beaming face of ’Manthla’s father with his irrepressible ‘Allee right!’
He marched in and billeted himself upon us for about six days. I am
not aware whether this was owing to prolonged litigation or to the
enjoyment of living at some one else’s expense. At all events, when the
week expired, the _babba_ vouchsafed the information that the case had
gone against him, and that he had to restore the bullocks, at the same
time cheerily adding: ‘It’s allee right, allee right!’ Nevertheless, he
went away very downcast, after another ineffectual attempt to collect
Capelle’s wages in advance. A day or two afterwards, the cattle were
returned to Indebbelish with a bad grace; but Umhlassu gave Babba Pank
eight oxen, with a promise of other two at some future period; and
the heart of the old man rejoiced. The sympathies of my wife had been
aroused in favour of Indebbelish; but her interest instantly vanished
when she found that ‘the poor, forsaken young man,’ long previous to
his ‘courtship’ of ’Manthla, was already possessed of three wives! When
Indebbelish received back the oxen from the _babba_, he simply drove
them off to another kraal, and purchased an ebony virgin to complete
his connubial quartet.
About eighteen months afterwards, I happened to be amongst the
Saturday morning throng on the Market Square of Maritzburg. Hundreds
of people—English, Dutch, Indian, and Kaffir—were moving about the
dusty expanse of ground, which was covered with auctioneers’ stands,
bullock-wagons, sacks of produce, cows and horses on sale, and large
quantities of the miscellaneous household goods which find their way
to colonial marts. At one part of the ground, a number of Kaffir wives
were squatted alongside heaps of firewood, which they had conveyed into
town, and were now selling. As I observed them, my boy Capelle suddenly
drew my attention to a woman who was walking towards the group. She
carried a great load of firewood in long lengths poised upon her head,
and a baby slung behind her in a blanket. I dimly recollected her face;
Capelle told me her name, and ran forward to speak to her. It was none
other than the heroine of the love-match—poor ’Manthla!
CONCERNING LOVE.[4]
IN TWO PARTS.—PART II.
Having in the former part of this paper considered certain theories
concerning the nature, qualities, power, and vitality of love, we
would now invite the attention of our readers to some of the symptoms,
evidences, and effects of that passion. Here we find ourselves upon
somewhat firmer ground, for the field now before us is not so much
that of theory and definition as of observation and experience. While
the profoundest philosophers find themselves at a loss in attempting
to formulate some satisfactory theory on the subject, the most
unsophisticated observer can tell us something of the signs and tokens
by which love manifests its presence. The symptoms of the tender
passion are both varied and varying, and we have it on the authority
of Addison that there is no other passion which produces such contrary
effects in so great a degree. Byron describes love as bearing within
itself ‘the very germ of change.’
For a thoroughly comprehensive catalogue of love’s tokens take the
reply of Silvius to Phebe in _As You Like It_. ‘Good shepherd,’ says
Phebe, ‘tell this youth what ’tis to love.’ ‘It is,’ replies Silvius,
‘to be all made of sighs and tears; it is to be all made of faith and
service; it is to be all made of fantasy, all made of passion, and all
made of wishes; all adoration, duty, and observance; all humbleness,
all patience, and impatience; all purity, all trial, all observance.’
If the foregoing be accepted as an accurate description of what it is
to love, one is enabled to understand the belief that the reason why
Love is not included among the virtues is that it combines them all in
one.
Dryden has given us several accounts of the way in which the tender
passion operates upon the mind. In one passage he says:
Love various minds does variously inspire:
He stirs in gentle natures gentle fire,
Like that of incense on the altar laid;
But raging flames tempestuous souls invade:
A fire which every windy passion blows;
With pride it mounts, and with revenge it glows.
The same writer, descending to more everyday observations, and speaking
of the condition of a person in love, declares:
You pine, you languish, love to be alone,
Think much, speak little, and in speaking sigh.
This is certainly a faithful description of the conventional lover,
whom you meet in novels, and there are no doubt a great many
sentimental people who still languish and sigh, after the old romantic
pattern. Yet there are a great many more who get through all their
love experiences with very little languishing and very few sighs. They
are much too busy, or too cheerful, or too matter-of-fact, to indulge
their passion to the pining or languishing degree; so that tears and
sighs and groans are not by any means inevitable or necessary symptoms
of love. While one lover is to be found ‘sighing like furnace, with a
woeful ballad made to his mistress’ eyebrow,’ another is discovered
basking joyfully in the sunshine of his love, and singing with Moore
that
There’s nothing half so sweet in life
As love’s young dream.
