PIERRE:
OR,
THE AMBIGUITIES.
BY
HERMAN MELVILLE.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS
329 & 331 PEARL STREET,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1852.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by
HERMAN MELVILLE,
In the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New York.
TO
Greylock's Most Excellent Majesty.
In old times authors were proud of the privilege of dedicating their
works to Majesty. A right noble custom, which we of Berkshire must
revive. For whether we will or no, Majesty is all around us here in
Berkshire, sitting as in a grand Congress of Vienna of majestical
hill-tops, and eternally challenging our homage.
But since the majestic mountain, Greylock--my own more immediate
sovereign lord and king--hath now, for innumerable ages, been the one
grand dedicatee of the earliest rays of all the Berkshire mornings, I
know not how his Imperial Purple Majesty (royal-born: Porphyrogenitus)
will receive the dedication of my own poor solitary ray.
Nevertheless, forasmuch as I, dwelling with my loyal neighbors, the
Maples and the Beeches, in the amphitheater over which his central
majesty presides, have received his most bounteous and unstinted
fertilizations, it is but meet, that I here devoutly kneel, and render
up my gratitude, whether, thereto, The Most Excellent Purple Majesty of
Greylock benignantly incline his hoary crown or no.
_Pittsfield, Mass._
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
BOOK I. PIERRE JUST EMERGING FROM HIS TEENS
BOOK II. LOVE, DELIGHT, AND ALARM
BOOK III. THE PRESENTIMENT AND THE VERIFICATION
BOOK IV. RETROSPECTIVE
BOOK V. MISGIVINGS AND PREPARATIVES
BOOK VI. ISABEL, AND THE FIRST PART OF THE STORY OF ISABEL
BOOK VII. INTERMEDIATE BETWEEN PIERRE'S TWO INTERVIEWS WITH ISABEL AT THE FARM-HOUSE
BOOK VIII. THE SECOND INTERVIEW, AND THE SECOND PART OF THE STORY OF ISABEL. THEIR IMMEDIATE IMPULSIVE EFFECT UPON PIERRE
BOOK IX. MORE LIGHT, AND THE GLOOM OF THAT LIGHT. MORE GLOOM, AND THE LIGHT OF THAT GLOOM
BOOK X. THE UNPRECEDENTED FINAL RESOLUTION OF PIERRE
BOOK XI. HE CROSSES THE RUBICON
BOOK XII. ISABEL, MRS. GLENDINNING, THE PORTRAIT, AND LUCY
BOOK XIII. THEY DEPART THE MEADOWS
BOOK XIV. THE JOURNEY AND THE PAMPHLET
BOOK XV. THE COUSINS
BOOK XVI. FIRST NIGHT OF THEIR ARRIVAL IN THE CITY
BOOK XVII. YOUNG AMERICA IN LITERATURE
BOOK XVIII. PIERRE, AS A JUVENILE AUTHOR, RECONSIDERED
BOOK XIX. THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES
BOOK XX. CHARLIE MILLTHORPE
BOOK XXI. PIERRE IMMATURELY ATTEMPTS A MATURE BOOK. TIDINGS FROM THE MEADOWS. PLINLIMMON
BOOK XXII. THE FLOWER-CURTAIN LIFTED FROM BEFORE A TROPICAL AUTHOR; WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE TRANSCENDENTAL FLESH-BRUSH PHILOSOPHY
BOOK XXIII. A LETTER FOR PIERRE. ISABEL. ARRIVAL OF LUCY'S EASEL AND TRUNKS AT THE APOSTLES'
BOOK XXIV. LUCY AT THE APOSTLES'
BOOK XXV. LUCY, ISABEL, AND PIERRE. PIERRE AT HIS BOOK. ENCELADUS
BOOK XXVI. A WALK; A FOREIGN PORTRAIT; A SAIL. AND THE END
PIERRE.
BOOK I.
PIERRE JUST EMERGING FROM HIS TEENS.
I.
There are some strange summer mornings in the country, when he who is
but a sojourner from the city shall early walk forth into the fields,
and be wonder-smitten with the trance-like aspect of the green and
golden world. Not a flower stirs; the trees forget to wave; the grass
itself seems to have ceased to grow; and all Nature, as if suddenly
become conscious of her own profound mystery, and feeling no refuge from
it but silence, sinks into this wonderful and indescribable repose.
Such was the morning in June, when, issuing from the embowered and
high-gabled old home of his fathers, Pierre, dewily refreshed and
spiritualized by sleep, gayly entered the long, wide, elm-arched street
of the village, and half unconsciously bent his steps toward a cottage,
which peeped into view near the end of the vista.
The verdant trance lay far and wide; and through it nothing came but the
brindled kine, dreamily wandering to their pastures, followed, not
driven, by ruddy-cheeked, white-footed boys.
As touched and bewitched by the loveliness of this silence, Pierre
neared the cottage, and lifted his eyes, he swiftly paused, fixing his
glance upon one upper, open casement there. Why now this impassioned,
youthful pause? Why this enkindled cheek and eye? Upon the sill of the
casement, a snow-white glossy pillow reposes, and a trailing shrub has
softly rested a rich, crimson flower against it.
Well mayst thou seek that pillow, thou odoriferous flower, thought
Pierre; not an hour ago, her own cheek must have rested there. "Lucy!"
"Pierre!"
As heart rings to heart those voices rang, and for a moment, in the
bright hush of the morning, the two stood silently but ardently eying
each other, beholding mutual reflections of a boundless admiration and
love.
