Lord L'Estrange threw himself on a sofa, and leant his cheek on his
hand thoughtfully. Audley Egerton sat near him, with his arms folded,
and gazed on his friend's face with a soft expression of aspect, which
was very unusual to the firm outline of his handsome features. The two
men were as dissimilar in person as the reader will have divined that
they were in character. All about Egerton was so rigid, all about
L'Estrange so easy. In every posture of Harley there was the
unconscious grace of a child. The very fashion of his garments showed
his abhorrence of restraint. His clothes were wide and loose, his
neckcloth tied carelessly, left his throat half bare. You could see
that he had lived much in warm and southern lands, and contracted a
contempt for conventionalities; there was as little in his dress as in
his talk of the formal precision of the north. He was three or four
years younger than Audley, but he looked at least twelve years
younger. In fact, he was one of those men to whom old age seems
impossible--voice, look, figure, had all the charm of youth; and,
perhaps, it was from this gracious youthfulness--at all events, it was
characteristic of the kind of love he inspired--that neither his
parents, nor the few friends admitted into his intimacy, ever called
him, in their habitual intercourse, by the name of his title. He was
not L'Estrange with them, he was Harley; and by that familiar
baptismal I will usually designate him. He was not one of those men
whom author or reader wish to view at a distance, and remember as "my
lord"--it was so rarely that he remembered it himself. For the rest,
it had been said of him by a shrewd wit--"He is so natural, that every
one calls him affected." Harley L'Estrange was not so critically
handsome as Audley Egerton; to a commonplace observer he was, at best,
rather good-looking than otherwise. But women said that he had a
beautiful countenance, and they were not wrong. He wore his hair,
which was of a fair chestnut, long, and in loose curls; and instead of
the Englishman's whiskers, indulged in the foreigner's moustache. His
complexion was delicate, though not effeminate; it was rather the
delicacy of a student than of a woman. But in his clear gray eye there
was wonderful vigor of life. A skilful physiologist, looking only into
that eye, would have recognized rare stamina of constitution--a nature
so rich that, while easily disturbed, it would require all the effects
of time, or all the fell combinations of passion and grief, to exhaust
it. Even now, though so thoughtful, and even so sad, the rays of that
eye were as concentred and stedfast as the light of the diamond.
"You were only, then, in jest," said Audley, after a long silence,
"when you spoke of this mission to Florence. You have still no idea of
entering into public life.
"None."
"I had hoped better things when I got your promise to pass one season
in London. But, indeed, you have kept your promise to the ear to break
it to the spirit. I could not presuppose that you would shun all
society, and be as much of a hermit here as under the vines of Como."
"I have sat in the Strangers' Gallery, and heard your great speakers;
I have been in the pit of the opera, and seen your fine ladies; I have
walked your streets, I have lounged in your parks, and I say that I
can't fall in love with a faded dowager, because she fills up her
wrinkles with rouge."
"Of what dowager do you speak?" asked the matter-of-fact Audley.
"She has a great many titles. Some people call her fashion, you busy
men, politics: it is all one--tricked out and artificial. I mean
London life. No, I can't fall in love with her, fawning old harridan!"
"I wish you could fall in love with something."
"I wish I could, with all my heart."
"But you are so _blase_."
"On the contrary, I am so fresh. Look out of the window--what do you
see?"
"Nothing!"
"Nothing--"
"Nothing but houses and dusty lilacs, my coachman dozing on his box,
and two women in pattens crossing the kennel."
"I see none of that where I lie on the sofa. I see but the stars. And
I feel for them as I did when I was a schoolboy at Eton. It is you who
are _blase_, not I--enough of this. You do not forget my commission,
with respect to the exile who has married into your brother's family?"
"No; but here you set me a task more difficult than that of saddling
your cornet on the War Office."
"I know it is difficult, for the counter influence is vigilant and
strong; but, on the other hand, the enemy is so damnable a traitor
that one must have the Fates and the household gods on one's side."
"Nevertheless," said the practical Audley, bending over a book on the
table, "I think that the best plan would be to attempt a compromise
with the traitor."
"To judge of others by myself," answered Harley with spirit, "it were
less bitter to put up with wrong than to palter with it for
compensation. And such wrong! Compromise with the open foe--that may
be done with honor; but with the perjured friend--that were to forgive
the perjury."
"You are too vindictive," said Egerton; "there may be excuses for the
friend, which palliate even--"
"Hush! Audley, hush! or I shall think the world has indeed corrupted
you. Excuse for the friend who deceives, who betrays! No, such is the
true outlaw of Humanity; and the Furies surround him even while he
sleeps in the temple."
The man of the world lifted his eye slowly on the animated face of one
still natural enough for the passions. He then once more returned to
his book, and said, after a pause, "It is time you should marry,
Harley."
"No," answered L'Estrange, with a smile at this sudden turn in the
conversation--"not time yet; for my chief objection to that change in
life is, that all the women now-a-days are too old for me, or I am too
young for them; a few, indeed, are so infantine that one is ashamed
to be their toy; but most are so knowing that one is a fool to be
their dupe. The first, if they condescend to love you, love you as the
biggest doll they have yet dandled, and for a doll's good
qualities--your pretty blue eyes, and your exquisite millinery. The
last, if they prudently accept you, do so on algebraical principles;
you are but the X or the Y that represents a certain aggregate of
goods matrimonial--pedigree, title, rent-roll, diamonds, pin-money,
opera-box. They cast you up with the help of mamma, and you wake some
morning to find that _plus_ wife _minus_ affection equals--the Devil!"
"Nonsense," said Audley, with his quiet grave laugh. "I grant that it
is often the misfortune of a man in your station to be married rather
for what he has, than for what he is; but you are tolerably
penetrating, and not likely to be deceived in the character of the
woman you court."
"Of the woman I _court_?--No! But of the woman I _marry_, very likely
indeed. Woman is a changeable thing, as our Virgil informed us at
school; but her change _par excellence_ is from the fairy you woo to
the brownie you wed. It is not that she has been a hypocrite,
it is that she is a transmigration. You marry a girl for her
accomplishments. She paints charmingly, or plays like St. Cecilia.
Clap a ring on her finger, and she never draws again--except perhaps
your caricature on the back of a letter, and never opens a piano after
the honeymoon. You marry her for her sweet temper; and next year, her
nerves are so shattered that you can't contradict her but you are
whirled into a storm of hysterics. You marry her because she declares
she hates balls and likes quiet; and ten to one but what she becomes a
patroness at Almacks, or a lady in waiting."
"Yet most men marry, and most men survive the operation."
"If it were only necessary to live, that would be a consolatory and
encouraging reflection. But to live with peace, to live with dignity,
to live with freedom, to live in harmony with your thoughts, your
habits, your aspirations--and this in the perpetual companionship of a
person to whom you have given the power to wound your peace, to assail
your dignity, to cripple your freedom, to jar on each thought and each
habit, and bring you down to the meanest details of earth, when you
invite her, poor soul, to soar to the spheres--that makes the to be,
or not to be, which is the question."
"If I were you, Harley, I would do as I have heard the author of
_Sandford and Merton_ did--choose out a child, and educate her
yourself after your own heart."
"You have hit it," answered Harley, seriously. "That has long been my
idea--a very vague one, I confess. But I fear I shall be an old man
before I find even the child."
