part of Madame de Lery. Henry, as the husband, revealed one of those
real theatrical talents which are often found in cold young men and in
grave men of the world. Naomi herself--carried away by Henry's acting,
carefully prompted by Denoisel from behind the scenes, a little
intoxicated by her audience--played her little part of a neglected wife
very tolerably. This was a great relief to Madame Bourjot. Seated in the
front row, she had followed her daughter with anxiety. Her pride dreaded
a failure. The curtain fell, the applause burst out, and all the company
were called for. Her daughter had not been ridiculous; she was happy in
this great success, and she composedly gave herself up to the speeches,
opinions, congratulations, which, as in all representations of private
theatricals, followed the applause and continued in murmurs. Amidst all
that she thus vaguely heard, one sentence, pronounced close by her,
reached her ears clear and distinct above the buzz of general
conversation:--"Yes, it is his sister, I know; but I think that for the
part he is not sufficiently in love with her, and really too much in
love with his wife: did you notice it?" And the speaker, feeling that
she was being overheard by Madame Bourjot, leaned over and whispered in
her neighbor's ear. Madame Bourjot became serious.
After a pause the curtain went up again, and Henry Mauperin appeared as
Pierrot or Harlequin, not in the traditional sack of white calico and
black cap, but as an Italian harlequin, with a white three-cornered hat,
and dressed entirely in white satin from head to foot. A shiver of
interest ran through the women, proving that the costume and the man
were both charming; and the folly began.
It was the mad story of Pierrot, married to one woman and wishing to
marry another; a farce intermingled with passion, which had been
unearthed by a playwright, with the help of a poet, from a collection of
old comic plays. Renee this time acted the part of the neglected woman,
who in various disguises interfered between her husband and his gallant
adventures, and Naomi that of the woman he loved. Henry, in his scenes
of love with the latter, carried all before him. He played with youth,
with brilliancy, with excitement. In the scene in which he avows his
love, his voice was full of the passionate cry of a declaration which
overflows and swamps everything. True, he had to act with the prettiest
Columbine in the world: Naomi looked delicious that evening in her
bridal costume of Louis XVI., copied exactly from the 'Bride's Minuet,'
a print by Debucourt, which Barousse had lent for the purpose.
A sort of enchantment filled the whole room, and reached Madame Bourjot;
a sort of sympathetic complicity with the actors seemed to encourage the
pretty couple to love one another. The piece went on. Now and again
Henry's eyes seemed to look for those of Madame Bourjot, over the
footlights. Meanwhile, Renee appeared disguised as the village bailiff;
it only remained to sign the contract; Pierrot, taking the hand of the
woman he loved, began to tell her of all the happiness he was going to
have with her.
The woman who sat next to Madame Bourjot felt her lean somewhat on her
shoulder. Henry finished his speech, the piece disentangled itself and
came to an end. All at once Madame Bourjot's neighbor saw something
glide down her arm; it was Madame Bourjot, who had just fainted.
* * * * *
"Oh, do pray go indoors," said Madame Bourjot to the people who were
standing around her. She had been carried into the garden. "It is past
now; it is really nothing; it was only the heat." She was quite pale,
but she smiled. "I only want a little air. Let M. Henry only stay with
me."
The audience retired. Scarcely had the sound of feet died away,
when--"You love her!" said Madame Bourjot, seizing Henry's arm as though
she were taking him prisoner with her feverish hands; "you love her!"
"Madame--" said Henry.
"Hold your tongue! you lie!" And she threw his arm from her. Henry
bowed.--"I know all. I have seen all. But look at me!" and with her eyes
she closely scanned his face. Henry stood before her, his head
bent.--"At least speak to me! You can speak, at any rate! Ah, I see
it,--you can only act in her company!"
"I have nothing to say to you, Laura," said Henry in his softest and
clearest voice. Madame Bourjot started at this name of Laura as though
he had touched her. "I have struggled for a year, madame," began Henry;
"I have no excuse to make. But my heart is fast. We knew each other as
children. The charm has grown day by day. I am very unhappy, madame, at
having to acknowledge the truth to you. I love your daughter, that is
true."
"But have you ever spoken to her? I blush for her when there are people
there! Have you ever looked at her? Do you think her pretty? What
possesses you men? Come! I am better-looking than she is! You men are
fools. And besides, my friend, I have spoiled you. Go to her and ask her
to caress your pride, to tickle your vanity, to flatter and to serve
your ambitions,--for you are ambitious: I know you! Ah, M. Mauperin, one
can only find that once in a lifetime! And it is only women of my age,
old women like me,--do you hear me?--who love the future of the people
whom they love! You were not my lover, you were my grandchild!" And at
this word, her voice sounded as though it came from the bottom of her
heart. Then immediately changing her tone--"But don't be foolish! I tell
you you don't really love my daughter; it is not true: she is rich!"
"O madame!"
"Good gracious! there are lots of people. They have been pointed out to
me. It pays sometimes to begin with the mother and finish with the
dower. And a million, you know, will gild a good many pills."
"Speak lower, I implore--for your own sake: some one has just opened a
window."
"Calmness is very fine, M. Mauperin, very fine, very fine," repeated
Madame Bourjot. And her low, hissing voice seemed to stifle her.
Clouds were scudding across the sky, and passed over the moon looking
like huge bats' wings. Madame Bourjot gazed fixedly into the darkness,
straight in front of her. Her elbows resting on her knees, her weight
thrown on to her heels, she was beating with the points of her satin
shoes the gravel of the path. After a few minutes she sat upright,
stretched out her arms two or three times wildly and as though but half
awake; then, hastily and with jerks, she pushed her hand down between
her gown and her waistband, pressing her hand against the ribbon as
though she would break it. Then she rose and began to walk. Henry
followed her.
