excuses given by Schlemihl for the loss of his shadow are certainly
grotesque. One was that when he was travelling in Russia it froze so
hard that the shadow stuck to the ground; another that a rough man
walked so rudely into the shadow that he tore a hole in it and it was
sent out to be mended. Another excuse was that it disappeared during a
long sickness, with the hair and nails of the hero, and while hair and
nails had been restored, the shadow had never come back.
“Peter Schlemihl” is written in a charming style. The vocabulary and
the diction are extremely simple. This is perhaps due to the fact that
the book was intended for a child’s story, but still more, I think,
to the fact that Chamisso being by birth a Frenchman, his diction has
something in it of the clear and luminous character of French prose.
THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW
WASHINGTON IRVING
As in painting it is not the huge canvas but the miniature which is
most finished and delicate in detail, so in American fiction it is
a short story of the simplest type, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,”
which furnishes perhaps the choicest illustration of the perfection of
literary handiwork.
The incidents of the tale are meager; the characters are very few.
Ichabod Crane, the Yankee schoolmaster, is pretty much all. But with
what a master hand are drawn the few lines that portray his grotesque
personality! “He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders,
long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet
that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely
hung together. His head was small and flat on top, with huge ears,
large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like
a weather-cock perched on his spindle neck to tell which way the wind
blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day,
with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have
mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or
some scarecrow escaped from a cornfield.”
In the matter of style, this little sketch is as near perfection as
it is possible to come. The landscape pictures are so lifelike that the
reader is flushed by the opulence of the autumn harvests “in which
the birds were taking their farewell banquets,” or hushed by the calm
brooding over the Tappan Zee, while the schoolmaster jogs along upon
his ancient nag to lay siege to the heart and the inheritance of the
fair Katrina Van Tassel. The crullers and doughnuts on the table of
the Dutch farmer inspire an appetite in the reader almost as keen as
that of the pedagogue; and the final catastrophe, when, after the
rejection of his suit, the trembling Ichabod falls a victim to the
Headless Horseman, overthrown by the pumpkin hurled from the hands of
the irreverent Brom Bones, is a climax worthy of the humor of Cervantes
himself. Indeed, there are strong grounds for believing that Don
Quixote was the model of the lank pedagogue, who, whether he bestrides
Gunpowder, or delves in the lore of ghosts and hobgoblins, or shakes
himself to pieces in the dance, irresistibly calls to mind the peerless
knight of La Mancha. But whether or not Irving borrowed the lay figure
from another, he has moulded the cast upon it so perfectly that Ichabod
is all his own.
IVANHOE
WALTER SCOTT
The novelist who puts the scene of his story in a place and a time far
removed from his own has perhaps this advantage, that he offers to his
reader scenes that have the charm of strangeness and novelty; but he
suffers from a serious drawback,--he can never interpret the thoughts
and conduct of his characters with the same truthfulness, nor in
quite the same lively manner as if they were familiar to him by daily
contact. For the human interest of his drama he has to rely not so much
upon temporary or local characteristics as upon those which are common
to all periods and all communities. Indeed, if there be any local
color, it is apt to be that of the author’s own surroundings rather
than of those in which the story is laid.
In “Ivanhoe,” Scott sought to reproduce the period of Richard I, and
perhaps the reproduction is as lifelike as any that could be made,
where the materials are so scanty. The novel belongs distinctly to
the romantic school, and contains all the usual ingredients of books
of chivalry,--knights errant, heroes in disguise, prodigies of valor,
maidens in distress, a foul ravisher, a wandering monarch, a drinking
friar, etc. These things are pruned of their most evident absurdities,
but the story is still quite far removed from probability. The plot
is palpably a creation of imaginative architecture, resembling some
well proportioned temple or villa, rather than the product of natural
development like a landscape or like life itself. In places the author
invokes the Saxon Chronicle and other authorities in proof of the
credibility of his narrative, but these references themselves show that
he is not unconscious of the fact that his story stands in need of
extraneous support.
