Anne Soulard, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team.
MEMORIALS, AND OTHER PAPERS, VOL. I.
BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY
FROM THE AUTHOR, TO THE AMERICAN EDITOR OF HIS WORKS.
These papers I am anxious to put into the hands of your house, and, so
far as regards the U.S., of your house exclusively; not with any view
to further emolument, but as an acknowledgment of the services which you
have already rendered me; namely, first, in having brought together so
widely scattered a collection--a difficulty which in my own hands by
too painful an experience I had found from nervous depression to be
absolutely insurmountable; secondly, in having made me a participator in
the pecuniary profits of the American edition, without solicitation or
the shadow of any expectation on my part, without any legal claim that
I could plead, or equitable warrant in established usage, solely and
merely upon your own spontaneous motion. Some of these new papers, I
hope, will not be without their value in the eyes of those who have
taken an interest in the original series. But at all events, good or
bad, they are now tendered to the appropriation of your individual
house, the Messrs. TICKNOR & FIELDS, according to the amplest extent of
any power to make such a transfer that I may be found to possess by law
or custom in America.
I wish this transfer were likely to be of more value. But the veriest
trifle, interpreted by the spirit in which I offer it, may express my
sense of the liberality manifested throughout this transaction by your
honorable house.
Ever believe me, my dear sir,
Your faithful and obliged,
THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.
EXPLANATORY NOTICES THE ORPHAN HEIRESS. VISIT TO LAXTON
THE PRIORY
OXFORD THE PAGAN ORACLES THE REVOLUTION OF GREECE
EXPLANATORY NOTICES.
Many of the papers in my collected works were originally written under
one set of disadvantages, and are now revised under another. They were
written generally under great pressure as to time, in order to catch the
critical periods of monthly journals; written oftentimes at a distance
from the press (so as to have no opportunity for correction); and always
written at a distance from libraries, so that very many statements,
references, and citations, were made on the authority of my unassisted
memory. Under such circumstances were most of the papers composed; and
they are now reissued in a corrected form, sometimes even partially
recast, under the distraction of a nervous misery which embarrasses my
efforts in a mode and in a degree inexpressible by words. Such, indeed,
is the distress produced by this malady, that, if the present act of
republication had in any respect worn the character of an experiment, I
should have shrunk from it in despondency. But the experiment, so far
as there was any, had been already tried for me vicariously amongst the
Americans; a people so nearly repeating our own in style of intellect,
and in the composition of their reading class, that a success amongst
them counts for a success amongst ourselves. For some few of the
separate papers in these volumes I make pretensions of a higher cast.
These pretensions I will explain hereafter. All the rest I resign to the
reader's unbiased judgment, adding here, with respect to four of them,
a few prefatory words--not of propitiation or deprecation, but simply
in explanation as to points that would otherwise be open to
misconstruction.
1. The paper on "Murder as one of the Fine Arts" [Footnote: Published
in the "Miscellaneous Essays."] seemed to exact from me some account of
Williams, the dreadful London murderer of the last generation; not only
because the amateurs had so much insisted on his merit as the supreme of
artists for grandeur of design and breadth of style; and because, apart
from this momentary connection with my paper, the man himself merited
a record for his matchless audacity, combined with so much of snaky
subtlety, and even insinuating amiableness, in his demeanor; but also
because, apart from the man himself, the works of the man (those two of
them especially which so profoundly impressed the nation in 1812) were
in themselves, for dramatic effect, the most impressive on record.
Southey pronounced their preeminence when he said to me that they ranked
amongst the few domestic events which, by the depth and the expansion
of horror attending them, had risen to the dignity of a _national_
interest. I may add that this interest benefited also by the mystery
which invested the murders; mystery as to various points but especially
as respected one important question, Had the murderer any accomplice?
[Footnote: Upon a large overbalance of probabilities, it was, however,
definitively agreed amongst amateurs that Williams must have been alone
in these atrocities. Meantime, amongst the colorable presumptions on
the other side was this:--Some hours after the last murder, a man was
apprehended at Barnet (the first stage from London on a principal
north road), encumbered with a quantity of plate. How he came by it,
or whither he was going, he steadfastly refused to say. In the daily
journals, which he was allowed to see, he read with eagerness the
police examinations of Williams; and on the same day which announced the
catastrophe of Williams, he also committed suicide in his cell.] There
was, therefore, reason enough, both in the man's hellish character,
and in the mystery which surrounded him, for a Postscript [Footnote:
Published in the "Note Book."] to the original paper; since, in a lapse
of forty-two years, both the man and his deeds had faded away from the
knowledge of the present generation; but still I am sensible that my
record is far too diffuse. Feeling this at the very time of writing,
I was yet unable to correct it; so little self-control was I able
to exercise under the afflicting agitations and the unconquerable
impatience of my nervous malady.