Ovid remarks that tears are by no means unserviceable in love, because
by tears you may touch a heart of stone. He therefore advises the
lover to endeavour that his mistress should find him with his cheeks
bathed in tears; and he adds, that if you are not quite equal to the
shedding of genuine tears, you may bathe your eyes and cheeks by other
means. But Ovid is discoursing on the _art_ of love, and what we are
at present considering are the true marks of the genuine passion.
There are, no doubt, few matters in which there has been, since the
world began, so much dissimulation and hypocrisy as in love affairs,
and Ovid’s artful suggestions recall the profane observation of a
cynical writer, that ‘Love consists of a little sighing, a little
crying, a little dying—and a deal of lying.’ It is not our present
purpose, however, to enter upon the false in love, or the spurious
impersonations which stalk about in his name. Let it suffice to say
that Ovid’s crafty advice is founded on the fact that true love is
often tearful and desponding. It may not be, as Silvius puts it, ‘all
sighs and tears,’ but even the most sanguine love may have its moments
of sadness and doubt. ‘Love,’ says one of the poets—
Love, though most sure,
Yet always to itself seems insecure.
And Scott declares that ‘Love is loveliest when embalmed in tears.’
Another poet argues that unless you quake and are struck dumb when your
mistress enters the room, you have loved amiss, and must begin anew.
But if love is sometimes downcast and fearful, it just as often
soars aloft on the pinions of hope, for ‘Love can hope where Reason
would despair.’ The lover has a miraculous way of finding hope and
encouragement amid the most unpromising circumstances. He can feed for
weeks together on a word or a glance; and if his mistress frown and
turn her back upon him, he must still lay the flattering unction to his
soul that she merely frowns, as Shakspeare expresses it somewhere, to
beget more love in him. Truly, the lover had need be ‘all patience,’
for ’tis a fickle god he woos. If he would not woo in vain, he must
bear with a thousand caprices, inconstancies, and tyrannies.
Lovers are proverbially blind to each other’s shortcomings, and their
praises of each other are therefore untrammelled by ordinary scruples
on the score of veracity. ‘There never,’ says Bacon, ‘was a proud man
thought so absurdly well of himself as the lover doth of the person
loved.’ It is therefore at once easy and natural for men and women
under the influence of the tender passion to present to each other, and
to swallow with the keenest relish, a great deal of this kind of food.
If we are to credit the French poet Chamfort, who says he has seen
women of all countries, an Italian woman does not believe that she is
loved by her lover unless he is capable of committing a crime for her,
an Englishwoman an extravagance, and a Frenchwoman a folly. Let us hope
that worthier performances than these are sometimes demanded in token
of love’s sincerity—acts of self-denial, of merit, of generosity, and
of faithfulness. Richter is of opinion, however, that ‘love requires
not so much proofs as expressions of love—it demands little else than
the power to feel and to requite love.’ Dryden gives expression to the
same idea, when he says:
All other debts may compensation find,
But Love is strict, and must be paid in kind.
How often has love spurned riches, power, enjoyment, the good opinion
of the world, and everything else, in order to meet responsive love
amid poverty, suffering, deprivation, and even dishonour! True love
will sacrifice everything to be requited; for ‘Lovers all but love
disdain.’
Whatever form its manifestations may take, it may be assumed that
the fickle god will not fail to show itself. ‘There are two things
not to be hidden,’ says the proverb—‘Love and a cough.’ It may be
expressed by sighs and tears, by a dejected and distracted mien, and
by what Shakspeare calls ‘the pale complexion of true love.’ It may
be discovered in tell-tale blushes—‘celestial rosy red, Love’s proper
hue,’ as Milton puts it—in bashful awkwardness, and in a distressing
self-consciousness in the presence of the adored object. And it may
be shown no less plainly and emphatically in quiet self-devotion,
dutifulness, and self-sacrifice. It often identifies itself with
various kinds of manias, such as a mania for composing amatory
epistles or writing verses, a mania for going to church, for haunting
a particular street, or for buying kid gloves, patent-leather boots,
and eau-de-Cologne. These, with many other similar and equally harmless
symptoms, are quite familiar.