"Ah," he continued, yet more earnestly, while the whole character of
his varying countenance changed again--"ah! if indeed I could discover
what I seek--one who with the heart of a child has the mind of a
woman; one who beholds in nature the variety, the charm, the never
feverish, ever healthful excitement that others vainly seek in the
bastard sentimentalities of a life false with artificial forms; one
who can comprehend, as by intuition, the rich poetry with which
creation is clothed--poetry so clear to the child when enraptured with
the flower, or when wondering at the star? If on me such exquisite
companionship were bestowed--why, then"--he paused, sighed deeply,
and, covering his face with his hand, resumed in faltering accents,--
"But once--but once only, did such vision of the Beautiful made human
rise before me--amidst 'golden exhalations of the dawn.' It beggared
my life in vanishing. You know only--you only--how--how"--
He bowed his head, and the tears forced themselves through his
clenched fingers.
"So long ago!" said Audley, sharing his friend's emotion. "Years so
long and so weary, yet still thus tenacious of a mere boyish memory."
"Away with it, then!" cried Harley, springing to his feet, and with a
laugh of strange merriment. "Your carriage still waits; set me home
before you go to the House."
Then laying his hand lightly on his friend's shoulder, he said, "Is it
for you, Audley Egerton, to speak sneeringly of boyish memories? What
else is it that binds us together? What else warms my heart when I
meet you? What else draws your thoughts from blue-books and
beer-bills, to waste them on a vagrant like me? Shake hands. Oh,
friend of my boyhood! recollect the oars that we plied and the bats
that we wielded in the old time, or the murmured talk on the
moss-grown bank, as we sat together, building in the summer air
castles mightier than Windsor. Ah! they are strong ties, those boyish
memories, believe me! I remember as if it were yesterday my
translation of that lovely passage in Perseus, beginning--let me
see--ah!--
"Quum primum pavido custos mihi purpura cessit,"
that passage on friendship which gushes out so livingly from the stern
heart of the satirist. And when old ---- complimented me on my verses,
my eye sought yours. Verily, I now say as then,
"Nescio quod, certe est quod me tibi temperet astrum."[8]
Audley turned away his head as he returned the grasp of his friend's
hand; and while Harley, with his light elastic footstep, descended the
stairs, Egerton lingered behind, and there was no trace of the worldly
man upon his countenance when he took his place in the carriage by his
companion's side.
Two hours afterwards, weary cries of "Question, question!" "Divide,
divide!" sank into reluctant silence as Audley Egerton rose to
conclude the debate--the man of men to speak late at night, and to
impatient benches: a man who would be heard; whom a Bedlam broke loose
would not have roared down; with a voice clear and sound as a bell,
and a form as firmly set on the ground as a church-tower. And while,
on the dullest of dull questions, Audley Egerton thus, not too lively
himself, enforced attention, where was Harley L'Estrange? Standing
alone by the river at Richmond, and murmuring low fantastic thoughts
as he gazed on the moonlit tide.
When Audley left him at home, he had joined his parents, made them gay
with his careless gayety, seen the old-fashioned folks retire to rest,
and then--while they, perhaps, deemed him once more the hero of
ball-rooms and the cynosure of clubs--he drove slowly through the soft
summer night, amidst the perfumes of many a garden and many a gleaming
chestnut grove, with no other aim before him than to reach the
loveliest margin of England's loveliest river, at the hour the moon
was fullest and the song of the nightingale most sweet. And so
eccentric a humorist was this man, that I believe, as he there
loitered--no one near to cry "How affected!" or "How romantic!"--he
enjoyed himself more than if he had been exchanging the politest
"how-d'ye-do's" in the hottest of London drawing-rooms, or betting his
hundreds on the odd trick with Lord de R---- for his partner.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] "What was the star I know not, but certainly some star it was that
attuned me unto thee."
From the London Examiner.
A GLIMPSE OF THE GREAT EXHIBITION.
There is one country which is not represented at the Great Exhibition,
one power which refused to send any specimens of its produce, lest the
having done so should be considered as a tribute to the commercial
greatness of England, and lest exhibitors and exhibited should incur
contamination by contact with specimens of the world's industry. One
is not sorry that this should be the case, and that the felon power of
Europe should have thus passed judgment on itself, and of its own
accord placed itself in Coventry.
The country we allude to is Naples. The horror which the king
entertains of any thing constitutional since his Majesty took the oath
to his own constitution, and since he hanged those who committed the
same crime without afterwards perjuring themselves after the royal
example, has induced him to prohibit the sending of any specimens to
London. Naples, to be sure, has little to exhibit. Industry in that
country, so blessed by nature, has been crushed and annihilated by the
hand of tyranny. Sulphur and other volcanic products, wine which
science has never enabled to bear exportation, silk in its _brut_
state, with some coarse fabrics of cloth and linen, and hats in
imitation of Tuscany, compose all the industry of one of the finest
countries in Europe. No marvel, therefore, it should have shrunk upon
any pretence from occupying a booth at the Great Exhibition.
A very different place in that great show is held by Piedmont, which
has furnished a large assortment of raw materials and manufactured
articles. On the other hand, Florence and Venice are far, we fear,
from even keeping up a shadow of their old reputation. The country of
Benvenuto Cellini has lost the gift of the arts with that of freedom;
and the manufactures with which Venice used to pay for the merchandise
of the East are no more. Strange to say, however, Milan supplies one
of the most interesting and perfect compartments of the Exhibition,
that of small sculptures, in which the youth of the region are so
skilled as to distance all competition.
The United States must be held to have furnished far less valuable
specimens of either art or nature than might have been expected; and
this will be the more evident, as its stall occupies the great
compartment of the Exhibition adjoining the eastern entrance, and
first meeting the eye. France and Germany, especially North Germany,
hold their ground well. One thing, however, seems certain, and the
more remarkable as it was not altogether expected, which is, that
England is not inferior to her competitors in any department. That her
machinery, and the results of her science and skill in working in
metals should distance all competition, might have been looked for.
But what will greatly astonish people, is her very signal success in
so many departments of the ornamental: and whilst of natural
productions her various colonies have supplied specimens the most
novel and most startling, the produce of the looms as well as of the
mines of Indostan offer among the most novel and interesting sights
that the curious could flock to see.
In a general way it is not yet possible to guess what effect the
Exhibition is likely to have. So many persons will crowd to it with
widely different views, that it is extremely difficult to sum up its
probable impression on the whole. But we believe that those most
gratified will be scientific persons, who can see and compare for the
first time all raw materials and all finished productions gathered
together under the same roof. It is, indeed, as a creator of new
combinations and of new ideas, that the Great Exhibition must in any
permanent sense be chiefly valuable; for it is hardly conceivable but
that many most startling inventions in art manufacture must ultimately
spring from it. But these will be silent enjoyments, and for a long
time secret profits. Those on whose fertile minds the good seed of new
ideas may fall, will silently cherish and allow them to germ in the
shade, and years may elapse ere we see the growth or the fruit. What
meanwhile we may count upon hearing most of for the moment will be the
enjoyment of the curious at the view of the Koh-i-noor, and the other
mere sight-wonders of the Exhibition.
Let us add that not the least pleasure of this kind is the view which
each race of the human family will be enabled to take of the other.
The crowds now brought together are essentially, the greater part of
them, of the middle and artisan class, although it may be generally of
those already successful and enriched. This is a kind of people that
would never have come amongst us but upon an occasion such as the
present, and whom to see and be seen by, cannot but be productive of
large, friendly, humane, cosmopolitan results.
From Leigh Hunt's Journal.
DR. DAVID STRAUSS IN WEIMAR.