2. "War." [Footnote: Published in "Narrative and Miscellaneous
Essays."]--In this paper, from having faultily adjusted its proportions
in the original outline, I find that I have dwelt too briefly and too
feebly upon the capital interest at stake. To apply a correction to
some popular misreadings of history, to show that the criminal (because
trivial) occasions of war are not always its true causes, or to suggest
that war (if resigned to its own natural movement of progress) is
cleansing itself and ennobling itself constantly and inevitably, were it
only through its connection with science ever more and more exquisite,
and through its augmented costliness,--all this may have its use in
offering some restraint upon the levity of action or of declamation in
Peace Societies. But all this is below the occasion. I feel that far
grander interests are at stake in this contest. The Peace Societies
are falsely appreciated, when they are described as merely deaf to the
lessons of experience, and as too "_romantic_" in their expectations.
The very opposite is, to _my_ thinking, their criminal reproach. He that
is romantic errs usually by too much elevation. He violates the standard
of reasonable expectation, by drawing too violently upon the nobilities
of human nature. But, on the contrary, the Peace Societies would, if
their power kept pace with their guilty purposes, work degradation for
man by drawing upon his most effeminate and luxurious cravings for ease.
Most heartily, and with my profoundest sympathy, do I go along with
Wordsworth in his grand lyrical proclamation of a truth not less divine
than it is mysterious, not less triumphant than it is sorrowful, namely,
that amongst God's holiest instruments for the elevation of human
nature is "mutual slaughter" amongst men; yes, that "Carnage is
God's daughter." Not deriving my own views in this matter from
Wordsworth,--not knowing even whether I hold them on the same grounds,
since Wordsworth has left _his_ grounds unexplained,--nevertheless
I cite them in honor, as capable of the holiest justification. The
instruments rise in grandeur, carnage and mutual slaughter rise in
holiness, exactly as the motives and the interests rise on behalf of
which such awful powers are invoked. Fighting for truth in its last
recesses of sanctity, for human dignity systematically outraged, or
for human rights mercilessly trodden under foot--champions of such
interests, men first of all descry, as from a summit suddenly revealed,
the possible grandeur of bloodshed suffered or inflicted. Judas and
Simon Maccabæus in days of old, Gustavus Adolphus [Footnote: The
Thirty Years' War, from 1618 to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, was
notoriously the last and the decisive conflict between Popery and
Protestantism; the result of that war it was which finally enlightened
all the Popish princes of Christendom as to the impossibility of
ever suppressing the antagonist party by mere force of arms. I am
not meaning, however, to utter any opinion whatever on the religious
position of the two great parties. It is sufficient for entire sympathy
with the royal Swede, that he fought for the freedom of conscience. Many
an enlightened Roman Catholic, supposing only that he were not a Papist,
would have given his hopes and his confidence to the Protestant king.]
in modern days, fighting for the violated rights of conscience
against perfidious despots and murdering oppressors, exhibit to us
the incarnations of Wordsworth's principle. Such wars are of rare
occurrence. Fortunately they are so; since, under the possible
contingencies of human strength and weakness, it might else happen
that the grandeur of the principle should suffer dishonor through the
incommensurate means for maintaining it. But such cases, though emerging
rarely, are always to be reserved in men's minds as ultimate appeals to
what is most divine in man. Happy it is for human welfare that the
blind heart of man is a thousand times wiser than his understanding. An
_arrière pensée_ should lie hidden in all minds--a holy reserve as to
cases which _may_ arise similar to such as HAVE arisen, where a merciful
bloodshed [Footnote: "_Merciful bloodshed_"--In reading either the later
religious wars of the Jewish people under the Maccabees, or the earlier
under Joshua, every philosophic reader will have felt the true and
transcendent spirit of mercy which resides virtually in such wars, as
maintaining the unity of God against Polytheism and, by trampling
on cruel idolatries, as indirectly opening the channels for benign
principles of morality through endless generations of men. Here
especially he will have read one justification of Wordsworth's bold
doctrine upon war. Thus far he will destroy a wisdom working from afar,
but, as regards the immediate present, he will be apt to adopt the
ordinary view, namely, that in the Old Testament severity prevails
approaching to cruelty. Yet, on consideration, he will be disposed
to qualify this opinion. He will have observed many indications of a
relenting kindness and a tenderness of love in the Mosaical ordinances.
And recently there has been suggested another argument tending to the
same conclusion. In the last work of Mr. Layard ('Discoveries in the
Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, 1853') are published some atrocious
monuments of the Assyrian cruelty in the treatment of military captives.
In one of the plates of Chap xx., at page 456, is exhibited some unknown
torture applied to the head, and in another, at page 458, is exhibited
the abominable process, applied to two captives, of flaying them alive.