And yet, this artificiality being once conceded, how beautiful is the
structure! How fine the material, and how symmetrically it is put
together! Sometimes, perhaps, the narrative lags a little; sometimes
the descriptions, like those of Cedric’s hall or Athelstane’s castle,
are longer than the impatience of the reader cares to tolerate. Yet
the great scenes of the drama, how vividly do all these stand forth in
our memory! How splendid the stage setting and how well arranged the
incidents!
The story opens quietly. Gurth, the swineherd, and Wamba, the jester
of Cedric the Saxon, are driving home a herd of swine, when they are
overtaken by Prior Aymer and the Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert with
their train. Then follows the supper scene at Rotherwood, the residence
of Cedric, where Ivanhoe, disguised as a wandering palmer, returned
from Palestine, visits his father’s home, answers the boasting taunts
of the Templar, saves the poor Jew, Isaac of York, and is supplied with
armor for the coming tourney.
Next follows one of the most celebrated scenes in literature, the
description of the passage at arms at Ashby, in which Ivanhoe, as the
“Disinherited Knight,” vanquishes all antagonists and names Rowena,
Cedric’s ward, as queen of love and beauty, and where, in the _melée_
on the second day, the “Black Sluggard,” another unknown knight, turns
the fortunes of the fray against the Templar.
Perhaps even more admirably constructed are the scenes which
follow,--the capture of Cedric, Rowena, Athelstane, Isaac and his
daughter Rebecca, by the Norman nobles, and their imprisonment in the
castle of Front-de-Boeuf, where they are separated from each other, and
where the events which take place simultaneously in different parts of
the castle are narrated with great vividness and power. While Cedric
and Athelstane are held for ransom, Front-de-Boeuf seeks to extort a
vast sum of money from poor Isaac by preparing to roast him alive; De
Bracy, a Norman noble, demands the hand of Rowena as the price of her
safety and that of Ivanhoe; and the Templar besets Rebecca with his
amorous importunities until she prepares to fling herself from the
parapet to escape his violence. The interruption of these scenes by a
bugle call from without, the demand for the release of the captives
made by Wamba, Gurth, the Black Knight, and Locksley, captain of the
outlaws, followed by the siege and burning of the castle, constitute
perhaps the climax of the story, and are even more impressive than
its third great scene, the trial of Rebecca for sorcery, and her
deliverance by Ivanhoe, who appears as her champion at the last moment.
Certain episodes are almost as attractive as the main thread of the
narrative. For instance, the drinking bout between Friar Tuck and the
Black Knight (who turns out to be King Richard) in the chapel in the
forest.
There are improbabilities in this work which show us very clearly
that it is a creation of the imagination rather than a transcript of
observations from actual life. Take, for instance, the conversation
between Brian de Bois-Guilbert and the captive Rebecca in the castle.
It is safe to say that no knight, however profligate, ever began a
love-suit to a maiden with a satirical reminder that her father was
then being tortured for money in another part of the castle, in such
words as the following:
“Know, bright lily of the vale of Baca, that thy father is
already in the hands of a powerful alchemist, who knows how to
convert into gold and silver even the rusty bars of a dungeon
grate. The venerable Isaac is subjected to an alembic, which will
distill from him all he holds dear, without any assistance from
my requests or thy entreaty. Thy ransom must be paid by love and
beauty, and in no other coin will I accept it.”
And yet, in spite of such defects, the heroism displayed by Rebecca
in this particular scene has made it one of the most attractive in
the entire story. Rebecca is indeed one of the noblest characters in
fiction, and the portrait is natural and human, as well as heroic.
Although she was delivered from the stake by her champion, the story
ends sadly for her, since the knight whom she loves has become the
husband of Rowena. Scott tells us in his preface that he has been
censured for this, but he adds, with admirable taste, that he thinks
that a character of a highly virtuous and lofty stamp is degraded
rather than exalted by an attempt to reward virtue with temporal
prosperity.
But to my mind the most attractive person in the book is Wamba, the
jester. He appears to me in many ways a close imitation of some of
Shakespeare’s clowns. His jests are on an average quite as good, and
he everywhere awakens our liveliest interest and sympathy, from the
hour when he interposes his shield of brawn in front of the Jew at the
tournament until the time when he exchanges repartees and songs with
the Black Knight on their way through the forest. There is, moreover
a strain of pathos in his merriment, and when he enters the castle of
Front-de-Boeuf, disguised as a monk, and exchanges his garments with
his master, remaining within the castle in expectation of death, the
gibes with which he accompanies his sacrifice give to his character
something very human, lovable, and withal heroic. Even Shakespeare has
hardly given us a better clown.