The Visitor's Book of the Elephant Hotel in Weimar contains, under the
date of the 12th August, a rather remarkable autograph, which the
curious collector would do well to buy, if possible, or, if not
possible, then to beg or steal. Perhaps, among the many distinguished
names which the long series of _Fremdenbuecher_ kept at Weimar during
the last fifty years must necessarily exhibit, there are few to which
an earnest, thinking man would attach the same profound, though
somewhat painful degree of interest. It is the name of "_Dr. David
Strauss, aus Ludwigsburg_," written by himself.
"How!" you exclaim in a mingled tone of surprise and incredulity, "Dr.
Strauss in Weimar? David Strauss among the pilgrims to the tomb of the
poets?"
It does sound apocryphal--_mythical_, if you will. One would almost as
soon expect to hear of the late Dr. Jordan Faust himself paying a
visit to the ghost of Goethe. Nevertheless, and in spite of all that
learned critics, a thousand years hence, may advance and prove to the
contrary, a veritable fact it is, Strauss actually has been among
us--has been seen here in the body during several days by several
witnesses, the present writer being one.
It is my intention here briefly to record the impression which I still
retain of my transient intercourse with this celebrated man. Such a
record can scarce be considered as a breach of confidence, an invasion
of the sacred domains of private life: the author of the "_Leben
Jesu_" is a public, I had almost said, an historical character.
Up to his arrival in Weimar, my relation to Strauss had been merely of
that mystic, invisible, and impersonal description, which usually
subsists between a gifted writer and his readers. But even before I
knew the language, and, by consequence, before I could read the works
of Strauss, I had heard much and often of the young Tubingen
theologian, who, at the age of twenty-seven years, with all the moral
courage of a Luther, all the critical skill, and more than all the
learning of a Lessing, had arisen and _implicitly_ declared to the
whole German nation, and to the world at large, that their belief
rested on a false basis (in his opinion).
Though educated in a country where every man reads and reverences his
Bible, I had likewise arrived at that, in every sense, _critical_
period, which is, I suppose, common to all men of an inquiring
disposition. I, too, had eaten of the fruit of the tree of
knowledge--had become as a god in my own conceit, knowing good from
evil. I had passed through the French and English schools of
skepticism, with my orthodoxy, if not intact, at least not vitally
injured. To study Strauss, therefore, seemed a mere matter of course.
Well; I read his celebrated work. It contained nothing absolutely new,
either in assertion or opinion. I had met with the same or similar
elsewhere. And yet the very same _wooden_ arguments I had so often
smiled at in the writings of the French and English free-thinkers,
seemed here to annihilate me. In vain I said to myself, "they are
still wooden!" Strauss had so sheathed and bound them with his triple
fold of _brass_. In other words, had so supported and confirmed them
with his unheard-of array of learning, logic, and science; that
nothing, I thought, could resist them. It seemed as if the world-old,
hereditary feud between faith and reason were here to be terminated
for ever. As I read, the solid earth seemed to be giving way beneath
me; and when I at length closed the ominous volume, I could have
almost cried out with the chorus in Faust: "Woe! woe! thou hast
shattered the lovely world!"
It is unusual, I believe, to speak out these bosom secrets in this
way; but I thought it necessary to give you this, by no means
exaggerated description of my first spiritual encounter with the
author of the _Leben Jesu_, in order that you might have some idea of
the feelings with which, on the third morning after his arrival in
Weimar, I received and read the following whimsical note:
_Weimar_, 15th August.
"A. S. requests the pleasure of Mr. M----'s company to-day,
at two o'clock, to soup and Strauss."
How busily my fancy was employed the whole of that forenoon, I need
not stop here to tell. Enough, that of all the various pictures she
then drew for me, not one resembled the pale, the slightly made, and,
but for a partial stoop, the somewhat tall, half-lay, half-clerical
figure in spectacles, to whom I was presented on arriving at my
friend's apartments. This was Strauss himself, whose portrait I may as
well go on and finish here at once as well as I can, and so have done
with externals.
Judging from appearance, Strauss's age might be any where between
forty and fifty. But for his light brown, glossy hair, I should have
said nearer the latter than the former. I have since ascertained,
however, that he is, or was then, exactly forty-one years of age. His
head is the very contrary of massive,--as, indeed, his whole figure is
the opposite of robust or muscular. But it--the head--is of a purely
classical form, having none of those bumps and extravagant
protuberances, which phrenologists delight in. His profile, in
particular, might be called truly Grecian, were it not for the thin
and somewhat pinched lips, which give it an almost ascetical
character. Strange enough, too, this same character of ascetism, or
something akin to it, seems likewise indicated by a peculiar
expression in his otherwise fine, dark-brown eyes. It is not a squint,
as at first sight it appears, but a frequent turning-upward of the
eye-balls, like a Methodist at his devotions, which, in Strauss's
case, is of course involuntary. Perhaps it is to conceal this slight
blemish that he wears spectacles, for his large and lustrous eyes did
not else appear to need them. I have said that Strauss was slightly
made; and, in fact, this is so much the case as to suggest the idea of
a consumptive habit. Nor do his narrow shoulders and hollow breast,
together with a certain swinging serpentine gait when he walks, seem
to contradict the supposition. I have little more to add to this
feeble sketch of Strauss's outward man; for it would, I suppose, be
too trifling a circumstance to mention that I had seldom seen a more
_thorough-bred_ hand and foot than his!
My entrance had interrupted a conversation, which Strauss presently
resumed, and which proved to be on the eternal topic of politics. His
voice was strong and deep, but he spoke (and it seemed to be a habit
with him) in a subdued tone, and with a very decided Wurtemberg
accent. I was surprised at some of the high-Tory opinions to which he
gave utterance. I had not expected to find the author of the _Leben
Jesu_ on the Conservative side of any question. It seemed
inconsistent. But I recollected that the man was now on the wrong side
of forty; and I could not help thinking that if, instead of publishing
his destructive book at the age of twenty-seven, he had waited with it
till now, he might possibly have postponed it altogether. At table,
our talk was of the usual commonplace description; and it may be worth
while observing, that even Strauss could be commonplace with as good a
grace as any. Our host and he had, it seems, been fellow-students
together, and, of course, there was no want of anecdotes and
reminiscences of those early days, all of which appeared to give him
exquisite pleasure. In particular, I remember that he spoke with much
fervor of the fine mountain scenery in the neighborhood of Heidelberg;
and when a friendly discussion arose amongst us as to whether the
mountains or the ocean were the sublimer spectacle, Strauss argued
warmly in favor of the former. Some one (myself, I believe) happening
to say that, like Goethe and Schiller, they were both _superlative_,
and not to be _compared_--"Bravo!" cried Strauss, and good humoredly
gave up his position. The conversation now naturally turned upon
Goethe, and upon all the localities in and about Weimar, connected
with his memory. Like a pious pilgrim, as he was, Strauss, as I found,
had already been to all these places, with the exception of the
garden-house and garden. It was proposed to conduct him thither
immediately.
The extreme and almost primitive simplicity of the house in which
Goethe had spent some of the happiest days of his life, seemed to
astonish Strauss. He made few remarks to that effect, however, but
there was no end to his eager questionings. He touched the walls, the
doors, the locks--whatever it might be supposed Goethe had touched. He
peeped into every corner, scrutinized even the minutest details; and
all this with the utmost outward composure, so that, if I had not
closely watched him, it might have escaped my notice! In the garden, I
showed him Goethe's favorite walk, and some oaks and firs planted by
the poet's own hand. He gathered an oak-leaf, and put it in his
pocket-book. He did the same by the flower of a hollyhock, the only
kind of flower remaining, which plant I knew for certain dated its
existence from the time of Goethe. The pocket-book was already full of
such relics. From this time forth, therefore, let no man say that
Strauss is devoid of veneration! Man was made for adoration. He cannot
help it. Pity, only, that he sometimes mistakes the object of it.