One such case had been previously recorded in human literature, and
illustrated by a plate. It occurs in a Dutch voyage to the islands of
the East. The subject of the torment in that case as a woman who had
been charged with some act of infidelity to her husband. And the local
government, being indignantly summoned to interfere by some Christian
strangers, had declined to do so, on the plea that the man was master
within his own house. But the Assyrian case was worse. This torture was
there applied, not upon a sudden vindictive impulse, but in cold blood,
to a simple case apparently of civil disobedience or revolt. Now, when
we consider how intimate, and how ancient, was the connection between
Assyria and Palestine, how many things (in war especially) were
transferred mediately through the intervening tribes (all habitually
cruel), from the people on the Tigris to those on the Jordan, I
feel convinced that Moses must have interfered most peremptorily and
determinately, and not merely by verbal ordinances, but by establishing
counter usages against this spirit of barbarity, otherwise it would have
increased contagiously, whereas we meet with no such hellish atrocities
amongst the children of Israel. In the case of one memorable outrage by
a Hebrew tribe, the national vengeance which overtook it was complete
and tearful beyond all that history has recorded] has been authorized
by the express voice of God. Such a reserve cannot be dispensed with. It
belongs to the principle of progress in man that he should forever keep
open a secret commerce in the last resort with the spirit of martyrdom
on behalf of man's most saintly interests. In proportion as the
instruments for upholding or retrieving such saintly interests should
come to be dishonored or less honored, would the inference be valid that
those interests were shaking in their foundations. And any confederation
or compact of nations for abolishing war would be the inauguration of a
downward path for man.
A battle is by possibility the grandest, and also the meanest, of human
exploits. It is the grandest when it is fought for godlike truth, for
human dignity, or for human rights; it is the meanest when it is fought
for petty advantages (as, by way of example, for accession of territory
which adds nothing to the security of a frontier), and still more when
it is fought simply as a gladiator's trial of national prowess. This is
the principle upon which, very naturally, our British school-boys value
a battle. Painful it is to add, that this is the principle upon which
our adult neighbors the French seem to value a battle.
To any man who, like myself, admires the high-toned, martial gallantry
of the French, and pays a cheerful tribute of respect to their many
intellectual triumphs, it is painful to witness the childish state of
feeling which the French people manifest on every possible question
that connects itself at any point with martial pretensions. A battle
is valued by them on the same principles, not better and not worse, as
govern our own schoolboys. Every battle is viewed by the boys as a
test applied to the personal prowess of each individual soldier; and,
naturally amongst boys, it would be the merest hypocrisy to take any
higher ground. But amongst adults, arrived at the power of reflecting
and comparing, we look for something nobler. We English estimate
Waterloo, not by its amount of killed and wounded, but as the battle
which terminated a series of battles, having one common object, namely,
the overthrow of a frightful tyranny. A great sepulchral shadow rolled
away from the face of Christendom as that day's sun went down to his
rest; for, had the success been less absolute, an opportunity would have
offered for negotiation, and consequently for an infinity of intrigues
through the feuds always gathering upon national jealousies amongst
allied armies. The dragon would soon have healed his wounds; after which
the prosperity of the despotism would have been greater than before.
But, without reference to Waterloo in particular, _we_, on _our_ part,
find it impossible to contemplate any memorable battle otherwise than
according to its tendency towards some commensurate object. To the
French this must be impossible, seeing that no lofty (that is, no
disinterested) purpose has ever been so much as counterfeited for a
French war, nor therefore for a French battle. Aggression, cloaked at
the very utmost in the garb of retaliation for counter aggressions
on the part of the enemy, stands forward uniformly in the van of such
motives as it is thought worth while to plead. But in French casuistry
it is not held necessary to plead _any_thing; war justifies itself. To
fight for the experimental purpose of trying the proportions of martial
merit, but (to speak frankly) for the purpose of publishing and renewing
to Europe the proclamation of French superiority--_that_ is the object
of French wars. Like the Spartan of old, the Frenchman would hold that
a state of peace, and not a state of war, is the state which calls for
apology; and that already from the first such an apology must wear a
very suspicious aspect of paradox.
3. "The English Mail-Coach." [Footnote: Published in the "Miscellaneous
Essays."]--This little paper, according to my original intention,
formed part of the "Suspiria de Profundis," from which, for a momentary
purpose, I did not scruple to detach it, and to publish it apart, as
sufficiently intelligible even when dislocated from its place in
a larger whole. To my surprise, however, one or two critics, not
carelessly in conversation, but deliberately in print, professed their
inability to apprehend the meaning of the whole, or to follow the links
of the connection between its several parts. I am myself as little
able to understand where the difficulty lies, or to detect any lurking
obscurity, as those critics found themselves to unravel my logic.
Possibly I may not be an indifferent and neutral judge in such a case. I
will therefore sketch a brief abstract of the little paper according to
my own original design, and then leave the reader to judge how far this
design is kept in sight through the actual execution.