"Nothing but Pierre," laughed the youth, at last; "thou hast forgotten
to bid me good-morning."
"That would be little. Good-mornings, good-evenings, good days, weeks,
months, and years to thee, Pierre;--bright Pierre!--Pierre!"
Truly, thought the youth, with a still gaze of inexpressible fondness;
truly the skies do ope, and this invoking angel looks down.--"I would
return thee thy manifold good-mornings, Lucy, did not that presume thou
had'st lived through a night; and by Heaven, thou belong'st to the
regions of an infinite day!"
"Fie, now, Pierre; why should ye youths always swear when ye love!"
"Because in us love is profane, since it mortally reaches toward the
heaven in ye!"
"There thou fly'st again, Pierre; thou art always circumventing me so.
Tell me, why should ye youths ever show so sweet an expertness in
turning all trifles of ours into trophies of yours?"
"I know not how that is, but ever was it our fashion to do." And shaking
the casement shrub, he dislodged the flower, and conspicuously fastened
it in his bosom.--"I must away now, Lucy; see! under these colors I
march."
"Bravissimo! oh, my only recruit!"
II.
Pierre was the only son of an affluent, and haughty widow; a lady who
externally furnished a singular example of the preservative and
beautifying influences of unfluctuating rank, health, and wealth, when
joined to a fine mind of medium culture, uncankered by any inconsolable
grief, and never worn by sordid cares. In mature age, the rose still
miraculously clung to her cheek; litheness had not yet completely
uncoiled itself from her waist, nor smoothness unscrolled itself from
her brow, nor diamondness departed from her eyes. So that when lit up
and bediademed by ball-room lights, Mrs. Glendinning still eclipsed far
younger charms, and had she chosen to encourage them, would have been
followed by a train of infatuated suitors, little less young than her
own son Pierre.
But a reverential and devoted son seemed lover enough for this widow
Bloom; and besides all this, Pierre when namelessly annoyed, and
sometimes even jealously transported by the too ardent admiration of the
handsome youths, who now and then, caught in unintended snares, seemed
to entertain some insane hopes of wedding this unattainable being;
Pierre had more than once, with a playful malice, openly sworn, that the
man--gray-beard, or beardless--who should dare to propose marriage to
his mother, that man would by some peremptory unrevealed agency
immediately disappear from the earth.
This romantic filial love of Pierre seemed fully returned by the
triumphant maternal pride of the widow, who in the clear-cut lineaments
and noble air of the son, saw her own graces strangely translated into
the opposite sex. There was a striking personal resemblance between
them; and as the mother seemed to have long stood still in her beauty,
heedless of the passing years; so Pierre seemed to meet her half-way,
and by a splendid precocity of form and feature, almost advanced himself
to that mature stand-point in Time, where his pedestaled mother so long
had stood. In the playfulness of their unclouded love, and with that
strange license which a perfect confidence and mutual understanding at
all points, had long bred between them, they were wont to call each
other brother and sister. Both in public and private this was their
usage; nor when thrown among strangers, was this mode of address ever
suspected for a sportful assumption; since the amaranthiness of Mrs.
Glendinning fully sustained this youthful pretension.--Thus freely and
lightsomely for mother and son flowed on the pure joined current of
life. But as yet the fair river had not borne its waves to those
sideways repelling rocks, where it was thenceforth destined to be
forever divided into two unmixing streams.
An excellent English author of these times enumerating the prime
advantages of his natal lot, cites foremost, that he first saw the rural
light. So with Pierre. It had been his choice fate to have been born and
nurtured in the country, surrounded by scenery whose uncommon loveliness
was the perfect mould of a delicate and poetic mind; while the popular
names of its finest features appealed to the proudest patriotic and
family associations of the historic line of Glendinning. On the meadows
which sloped away from the shaded rear of the manorial mansion, far to
the winding river, an Indian battle had been fought, in the earlier days
of the colony, and in that battle the paternal great-grandfather of
Pierre, mortally wounded, had sat unhorsed on his saddle in the grass,
with his dying voice, still cheering his men in the fray. This was
Saddle-Meadows, a name likewise extended to the mansion and the
village. Far beyond these plains, a day's walk for Pierre, rose the
storied heights, where in the Revolutionary War his grandfather had for
several months defended a rude but all-important stockaded fort, against
the repeated combined assaults of Indians, Tories, and Regulars. From
before that fort, the gentlemanly, but murderous half-breed, Brandt, had
fled, but had survived to dine with General Glendinning, in the amicable
times which followed that vindictive war. All the associations of
Saddle-Meadows were full of pride to Pierre. The Glendinning deeds by
which their estate had so long been held, bore the cyphers of three
Indian kings, the aboriginal and only conveyancers of those noble woods
and plains. Thus loftily, in the days of his circumscribed youth, did
Pierre glance along the background of his race; little recking of that
maturer and larger interior development, which should forever deprive
these things of their full power of pride in his soul.
But the breeding of Pierre would have been unwisely contracted, had his
youth been unintermittingly passed in these rural scenes. At a very
early period he had begun to accompany his father and mother--and
afterwards his mother alone--in their annual visits to the city; where
naturally mingling in a large and polished society, Pierre had
insensibly formed himself in the airier graces of life, without
enfeebling the vigor derived from a martial race, and fostered in the
country's clarion air.