In the mean while Strauss and I had somehow drawn nearer to each
other, and had begun to hold little dialogues apart together. We
talked of England, where he had never been,--of English literature,
which he knew chiefly through the medium of translation. Shakspeare of
course was duly discussed,--for, like all educated Germans, Strauss
was an enthusiast about Shakspeare. He asked me if I had read
Gervinus's new work, and was evidently pleased with the way in which I
spoke of it. By-and-by I ventured to allude to the _Leben Jesu_. It
was not without considerable hesitation. He seemed, I think, to enjoy
my embarrassment,--and told me he had seen several specimens of an
English translation of the _Leben Jesu_, which a young lady, a Miss
Brabant, was preparing for publication! There was something
_Mephistophelian_ in the smile with which he told me this. Such a
work, he continued, was, however, not likely to succeed in England:
for there was Hennel, who had published an amazingly clever work of
the same kind in London, and yet the British public seemed to have
made a point of completely _ignoring_ it. The work had, however, been
translated into German, and he (Strauss himself) had written a preface
to it. As I now perceived that the subject was any thing but a
delicate one with Strauss, I determined upon accepting a proposal he
had made me to accompany him on the morrow to Doornburg and Jena.
There were inconsistencies in his system, which I had the vanity to
think I might convince him of, and a _tete-a-tete_ like the one in
prospect was just what I wanted.
We returned to _S--'s_ for tea, with the addition to our party of a
distinguished philologian of this town, whose presence seemed to call
forth all the intellectual energies of Strauss, so that, in the course
of the evening, I had more than one occasion to admire the variety and
depth of the man's attainments. It is impossible to recollect every
thing, but what especially excited my attention was, that in a very
learned discussion concerning the comparative merits of the ancient
and modern drama, Strauss suggested the character and fate of Tiberius
as the best subject for a tragedy in the whole compass of history. I
was struck, too, and with reason, I think, with a new and flagrant
instance of the conservative tendency which his mind seems of late to
have fallen into. In talking of Horace, whose works, and particularly
whose odes, he appeared to have at his fingers' ends, he defended the
elder state of the texts with amazing pertinacity, treating with
contempt every change and suggestion of such, which the sacrilegious
commentators of our times have ventured upon. Such opinions in the
mouth of the author of the _Leben Jesu_ sounded strange enough, and
again I could not help saying to myself, "Why the deuce did he publish
that destructive work of his twenty-seventh year?"
The following day, being prevented by pressing engagements from
leaving town, I prevailed upon Strauss to put off his journey for a
day longer. I saw little of him in the mean time, and had therefore
leisure to bring into some kind of order and method a series of
objections which I had noted down during a second and more critical
perusal of the _Leben Jesu_. On mature reflection, it had occurred to
me that, after all, the Christian religion had, in the course of
eighteen centuries, survived far worse things than even Strauss's
book. This idea now gave me courage to look this Goliah in the face,
and, though I was but a youth (so to speak), and he a "man of war," to
go up against him, if occasion offered, even with my "scrip" and
"sling," and my "five smooth stones out of the brook."
Next morning, then, in pursuance of our plan, Strauss and I started
with the first train for Apolda, whence we went on foot across the
fields to Doornburg. There we breakfasted in Goethe's room, saw the
poet's handwriting on the wall, walked along his favorite
terrace-walk, where I, for the time as much of a hero-worshipper as
Strauss himself, recited aloud the beautiful song, _Da droben auf
jenem Berge_, &c., which Goethe is said to have composed on this very
spot. I expected Strauss to be moved almost to tears, instead of which
he burst out in a most incontrollable fit of laughter, in which I as
incontrollably joined when he told me the cause, which was this:--In
Munich or Ludwigsburg, I forget which, there was once a house of
public entertainment, called from its sign "The Lamb's Wool," as its
proprietor was called "The Lamb's Wool landlord." This landlord had,
it seems, been one of his own best customers, in consequence of which
he soon became bankrupt, which sad event a poet of the same town, most
probably another of the landlord's best customers, commemorated in a
few stanzas entitled, _Des Lamswollswirthes Klagelied_ (The Host of
the Lamb's Wool's Lament), a parody on the above song of Goethe's, and
suggested, doubtless, by these two lines--
"Ich bin _herunter gekommem_,
Und weiss doch selber nicht wie!"[9]
Nothing could exceed the humor with which Strauss told me this droll
anecdote, and, for my part, I feel that I shall never again be able to
recite Goethe's pathetic song with becoming gravity.
From Doornburg we walked to Jena, where we arrived to dinner. It
rained torrents, but Strauss was not to be balked of what he came for.
We trudged like _Schwarmer_ (enthusiasts), as he said, through mud and
rain, to all the Goethe and Schiller relics, the library, the
observatory, and, last of all, the Princess's garden, where the statue
of the eagle with its three poetical inscriptions long detained us.
Returned to our inn and about to take a final leave of Strauss; now, I
thought, or never, was the time to fulfil the object for which I had
accompanied him thus far. All day, hitherto, our talk had been of the
poets--Greek, Roman, English, and German, and so much erudition,
taste, and feeling, I had rarely found united. His mind seemed to have
fed on poetry and nothing else; and I know not how it was, but I could
not till now resolve to speak the word which I knew would disenchant
him. Now, however, the probability that we should never see each other
again on this side eternity gave a solemn, perhaps superstitious, turn
to my thoughts. As he sat there in silence before me, like the sphinx
of which he had spoken so mysteriously in descanting that morning on
the master piece of Sophocles, I felt that now I must speak out, or
else look to be devoured. I at once entered on the subject, therefore,
and delivered myself of all the objections I had so elaborately
arranged and prepared. His answer was evasive; and the topic was
changed into an argument.
Strauss was to leave with the diligence at eight o'clock for
Rudolstadt. I cordially shook hands with him, bade God bless him, and,
hiring a conveyance, drove directly back to Weimar. On the way home, I
conceived the plan of a poem, which, if it were completed, I would
insert here. It will probably never be completed. Instead of it,
therefore, I will communicate something far more interesting--a copy
of verses written by Strauss himself, on returning from his pilgrimage
to the tomb of the poets; and with which I conclude what I had to say
regarding Dr. David Strauss in Weimar.
[Dr. Strauss, as a poet, being almost a _lusus naturae_, according to
English ideas of him, we have thought it right to translate this
poem. Here, accordingly, is the best English version possible to us in
the little time allowed by an inexorable printer:--]
On pilgrim staff I homeward come,
Way worn, but still with pleasure warmed;
At the great prophet's holy tomb,
The pious rites I have performed.
I, in his garden's shady walk,
Recalled the prints of footsteps lost:
And from the tree his care had raised,
I plucked a greeting from his ghost.
I saw in letters and in poems,
His honored hand's laborious toil;
And many loving recollections,
Inquiry won me for my spoil.
Through every chamber, small and homely,
With holy reverence did I roam,
Where oft the gods in radiant concourse
Came thronging to their loved one's home.
By the bed stood I where the poet
In placid sleep his eyes reposed,
Till summoned to a nobler being
For the last time their lids he closed.
In reading of the holy places,
Henceforth have I a doubled zeal,
I have a being in the writing,
For all of it I know and feel.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] To explain this joke to the un-Germanized reader, it will be
necessary to inform him that the title of Goethe's poem is "The
Shepherd's Lament," wherein a shepherd, leaving his native hills,
gives a lingering look up at the familiar mountain, and sings
regretfully
"I have to the valley descended,
And how I cannot tell."