Thirty-seven years ago, or rather more, accident made me, in the dead
of night, and of a night memorably solemn, the solitary witness to an
appalling scene, which threatened instant death, in a shape the most
terrific, to two young people, whom I had no means of assisting, except
in so far as I was able to give them a most hurried warning of their
danger; but even _that_ not until they stood within the very shadow
of the catastrophe, being divided from the most frightful of deaths by
scarcely more, if more at all, than seventy seconds.
Such was the scene, such in its outline, from which the whole of this
paper radiates as a natural expansion. The scene is circumstantially
narrated in Section the Second, entitled, "The Vision of Sudden Death."
But a movement of horror and of spontaneous recoil from this dreadful
scene naturally carried the whole of that scene, raised and idealised,
into my dreams, and very soon into a rolling succession of dreams.
The actual scene, as looked down upon from the box of the mail, was
transformed into a dream, as tumultuous and changing as a musical fugue.
This troubled Dream is circumstantially reported in Section the Third,
entitled, "Dream-Fugue upon the Theme of Sudden Death." What I had
beheld from my seat upon the mail,--the scenical strife of action and
passion, of anguish and fear, as I had there witnessed them moving in
ghostly silence; this duel between life and death narrowing itself to a
point of such exquisite evanescence as the collision neared,--all these
elements of the scene blended, under the law of association, with
the previous and permanent features of distinction investing the mail
itself, which features at that time lay--1st, in velocity unprecedented;
2dly, in the power and beauty of the horses: 3dly, in the official
connection with the government of a great nation; and, 4thly, in the
function, almost a consecrated function, of publishing and diffusing
through the land the great political events, and especially the great
battles during a conflict of unparalleled grandeur. These honorary
distinctions are all described circumstantially in the FIRST or
introductory section ("The Glory of Motion"). The three first were
distinctions maintained at all times; but the fourth and grandest
belonged exclusively to the war with Napoleon; and this it was
which most naturally introduced Waterloo into the dream. Waterloo, I
understood, was the particular feature of the "Dream-Fugue" which my
censors were least able to account for. Yet surely Waterloo, which, in
common with every other great battle, it had been our special privilege
to publish over all the land, most naturally entered the Dream under the
license of our privilege. If not--if there be anything amiss--let the
Dream be responsible. The Dream is a law to itself; and as well quarrel
with a rainbow for showing, or for _not_ showing, a secondary arch.
So far as I know, every element in the shifting movements of the Dream
derived itself either primarily from the incidents of the actual scene,
or from secondary features associated with the mail. For example, the
cathedral aisle derived itself from the mimic combination of features
which grouped themselves together at the point of approaching collision,
namely, an arrow-like section of the road, six hundred yards long,
under the solemn lights described, with lofty trees meeting overhead in
arches. The guard's horn, again--a humble instrument in itself--was yet
glorified as the organ of publication for so many great national
events. And the incident of the Dying Trumpeter, who rises from a marble
bas-relief, and carries a marble trumpet to his marble lips for the
purpose of warning the female infant, was doubtless secretly suggested
by my own imperfect effort to seize the guard's horn, and to blow a
warning blast. But the Dream knows best; and the Dream, I say again, is
the responsible party.
4. "The Spanish Nun." [Footnote: Published in "Narrative and
Miscellaneous Essays."]--There are some narratives, which, though pure
fictions from first to last, counterfeit so vividly the air of grave
realities, that, if deliberately offered for such, they would for a time
impose upon everybody. In the opposite scale there are other narratives,
which, whilst rigorously true, move amongst characters and scenes so
remote from our ordinary experience, and through, a state of society
so favorable to an adventurous cast of incidents, that they would
everywhere pass for romances, if severed from the documents which attest
their fidelity to facts. In the former class stand the admirable
novels of De Foe; and, on a lower range, within the same category, the
inimitable "Vicar of Wakefield;" upon which last novel, without at all
designing it, I once became the author of the following instructive
experiment. I had given a copy of this little novel to a beautiful girl
of seventeen, the daughter of a statesman in Westmoreland, not designing
any deception (nor so much as any concealment) with respect to the
fictitious character of the incidents and of the actors in that famous
tale. Mere accident it was that had intercepted those explanations as to
the extent of fiction in these points which in this case it would
have been so natural to make. Indeed, considering the exquisite
verisimilitude of the work meeting with such absolute inexperience in
the reader, it was almost a duty to have made them. This duty, however,
something had caused me to forget; and when next I saw the young
mountaineer, I forgot that I _had_ forgotten it. Consequently, at first
I was perplexed by the unfaltering gravity with which my fair young
friend spoke of Dr. Primrose, of Sophia and her sister, of Squire
Thornhill, &c., as real and probably living personages, who could sue
and be sued. It appeared that this artless young rustic, who had never
heard of novels and romances as a bare possibility amongst all the
shameless devices of London swindlers, had read with religious fidelity
every word of this tale, so thoroughly life-like, surrendering her
perfect faith and her loving sympathy to the different persons in the
tale, and the natural distresses in which they are involved, without
suspecting, for a moment, that by so much as a breathing of exaggeration
or of embellishment the pure gospel truth of the narrative could have
been sullied. She listened, in a kind of breathless stupor, to my frank
explanation--that not part only, but the whole, of this natural tale
was a pure invention. Scorn and indignation flashed from her eyes. She
regarded herself as one who had been hoaxed and swindled; begged me
to take back the book; and never again, to the end of her life, could
endure to look into the book, or to be reminded of that criminal
imposture which Dr. Oliver Goldsmith had practised upon her youthful
credulity.