The resuscitation and the appearance of the Saxon noble Athelstane
at his own funeral feast is far from artistic. Scott himself calls it
a _tour de force_, and says he put it in at the vehement entreaties
of his friend and printer, who was inconsolable at the Saxon being
conveyed to the tomb,--an example which ought to be a warning to
authors to follow their own judgment rather than that of their friends.
In the crucible of Scott’s imagination moral qualities are sometimes
fused together in such manner that the original ingredients are quite
undiscernible. Robin Hood and his outlaws become generous heroes,
and Friar Tuck, who is in reality a dissolute and hypocritical monk,
becomes amiable and attractive. Indeed, this great writer of romance is
filled with such ever present optimism and love of honorable qualities,
that it is almost impossible for him to draw the picture of a really
detestable man. His novels offer the strongest possible contrast to the
pessimistic realism of some of the more recent works of fiction.
Men may differ in their estimates of Ivanhoe as a picture of human
life and character, but they can hardly differ in their estimate of it
as a beautiful piece of poetic imagination.
THE BETROTHED
ALESSANDRO MANZONI
“The Betrothed,” by Manzoni, has not received at the hands of the
English or American public that wide celebrity or high rank which it
deserves. It is a very great novel. Excepting only “Don Quixote,”
and some of the masterpieces of Thackeray, I know of nothing more
excellent in the whole range of fiction. There is no artificiality,
no sensationalism, no straining after effect; but the story proceeds
naturally and even quietly through events of great historic as well as
tragic interest, to its consummation.
The scene opens at a village on the shores of the lake of Como, on
an occasion when Don Abbondio, the curate of the parish, is stopped
on his way home by two “bravoes” of Don Rodrigo, a nobleman of the
locality, and warned, upon pain of death, not to celebrate the marriage
of Renzo Tramaglino and Lucia Mondella, which had been fixed for the
following day. The scene is a very vivid one, and the terror of Don
Abbondio is set forth in the liveliest manner. He is also warned not
to disclose the warning; “It will be the same as marrying them,” says
the bravo. But the poor priest is a leaky vessel, and when he grumbles
and complains to his housekeeper Perpetua, he can not refrain from
relating to her the awful threat. Dreadful are his dreams that night
of “bravoes, Don Rodrigo, Renzo, cries, muskets”; and on the next
day, when he makes blundering excuses to the bridegroom and tries
to overwhelm him with Latin quotations which he can not understand,
the truth all comes out, for Perpetua has talked with Renzo about
“overbearing tyrants,” and Renzo at last worms the story, and even the
name of the “tyrant,” out of the frightened priest.
But the wedding is stopped, and Renzo betakes himself to Dr. Azzecca
Garbugli, learned in the law, who treats him encouragingly and
confidentially, so long as he thinks he has only a malefactor to
defend, quoting terrible edicts with the comforting assurance that he
can get him off, until he learns that Renzo has come, not to defeat but
to seek justice, and that too against the powerful Don Rodrigo. Then he
sends the poor fellow away, and will hear nothing in justification of
his suit.
But the unfortunate lovers have a friend in the person of Father
Cristoforo, a monk, who in his early life had killed a man in a rage,
and devoted the remainder of his days to the humility and repentance
of the cloister. He takes it upon himself to visit Don Rodrigo, and in
earnest and indignant words remonstrates with the abandoned nobleman,
but he is ordered from the house.
And now Agnese, the gossiping mother of Lucia, proposes to accomplish
the marriage by craft. The lovers are to make a declaration before
the curate in the presence of witnesses. This, it seems, was a method
recognized by law. Renzo undertakes his preparations for the scheme;
gains access to Don Abbondio’s house through a friend, who comes
under pretense of paying rent; but just as they are making the mutual
declaration they are interrupted by a great outcry on the part of Don
Abbondio, who throws the tablecloth over Lucia’s face and stops the
proceedings.