_Herunter kommen_, means also to decline, _to fail_, and upon this
turns the joke.
From Eliza Cook's Journal
GREAT MEN'S WIVES.
Probably, greatness does not conform with domesticity. The literary
man is wrapped up in his books, and the wife does not brook a divided
affection. He lives in the past or the future, and his mind can with
difficulty be brought to condescend to the carking cares of the
present--perhaps not even to its quiet daily life. His lofty
meditations are disturbed by the puling infant, or it may be, by a
call for house-rent, or the amount of the chandler's bill. Or, take
the leader of some great political or social movement; or the
commander of armies, at whose nod ten thousand swords are unsheathed,
and the air made blatant with the discharge of artillery; can you
expect such a person to subside into the quiet, husband-life, like any
common, ordinary man, and condescend to inquire into the state of the
children's teething, Johnny's progress at school, and the thousand
little domestic attentions which constitute a wife's happiness?
We shall not, however, discuss the question of whether happiness in
marriage be compatible with genius, or not, but proceed to set forth a
few traits of the wives of great men.
We shall not dwell on Xantippe, the wife of Socrates, whose name has
become familiar to us almost as a proverb. But she was not without her
uses, for she taught her great husband at least the virtue of
patience. Many of the great Greeks and Romans, like Socrates, were
unhappy in their wives. Possibly, however, we have heard only of the
bad ones among them; for the life of good wives is rarely made matter
of comment by the biographer, either in ancient or modern times.
The advent of Christianity placed woman in a greatly improved
position, as regarded marriage. Repudiation, as among the Greeks and
Romans, was no longer permitted; the new religion enforced the unity
and indissolubility of marriage; it became a sacrament, dispensed at
the altar, where woman had formerly been a victim, but was now become
an idol. The conjugal union was made a religious contract; the family
was constituted by the priest; the wife was elevated to the function
of Educator of the Family--the _alma mater_; and thus, through her
instrumentality, was the regeneration of the world secured.
But it did not follow that all women were good, or that all were
happy. Life is but a tangled yarn at the best; there are blanks and
prizes drawn by women still, and not unfrequently "great men" have
proved the greatest of blanks to them. Henry the Eighth was not,
perhaps, entitled to the appellation of a great man, though he was an
author, for which the Pope conferred on him the title, still retained
by our monarchs, of "Defender of the Faith." The history of his six
wives is well known. Nor was the married life of Peter the Great, and
his three wives, of a more creditable complexion.
LUTHER married Catharine de Bora, an escaped nun--a remarkably
handsome woman. In his letters to his friends, he spoke of her as "My
rib Kitty, my loved Kitty, my Empress Kitty." A year after his
marriage, when struggling with poverty, he said, in one of these
letters, "Catharine, my dear rib, salutes you. She is quite well,
thank God; gentle, obedient, and kind, in all things; quite beyond my
hopes. I would not exchange my poverty with her, for all the riches of
Croesus without her." A dozen years after, he said, "Catharine, thou
hast a pious man, who loves thee; thou art a very empress!" Yet Luther
had his little troubles in connection with his married life. Catharine
was fond of small-talk, and, when Luther was busily engaged in solving
the difficulties of the Bible, she would interrupt him with such
questions as--whether the king of France was richer than his cousin
the emperor of Germany? if the Italian women were more beautiful than
the German? if Rome was as big as Wittenberg? and so on. To escape
these little inquiries, Luther saw no other way than to lock himself
up in his study, with a quantity of bread and cheese, and there hold
to his work. But Catharine still pursued him. One day, when he was
thus locked up, laboring at his translation of the twenty-second
Psalm, the door was assailed by the wife. No answer was given. More
knocking followed, accompanied by Catharine's voice, shouting--"if you
don't open the door, I will go fetch the locksmith." The Doctor
entreated his wife not to interrupt his labors. "Open! open!" repeated
Catharine. The doctor obeyed. "I was afraid," said she, on entering,
"that something had vexed you, locked up in this room alone." To which
Luther replied, "the only thing that vexes me now is yourself." But
Luther, doubtless, entertained a steady, though sober affection for
his wife; and in his will, in which he left her sole executrix,
bequeathing to her all his property, he speaks of her as "always a
gentle, pious, and faithful wife to me, and that has loved me
tenderly. Whatever," he adds, "may happen to her after my death, I
have, I say, full confidence that she will ever conduct herself as a
good mother towards her children, and will conscientiously share with
them whatever she possesses."
The great Genevese Reformer, CALVIN, proceeded in his search for a
wife in a matter-of-fact way. He wrote to his friends, describing to
them what sort of an article he wanted, and they looked up a proper
person for him. Writing to Farel, one of his correspondents, on this
subject, he said,--"I beseech you ever to bear in mind what I seek for
in a wife. I am not one of your mad kind of lovers, who dote even upon
faults, when once they are taken by beauty of person. The only beauty
that entices me is, that she be chaste, obedient, humble, economical,
patient; and that there be hopes that she wilt be solicitous about my
health. If, therefore, you think it expedient that I should marry,
bestir yourself, lest somebody else anticipate you. But, if you think
otherwise, let us drop the subject altogether." A rich young German
lady, of noble birth, was proposed; but Calvin objected, on the ground
of the high birth. Another was proposed to him, but another failure
resulted. At last a widow, with a considerable family of children,
Odelette de Bures, the relict of a Strasburg Anabaptist, whom he had
converted, was discovered, suited to his notions, and he married her.
Nothing is said about their wedded life, and, therefore, we presume it
went on in the quiet, jog-trot way. At her death, he did not shed a
tear; and he spoke of the event only as an ordinary spectator would
have done.
The brothers CORNEILLE married the two sisters Lamperiere; and the
love of the whole family was cemented by the double union. They lived
in contiguous houses, which opened into each other, and there they
lived in a community of taste and sentiment. They worked together, and
shared each other's fame; the sisters, happy in the love and
admiration of their husbands, and in each other's sympathy. The poet
Racine was greatly blessed in his wife; she was pious, good,
sweet-tempered, and made his life happy. And yet she had no taste for
poetry, scarcely knowing what verse was; and knew little of her
husband's great tragedies except by name. She had an utter
indifference for money. One day, Racine brought from Versailles a
purse of a thousand golden louis; and running to his wife, embraced
her: "Congratulate me," said he, "here is a purse of a thousand louis
that the king has presented to me!" She complained to him of one of
the children, who would not learn his lessons for two days together.
"Let us talk of that another time," said he, "to-day we give ourselves
up to joy." She again reverted to the disobedient child, and requested
the parent to reprimand him; when Boileau (at whose house she was on a
visit) lost patience, and cried, "what insensibility! Can't you think
of a purse of a thousand louis?" Yet these two characters, though so
opposite, consorted admirably, and they lived long and happily
together.
To please his friends, LA FONTAINE married Mary Hericat, the daughter
of a lieutenant-general. It was a marriage of convenience, and the two
preferred living separate,--he at Paris, she in the country. Once a
year La Fontaine paid her a visit, in the month of September. If he
did not see her, he returned home as happy as he had gone. He went
some other day. Once, when he visited her house, he was told she was
quite well, and he returned to Paris, and told his friends he had not
seen his wife, because he understood she was in very good health. It
was a state of indifference on both sides. Yet the wife was a woman of
virtue, beauty, and intelligence; and La Fontaine himself was a man of
otherwise irreproachable character. There were many such marriages of
indifference in France in those days. Boileau and Racine both tried to
bring the married pair together, but without success; and, in course
of time La Fontaine almost forgot that he was married.
