My reader is sufficiently acquainted with me by this time to know that
there is one quality in me on which he can always count with safety,--my
candor! There may be braver men and more ingenious men; there may be, I
will not dispute it, persons more gifted with oratorical powers, better
linguists, better mathematicians, and with higher acquirements in art;
but I take my stand upon candor, and say, there never lived the man,
ancient or modern, who presented a more open and undisguised section of
himself than I have done, am doing, and hope to do to the end. And
what, I would ask you, is the reason why we have hitherto made so little
progress in that greatest of all sciences,--the knowledge of human
nature? Is it not because we are always engaged in speculating on what
goes on in the hearts of others, guessing, as it were, what people are
doing next door, instead of honestly recording what takes place in their
own house?
You think this same candor is a small quality. Well, show me one
thoroughly honest autobiography. Of all the men who have written their
own memoirs, it is fair to presume that some may have lacked personal
courage, some been deficient in truthfulness, some forgetful of early
friendships, and so on. Yet where will you find me one, I only ask
one, who declares, “I was a coward, I never could speak truth, I was by
nature ungrateful”?
Now, it would be exactly through such confessions as these our knowledge
of humanity would be advanced. The ship that makes her voyage without
the loss of a spar or a rope, teaches little; but there is a whole world
of information in the log of the vessel with a great hole in her, all
her masts carried away, the captain invariably drunk, and the crew
mutinous; then we hear of energy and daring and ready-wittedness,
marvellous resource, and indomitable perseverance; then we come to
estimate a variety of qualities that are only evoked by danger. Just
as some gallant skipper might say, “I saw that we couldn't weather the
point, and so I dropped anchor in thirty fathoms, and determined to
trust all to my cables;” or, “I perceived that we were settling down,
so I crowded all sail on, resolved to beach her.” In the same spirit I
would like to read in some personal memoir, “Knowing that I could not
rely on my courage; feeling that if pressed hard, I should certainly
have told a lie--” Oh, if we only could get honesty like this! If some
great statesman, some grand foreground figure of his age would sit down
to give his trials as they really occurred, we should learn more of life
from one such volume than we glean from all the mock memoirs we have
been reading for centuries!
It is the special pleading of these records that makes them so
valueless; the writer always is bent on making out his case. It is the
eternal representation of that spectacle said to be so pleasing to the
gods,--the good man struggling with adversity. But what we want to see
is the weak man, the frail man, the man who has to fight adversity
with an old rusty musket and a flint lock, instead of an Enfield rifle,
loading at the breech!
I 'd not give a rush to see Blondin cross the Falls of Niagara on a
tight-rope; but I'd cross the Atlantic to see, «ay, the Lord Mayor or
the Master of the Rolls try it.
Now, much-respected reader, do not for a moment suppose that I have,
even in my most vainglorious raptures, ever imagined that I was here
in these records supplying the void I have pointed out. Remember that I
have expressly told you such confessions, to be valuable, ought to
come from a great man. Painful as the avowal is, I am not a great man!
Elements of greatness I have in me, it is true; but there are wants,
deficiencies, small little details, many of them,--rivets and bolts, as
it were,--without which the machinery can't work; and I know this, and I
feel it.
This digression has all grown out of my unwillingness to mention what
mention I must,--that I passed my night at the little inn on the table
where we supped. I had not courage to assert the right to my bed in the
Count's room; and so I wrapped myself in my cloak, and with my
carpetbag for a pillow, tried to sleep. It was no use; the most elastic
spring-mattress and a down cushion would have failed that night to
lull me! I was outraged beyond endurance: _she_ had slighted, _he_
had insulted me! Such a provocation as he gave me could have but one
expiation. He could not, by any pretext, refuse me satisfaction. But was
I as ready to ask it? Was it so very certain that I would insist upon
this reparation? He was certain to wound, he might kill me! I believe I
cried over that thought. To be cut off in the bud of one's youth, in
the very spring-time of one's enjoyment,--I could not say of one's
utility,--to go down unnoticed to the grave, never appreciated, never
understood, with vulgar and mistaken judgments upon one's character and
motives! I thought my heart would burst with the affliction of such
a picture, and I said, “No, Potts, live; and reply to such would-be
slanderers by the exercise of the qualities of your great nature.”
Numberless beautiful little episodes came thronging to my memory of
good men, men whose personal gallantry had won them a world-wide renown,
refusing to fight a duel. “We are to storm the citadel to-morrow,
Colonel,” said one; “let us see which of us will be first up the
breach.” How I loved that fellow for his speech; and I tortured my mind
how, as there was no citadel to be carried by assault, I could apply
its wisdom to my own case. What if I were to say, “Count, the world is
before us,--a world full of trials and troubles. With the common fortune
of humanity, we are certain each of us to have our share. What if we
meet on this spot, say ten years hence, and see who has best acquitted
himself in the conflict?” I wonder what he would say. The Germans are
a strange, imaginative, dreamy sort of folk. Is it not likely that he
would be struck by a notion so undeniably original? Is it not probable
that he would seize my hand with rapture, and say, “Ja! I agree”?