Nor while thus liberally developed in person and manners, was Pierre
deficient in a still better and finer culture. Not in vain had he spent
long summer afternoons in the deep recesses of his father's fastidiously
picked and decorous library; where the Spenserian nymphs had early led
him into many a maze of all-bewildering beauty. Thus, with a graceful
glow on his limbs, and soft, imaginative flames in his heart, did this
Pierre glide toward maturity, thoughtless of that period of remorseless
insight, when all these delicate warmths should seem frigid to him, and
he should madly demand more ardent fires.
Nor had that pride and love which had so bountifully provided for the
youthful nurture of Pierre, neglected his culture in the deepest element
of all. It had been a maxim with the father of Pierre, that all
gentlemanhood was vain; all claims to it preposterous and absurd, unless
the primeval gentleness and golden humanities of religion had been so
thoroughly wrought into the complete texture of the character, that he
who pronounced himself gentleman, could also rightfully assume the meek,
but kingly style of Christian. At the age of sixteen, Pierre partook
with his mother of the Holy Sacraments.
It were needless, and more difficult, perhaps, to trace out precisely
the absolute motives which prompted these youthful vows. Enough, that as
to Pierre had descended the numerous other noble qualities of his
ancestors; and as he now stood heir to their forests and farms; so by
the same insensible sliding process, he seemed to have inherited their
docile homage to a venerable Faith, which the first Glendinning had
brought over sea, from beneath the shadow of an English minister. Thus
in Pierre was the complete polished steel of the gentleman, girded with
Religion's silken sash; and his great-grandfather's soldierly fate had
taught him that the generous sash should, in the last bitter trial,
furnish its wearer with Glory's shroud; so that what through life had
been worn for Grace's sake, in death might safely hold the man. But
while thus all alive to the beauty and poesy of his father's faith,
Pierre little foresaw that this world hath a secret deeper than beauty,
and Life some burdens heavier than death.
So perfect to Pierre had long seemed the illuminated scroll of his life
thus far, that only one hiatus was discoverable by him in that
sweetly-writ manuscript. A sister had been omitted from the text. He
mourned that so delicious a feeling as fraternal love had been denied
him. Nor could the fictitious title, which he so often lavished upon his
mother, at all supply the absent reality. This emotion was most natural;
and the full cause and reason of it even Pierre did not at that time
entirely appreciate. For surely a gentle sister is the second best gift
to a man; and it is first in point of occurrence; for the wife comes
after. He who is sisterless, is as a bachelor before his time. For much
that goes to make up the deliciousness of a wife, already lies in the
sister.
"Oh, had my father but had a daughter!" cried Pierre; "some one whom I
might love, and protect, and fight for, if need be. It must be a
glorious thing to engage in a mortal quarrel on a sweet sister's behalf!
Now, of all things, would to heaven, I had a sister!"
Thus, ere entranced in the gentler bonds of a lover; thus often would
Pierre invoke heaven for a sister; but Pierre did not then know, that if
there be any thing a man might well pray against, that thing is the
responsive gratification of some of the devoutest prayers of his youth.
It may have been that this strange yearning of Pierre for a sister, had
part of its origin in that still stranger feeling of loneliness he
sometimes experienced, as not only the solitary head of his family, but
the only surnamed male Glendinning extant. A powerful and populous
family had by degrees run off into the female branches; so that Pierre
found himself surrounded by numerous kinsmen and kinswomen, yet
companioned by no surnamed male Glendinning, but the duplicate one
reflected to him in the mirror. But in his more wonted natural mood,
this thought was not wholly sad to him. Nay, sometimes it mounted into
an exultant swell. For in the ruddiness, and flushfulness, and
vain-gloriousness of his youthful soul, he fondly hoped to have a
monopoly of glory in capping the fame-column, whose tall shaft had been
erected by his noble sires.
In all this, how unadmonished was our Pierre by that foreboding and
prophetic lesson taught, not less by Palmyra's quarries, than by
Palmyra's ruins. Among those ruins is a crumbling, uncompleted shaft,
and some leagues off, ages ago left in the quarry, is the crumbling
corresponding capital, also incomplete. These Time seized and spoiled;
these Time crushed in the egg; and the proud stone that should have
stood among the clouds, Time left abased beneath the soil. Oh, what
quenchless feud is this, that Time hath with the sons of Men!
III.
It has been said that the beautiful country round about Pierre appealed
to very proud memories. But not only through the mere chances of things,
had that fine country become ennobled by the deeds of his sires, but in
Pierre's eyes, all its hills and swales seemed as sanctified through
their very long uninterrupted possession by his race.
That fond ideality which, in the eyes of affection, hallows the least
trinket once familiar to the person of a departed love; with Pierre that
talisman touched the whole earthly landscape about him; for remembering
that on those hills his own fine fathers had gazed; through those woods,
over these lawns, by that stream, along these tangled paths, many a
grand-dame of his had merrily strolled when a girl; vividly recalling
these things, Pierre deemed all that part of the earth a love-token; so
that his very horizon was to him as a memorial ring.