In that case, a book altogether fabulous, and not meaning to offer
itself for anything else, had been read as genuine history. Here, on the
other hand, the adventures of the Spanish Nun, which in every detail of
time and place have since been sifted and authenticated, stood a good
chance at one period of being classed as the most lawless of romances.
It is, indeed, undeniable, and this arises as a natural result from the
bold, adventurous character of the heroine, and from the unsettled state
of society at that period in Spanish America, that a reader the most
credulous would at times be startled with doubts upon what seems so
unvarying a tenor of danger and lawless violence. But, on the other
hand, it is also undeniable that a reader the most obstinately sceptical
would be equally startled in the very opposite direction, on remarking
that the incidents are far from being such as a romance-writer would
have been likely to invent; since, if striking, tragic, and even
appalling, they are at times repulsive. And it seems evident that, once
putting himself to the cost of a wholesale fiction, the writer would
have used his privilege more freely for his own advantage. Whereas the
author of these memoirs clearly writes under the coercion and restraint
of a _notorious reality_, that would not suffer him to ignore or to
modify the leading facts. Then, as to the objection that few people
or none have an experience presenting such uniformity of perilous
adventure, a little closer attention shows that the experience in this
case is _not_ uniform; and so far otherwise, that a period of several
years in Kate's South American life is confessedly suppressed; and on
no other ground whatever than that this long parenthesis is _not_
adventurous, not essentially differing from the monotonous character of
ordinary Spanish life.
Suppose the case, therefore, that Kate's memoirs had been thrown upon
the world with no vouchers for their authenticity beyond such internal
presumptions as would have occurred to thoughtful readers, when
reviewing the entire succession of incidents, I am of opinion that the
person best qualified by legal experience to judge of evidence
would finally have pronounced a favorable award; since it is easy to
understand that in a world so vast as the Peru, the Mexico, the Chili,
of Spaniards during the first quarter of the seventeenth century, and
under the slender modification of Indian manners as yet effected by the
Papal Christianization of those countries, and in the neighborhood of
a river-system so awful, of a mountain-system so unheard-of in Europe,
there would probably, by blind, unconscious sympathy, grow up a tendency
to lawless and gigantesque ideals of adventurous life; under which,
united with the duelling code of Europe, many things would become
trivial and commonplace experiences that to us home-bred English ("_qui
musas colimus severiores_") seem monstrous and revolting.
Left, therefore, to itself, _my_ belief is, that the story of the
Military Nun would have prevailed finally against the demurs of the
sceptics. However, in the mean time, all such demurs were suddenly and
_officially_ silenced forever. Soon after the publication of Kate's
memoirs, in what you may call an early stage of her _literary_ career,
though two centuries after her _personal_ career had closed, a regular
controversy arose upon the degree of credit due to these extraordinary
confessions (such they may be called) of the poor conscience-haunted
nun. Whether these in Kate's original MS. were entitled "Autobiographic
Sketches," or "Selections Grave and Gay," from the military experiences
of a Nun, or possibly "The Confessions of a Biscayan Fire-Eater," is
more than I know. No matter: confessions they were; and confessions
that, when at length published, were absolutely mobbed and hustled by
a gang of misbelieving (that is, _miscreant_) critics. And this fact is
most remarkable, that the person who originally headed the incredulous
party, namely, Senor de Ferrer, a learned Castilian, was the very same
who finally authenticated, by _documentary_ evidence, the extraordinary
narrative in those parts which had most of all invited scepticism. The
progress of the dispute threw the decision at length upon the archives
of the Spanish Marine. Those for the southern ports of Spain had been
transferred, I believe, from Cadiz and St. Lucar to Seville; chiefly,
perhaps, through the confusions incident to the two French invasions of
Spain in our own day [1st, that under Napoleon; 2dly, that under the
Due d'Angoulême]. Amongst these archives, subsequently amongst those of
Cuzco, in South America; 3dly, amongst the records of some royal courts
in Madrid; 4thly, by collateral proof from the Papal Chancery; 5thly,
from Barcelona--have been drawn together ample attestations of all the
incidents recorded by Kate. The elopement from St. Sebastian's, the
doubling of Cape Horn, the shipwreck on the coast of Peru, the rescue of
the royal banner from the Indians of Chili, the fatal duel in the dark,
the astonishing passage of the Andes, the tragical scenes at Tucuman and
Cuzco, the return to Spain in obedience to a royal and a papal summons,
the visit to Rome and the interview with the Pope--finally, the return
to South America, and the mysterious disappearance at Vera Cruz, upon
which no light was ever thrown--all these capital heads of the
narrative have been established beyond the reach of scepticism: and,
in consequence, the story was soon after adopted as historically
established, and was reported at length by journals of the highest
credit in Spain and Germany, and by a Parisian journal so cautious and
so distinguished for its ability as the _Revue des Deux Mondes_.