MOLIERE was extremely unhappy in his marriage. He espoused an actress,
and she proved a coquette. He became extremely jealous, and, perhaps,
he had reason. Yet he loved her passionately, and bore long with her
frailties. He thus himself describes her: "She has small eyes, but
they are full of fire, brilliant, and the most penetrating in the
world. She has a large mouth, but one can discern beauties in it that
one does not see in other mouths. Her figure is not large, but easy
and well-proportioned. She affects a _nonchalance_ in her speech and
carriage; but there is grace in her every act, and an indescribable
charm about her, by which she never fails to work her way to the
heart. Her mental gifts are exquisite; her conversation is charming,
and, if she be capricious more than any other can be, all sits
gracefully on the beautiful,--one bears any thing from the beautiful."
She was an excellent actress, and was run after by the town. Moliere,
her husband, was neglected by her, and suffered agonies of torture. He
strove against his passion as long as he could. At last, his patience
was exhausted, and a separation took place.
We know nothing of the married life of SHAKSPEARE; indeed, we know but
little of any portion of that great man's life. But we know that he
married young, and we know the name of his wife, Anne Hathawaye, the
daughter of a yeoman, in the neighborhood of Stratford-on-Avon. He was
little more than eighteen when he married her, and she was twenty-six.
The marriage was hastened by circumstances which need not be explained
here. He seems to have gone alone to London, leaving her with her
little family of children at Stratford-on-Avon, (for her name does not
once appear in his married life;) and yet she survived him seven
years. In his will he left her only his "second-best bed." Judging
from his sonnets one would be disposed to infer that Shakspeare's life
was not more chaste than that of his age; for we find him, in one of
these, excusing his friend for robbing him of his mistress,--a married
woman. One could almost wish, with Mr. Hallam, that Shakspeare had not
written many of those sonnets, beautiful in language and imagery
though they unquestionably are.
MILTON was three times married,--the first time very unhappily. Mary
Powell was the daughter of a royalist cavalier of Oxfordshire, and
Milton was a zealous republican. He was, moreover, a studious man,
whereas his wife was possessed by a love of gayety and pleasure. They
had only been married a month, when she grew tired of the studious
habits and philosophical seclusion of the republican poet, and
requested his permission to return to her father's house. She went,
but refused to return to him, preferring the dissipated society of the
brawling cavaliers who surrounded her. He beseeched her to come back,
but she persistently refused, treating his messengers with contumely
and contempt. He bore this for a long time; but at last he grew angry,
and repudiated her. He bethought himself of the social mischiefs
resulting from ill-assorted marriages like his own; and, full of the
subject, he composed and published his celebrated treatise on divorce.
On public grounds he pleaded his own cause in this work, which
contains, perhaps, the finest passages that are to be found in his
prose writings. He proceeded to solicit the hand of another young and
beautiful lady, the daughter of Dr. Dawes; but his wife, hearing of
this, became repentant, and, returning to him, fell upon her knees,
and entreated his forgiveness. Milton, like his own Adam, was "fondly
overcome with female charms," and consented. Four children were born
to them, but the wife died in child-bed of the fifth infant. It is to
Milton's honor, that he behaved to his deceased wife's relatives with
great generosity, when, a short time after, they became involved in
ruin in the progress of the civil wars. His second wife, Catharine
Woodcock, also died in child-bed, only a year after marriage. He seems
to have loved her fondly, and most readers will remember his beautiful
sonnet, consecrated to her memory.
With his third wife he seems to have lived happily; the young wife
devoted herself to his necessities--for he was now blind--"in
darkness, and with dangers compassed round, and solitude."
DR. RICHARD HOOKER, was very unfortunate in his wife. He was betrayed
into marrying her by his extraordinary simplicity and ignorance of the
world. The circumstances connected with the marriage were these:
Having been appointed to preach at St. Paul's Cross, he went up to
London from Oxford, and proceeded to the house set apart for the
reception of the preachers. He was very wet and weary on his arrival,
and experienced much kindness from the housekeeper. She persuaded him
that he was a man of very tender constitution, and urged that he
ought, above all things, to have a wife, to nurse and take care of
him. She professed to be able to furnish him with such, if he thought
fit to marry. Hooker authorized her to select a wife for him, and the
artful woman presented her own daughter--"a silly, clownish woman, and
withal a mere Xantippe." Hooker, who had promised to marry whomsoever
she should select, thought himself bound to marry her, and he did so.
They led a most uncomfortable life, but he resigned himself as he best
could, lamenting that "saints have usually a double share in the
miseries of this life." When Cranmer and Sandys went to see him at his
rectory in Buckinghamshire, they found him reading Horace and tending
sheep, in the absence of the servant. When they were conversing with
him in the house, his wife would break in upon them, and call him away
to rock the cradle and perform other menial offices. The guests were
glad to get away. This unfortunate wife was long a thorn in his side.
The famous Earl of ROCHESTER appears in very favorable light in his
letters to his wife: they are remarkably tender, affectionate, and
gentle. In one of them, he says: "'Tis not an easy thing to be
entirely happy; but to be kind is very easy, and that is the greatest
measure of happiness. I say not this to put you in mind of being kind
to me--you have practised that so long, that I have a joyful
confidence you will never forget it--but to show that I myself have a
sense of what the method of my life seemed so utterly to contradict."
DRYDEN married Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the Earl of Berkshire.
The match added little to his wealth, and less to his happiness. It
was an altogether unhappy union. On one occasion, his wife wished to
be a book, that she might enjoy more of his company. Dryden's reply
was: "Be an almanac, then, my dear, that I may change you once a
year." In his writings afterwards, he constantly inveighed against
matrimony.
ADDISON also "married discord in a noble wife." He was tutor to the
young Earl of Warwick, and aspired to the hand of the Dowager
Countess. She married him, and treated him like a lacquey. She never
saw in him more than her son's tutor. SWIFT (his contemporary) cruelly
flirted with two admirable women; he heartlessly killed one of them,
and secretly married the other, but never publicly recognized her;
she, too, shortly after died.
STERNE treated his wife with such severity, that she abandoned him,
and took retreat in a convent with her daughter; she never saw him
after. Who would have suspected this from the author of "Lefevre" and
"The Sentimental Journey?" FARQUHAR, the play-writer, married, early
in life, a woman who deceived him by pretending to be possessed of a
fortune, and he sunk, a victim to disappointment and over-exertion, in
his thirtieth year, leaving behind him "two helpless girls;" his
widow died in the utmost indigence.
These are rather unhappy instances of the wives of great men; but
there are others of a happier kind. Indeed we hear but little of the
happy unions: it is the brawling, rocky brook that is the most noisy:
the slow, deep waters are dump. Every one will remember the wife of
Lord WILLIAM RUSSELL, whose conduct by the side of her husband, on his
trial, stands out as one of the most beautiful pictures in all
history. How devotedly her husband loved her need not be said: when he
had taken his final farewell, all he could say was: "The bitterness of
death is now past!" She lived many years after the execution of her
husband, and a delightful collection of her letters has since been
published.
BUNYAN speaks with the greatest tenderness of his wife, who helped to
lead him into the paths of peace. He says: "My mercy was to light upon
a wife, whose father and mother were counted godly: this woman and I,
though we came together as poor as poor might be (not having so much
household stuff as a dish or a spoon betwixt us both); yet this she
had for her part, 'The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven,' and 'The
Practice of Piety,' which her father had left her when he died." And
the perusal of these books, together with his good wife's kindly
influence, at last implanted in him strong desires to reform his
vicious life, in which he eventually succeeded.