The monarchical world very generally imagines, that in demagoguical
America the sacred Past hath no fixed statues erected to it, but all
things irreverently seethe and boil in the vulgar caldron of an
everlasting uncrystalizing Present. This conceit would seem peculiarly
applicable to the social condition. With no chartered aristocracy, and
no law of entail, how can any family in America imposingly perpetuate
itself? Certainly that common saying among us, which declares, that be a
family conspicuous as it may, a single half-century shall see it abased;
that maxim undoubtedly holds true with the commonalty. In our cities
families rise and burst like bubbles in a vat. For indeed the democratic
element operates as a subtile acid among us; forever producing new
things by corroding the old; as in the south of France verdigris, the
primitive material of one kind of green paint, is produced by
grape-vinegar poured upon copper plates. Now in general nothing can be
more significant of decay than the idea of corrosion; yet on the other
hand, nothing can more vividly suggest luxuriance of life, than the idea
of green as a color; for green is the peculiar signet of all-fertile
Nature herself. Herein by apt analogy we behold the marked anomalousness
of America; whose character abroad, we need not be surprised, is
misconceived, when we consider how strangely she contradicts all prior
notions of human things; and how wonderfully to her, Death itself
becomes transmuted into Life. So that political institutions, which in
other lands seem above all things intensely artificial, with America
seem to possess the divine virtue of a natural law; for the most mighty
of nature's laws is this, that out of Death she brings Life.
Still, are there things in the visible world, over which ever-shifting
Nature hath not so unbounded a sway. The grass is annually changed; but
the limbs of the oak, for a long term of years, defy that annual decree.
And if in America the vast mass of families be as the blades of grass,
yet some few there are that stand as the oak; which, instead of
decaying, annually puts forth new branches; whereby Time, instead of
subtracting, is made to capitulate into a multiple virtue.
In this matter we will--not superciliously, but in fair spirit--compare
pedigrees with England, and strange as it may seem at the first blush,
not without some claim to equality. I dare say, that in this thing the
Peerage Book is a good statistical standard whereby to judge her; since
the compilers of that work can not be entirely insensible on whose
patronage they most rely; and the common intelligence of our own people
shall suffice to judge us. But the magnificence of names must not
mislead us as to the humility of things. For as the breath in all our
lungs is hereditary, and my present breath at this moment, is further
descended than the body of the present High Priest of the Jews, so far
as he can assuredly trace it; so mere names, which are also but air, do
likewise revel in this endless descendedness. But if Richmond, and St.
Albans, and Grafton, and Portland, and Buccleugh, be names almost old as
England herself, the present Dukes of those names stop in their own
genuine pedigrees at Charles II., and there find no very fine fountain;
since what we would deem the least glorious parentage under the sun, is
precisely the parentage of a Buccleugh, for example; whose ancestress
could not well avoid being a mother, it is true, but had accidentally
omitted the preliminary rite. Yet a king was the sire. Then only so much
the worse; for if it be small insult to be struck by a pauper, but
mortal offense to receive a blow from a gentleman, then of all things
the bye-blows of kings must be signally unflattering. In England the
Peerage is kept alive by incessant restorations and creations. One man,
George III., manufactured five hundred and twenty-two peers. An earldom,
in abeyance for five centuries, has suddenly been assumed by some
commoner, to whom it had not so much descended, as through the art of
the lawyers been made flexibly to bend in that direction. For not Thames
is so sinuous in his natural course, not the Bridgewater Canal more
artificially conducted, than blood in the veins of that winding or
manufactured nobility. Perishable as stubble, and fungous as the fungi,
those grafted families successively live and die on the eternal soil of
a name. In England this day, twenty-five hundred peerages are extinct;
but the names survive. So that the empty air of a name is more
endurable than a man, or than dynasties of men; the air fills man's
lungs and puts life into a man, but man fills not the air, nor puts life
into that.
All honor to the names then, and all courtesy to the men; but if St.
Albans tell me he is all-honorable and all-eternal, I must still
politely refer him to Nell Gwynne.
Beyond Charles II. very few indeed--hardly worthy of note--are the
present titled English families which can trace any thing like a direct
unvitiated blood-descent from the thief knights of the Norman. Beyond
Charles II. their direct genealogies seem vain as though some Jew
clothesman, with a tea-canister on his head, turned over the first
chapter of St. Matthew to make out his unmingled participation in the
blood of King Saul, who had long died ere the career of the Cæsar began.
Now, not preliminarily to enlarge upon the fact that, while in England
an immense mass of state-masonry is brought to bear as a buttress in
upholding the hereditary existence of certain houses, while with us
nothing of that kind can possibly be admitted; and to omit all mention
of the hundreds of unobtrusive families in New England who,
nevertheless, might easily trace their uninterrupted English lineage to
a time before Charles the Blade: not to speak of the old and
oriental-like English planter families of Virginia and the South; the
Randolphs for example, one of whose ancestors, in King James' time,
married Pocahontas the Indian Princess, and in whose blood therefore an
underived aboriginal royalty was flowing over two hundred years ago;
consider those most ancient and magnificent Dutch Manors at the North,
whose perches are miles--whose meadows overspread adjacent
countries--and whose haughty rent-deeds are held by their thousand
farmer tenants, so long as grass grows and water runs; which hints of a
surprising eternity for a deed, and seem to make lawyer's ink
unobliterable as the sea. Some of those manors are two centuries old;
and their present patrons or lords will show you stakes and stones on
their estates put there--the stones at least--before Nell Gwynne the
Duke-mother was born, and genealogies which, like their own river,
Hudson, flow somewhat farther and straighter than the Serpentine
brooklet in Hyde Park.
These far-descended Dutch meadows lie steeped in a Hindooish haze; an
eastern patriarchalness sways its mild crook over pastures, whose tenant
flocks shall there feed, long as their own grass grows, long as their
own water shall run. Such estates seem to defy Time's tooth, and by
conditions which take hold of the indestructible earth seem to
contemporize their fee-simples with eternity. Unimaginable audacity of a
worm that but crawls through the soil he so imperially claims!