I must not leave the impression upon my readers that this complex body
of documentary evidences has been searched and appraised by myself.
Frankly I acknowledge that, on the sole occasion when any opportunity
offered itself for such a labor, I shrank from it as too fatiguing--and
also as superfluous; since, if the proofs had satisfied the compatriots
of Catalina, who came to the investigation with hostile feelings of
partisanship, and not dissembling their incredulity,--armed also (and in
Mr. de Ferrer's case conspicuously armed) with the appropriate learning
for giving effect to this incredulity,--it could not become a stranger
to suppose himself qualified for disturbing a judgment that had been
so deliberately delivered. Such a tribunal of native Spaniards being
satisfied, there was no further opening for demur. The ratification of
poor Kate's memoirs is now therefore to be understood as absolute, and
without reserve.
This being stated,--namely, such an attestation from competent
authorities to the truth of Kate's narrative as may save all readers
from my fair Westmoreland friend's disaster,--it remains to give such an
answer, as without further research _can_ be given, to a question pretty
sure of arising in all reflective readers' thoughts--namely, does there
anywhere survive a portrait of Kate? I answer--and it would be both
mortifying and perplexing if I could _not_--_Yes_. One such portrait
there is confessedly; and seven years ago this was to be found at
Aix-la-Chapelle, in the collection of Herr Sempeller. The name of
the artist I am not able to report; neither can I say whether
Herr Sempeller's collection still remains intact, and remains at
Aix-la-Chapelle.
But inevitably to most readers who review the circumstances of a case so
extraordinary, it will occur that beyond a doubt _many_ portraits of the
adventurous nun must have been executed. To have affronted the wrath of
the Inquisition, and to have survived such an audacity, would of itself
be enough to found a title for the martial nun to a national interest.
It is true that Kate had not taken the veil; she had stopped short
of the deadliest crime known to the Inquisition; but still her
transgressions were such as to require a special indulgence; and this
indulgence was granted by a Pope to the intercession of a king--the
greatest then reigning. It was a favor that could not have been asked
by any greater man in this world, nor granted by any less. Had no other
distinction settled upon Kate, this would have been enough to fix the
gaze of her own nation. But her whole life constituted Kate's supreme
distinction. There can be no doubt, therefore, that, from the year 1624
(that is, the last year of our James I.), she became the object of
an admiration in her own country that was almost idolatrous. And this
admiration was not of a kind that rested upon any partisan-schism
amongst her countrymen. So long as it was kept alive by her bodily
presence amongst them, it was an admiration equally aristocratic and
popular,--shared alike by the rich and the poor, by the lofty and the
humble. Great, therefore, would be the demand for her portrait. There
is a tradition that Velasquez, who had in 1623 executed a portrait of
Charles I. (then Prince of Wales), was amongst those who in the three
or four following years ministered to this demand. It is believed, also,
that, in travelling from Genoa and Florence to Rome, she sat to various
artists, in order to meet the interest about herself already rising
amongst the cardinals and other dignitaries of the Romish church. It is
probable, therefore, that numerous pictures of Kate are yet lurking
both in Spain and Italy, but not known as such. For, as the public
consideration granted to her had grown out of merits and qualities
purely personal, and was kept alive by no local or family memorials
rooted in the land, or surviving herself, it was inevitable that, as
soon as she herself died, all identification of her portraits would
perish: and the portraits would thenceforwards be confounded with the
similar memorials, past all numbering, which every year accumulates as
the wrecks from household remembrances of generations that are passing
or passed, that are fading or faded, that are dying or buried. It is
well, therefore, amongst so many irrecoverable ruins, that, in
the portrait at Aix-la-Chapelle, we still possess one undoubted
representation (and therefore in some degree a means for identifying
_other_ representations) of a female so memorably adorned by nature;
gifted with capacities so unparalleled both of doing and suffering;
who lived a life so stormy, and perished by a fate so unsearchably
mysterious.
THE ORPHAN HEIRESS
I.
VISIT TO LAXTON.