That same night Don Rodrigo has sent his bravoes to abduct Lucia. They
steal into the house, but find it empty, and are suddenly startled by
the ringing of the bell, which has followed the outcry of Don Abbondio.
“Each of the villains seems to hear in these peals his name, surname,
and nickname,” and they flee in consternation, while the betrothed
betake themselves to the convent of Father Cristoforo, at Pescarenico;
and the tumult aroused in the village by these events, admirably
pictured by the novelist, at length subsides.
Father Cristoforo sends Renzo to Milan, and the women to a convent
at Monza, where Lucia is to find refuge with “the Signora,” a nun of
high rank, who has been compelled by her father to assume the veil.
The Signora is proud, passionate, unreconciled. Her history, and the
schemes by which her consent to a monastic life had been extorted by
alternate persecutions and flatteries, are skillfully delineated, as
well as her intrigue with Egidio, an abandoned man, living in a house
adjoining the convent, which intrigue is followed by the mysterious
disappearance of a lay sister who has discovered the crime. But “the
Signora” now rejoices at the opportunity of thus sheltering an innocent
creature like Lucia, whom she takes under her protection.
Renzo reaches Milan at the time of the breaking out of the bread riots,
due to the prevailing famine. The looting and destruction of one of
the bake-houses is vividly described, and also the attack upon the
superintendent of provisions. Renzo can not keep out of these exciting
scenes, and becomes quite a hero, making a speech to the crowd,
innocent enough in purpose, but easily construed into sedition by a
secret agent of the government who hears it, attaches himself to Renzo,
acts as his guide to an inn in the neighborhood, where the innocent
young man unlawfully refuses to give his name to the innkeeper, but
unwittingly reveals it to his guide; then goes to bed intoxicated, is
arrested next morning, escapes from the officers of justice in the
midst of the crowd, flees from the city, and does not stop until he has
quit the duchy of Milan, crossed the Adda, and taken refuge with his
cousin Bortolo in the Bergamascan territory--all of which is followed
by proceedings declaring him a dangerous outlaw,--luckily, however,
after he is well out of reach.
Through the intrigues of Don Rodrigo, the monk Cristoforo is sent
away to Rimini, and the nobleman now betakes himself to the castle of
a great lord, whose name is not given, so dreadful were the crimes he
was said to have committed. The Unnamed took upon himself the task of
kidnapping Lucia from the convent, and for this purpose availed himself
of Egidio, who compelled the Signora to betray the girl committed to
her keeping and to send Lucia on a pretended message, to be seized,
thrown into a carriage, and driven to that lair of robbers, the castle
of the Unnamed. But so great are her sufferings, so moving her piteous
appeals, that even the heart of the outlaw is touched, and he falters
in his desperate scheme. Lucia in her agony prays to the Madonna for
deliverance, and, resolving to sacrifice what she holds most dear, she
determines to give up her beloved Renzo, and vows to remain a virgin.
A fine description is given of the remorse which steals over
the conscience of the desperate malefactor, his despair at the
contemplation of a career which is now drawing near its close, with
its inevitable termination, and the thought, “If there should really
be another life!” He hears again the piteous words of Lucia when she
besought him to set her free, “God pardons so many sins for one deed of
mercy!”
When the morning breaks after a night of this remorse, he hears the
distant chiming of bells; learns of the festival of the people in the
neighborhood who were going to meet their bishop, Cardinal Federigo
Borromeo, and, by a sudden impulse, he too determines to go and
present himself to the cardinal. The history of this great prelate, a
saintly man, is given in detail--his works of charity, his writings,
his efforts in the cause of education. The Unnamed is welcomed by
the Cardinal with joy and genuine tenderness, and the details of a
religious conversion, often repulsive to an unsympathetic reader, here
become, through the author’s skill, both natural and attractive.
Don Abbondio, to his great consternation is now sent with the
celebrated outlaw to fetch Lucia from his castle. He goes thither,
trembling, grumbling, and complaining to himself like an old woman. The
poor girl is released, and believes, of course, that her deliverance is
due to the Madonna.