In midland counties of England they boast of old oaken dining-halls
where three hundred men-at-arms could exercise of a rainy afternoon, in
the reign of the Plantagenets. But our lords, the Patroons, appeal not
to the past, but they point to the present. One will show you that the
public census of a county is but part of the roll of his tenants. Ranges
of mountains, high as Ben Nevis or Snowdon, are their walls; and regular
armies, with staffs of officers, crossing rivers with artillery, and
marching through primeval woods, and threading vast rocky defiles, have
been sent out to distrain upon three thousand farmer-tenants of one
landlord, at a blow. A fact most suggestive two ways; both whereof shall
be nameless here.
But whatever one may think of the existence of such mighty lordships in
the heart of a republic, and however we may wonder at their thus
surviving, like Indian mounds, the Revolutionary flood; yet survive and
exist they do, and are now owned by their present proprietors, by as
good nominal title as any peasant owns his father's old hat, or any duke
his great-uncle's old coronet.
For all this, then, we shall not err very widely if we humbly conceive,
that--should she choose to glorify herself in that inconsiderable
way--our America will make out a good general case with England in this
short little matter of large estates, and long pedigrees--pedigrees I
mean, wherein is no flaw.
IV.
In general terms we have been thus decided in asserting the great
genealogical and real-estate dignity of some families in America,
because in so doing we poetically establish the richly aristocratic
condition of Master Pierre Glendinning, for whom we have before claimed
some special family distinction. And to the observant reader the sequel
will not fail to show, how important is this circumstance, considered
with reference to the singularly developed character and most singular
life-career of our hero. Nor will any man dream that the last chapter
was merely intended for a foolish bravado, and not with a solid purpose
in view.
Now Pierre stands on this noble pedestal; we shall see if he keeps that
fine footing; we shall see if Fate hath not just a little bit of a small
word or two to say in this world. But it is not laid down here that the
Glendinnings dated back beyond Pharaoh, or the deeds of Saddle-Meadows
to the Three Magi in the Gospels. Nevertheless, those deeds, as before
hinted, did indeed date back to three kings--Indian kings--only so much
the finer for that.
But if Pierre did not date back to the Pharaohs, and if the English
farmer Hampdens were somewhat the seniors of even the oldest
Glendinning; and if some American manors boasted a few additional years
and square miles over his, yet think you that it is at all possible,
that a youth of nineteen should--merely by way of trial of the
thing--strew his ancestral kitchen hearth-stone with wheat in the stalk,
and there standing in the chimney thresh out that grain with a flail,
whose aerial evolutions had free play among all that masonry; were it
not impossible for such a flailer so to thresh wheat in his own
ancestral kitchen chimney without feeling just a little twinge or two of
what one might call family pride? I should say not.
Or how think you it would be with this youthful Pierre, if every day
descending to breakfast, he caught sight of an old tattered British
banner or two, hanging over an arched window in his hall; and those
banners captured by his grandfather, the general, in fair fight? Or how
think you it would be if every time he heard the band of the military
company of the village, he should distinctly recognize the peculiar tap
of a British kettle-drum also captured by his grandfather in fair fight,
and afterwards suitably inscribed on the brass and bestowed upon the
Saddle-Meadows Artillery Corps? Or how think you it would be, if
sometimes of a mild meditative Fourth of July morning in the country, he
carried out with him into the garden by way of ceremonial cane, a long,
majestic, silver-tipped staff, a Major-General's baton, once wielded on
the plume-nodding and musket-flashing review by the same grandfather
several times here-in-before mentioned? I should say that considering
Pierre was quite young and very unphilosophical as yet, and withal
rather high-blooded; and sometimes read the History of the Revolutionary
War, and possessed a mother who very frequently made remote social
allusions to the epaulettes of the Major-General his grandfather;--I
should say that upon all of these occasions, the way it must have been
with him, was a very proud, elated sort of way. And if this seem but too
fond and foolish in Pierre; and if you tell me that this sort of thing
in him showed him no sterling Democrat, and that a truly noble man
should never brag of any arm but his own; then I beg you to consider
again that this Pierre was but a youngster as yet. And believe me you
will pronounce Pierre a thoroughgoing Democrat in time; perhaps a little
too Radical altogether to your fancy.
In conclusion, do not blame me if I here make repetition, and do
verbally quote my own words in saying that _it had been the choice fate
of Pierre to have been born and bred in the country_. For to a noble
American youth this indeed--more than in any other land--this indeed is
a most rare and choice lot. For it is to be observed, that while in
other countries, the finest families boast of the country as their home;
the more prominent among us, proudly cite the city as their seat. Too
often the American that himself makes his fortune, builds him a great
metropolitan house, in the most metropolitan street of the most
metropolitan town. Whereas a European of the same sort would thereupon
migrate into the country. That herein the European hath the better of
it, no poet, no philosopher, and no aristocrat will deny. For the
country is not only the most poetical and philosophical, but it is the
most aristocratic part of this earth, for it is the most venerable, and
numerous bards have ennobled it by many fine titles. Whereas the town is
the more plebeian portion: which, besides many other things, is plainly
evinced by the dirty unwashed face perpetually worn by the town; but the
country, like any Queen, is ever attended by scrupulous lady's maids in
the guise of the seasons, and the town hath but one dress of brick
turned up with stone; but the country hath a brave dress for every week
in the year; sometimes she changes her dress twenty-four times in the
twenty-four hours; and the country weareth her sun by day as a diamond
on a Queen's brow; and the stars by night as necklaces of gold beads;
whereas the town's sun is smoky paste, and no diamond, and the town's
stars are pinchbeck and not gold.