PARNELL and STEELE were both happy in their wives. The former married
a young woman of beauty and merit, but she lived only a few years, and
his grief at his loss so preyed on his mind, that he never recovered
his wonted spirits and health. STEELE'S letters to his wife, both
before and after his marriage, are imbued with the most tender
feeling, and exhibit his affection for her in the most beautiful
light. YOUNG, the poet, like Dryden and Addison, married into a noble
house, espousing the daughter of the Earl of Litchfield; but he was
happier than they. It was out of the melancholy produced by her death
that his famous "Night Thoughts" took their rise.
When JOHNSON married Mrs. Porter, her age was twice his own; yet the
union proved a happy one. It was not a love-match, but it was one of
inclination and of reciprocal esteem. Johnson was any thing but
graceful or attractive, yet he possessed admirable qualities. Mrs.
Porter was rather ungainly; but Johnson was very shortsighted, and
could not detect personal faults. In his eyes, she was beautiful; and,
in an affectionate epitaph which he devoted to her, he painted her in
glowing colors. Indeed, his writings contain many proofs of the lively
and sincere affection which he entertained for her.
While such have been the wives of a few of the great men of past
times, it must be stated that, probably, the greatest of them all led
a single life. The greatest of the philosophers were bachelors, such
as Bacon, Newton, Gassendi, Galileo, Descartes, Bayle, Locke,
Leibnitz, Hume, Gibbon; and many poets also as Pope, Goldsmith, and
Thompson. Bacon says that wife and children are "impediments to great
enterprises;" and that "certainly the best works, and of greatest
merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless
men, which, both in affection and reason, have married and endowed the
public." But these were the words of a bachelor, and, perhaps, not
strictly correct. The great men of more recent times have generally
been married; and, at another time, we shall probably complete this
paper by a brief account of the more distinguished of their wives.
A LEGEND OF ST. MARY'S.
BY ALICE CAREY.
One night, when bitterer winds than ours
On hill-sides and in valleys low,
Built sepulchres for the dead flowers,
And buried them in sheets of snow,--
When over ledges dark and cold,
The sweet moon rising high and higher,
Tipped with a dimly burning gold
St. Mary's old cathedral spire,--
The lamp of the confessional,
(God grant it did not burn in vain,)
After the solemn midnight bell,
Streamed redly through the lattice-pane.
And kneeling at the father's feet,
Whose long and venerable hairs,
Now whiter than the mountain sleet,
Could not have numbered half his prayers,
Was one--I cannot picture true
The cherub beauty of his guise;
Lilies, and waves of deepest blue,
Were something like his hands and eyes!
Like yellow mosses on the rocks,
Dashed with the ocean's milk-white spray,
The softness of his golden locks
About his cheek and forehead lay.
Father, thy tresses, silver-sleet,
Ne'er swept above a form so fair;
Surely the flowers beneath his feet
Have been a rosary of prayer!
We know not, and we cannot know,
Why swam those meek blue eyes with tears;
But surely guilt, or guiltless wo,
Had bowed him earthward more than years.
All the long summer that was gone,
A cottage maid, the village pride,
Fainter and fainter smiles had worn,
And on that very night she died!
As soft the yellow moonbeams streamed
Across her bosom, snowy fair,
She said, (the watchers thought she dreamed,)
"'Tis like the shadow of his hair!"
And they could hear, who nearest came,
The cross to sign and hope to lend,
The murmur of another name
Than that of mother, brother, friend.
An hour--and St. Mary's spires,
Like spikes of flame, no longer glow--
No longer the confessional fires
Shine redly on the drifted snow.
An hour--and the saints had claimed
That cottage maid, the village pride;
And he, whose name in death she named,
Was darkly weeping by her side.
White as a spray-wreath lay her brow
Beneath the midnight of her hair,
But all those passionate kisses now
Wake not the faintest crimson there!
Pride, honor, manhood, cannot check
The vehemence of love's despair--
No soft hand steals about his neck,
Or bathes its beauty in his hair!
Almost upon the cabin walls
Wherein the sweet young maiden died,
The shadow of a castle falls,
Where for her young lord waits a bride!
With clear blue eyes and flaxen hair,
In her high turret still she sits;
But, ah! what scorn her ripe lips wear--
What shadow to her bosom flits!
From that low cabin tapers flash,
And, by the shimmering light they spread,
She sees beneath its mountain ash,
Leafless, but all with berries red,
Impatient of the unclasped rein,
A courser that should not be there--
The silver whiteness of his mane
Streaming like moonlight on the air!
Oh, love! thou art avenged too well--
The young heart, broken and betrayed,
Where thou didst meekly, sweetly dwell,
For all its sufferings is repaid.
Not the proud beauty, nor the frown
Of her who shares the living years
From her the winding-sheet wraps down,
Can ever buy away the tears!
From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal.
MARY KINGSFORD.
FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF A POLICE-OFFICER.
Towards the close of 1836, I was hurriedly dispatched to Liverpool for
the purpose of securing the person of one Charles James Marshall, a
collecting clerk, who, it was suddenly discovered, had absconded with
a considerable sum of money belonging to his employers. I was too
late--Charles James Marshall having sailed in one of the American
liners the day before my arrival in the northern commercial capital.
This fact well ascertained, I immediately set out on my return to
London. Winter had come upon us unusually early; the weather was
bitterly cold; and a piercing wind caused the snow, which had been
falling heavily for several hours, to gyrate in fierce, blinding
eddies, and heaped it up here and there into large and dangerous
drifts. The obstruction offered by the rapidly-congealing snow greatly
delayed our progress between Liverpool and Birmingham; and at a few
miles only distant from the latter city, the leading engine ran off
the line. Fortunately, the rate at which we were travelling was a very
slow one, and no accident of moment occurred. Having no luggage to
care for, I walked on to Birmingham, where I found the parliamentary
train just on the point of starting, and with some hesitation, on
account of the severity of the weather, I took my seat in one of the
then very much exposed and uncomfortable carriages. We travelled
steadily and safely, though slowly along, and reached Rugby Station in
the afternoon, where we were to remain, the guard told us, till a fast
down-train had passed. All of us hurried as quickly as we could to the
large room at this station, where blazing fires and other appliances
soon thawed the half-frozen bodies, and loosened the tongues of the
numerous and motley passengers. After recovering the use of my
benumbed limbs and faculties, I had leisure to look around and survey
the miscellaneous assemblage about me.