Still, it is possible that he might not; he might be one of those vulgar
matter-of-fact creatures who will regard nothing through the tinted
glass of fancy; he might ridicule the project, and tell it at breakfast
as a joke. I felt almost smothered as this notion crossed me.
I next bethought me of the privileges of my rank. Could I, as an R.
H., accept the vulgar hazards of a personal encounter? Would not such
conduct be derogatory in one to whom great destinies might one day be
committed? Not that I lent myself, be it remarked, to the delusion
of being a prince; but that I felt, if the line of conduct would be
objectionable to men in my rank and condition, it inevitably followed
that it must be bad. What I could neither do as the descendant of St.
Louis, or the son of Peter Potts, must needs be wrong. These were the
grievous meditations of that long, long night; and though I arose from
the hard table, weary and with aching bones, I blessed the pinkish-gray
light that ushered in the day. I had scarcely completed a very rapid
toilet, when François came with a message from Mrs. Keats, “hoping I
had rested well, and begging to know at what hour it was my pleasure to
continue the journey.” There was an evident astonishment in the fellow's
face at the embassy with which he was charged; and though he delivered
the message with reasonable propriety, there was a certain something in
his look that said, “What delusion is this you have thrown around the
old lady?”
“Say that I am ready, François; that I am even impatient to be off, and
the sooner we start the better.”
This I uttered with all my heart; for I was eager to get away before
the odious German should be stirring, and could not subdue my anxiety to
avoid meeting him again. There was every reason to expect that we should
get off unnoticed, and I hastened out myself to order the horses and
stimulate the postilions to greater activity. This was no labor of
love, I promise you! The sluggardly inertness of that people passes all
belief; entreaties, objurgations, curses, even bribes could not move
them. They never admitted such a possibility as haste, and stumped about
in their wooden shoes or iron-bound boots, searching for articles of
horse-gear under bundles of hay or stacks of firewood, as though it
was the very first time in their lives that post-horses had ever been
required in that locality. “Make a great people out of such materials
as these!” muttered I; “what rubbish to imagine it! How, with such
intolerable apathy, are they to be moved? Where everything proceeds at
the same regulated slowness, how can justice ever overtake crime? When
can truth come up with falsehood? Whichever starts first here, must
inevitably win.” To urge the creatures on by example, I assisted with my
own hands to put on the harness; not, I will own, with much advantage
to speed, for I put the collar on upside down, and, in revenge for the
indignity, the beast planted one of his feet upon me, and almost
drove the cock of his shoe through my instep. Almost mad with pain
and passion, I limped away into the garden, and sat down in a damp
summer-house. A sleepless night, a lazy ostler, and a bruised foot
are, after all, not stunning calamities; but there are moments when our
jarred nerves jangle at the slightest touch, and even the most trivial
inconveniences grow to the size of afflictions.
“We began to fear you were lost, sir,” said François, breaking in upon
my gloomy revery I cannot say how long after. “The horses have been at
the door this half-hour, and all the house searching after you.”
I did not deign a reply, but followed him, as he led me by a short path
to the house. Mrs. Keats and Miss Herbert had taken their places
inside the carriage, and, to my ineffable disgust, there was the German
chatting with them at the door, and actually presenting a bouquet the
landlord had just culled for her. Unable to confront the fellow with
that contemptuous indifference which I knew with a little time and
preparation I could summon to my aid, I scaled up to my leathern attic
and let down the blinds.
“Do you mean,” said I, through a small slit in my curtain,--“do you mean
to sit smoking there all day? Will you never drive on?” And now, with a
crash of bolts and a jarring of cordage, like what announced the launch
of a small ship, the heavy conveniency lurched, surged, and, after two
or three convulsive bounds, lumbered along, and we started on our day's
journey. As we bumped along, I remembered that I had never wished the
ladies a “good-morning,” nor addressed them in any way; so completely
had my selfish preoccupation immersed me in my own annoyances, that I
actually forgot the commonest attentions of every-day life. I was pained
by this rudeness on my part, and waited with impatience for our first
change of horses to repair my omission. Before, however, we had gone a
couple of miles, the little window at my back was opened, and I
heard the old lady's voice, asking if I had ever chanced upon a more
comfortable country inn or with better beds.