My route, after parting from Lord Westport at Birmingham, lay, as I have
mentioned in the "Autobiographic Sketches," through Stamford to Laxton,
the Northamptonshire seat of Lord Carbery. From Stamford, which I
had reached by some intolerable old coach, such as in those days too
commonly abused the patience and long-suffering of Young England, I
took a post-chaise to Laxton. The distance was but nine miles, and the
postilion drove well, so that I could not really have been long upon the
road; and yet, from gloomy rumination upon the unhappy destination which
I believed myself approaching within three or four months, never had I
weathered a journey that seemed to me so long and dreary. As I alighted
on the steps at Laxton, the first dinner-bell rang; and I was hurrying
to my toilet, when my sister Mary, who had met me in the portico,
begged me first of all to come into Lady Carbery's [Footnote: Lady
Carbery.--"To me, individually, she was the one sole friend that ever I
could regard as entirely fulfilling the offices of an honest friendship.
She had known me from infancy; when I was in my first year of life,
she, an orphan and a great heiress, was in her tenth or eleventh."--See
closing pages of "_Autobiographic Sketches_."] dressing-room, her
ladyship having something special to communicate, which related (as I
understood her) to one Simon. "What Simon? Simon Peter?"--O, no, you
irreverend boy, no Simon at all with an S, but Cymon with a C,--Dryden's
Cymon,-- "That whistled as he went for want of thought.'"
This one indication was a key to the whole explanation that followed.
The sole visitors, it seemed, at that time to Laxton, beside my sister
and myself, were Lord and Lady Massey. They were understood to be
domesticated at Laxton for a very long stay. In reality, my own private
construction of the case (though unauthorized by anything ever hinted to
me by Lady Carbery) was, that Lord Massey might probably be under some
cloud of pecuniary embarrassments, such as suggested prudentially an
absence from Ireland. Meantime, what was it that made him an object of
peculiar interest to Lady Carbery? It was the singular revolution
which, in one whom all his friends looked upon as sold to constitutional
torpor, suddenly, and beyond all hope, had kindled a new and nobler
life. Occupied originally by no shadow of any earthly interest, killed
by _ennui_, all at once Lord Massey had fallen passionately in love with
a fair young countrywoman, well connected, but bringing him no fortune
(I report only from hearsay), and endowing him simply with the priceless
blessing of her own womanly charms, her delightful society, and her
sweet, Irish style of innocent gayety. No transformation that ever
legends or romances had reported was more memorable. Lapse of time
(for Lord Massey had now been married three or four years), and deep
seclusion from general society, had done nothing, apparently, to
lower the tone of his happiness. The expression of this happiness
was noiseless and unobtrusive; no marks were there of vulgar
uxoriousness--nothing that could provoke the sneer of the worldling; but
not the less so entirely had the society of his young wife created a
new principle of life within him, and evoked some nature hitherto
slumbering, and which, no doubt, would else have continued to slumber
till his death, that, at moments when he believed himself unobserved, he
still wore the aspect of an impassioned lover.
"He beheld
A vision, and adored the thing he saw.
Arabian fiction never filled the world
With half the wonders that were wrought for _him_.
Earth breathed in one great presence of the spring
Her chamber window did surpass in glory
The portals of the dawn."
And in no case was it more literally realized, as daily almost I
witnessed, that
"All Paradise
Could, by the simple opening of a door,
Let itself in upon him."
[Footnote: Wordsworth's "Vandracour and Julia."]
For never did the drawing-room door open, and suddenly disclose the
beautiful figure of Lady Massey, than a mighty cloud seemed to roll away
from the young Irishman's brow. At this time it happened, and indeed
it often happened, that Lord Carbery was absent in Ireland. It was
probable, therefore, that during the long couple of hours through which
the custom of those times bound a man to the dinner-table after the
disappearance of the ladies, his time would hang heavily on his hands.