Two persons had travelled in the same compartment with me from
Birmingham, whose exterior, as disclosed by the dim light of the
railway carriage, created some surprise that such finely-attired,
fashionable gentlemen should stoop to journey by the plebeian
penny-a-mile train. I could now observe them in a clearer light, and
surprise at their apparent condescension vanished at once. To an eye
less experienced than mine in the artifices and expedients familiar to
a certain class of "swells," they might perhaps have passed muster for
what they assumed to be, especially amidst the varied crowd of a
"parliamentary;" but their copper finery could not for a moment impose
upon me. The watch-chains were, I saw, mosaic; the watches, so
frequently displayed, gilt; eye-glasses the same; the coats,
fur-collared and cuffed, were ill-fitting and second-hand; ditto of
the varnished boats and renovated velvet waistcoats; while the
luxuriant moustaches and whiskers, and flowing wigs, were unmistakably
mere _pieces d'occasion_--assumed and diversified at pleasure. They
were both apparently about fifty years of age; one of them perhaps one
or two years less than that. I watched them narrowly, the more so from
their making themselves ostentatiously attentive to a young
woman--girl rather she seemed--of a remarkably graceful figure, but
whose face I had not yet obtained a glimpse of. They made boisterous
way for her to the fire, and were profuse and noisy in their offers of
refreshment--all of which, I observed, were peremptorily declined. She
was dressed in deep, unexpensive mourning; and from her timid gestures
and averted head, whenever either of the fellows addressed her, was,
it was evident, terrified as well as annoyed by their rude and
insolent notice. I quietly drew near to the side of the fire-place, at
which she stood, and with some difficulty obtained a sight of her
features. I was struck with extreme surprise--not so much at her
singular beauty, as from an instantaneous conviction that she was
known to me, or at least that I had seen her frequently before, but
where or when I could not at all call to mind. Again I looked, and my
first impression was confirmed. At this moment the elder of the two
men I have partially described placed his hand, with a rude
familiarity, upon the girl's shoulder, proffering at the same time a
glass of hot brandy and water for her acceptance. She turned sharply
and indignantly away from the fellow; and looking round as if for
protection, caught my eagerly-fixed gaze.
"Mr. Waters!" she said impulsively. "Oh I am so glad!"
"Yes," I answered, "that is certainly my name; but I scarcely
remember----Stand back, fellow!" I angrily continued, as her
tormentor, emboldened by the spirits he had drank, pressed with a
jeering grin upon his face, towards her, still tendering the brandy
and water. "Stand back!" He replied by a curse and a threat. The next
moment his flowing wig was whirling across the room, and he standing
with his bullet-head bare but for a few locks of iron-gray, in an
attitude of speechless rage and confusion, increased by the peals of
laughter which greeted his ludicrous, unwigged aspect. He quickly put
himself in a fighting attitude, and, backed by his companion,
challenged me to battle. This was quite out of the question; and I was
somewhat at a loss how to proceed, when the bell announcing the
instant departure of the train rang out, my furious antagonist
gathered up and adjusted his wig, and we all sallied forth to take our
places--the young woman holding fast by my arm, and in a low, nervous
voice, begging me not to leave her. I watched the two fellows take
their seats, and then led her to the hindmost carriage, which we had
to ourselves as far as the next station.
"Are Mrs. Waters and Emily quite well?" said the young woman, coloring
and lowering her eyes beneath my earnest gaze, which she seemed for a
moment to misinterpret.
"Quite--entirely so," I almost stammered. "You know us, then?"
"Surely I do," she replied, reassured by my manner. "But you, it
seems," she presently added with a winning smile, "have quite
forgotten little Mary Kingsford."
"Mary Kingsford!" I exclaimed almost with a shout. "Why, so it is! But
what a transformation a few years have effected!"
"Do you think so! Not _pretty_ Mary Kingsford now, then?" she added
with a light, pleasant laugh.
"You know what I mean, you vain creature!" I rejoined; for I was
overjoyed at meeting with the gentle, well-remembered playmate of my
own eldest girl. We were old familiar friends--almost father and
daughter--in an instant.
Little Mary Kingsford, I should state, was, when I left Yorkshire, one
of the prettiest, most engaging children I had ever seen; and a petted
favorite not only with us, but of every other family in the
neighborhood. She was the only child of Philip and Mary Kingsford--a
humble, worthy, and much-respected couple. The father was gardener to
Sir Pyott Dalzell, and her mother eked out his wages to a respectable
maintenance by keeping a cheap children's school. The change which a
few years had wrought in the beautiful child was quite sufficient to
account for my imperfect recognition of her; but the instant her name
was mentioned, I at once recognised the rare comeliness which had
charmed us all in her childhood. The soft brown eyes were the same,
though now revealing profounder depths, and emitting a more pensive
expression; the hair, though deepened in color, was still golden; her
complexion, lit up as it now was by a sweet blush, was brilliant as
ever; whilst her child-person had became matured and developed into
womanly symmetry and grace. The brilliancy of color vanished from her
cheek as I glanced meaningly at her mourning dress.
"Yes," she murmured in a sad quivering voice--"yes, father is gone! It
will be six months next Thursday, that he died! Mother is well," she
continued more cheerfully, after a pause: "in health, but poorly off;
and I--and I," she added with a faint effort at a smile, "am going to
London to seek my fortune!"
"To seek your fortune!"
"Yes; you know my cousin, Sophy Clark? In one of her letters, she said
she often saw you."
I nodded without speaking. I knew little of Sophia Clarke, except that
she was the somewhat gay, coquettish shopwoman of a highly-respectable
confectioner in the Strand, whom I shall call by the name of Morris.
"I am to be Sophy's assistant," continued Mary Kingsford; "not of
course at first at such good wages as she gets. So lucky for me, is it
not, since I _must_ go to service? And so kind, too, of Sophy, to
interest herself for me!"
"Well, it may be so. But surely I have heard--my wife at least
has--that you and Richard Westlake were engaged? Excuse me, I was not
aware the subject was a painful or unpleasant one."
"Richard's father," she replied with some spirit, "has higher views
for his son. It is all off between us now," she added; "and perhaps it
is for the best that it should be so."
I could have rightly interpreted these words without the aid of the
partially-expressed sigh which followed them. The perilous position of
so attractive, so inexperienced, so guileless a young creature, amidst
the temptations and vanities of London, so painfully impressed and
preoccupied me, that I scarcely uttered another word till the
rapidly-diminishing rate of the train announced that we neared a
station, after which it was probable we should have no farther
opportunity for private conversation.
"Those men--those fellows at Rugby--where did you meet with them?" I
inquired.
"Thirty or forty miles below Birmingham, where they entered the car in
which I was seated. At Birmingham I managed to avoid them."
Little more passed between us till we reached London. Sophia Clark
received her cousin at the Euston station, and was profuse of
felicitations and compliments upon her arrival and personal
appearance. After receiving a promise from Mary Kingsford to call and
take tea with my wife and her old playmate, on the following Sunday, I
handed the two young women into a cab in waiting, and they drove off.
I had not moved away from the spot when a voice, a few paces behind
me, which I thought I recognised, called out; "Quick, coachee, or
you'll lose sight of them!" As I turned quickly round, another cab
drove smartly off, which I followed at a run. I found, on reaching
Lower Seymour Street, that I was not mistaken as to the owner of the
voice, nor of his purpose. The fellow I had unwigged at Rugby thrust
his body half out of the cab window, and pointing to the vehicle which
contained the two girls, called out to the driver "to mind and make no
mistake." The man nodded intelligence, and lashed his horse into a
faster pace. Nothing that I might do could prevent the fellows from
ascertaining Mary Kingsford's place of abode; and as that was all
that, for the present at least, need be apprehended, I desisted from
pursuit, and bent my steps homewards.
Mary Kingsford kept her appointment on the Sunday, and in reply to our
questioning, said she liked her situation very well. Mr. and Mrs.
Morris were exceedingly kind to her; so was Sophia. "Her cousin," she
added in reply to a look which I could not repress, "was perhaps a
little gay and free of manner, but the best-hearted creature in the
world." The two fellows who had followed them had, I found, already
twice visited the shop; but their attentions appeared now to be
exclusively directed towards Sophia Clarke, whose vanity they not a
little gratified. The names they gave were Hartley and Simpson. So
entirely guileless and unsophisticated was the gentle country maiden,
that I saw she scarcely comprehended the hints and warnings which I
threw out. At parting, however, she made me a serious promise that she
would instantly apply to me should any difficulty or perplexity
overtake her.