In the country then Nature planted our Pierre; because Nature intended a
rare and original development in Pierre. Never mind if hereby she proved
ambiguous to him in the end; nevertheless, in the beginning she did
bravely. She blew her wind-clarion from the blue hills, and Pierre
neighed out lyrical thoughts, as at the trumpet-blast, a war-horse paws
himself into a lyric of foam. She whispered through her deep groves at
eve, and gentle whispers of humanness, and sweet whispers of love, ran
through Pierre's thought-veins, musical as water over pebbles. She
lifted her spangled crest of a thickly-starred night, and forth at that
glimpse of their divine Captain and Lord, ten thousand mailed thoughts
of heroicness started up in Pierre's soul, and glared round for some
insulted good cause to defend.
So the country was a glorious benediction to young Pierre; we shall see
if that blessing pass from him as did the divine blessing from the
Hebrews; we shall yet see again, I say, whether Fate hath not just a
little bit of a word or two to say in this world; we shall see whether
this wee little bit scrap of latinity be very far out of the way--_Nemo
contra Deum nisi Deus ipse._
V.
"Sister Mary," said Pierre, returned from his sunrise stroll, and
tapping at his mother's chamber door:--"do you know, sister Mary, that
the trees which have been up all night, are all abroad again this
morning before you?--Do you not smell something like coffee, my sister?"
A light step moved from within toward the door; which opened, showing
Mrs. Glendinning, in a resplendently cheerful morning robe, and holding
a gay wide ribbon in her hand.
"Good morning, madam," said Pierre, slowly, and with a bow, whose
genuine and spontaneous reverence amusingly contrasted with the sportive
manner that had preceded it. For thus sweetly and religiously was the
familiarity of his affections bottomed on the profoundest filial
respect.
"Good afternoon to you, Pierre, for I suppose it is afternoon. But come,
you shall finish my toilette;--here, brother--" reaching the
ribbon--"now acquit yourself bravely--" and seating herself away from
the glass, she awaited the good offices of Pierre.
"First Lady in waiting to the Dowager Duchess Glendinning," laughed
Pierre, as bowing over before his mother, he gracefully passed the
ribbon round her neck, simply crossing the ends in front.
"Well, what is to hold it there, Pierre?"
"I am going to try and tack it with a kiss, sister,--there!--oh, what a
pity that sort of fastening won't always hold!--where's the cameo with
the fawns, I gave you last night?--Ah! on the slab--you were going to
wear it then?--Thank you, my considerate and most politic
sister--there!--but stop--here's a ringlet gone romping--so now, dear
sister, give that Assyrian toss to your head."
The haughtily happy mother rose to her feet, and as she stood before the
mirror to criticize her son's adornings, Pierre, noticing the straggling
tie of her slipper, knelt down and secured it. "And now for the urn," he
cried, "madam!" and with a humorous gallantry, offering his arm to his
mother, the pair descended to breakfast.
With Mrs. Glendinning it was one of those spontaneous maxims, which
women sometimes act upon without ever thinking of, never to appear in
the presence of her son in any dishabille that was not eminently
becoming. Her own independent observation of things, had revealed to her
many very common maxims, which often become operatively lifeless from a
vicarious reception of them. She was vividly aware how immense was that
influence, which, even in the closest ties of the heart, the merest
appearances make upon the mind. And as in the admiring love and
graceful devotion of Pierre lay now her highest joy in life; so she
omitted no slightest trifle which could possibly contribute to the
preservation of so sweet and flattering a thing.
Besides all this, Mary Glendinning was a woman, and with more than the
ordinary vanity of women--if vanity it can be called--which in a life of
nearly fifty years had never betrayed her into a single published
impropriety, or caused her one known pang at the heart. Moreover, she
had never yearned for admiration; because that was her birthright by the
eternal privilege of beauty; she had always possessed it; she had not to
turn her head for it, since spontaneously it always encompassed her.
Vanity, which in so many women approaches to a spiritual vice, and
therefore to a visible blemish; in her peculiar case--and though
possessed in a transcendent degree--was still the token of the highest
health; inasmuch as never knowing what it was to yearn for its
gratification, she was almost entirely unconscious of possessing it at
all. Many women carry this light of their lives flaming on their
foreheads; but Mary Glendinning unknowingly bore hers within. Through
all the infinite traceries of feminine art, she evenly glowed like a
vase which, internally illuminated, gives no outward sign of the
lighting flame, but seems to shine by the very virtue of the exquisite
marble itself. But that bluff corporeal admiration, with which some
ball-room women are content, was no admiration to the mother of Pierre.
Not the general homage of men, but the selected homage of the noblest
men, was what she felt to be her appropriate right. And as her own
maternal partialities were added to, and glorified the rare and absolute
merits of Pierre; she considered the voluntary allegiance of his
affectionate soul, the representative fealty of the choicest guild of
his race. Thus, though replenished through all her veins with the
subtlest vanity, with the homage of Pierre alone she was content.