“Not bad,--not bad,” said I, peevishly. “I had such a mass of letters to
write that I got little sleep. In fact, I scarcely could say I took any
rest.”
While the old lady expressed her regretful condolences at this, I saw
that Miss Herbert pinched her lips together as if to avoid a laugh, and
the bitter thought crossed me, “She knows it all!”
“I am easily put out, besides,” said I. “That is, at certain times I
am easily irritated, and a vulgar German fellow who supped with us last
night so ruffled my temper that I assure you he continued to go through
my head till morning.”
“Oh, don't call him vulgar!” broke in Miss Herbert; “surely there could
be nothing more quiet or unpretending than his manners.”
“If I were to hunt for an epithet for a month,” retorted I, “a more
suitable one would never occur to me. The fellow was evidently an actor
of some kind,--perhaps a rope-dancer.”
She burst in with an exclamation; but at the same time Mrs. Keats
interposed, and though her words were perfectly inaudible to me, I had
no difficulty in gathering their import, and saw that “the young person”
was undergoing a pretty smart lecture for her presumption in daring to
differ in opinion with my Royal Highness. I suppose it was very ignoble
of me, but I was delighted at it. I was right glad that the old woman
administered that sharp castigation, and I burned even with impatience
to throw in a shell myself and increase the discomfiture. Mrs. Keats
finished her gallop at last, and I took up the running.
“You were fortunate, madam,” said I, “in the indisposition that confined
you to your room, and which rescued you from the underbred presumption
of this man's manners. I have travelled much, I have mixed largely, I
may say, with every rank and condition, and in every country of Europe,
so that I am not pronouncing the opinion of one totally inadequate to
form a judgment--”
“Certainly not, sir. Listen to that, young lady,” muttered she, in a
sort of under growl.
“In fact,” resumed I, “it is one of my especial amusements to observe
and note the forms of civilization implied by mere conventional
habits. If, from circumstances not necessary to particularize, certain
advantages have favored this pursuit--”
When I had reached thus far in my very pompous preface, the clatter of
a horse coming up at full speed arrested my attention, and at the very
moment the German himself, the identical subject of our talk, dashed up
to the carriage window, and with a few polite words handed in a small
volume to Miss Herbert, which it seems he had promised to give her, but
could not accomplish before, in consequence of the abrupt haste of our
departure. The explanation did not occupy an entire minute, and he was
gone and out of sight at once. And now the little window was closed,
and I could distinctly hear that Mrs. Keats was engaged in one of those
salutary exercises by which age communicates its experiences to youth.
I wished I could have opened a little chink to listen to it, but I could
not do so undetected, so I had to console myself by imagining all the
shrewd and disagreeable remarks she must have made. Morals has its
rhubarb as well as medicine, wholesome, doubtless, when down, but
marvellously nauseous and very hard to swallow, and I felt that the
young person was getting a full dose; indeed, I could catch two very
significant words, which came and came again in the allocution, and
the very utterance of which added to their sharpness,--“levity,”
“encouragement.” There they were again!
“Lay it on, old lady,” muttered I; “your precepts are sound; never was
there a case more meet for their application. Never mind a little pain,
either,--one must touch the quick to make the cautery effectual. She
will be all the better for the lesson, and she has well earned it!” Oh,
Potts! Potts! was this not very hard-hearted and ungenerous? Why should
the sorrow of that young creature have been a pleasure to you? Is it
possible that the mean sentiment of revenge has had any share in this?
Are you angry with her that she liked that man's conversation, and
turned to _him_ in preference to _you?_ You surely cannot be actuated by
a motive so base as this? Is it for herself, for her own advantage, her
preservation, that you are thinking all this time? Of course it is. And
there, now, I think I hear her sob. Yes, she is crying; the old lady has
really come to the quick, and I believe is not going to stop there.
“Well,” thought I, “old ladies are an excellent invention; none of these
cutting severities could be done but for them. And they have a patient
persistence in this surgery quite wonderful, for when they have
flayed the patient all over, they sprinkle on salt as carefully as a
pastry-cook frosting a plum-cake.”
At last, I did begin to wish it was over. She surely must have addressed
herself to every phase of the question in an hour and a half; and yet
I could hear her still grinding, grinding on, as though the efficacy
of her precepts, like a homoeopathic remedy, were to be increased by
trituration. Fortunately, we had to halt for fresh horses; and so I got
down to chat with them at the carriage-door, and interrupt the lecture.
Little was I prepared for the reddened eyes and quivering lips of that
poor girl, as she drank off the glass of water she begged me to fetch
her, but still less for the few words she contrived to whisper in my ear
as I took the glass from her hands.
“I hope you have made me miserable enough _now_.”
And with this the window was banged to, and away we went.