To me, therefore, Lady Carbery looked, having first put me in possession
of the case, for assistance to her hospitality, under the difficulties I
have stated. She thoroughly loved Lady Massey, as, indeed, nobody could
help doing; and for _her_ sake, had there been no separate interest
surrounding the young lord, it would have been most painful to her that
through Lord Carbery's absence a periodic tedium should oppress her
guest at that precise season of the day which traditionally dedicated
itself to genial enjoyment. Glad, therefore, was she that an ally had
come at last to Laxton, who might arm her purposes of hospitality with
some powers of self-fulfilment. And yet, for a service of that nature,
could she reasonably rely upon me? Odious is the hobble-de-hoy to the
mature young man. Generally speaking, that cannot be denied. But in me,
though naturally the shyest of human beings, intense commerce with men
of every rank, from the highest to the lowest, had availed to dissipate
all arrears of _mauvaise honte_; I could talk upon innumerable subjects;
and, as the readiest means of entering immediately upon business, I was
fresh from Ireland, knew multitudes of those whom Lord Massey either
knew or felt an interest in, and, at that happy period of life, found
it easy, with three or four glasses of wine, to call back the golden
spirits which were now so often deserting me. Renovated, meantime, by
a hot bath, I was ready at the second summons of the dinner-bell, and
descended a new creature to the drawing-room. Here I was presented to
the noble lord and his wife. Lord Massey was in figure shortish, but
broad and stout, and wore an amiable expression of face. That I could
execute Lady Carbery's commission, I felt satisfied at once. And,
accordingly, when the ladies had retired from the dining-room, I found
an easy opening, in various circumstances connected with the Laxton
stables, for introducing naturally a picturesque and contrasting sketch
of the stud and the stables at Westport. The stables and everything
connected with the stables at Laxton were magnificent; in fact, far
out of symmetry with the house, which, at that time, was elegant and
comfortable, but not splendid. As usual in English establishments,
all the appointments were complete, and carried to the same point of
exquisite finish. The stud of hunters was first-rate and extensive; and
the whole scene, at closing the stables for the night, was so splendidly
arranged and illuminated, that Lady Carbery would take all her visitors
once or twice a week to admire it. On the other hand, at Westport you
might fancy yourself overlooking the establishment of some Albanian
Pacha. Crowds of irregular helpers and grooms, many of them totally
unrecognized by Lord Altamont, some half countenanced by this or that
upper servant, some doubtfully tolerated, some _not_ tolerated, but
nevertheless slipping in by postern doors when the enemy had
withdrawn, made up a strange mob as regarded the human element in this
establishment. And Dean Browne regularly asserted that five out of six
amongst these helpers he himself could swear to as active boys from
Vinegar Hill. Trivial enough, meantime, in our eyes, was any little
matter of rebellion that they might have upon their consciences. High
treason we willingly winked at. But what we could _not_ wink at was the
systematic treason which they committed against our comfort, namely, by
teaching our horses all imaginable tricks, and training them up in the
way along which they should _not_ go, so that when they were old they
were very little likely to depart from it. Such a set of restive,
hard-mouthed wretches as Lord Westport and I daily had to bestride,
no tongue could describe. There was a cousin of Lord Westport's,
subsequently created Lord Oranmore, distinguished for his horsemanship,
and always splendidly mounted from his father's stables at Castle
M'Garret, to whom our stormy contests with ruined tempers and vicious
habits yielded a regular comedy of fun; and, in order to improve it, he
would sometimes bribe Lord Westport's treacherous groom into misleading
us, when floundering amongst bogs, into the interior labyrinths of these
morasses. Deep, however, as the morass, was this man's remorse when,
on leaving Westport, I gave him the heavy golden perquisite, which my
mother (unaware of the tricks he had practised upon me) had by letter
instructed me to give. He was a mere savage boy from the central bogs of
Connaught, and, to the great amusement of Lord Westport, he persisted
in calling me "your majesty" for the rest of that day; and by all other
means open to him he expressed his penitence. But the dean insisted
that, no matter for his penitence in the matter of the bogs, he had
certainly carried a pike at Vinegar Hill; and probably had stolen a
pair of boots at Furnes, when he kindly made a call at the Deanery,
in passing through that place to the field of battle. It is always a
pleasure to see the engineer of mischief "hoist with his own petard;"
[Footnote: "Hamlet," but also "Ovid:"--"Lex nec justior ulla est, **Quam
necis artifices arte perire sua."] and it happened that the horses
assigned to draw a post-chariot carrying Lord Westport, myself, and the
dean, on our return journey to Dublin, were a pair utterly ruined by a
certain under-postilion, named Moran. This particular ruin did Mr. Moran
boast to have contributed as his separate contribution to the general
ruinations of the stables. And the particular object was, that _his_
horses, and consequently himself, might be left in genial laziness.
But, as Nemesis would have it, Mr. Moran was the charioteer specially
appointed to this particular service. We were to return by easy journeys
of twenty-five miles a day, or even less; since every such interval
brought us to the house of some hospitable family, connected by
friendship or by blood with Lord Altamont. Fervently had Lord Westport
pleaded with his father for an allowance of four horses; not at all with
any foolish view to fleeting aristocratic splendor, but simply to the
luxury of rapid motion. But Lord Altamont was firm in resisting this
petition at that time. The remote consequence was, that by way of
redressing the violated equilibrium to our feelings, we subscribed
throughout Wales to extort six horses from the astonished innkeepers,
most of whom declined the requisition, and would furnish only four, on
the plea that the leaders would only embarrass the other horses; but one
at Bangor, from whom we coolly requested eight, recoiled from our demand
as from a sort of miniature treason. How so? Because in this island he
had always understood eight horses to be consecrated to royal use. Not
at all, we assured him; Pickford, the great carrier, always horsed his
wagons with eight. And the law knew of no distinction between wagon and
post-chaise, coach-horse or cart-horse. However, we could not compass
this point of the eight horses, the double _quadriga_, in one single
instance; but the true reason we surmised to be, not the pretended
puritanism of loyalty to the house of Guelph, but the running short
of the innkeeper's funds. If he had to meet a daily average call for
twenty-four horses, then it might well happen that our draft upon him
for eight horses at one pull would bankrupt him for a whole day.