But as to a woman of sense and spirit, the admiration of even the
noblest and most gifted man, is esteemed as nothing, so long as she
remains conscious of possessing no directly influencing and practical
sorcery over his soul; and as notwithstanding all his intellectual
superiority to his mother, Pierre, through the unavoidable weakness of
inexperienced and unexpanded youth, was strangely docile to the maternal
tuitions in nearly all the things which thus far had any ways interested
or affected him; therefore it was, that to Mary Glendinning this
reverence of Pierre was invested with all the proudest delights and
witcheries of self-complacency, which it is possible for the most
conquering virgin to feel. Still more. That nameless and infinitely
delicate aroma of inexpressible tenderness and attentiveness which, in
every refined and honorable attachment, is cotemporary with the
courtship, and precedes the final banns and the rite; but which, like
the _bouquet_ of the costliest German wines, too often evaporates upon
pouring love out to drink, in the disenchanting glasses of the
matrimonial days and nights; this highest and airiest thing in the whole
compass of the experience of our mortal life; this heavenly
evanescence--still further etherealized in the filial breast--was for
Mary Glendinning, now not very far from her grand climacteric,
miraculously revived in the courteous lover-like adoration of Pierre.
Altogether having its origin in a wonderful but purely fortuitous
combination of the happiest and rarest accidents of earth; and not to be
limited in duration by that climax which is so fatal to ordinary love;
this softened spell which still wheeled the mother and son in one orbit
of joy, seemed a glimpse of the glorious possibility, that the divinest
of those emotions, which are incident to the sweetest season of love, is
capable of an indefinite translation into many of the less signal
relations of our many chequered life. In a detached and individual way,
it seemed almost to realize here below the sweet dreams of those
religious enthusiasts, who paint to us a Paradise to come, when
etherealized from all drosses and stains, the holiest passion of man
shall unite all kindreds and climes in one circle of pure and
unimpairable delight.
VI.
There was one little uncelestial trait, which, in the opinion of some,
may mar the romantic merits of the gentlemanly Pierre Glendinning. He
always had an excellent appetite, and especially for his breakfast. But
when we consider that though Pierre's hands were small, and his ruffles
white, yet his arm was by no means dainty, and his complexion inclined
to brown; and that he generally rose with the sun, and could not sleep
without riding his twenty, or walking his twelve miles a day, or felling
a fair-sized hemlock in the forest, or boxing, or fencing, or boating,
or performing some other gymnastical feat; when we consider these
athletic habitudes of Pierre, and the great fullness of brawn and muscle
they built round about him; all of which manly brawn and muscle, three
times a day loudly clamored for attention; we shall very soon perceive
that to have a bountiful appetite, was not only no vulgar reproach, but
a right royal grace and honor to Pierre; attesting him a man and a
gentleman; for a thoroughly developed gentleman is always robust and
healthy; and Robustness and Health are great trencher-men.
So when Pierre and his mother descended to breakfast, and Pierre had
scrupulously seen her supplied with whatever little things were
convenient to her; and had twice or thrice ordered the respectable and
immemorial Dates, the servitor, to adjust and re-adjust the
window-sashes, so that no unkind current of air should take undue
liberties with his mother's neck; after seeing to all this, but in a
very quiet and inconspicuous way; and also after directing the unruffled
Dates, to swing out, horizontally into a particular light, a fine joyous
painting, in the good-fellow, Flemish style (which painting was so
attached to the wall as to be capable of that mode of adjusting), and
furthermore after darting from where he sat a few invigorating glances
over the river-meadows to the blue mountains beyond; Pierre made a
masonic sort of mysterious motion to the excellent Dates, who in
automaton obedience thereto, brought from a certain agreeable little
side-stand, a very prominent-looking cold pasty; which, on careful
inspection with the knife, proved to be the embossed savory nest of a
few uncommonly tender pigeons of Pierre's own shooting.
"Sister Mary," said he, lifting on his silver trident one of the
choicest of the many fine pigeon morsels; "Sister Mary," said he, "in
shooting these pigeons, I was very careful to bring down one in such a
manner that the breast is entirely unmarred. It was intended for you!
and here it is. Now Sergeant Dates, help hither your mistress' plate.
No?--nothing but the crumbs of French rolls, and a few peeps into a
coffee-cup--is that a breakfast for the daughter of yonder bold
General?"--pointing to a full-length of his gold-laced grandfather on
the opposite wall. "Well, pitiable is my case when I have to breakfast
for two. Dates!"
"Sir."
"Remove that toast-rack, Dates; and this plate of tongue, and bring the
rolls nearer, and wheel the stand farther off, good Dates."
Having thus made generous room for himself, Pierre commenced operations,
interrupting his mouthfuls by many sallies of mirthfulness.
"You seem to be in prodigious fine spirits this morning, brother
Pierre," said his mother.
"Yes, very tolerable; at least I can't say, that I am low-spirited
exactly, sister Mary;--Dates, my fine fellow, bring me three bowls of
milk."
"One bowl, sir, you mean," said Dates, gravely and imperturbably.
As the servitor left the room, Mrs. Glendinning spoke. "My dear Pierre,
how often have I begged you never to permit your hilariousness to betray
you into overstepping the exact line of propriety in your intercourse
with servants. Dates' look was a respectful reproof to you just now. You
must not call Dates, _My fine fellow_. He _is_ a fine fellow, a very
fine fellow, indeed; but there is no need of telling him so at my table.
It is very easy to be entirely kind and pleasant to servants, without
the least touch of any shade of transient good-fellowship with them."