Shortly afterwards the cardinal, on the occasion of a visit to Don
Abbondio’s parish, takes the poor priest to task for his violated
duty in refusing to celebrate the marriage. There are few passages in
literature more impressive than the solemn severity of his reproof;--
“Signor Curate, why did you not unite in marriage this Lucia with
her bethrothed husband?”....
“Don Abbondio began to relate the doleful history; but
suppressing the principal name, he merely substituted _a great
Signor_; thus giving to prudence the little that he could in such
an emergency.
“‘And you have no other motive?’ asked the Cardinal, having
attentively heard the whole.
“‘Perhaps I have not sufficiently explained myself,’ replied Don
Abbondio. ‘I was prohibited under pain of death to perform this
marriage.’
“‘And does this appear to you a sufficient reason for omitting
a positive duty?’
“‘I have always endeavored to do my duty, even at very great
inconvenience; but when one’s life is concerned....’
“‘And when you presented yourself to the church,’ said Federigo,
in a still more solemn tone, ‘to receive Holy Orders, did she
caution you about your life?’.... ‘He from whom we have received
teaching and example, in imitation of whom we suffer ourselves to
be called, and call ourselves, shepherds; when He descended upon
earth to execute His office, did He lay down as a condition the
safety of His life? And to save it, to preserve it, I say, a few
days longer upon earth, at the expense of charity and duty, did
he institute the holy unction, the imposition of hands, the gift
of the priesthood? Leave it to the world to teach this virtue,
to advocate this doctrine. What do I say? Oh, shame! the world
itself rejects it; the world also makes its own laws, which fix
the limits of good and evil; it, too, has its gospel, a gospel of
pride and hatred; and it will not have it said that the love of
life is a reason for transgressing its precepts. It will not, and
it is obeyed. And we! children and proclaimers of the promise!
What would the Church be, if such language as yours were that of
all your brethren?’
* * * * *
“‘I repeat, my Lord,’ answered Don Abbondio, ‘that I shall be to
blame.... One can’t give one’s self courage.’
“‘And why then, I might ask you, did you undertake an office
which binds upon you a continual warfare with the passions of the
world?... Ah, if for so many years of pastoral labors you have
loved your flock (and how could you _not_ love them?)--if you
have placed in them your affections, your cares, your happiness,
courage ought not to fail you in the moment of need; love is
intrepid.’”
This discourse, which is much longer than I have quoted, gives us an
admirable ideal of the episcopal office, and through the whole of it
the contrast between these two natures vividly appears, without any
apparent effort on the part of the author to produce it.
In the meantime, Renzo, who has been in hiding under an assumed name,
has established secret communication with Agnese, the mother of his
betrothed, and is naturally greatly disgusted to learn of Lucia’s
vow. Lucia has found refuge at Milan with a distinguished lady, one
Donna Prassede, who is a type of the “superior woman”--one of those
pestilent, unsympathetic natures, determined to do good to others at
whatever violence to their feelings; who feels herself the instrument
of Heaven and with a consciousness of innate superiority, and great
display of patronage, torments Lucia by denouncing the unworthy outlaw
to whom her affections have been engaged.
Up to this point the narrative has traversed scenes common enough
to the period with which it deals; but here it takes up the story of
one of the most terrible public calamities which history records--the
appearance of the plague in Milan. The scenes of the preceding famine
are vividly described; the inefficacy of the ridiculous legal remedies
by which it was proposed to supply the lack of natural resources;
the establishment of the Lazaretto; the war raging in Italy, which
distracted the attention of the authorities; and, finally, the invasion
of the German army, by which the plague was introduced into the
territory of Milan. A historical account is given of the introduction
of the contagion, and the various stages of public sentiment in regard
to it.
“First, then, it was not the plague, absolutely not--by no
means; the very utterance of the term was prohibited. Then,
it was pestilential fevers; the idea was indirectly admitted
in the adjective. Then, it was not the true nor real plague;
that is to say, it was the plague, but only in a certain sense;
not positively and undoubtedly the plague, but something to
which no other name could be affixed. Lastly, it was the plague
without doubt, without dispute; but even then another idea was
appended to it, the idea of poison and witchcraft, which altered
and confounded that conveyed in the word they could no longer
repress.”