punished in this instance,
for Tom lacked modesty even more than French polish. Davie instantly
slammed the door, and sat down to compose his feelings by inditing a
sonnet on “Disappointed Love.” When it was finished--the lines being
flowing and the rhymes musical--he felt more placid and easy in his
mind; but, before the wedding, he withdrew himself from the house, and
went into country lodgings to hide his griefs. In process of time he
rhymed himself into a belief that he was the victim of a disappointed
passion, the prey of a devouring sorrow; that his heart was a wreck,
a ruin, dust, ashes, a stone, dwelling alone; that life was stale, an
unfinished tale, a hopeless, joyless pageant: all because blue-eyed
Lucy had married Tom Burton of Ravenscroft.
This was the early love-romance which furnished my brother Davie
with his cynicism, his similes of darts, flames, and wounds that are
scattered everywhere through his verses. Some of the productions of
his troubled muse, after he fled to Highgate, shall be quoted. What
would have been Lucy’s astonishment could she have heard herself
apostrophised in such burning numbers! her orbs of sunny blue would
have dilated until she would have looked, indeed, a round-eyed Juno.
Here is one of Davie’s effusions from a little manuscript-book, bound
in white vellum, the confidante of his poetical woes at this mournful
era:--
Thou hast come like a mist o’er my glorious dreaming,
Thy image stands up ’twixt my soul and the sun!
Oh! why, when youth’s noontide of gladness was beaming,
Hast thou darken’d all that it shone upon?
To see thee, to love thee, ay, love thee to madness,
To know that thou ne’er couldst be aught to me!
To leave thee! and read in my spirit’s lone sadness,
That the love was all hopeless I centred in thee!
The muse appears at this junction to have been quite troublesome
with her declarations. The following was written one evening instead
of going to dinner like a Christian gentleman to Uncle Sampson’s on
Christmas Day. It stands entitled, I Love Thee! and is written with a
neatness that says little for its spontaneity:--
I love thee! O, never did summer sea
Greet sunshine more gladly than I greet thee!
Like dew to spring flowers, like stars to dusk night
Art thou with thy glances of liquid light!
I love thee, as only those hearts can love
Whose burning devotion is hard to move!
Life, beauty, and hope, thou art all to me,--
A voice and an echo of melody!
It seems rather as if sense were made subordinate to sound in some of
these lucubrations, but they are not so bad for seventeen. Davie came
back to Milverston for a little while at this season, and cultivated
his grief, to the great disorder of our regular household. One night he
stayed out so late that my father went in search of him and found him
by the mere, seeking inspiration from the stars. On this occasion he
produced eight more lines, which seem to have been the utmost his muse
could bring for that one time. It is called, in the vellum book into
which it is carefully transcribed, Tell me, my Heart:--
Tell me, my heart, the reason of thy sadness,
Why peoplest thou thy solitude with dreams?
Why dost thou shun the scenes of mirth and gladness
To find thy echo in the lonely streams?
Alas! my heart, that thy poor love should wander,
Where it can meet with nought but cold disdain!
Sad that its treasures thus my soul should squander
Where it can reap but tears and griefs again!
Good little Lucy would have been sorry, indeed, if she could have known
into what a limbo of anguish Davie was thrown by her marriage; but let
us hope, as she might have done, that the best half of the tortures
were only fancy. I know he had at the worst an excellent appetite for
lamb and asparagus, to which he was very partial. Dear Davie, to read
these effusions, tender imaginations may think of him as fine porcelain
fractured with the world’s hard usage, whereas he is stout and bald,
and wears green spectacles. The law does not undertake to deal with
poetry composed under false pretences, or many would be the sighing
Strephons and doleful Delias brought up for judgment.
Last summer we had Davie at home for a month, and during that time
occurred the grand incremation of Bernardo Caspiato. I shall ever
regard it as a most cruel sacrifice, and Cousin Jack, who instigated
it, as an illiterate character. Davie brought it forth one evening
when we three were together, and read parts of it aloud: Jack
unfeelingly remarked that it was not like good wine, it did not improve
with keeping; that, like fruit plucked immaturely, it was green and
tasteless; it had not acquired mellowness and flavor, and if stored
up for another twenty years it would not taste better. Davie half
coincided with him; but I did not; so grandly majestic as was the march
of the lines, so delicate and true the rhymes, so thrilling the noble
catastrophe. It exasperated me to see Jack, first yawn to the full
extent of his jaws, then snatch the manuscript from Davie, and toss it
up to the ceiling, retreating afterwards in feigned fear lest he should
be crushed by its leaden fall. An ignoble fate was thine,--immortal
Bernardo! Convicted of the respectable sin of dulness--which none
pardon--thou wert condemned to be burnt! Davie did not act with undue
precipitation; Jack urged an immediate execution, but the poet took a
week to consider of it, and many a pang it cost him. Those who have
written immortal poems and destroyed them will appreciate his feelings;
none else can. Let anybody of experience call to mind the last time
he has read through the letters from his first love, just before she
was married to somebody else; or the letters from that particular old
friend, which it is of no use to keep because he is dead, or you have
quarrelled beyond hope of reconciliation, and then some faint idea will
be conceived of the poet’s sensations at this immolation of his first
love, his particular friend, and his pet child--all in one.
It was the summer-season, and warm,--I found it very warm; there was no
fire in the grate, and the match-box on the writing-table was empty.
Jack supplied the want eagerly from his smoking apparatus, and Bernardo
Caspiato shrank into a pinch of tinder. I wept.
“There!” said poor Davie, with a profound sigh, “it took two years to
write and two seconds to destroy--just like an eternal friendship,
an undying affection, or anything of that kind which half a dozen
indiscreet words are at any time enough to annihilate!”
“Have a cigar, old boy; never mind moralising,” said Jack, to whom a
cigar would be consolation for the death of his grandmother; “have a
cigar; the business can’t be helped.”
“Poor Bernardo!” said Davie, as feelingly as if he spoke of a brother,
“poor Bernardo! He gave me many an hour’s delightful occupation. I feel
as if I had lost a friend to whom I had been in the habit of confiding
my sentimental vagaries. I’m not sure that it was right to burn him.”
“Have a cigar,” reiterated Cousin Jack. Davie accepted the offer with a
pensive sigh, put on his green spectacles, and went out for a walk in
mournful mood. It is a serious thing burning immortal poems. Nobody
can tell what losses the world has had in that way--nobody!