"Well, sister, no doubt you are altogether right; after this I shall
drop the _fine_, and call Dates nothing but _fellow_;--Fellow, come
here!--how will that answer?"
"Not at all, Pierre--but you are a Romeo, you know, and so for the
present I pass over your nonsense."
"Romeo! oh, no. I am far from being Romeo--" sighed Pierre. "I laugh,
but he cried; poor Romeo! alas Romeo! woe is me, Romeo! he came to a
very deplorable end, did Romeo, sister Mary."
"It was his own fault though."
"Poor Romeo!"
"He was disobedient to his parents."
"Alas Romeo!"
"He married against their particular wishes."
"Woe is me, Romeo!"
"But you, Pierre, are going to be married before long, I trust, not to a
Capulet, but to one of our own Montagues; and so Romeo's evil fortune
will hardly be yours. You will be happy."
"The more miserable Romeo!"
"Don't be so ridiculous, brother Pierre; so you are going to take Lucy
that long ride among the hills this morning? She is a sweet girl; a most
lovely girl."
"Yes, that is rather my opinion, sister Mary.--By heavens, mother, the
five zones hold not such another! She is--yes--though I say
it--Dates!--he's a precious long time getting that milk!"
"Let him stay.--Don't be a milk-sop, Pierre!"
"Ha! my sister is a little satirical this morning. I comprehend."
"Never rave, Pierre; and never rant. Your father never did either; nor
is it written of Socrates; and both were very wise men. Your father was
profoundly in love--that I know to my certain knowledge--but I never
heard him rant about it. He was always exceedingly gentlemanly: and
gentlemen never rant. Milk-sops and Muggletonians rant, but gentlemen
never."
"Thank you, sister.--There, put it down, Dates; are the horses ready?"
"Just driving round, sir, I believe."
"Why, Pierre," said his mother, glancing out at the window, "are you
going to Santa Fe De Bogota with that enormous old phaeton;--what do you
take that Juggernaut out for?"
"Humor, sister, humor; I like it because it's old-fashioned, and because
the seat is such a wide sofa of a seat, and finally because a young lady
by the name of Lucy Tartan cherishes a high regard for it. She vows she
would like to be married in it."
"Well, Pierre, all I have to say, is, be sure that Christopher puts the
coach-hammer and nails, and plenty of cords and screws into the box. And
you had better let him follow you in one of the farm wagons, with a
spare axle and some boards."
"No fear, sister; no fear;--I shall take the best of care of the old
phaeton. The quaint old arms on the panel, always remind me who it was
that first rode in it."
"I am glad you have that memory, brother Pierre."
"And who it was that _next_ rode in it."
"Bless you!--God bless you, my dear son!--always think of him and you
can never err; yes, always think of your dear perfect father, Pierre."
"Well, kiss me now, dear sister, for I must go."
"There; this is my cheek, and the other is Lucy's; though now that I
look at them both, I think that hers is getting to be the most blooming;
sweeter dews fall on that one, I suppose."
Pierre laughed, and ran out of the room, for old Christopher was getting
impatient. His mother went to the window and stood there.
"A noble boy, and docile"--she murmured--"he has all the frolicsomeness
of youth, with little of its giddiness. And he does not grow
vain-glorious in sophomorean wisdom. I thank heaven I sent him not to
college. A noble boy, and docile. A fine, proud, loving, docile,
vigorous boy. Pray God, he never becomes otherwise to me. His little
wife, that is to be, will not estrange him from me; for she too is
docile,--beautiful, and reverential, and most docile. Seldom yet have I
known such blue eyes as hers, that were not docile, and would not follow
a bold black one, as two meek blue-ribboned ewes, follow their martial
leader. How glad am I that Pierre loves her so, and not some dark-eyed
haughtiness, with whom I could never live in peace; but who would be
ever setting her young married state before my elderly widowed one, and
claiming all the homage of my dear boy--the fine, proud, loving, docile,
vigorous boy!--the lofty-minded, well-born, noble boy; and with such
sweet docilities! See his hair! He does in truth illustrate that fine
saying of his father's, that as the noblest colts, in three
points--abundant hair, swelling chest, and sweet docility--should
resemble a fine woman, so should a noble youth. Well, good-bye, Pierre,
and a merry morning to ye!"
So saying she crossed the room, and--resting in a corner--her glad proud
eye met the old General's baton, which the day before in one of his
frolic moods Pierre had taken from its accustomed place in the
pictured-bannered hall. She lifted it, and musingly swayed it to and
fro; then paused, and staff-wise rested with it in her hand. Her stately
beauty had ever somewhat martial in it; and now she looked the daughter
of a General, as she was; for Pierre's was a double revolutionary
descent. On both sides he sprang from heroes.
"This is his inheritance--this symbol of command! and I swell out to
think it. Yet but just now I fondled the conceit that Pierre was so
sweetly docile! Here sure is a most strange inconsistency! For is sweet
docility a general's badge? and is this baton but a distaff
then?--Here's something widely wrong. Now I almost wish him otherwise
than sweet and docile to me, seeing that it must be hard for man to be
an uncompromising hero and a commander among his race, and yet never
ruffle any domestic brow. Pray heaven he show his heroicness in some
smooth way of favoring fortune, not be called out to be a hero of some
dark hope forlorn;--of some dark hope forlorn, whose cruelness makes a
savage of a man. Give him, O God, regardful gales! Fan him with
unwavering prosperities! So shall he remain all docility to me, and yet
prove a haughty hero to the world!"