Then there is a more extravagant class of manifestations that the hard
unfeeling world would describe as folly. When love reaches what Bacon
calls ‘the mad degree,’ there is absolutely no limit to the excesses
that may be perpetrated in its name. But of the comparatively harmless
kinds of folly there is usually a considerable admixture in even the
sedatest loves. Thomson describes the lover as ‘the very fool of
nature.’ It is not, of course, to be supposed that he is ever conscious
of his folly—when he is engaged in it, at all events—for
Love is blind, and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit.
Yet it cannot be denied that the folly in love is, to the lovers, by no
means the least agreeable part of it.
I could not love, I’m sure,
One who in love were wise,
is Cowley’s frank confession; and most lovers, if they carefully
examine their experience and speak the truth, will echo the sentiment.
Wisdom would never give utterance to all those fond, foolish fancies,
those ‘airy nothings,’ and sweet flatteries that the lover prizes so
much; and wisdom would often dictate a degree of prudence and reserve
and formality that could never be endured by two hearts that beat as
one.
The proverb holds, that to be wise and love,
Is hardly granted to the gods above.
After what we have seen of Cupid’s fickleness and ever-varying moods,
it will not be imagined that when love is not all smiles and sunshine,
it is therefore insincere or undesirable. In the words of the poet
Walsh:
Love is a medley of endearments, jars,
Suspicions, quarrels, reconcilements, wars,
Then peace again.
After the storm, the sun returns as bright and genial as before,
and the air is all the purer and the sweeter for the electric war
that has disturbed its stillness. The love that cannot outlive a few
misunderstandings and disagreements can hardly claim to be considered
as genuine, and had better be allowed to pass at once into the limbo of
exploded myths. The truth is, however, that Love often dispenses his
favours in a very eccentric way, and each favour is sometimes paid for
with a more than proportionate amount of suffering; so that the lover
must be often tempted to exclaim with Addison:
Mysterious love! uncertain treasure!
Hast thou more of pain or pleasure?
Yet he will probably resolve the problem in much the same manner as the
poet does in completing the stanza:
Endless torments dwell about thee,
Yet who would live and live without thee?
Spenser finds that ‘love with gall and honey doth abound,’ and in
computing the proportion of each, he expresses the belief that for
every drachm of honey there is a pound of gall. Notwithstanding this,
however, he is prepared to assert that
One loving hour
For many years of sorrow can dispense;
A drachm of sweet is worth a pound of sour.
This is the attitude which the lover must adopt; and if the gall
preponderate in his experience—which we sincerely hope it won’t—he must
comfort and sustain himself with thoughts of the honey he has enjoyed,
and that may be yet in store for him.
If the course of true love does not run smooth, that is not always
because the way is not clear enough or level enough, but very often
entirely on account of Love’s injudicious and impracticable behaviour.
If Love will indulge his propensity to masquerade in the guise of
frenzy or delirium, folly or extravagance, there is nothing at all
surprising in his getting into trouble. But what is the use of
sermonising? Notwithstanding all the striking lessons he has received,
and the painful experiences through which he has passed, Cupid is
still much the same wilful, rollicking, mischief-loving sprite that he
was when he first appeared upon our planet; and so, no doubt, he will
remain to the end of the chapter.
At the same time, when all is said and done, is it not just possible
that Love gets blamed for a good deal of trouble and mischief for
which he is really not responsible? Do people not often cry out
against Love’s tyranny and unreasonableness, when they ought to blame
their own selfishness, or pride, or blundering stupidity? Love must
be treated as an honoured guest, not as a slave; and if he leave us,
may we not reasonably ask ourselves, before we begin to upbraid and
revile him, whether we have not driven him away by our own neglect
and heartlessness and querulous impatience? When we consider how he
is sometimes treated, the wonder is, not so much that he should have
departed, as that he should have stayed so long.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Concluded from page 156.
THE PROGRESS OF CYCLING.
It is exceedingly interesting to the reflective cyclist of the present
day to indulge in a retrospect of ten or fifteen years, and compare
his present position with the status that subsisted in those early
days of the wheel. Nothing could better illustrate the rapid growth
of this comparatively modern method of locomotion than the spread and
increasing importance of the various Exhibitions in different parts of
the country devoted entirely or in part to demonstrating the advances
made in the two or three wheeler during the recess of winter. And these
advances have been most marked during the past year, the machines now
exhibited showing plainly the care and attention bestowed upon them.
In one important detail in particular this is markedly apparent,
namely, in that of gearing for tricycles. It is a well-known fact among
cyclists that the temporary exhaustion following the rapid traversing
of a smooth level road does not proceed in a tenth degree so much from
the actual strength expended as upon the rapid exertion required. To
obviate this, a system of gearing-up has been introduced, whereby the
wheels make more revolutions than the feet. But as this would place the
rider at a disadvantage in ascending inclines or in traversing rough
roads, a system of gearing level or down has been combined, whereby, by
a mechanical arrangement, the wheels perform either the same number of
revolutions as the feet, or less. The combination of these systems has
produced some of the most intricately ingenious mechanisms that have
lately appeared before the public, and cyclists are busily engaged in
testing and otherwise determining which system shall be introduced into
their mounts for the coming season.
In the June number of the _Journal_ for last year we predicted
the approach of a period of unusual activity in cycling, and the
prediction has not proved fallacious; for the season which closed with
the approach of last winter was remarkable in many respects, as the
following will show. In October, the extraordinary distance of two
hundred and sixty miles was ridden on a two-wheeler in twenty-four
hours over ordinary roads; a tricycle under similar circumstances
has covered over two hundred and twenty-one miles when ridden by a
gentleman, and one hundred and fifty-two miles when propelled by a
lady. In August, a tricycle was driven from John o’ Groats to Land’s
End—ten hundred and seven miles—in fourteen days; the bicycle record
by a shorter route being a little over nine days; whilst in October
a bicyclist rode from London to Derby—a distance of one hundred and
twenty-six miles—without either stopping or dismounting. Many feats of
endurance and determination similar to the above have taken place upon
the public roads; whilst upon the racing-path, the great feature has
been the ‘record cutting’ of the year. In 1882, a well-known doctor and
amateur bicyclist rode twenty miles and three hundred and twenty-five
yards in an hour; in 1883, this was beaten by a professional at
Leicester, who covered twenty miles nine hundred and five yards in
the same time; whilst the time for one mile has been lowered from two
minutes forty-one and three-fifth seconds to two minutes forty and
four-fifth seconds. The time for one mile for a tricycle was also
lowered to three minutes five seconds, and all existing tricycling
records from a quarter of a mile to one hundred miles were beaten
last year. But the rapid advances which characterise the sport will
doubtless enable faster times than the above to be made in the not far
distant future, and the records which we now behold with pardonable
pride may sink into comparative insignificance.
The objection has been raised by many opponents of cycling that it is
of no practical value to mankind apart from the means it provides for
healthy recreation. This objection no longer exists. The tricycle is
now used extensively in many parts of the kingdom by professional men;
clergymen in particular are very partial to it; to the doctor it is
a positive boon, ay, and to the patient as well at times, for in an
emergency, the ready steed can be mounted at once, and no delay caused
by awakening drowsy coachmen and harnessing horses. A new description
of tricycle now enables enterprising tradesmen, notably news-agents,
grocers, and others whose wares are of a comparatively light nature,
to deliver their goods with more despatch than formerly; and the
Post-office authorities have been alive to the advantages offered by
this means of distribution by obtaining machines for rural districts
in connection with the Parcels Post and the delivery of letters. The
Inland Revenue Office by a recent order recognises the tricycle; and
the police in some of our colonies have used them for some time. These
facts plainly show that the tricycle has entered upon a new phase of
its existence, and that a noble and useful career undoubtedly awaits it.
The ‘freemasonry of the wheel’ has been pushed on to a greater extent
than ever during the past year, and is a factor which undoubtedly
influences a large proportion of the British public. This is shown by
the increasing numbers of the Cyclists’ Touring Club, which increased
from seven to nearly twelve thousand during 1883, and promises to reach
even twenty thousand during the current year. The ladies are giving
their heartiest support, and are joining in large numbers; whilst
the movement offers so many attractions to all riders in providing
touring companions, hotels with fixed tariffs in nearly every town in
Great Britain and the continent, good-fellowship and congenial society
wherever the cyclist may happen to alight, and other advantages too
numerous to mention, that it includes in its roll many of the nobility
and gentry in all parts of the land, and is supported by some of the
highest dignitaries of the Church and members of the legal, medical,
military, and naval professions.
Other great cycling institutions exist, which are rendering good
service to the general public in various ways, one notably in
calling attention to the decadence of our public roads since the old
coaching-days. In many parts of the country, main roads now exist that
are all but impassable to ordinary traffic; their deterioration may be
attributed mainly to the competition and monopolisation of the railways
in diverting the traffic that once passed over them. Their condition
is a misfortune to the public in general, and especially to the
inhabitants of the locality; for as good roads are certain to advance
the prosperity of a district, so bad ones have ever been considered an
indication of a backward state of civilisation. The local authorities
to whom the construction and maintenance of these roads have been
intrusted, are being aroused to a sense of their responsibility by
influentially and numerously attended meetings of persons interested
in cycling; the laws relating to the highways have been collected
and discussed, and many leading newspapers have given prominence to
the grievances vented at these assemblies. If the result should be
the amelioration of the condition of these highways, the thanks of
the general public will be due to the cyclists, and it will tend to
forge still stronger the link which is fast binding them into closer
fellowship.
To many manufacturing towns, the rise of cycling has been a boon;
to one in particular, Coventry, it has proved perhaps the greatest
blessing that has ever befallen it. That ancient city was fast sinking
into absolute inertness through the falling-off of its staple trade;
it can now boast of being one of the most prosperous towns of the
midlands, with huge manufactories and busy hives of men sending forth
to the world those apparently delicate structures which are now in
such universal request. Other towns, such as Birmingham, London,
Wolverhampton, &c., sensibly feel the demands of the two hundred
thousand cyclists who are computed to be in Great Britain alone, and
the export trade of these towns is rapidly becoming greater in this
particular branch. The two and three wheeler have now penetrated
to nearly every part of the globe; they are no longer strangers to
the Russian, the Turk, and the Hindu; in Brazil, Australia, and New
Zealand, they make steady progress; and even the sacred land of the
Celestials is not free from their enchantments. This wide and general
dissemination of a sport which is essentially English, cannot fail to
be a source of the greatest gratification to those who so sturdily
fought for it and upheld it during the trials of its early existence.
SPRING IN THE ALLEY.
She stooped and told him that the Spring was born;
A ring of triumph in her fresh young voice;
For she, poor child, was in her life’s glad morn,
And the soft sunshine made her heart rejoice.
‘Wert thou not longing for the Spring?’ she said;
But the pale sufferer sadly shook his head,
And gazed with sunken eyes upon her face,
Till its pure beauty filled his soul with peace,
Then smoothed her locks, and in a fond embrace,
Clasping her slender form, he whispered: ‘Cease
To sing the praises of the young Spring flowers;
Child of the narrow court! they are not ours!’
O’er the despondent sufferer bending low,
Till her fair tresses swept his throbbing brow,
With tender glistening eyes, and cheeks aglow
With joy and hope, she softly told him how,
Not very far away, the golden bees
Wooed the white clusters of the hawthorn trees.
She spoke of twittering birds, and raised her eyes,
Bright with the glory of poetic thought,
To the dark ceiling that shut out the skies,
And lowered upon her, as she vainly sought,
With words of loving sympathy, to cheer
The flickering life that suffering made so dear.
For oh, that life, unlovely though it seemed,
Was the dear object of her fondest love;
Volumes of witching poesy she dreamed,
Morn, noon, and evening, as she bent above
His weary form, yet neither light nor bloom
Could tempt her footsteps from that dingy room.
Oft, when she heard his hollow cough, she wept
In the still midnight—how it wrung her heart!
Yea, she could hear it even when she slept,
And often wakened with a feverish start,
Beseeching God, in many a tearful prayer,
To ease the pain that _she_ so longed to share.
Blithely she carolled when the morning sun
Rose o’er the alley like a blushing bride;
Or grave and silent, like some meek-faced nun,
Plied she her needle by the sufferer’s side—
And oh, it was so sweet to toil for him
Till her hands trembled, and her eyes grew dim!