"I intend, sir, that we shall never see each other again," she said to
him, without turning round.
As they passed near the basin, she handed him her handkerchief:--
"Wet that for me."
Henry put one knee on the margin and gave her back the lace, which he
had moistened. She laid it on her forehead and on her eyes. "Now let us
go in," she said; "give me your arm."
"Oh, dear madame, what courage!" said Madame Mauperin, going to meet
Madame Bourjot as she entered; "but it is unwise of you. Let me order
your carriage."
"On no account," answered Madame Bourjot hastily: "I thank you. I
promised that I would sing for you, I think. I am going to sing."
And Madame Bourjot advanced to the piano, graceful and valiant, with the
heroic smile on her face wherewith the actors of society hide from the
public the tears that they shed within themselves, and the wounds which
are only known to their own hearts.
EDMUND GOSSE
(1849-)
Edmund William Gosse, or Edmund Gosse, to give him the name he has of
late years adopted, is a Londoner, the son of P.H. Gosse, an English
zoologist of repute. His education did not embrace the collegiate
training, but he was brought up amid cultured surroundings, read
largely, and when but eighteen was appointed an assistant librarian in
the British Museum, at the age of twenty-six receiving the position of
translator to the Board of Trade. Gosse is a good example of the
cultivated man of letters who fitted himself thoroughly for his
profession, though lacking the formal scholastic drill of the
university.
He began as a very young man to write for the leading English
periodicals, contributing papers and occasional poems to the Saturday
Review, Academy, and Cornhill Magazine, and soon gaining critical
recognition. In 1872 and 1874 he traveled in Scandinavia and Holland,
making literary studies which bore fruit in one of his best critical
works. He made his literary bow when twenty-one with the volume
'Madrigals, Songs, and Sonnets' (1870), which was well received, winning
praise from Tennyson. His essential qualities as a verse-writer appear
in it: elegance and care of workmanship, close study of nature, felicity
in phrasing, and a marked tendency to draw on literary culture for
subject and reference. Other works of poetry, 'On Viol and Flute'
(1873), 'New Poems' (1879), 'Firdausi in Exile' (1885), 'In Russet and
Gold' (1894), with the dramas 'King Erik' (1876) and 'The Unknown Lover'
(1878), show an increasingly firm technique and a broadening of outlook,
with some loss of the happy singing quality which characterized the
first volume. Gosse as a poet may be described as a lyrist with
attractive descriptive powers. Together with his fellow poets Lang and
Dobson, he revived in English verse the old French metrical forms, such
as the roundel, triolet, and ballade, and he has been very receptive to
the new in literary form and thought, while keeping a firm grip on the
classic models.
As an essayist, Gosse is one of the most accomplished and agreeable of
modern English writers; he has comprehensive culture and catholic
sympathy, and commands a picturesque style, graceful and rich without
being florid. His 'Studies in the Literature of Northern Europe' (1879)
introduced Ibsen and other little-known foreign writers to British
readers.
Gosse has been a thorough student of English literature prior to the
nineteenth century, and has made a specialty of the literary history of
the eighteenth century, his series of books in this field
including--'Seventeenth-Century Studies' (1883), 'From Shakespeare to
Pope' (1885), 'The Literature of the Eighteenth Century' (1889), 'The
Jacobean Poets' (1894), to which may be added the volume of
contemporaneous studies 'Critical Kit-Kats' (1896). Some of these books
are based on the lectures delivered by Gosse as Clark Lecturer at
Trinity College, Cambridge. He has also written biographies of Sir
Walter Raleigh and Congreve, and his 'Life of Thomas Gray' (1882) and
'Works of Thomas Gray' (1884) comprise the best edition and
setting-forth of that poet. In such labors as that of the editing of
Heinemann's 'International Library,' his influence has been salutary in
the popularization of the best literature of the world. His interest in
Ibsen led him to translate, in collaboration with William Archer, the
dramatic critic of London, the Norwegian's play 'The Master Builder.'
Edmund Gosse, as editor, translator, critic, and poet, has done varied
and excellent work. Sensitive to many literatures, and to good
literature everywhere, he has remained stanchly English in spirit, and
has combined scholarship with popular qualities of presentation. He has
thus contributed not a little to the furtherance of literature in
England.
[The poems are all taken from 'On Viol and Flute,' published
by Henry Holt & Co., New York.]
FEBRUARY IN ROME
When Roman fields are red with cyclamen,
And in the palace gardens you may find,
Under great leaves and sheltering briony-bind,
Clusters of cream-white violets, oh then
The ruined city of immortal men
Must smile, a little to her fate resigned,
And through her corridors the slow warm wind
Gush harmonies beyond a mortal ken.
Such soft favonian airs upon a flute,
Such shadowy censers burning live perfume,
Shall lead the mystic city to her tomb;
Nor flowerless springs, nor autumns without fruit,
Nor summer mornings when the winds are mute,
Trouble her soul till Rome be no more Rome.
DESIDERIUM
Sit there for ever, dear, and lean
In marble as in fleeting flesh,
Above the tall gray reeds that screen
The river when the breeze is fresh;
For ever let the morning light
Stream down that forehead broad and white,
And round that cheek for my delight.
Already that flushed moment grows
So dark, so distant: through the ranks
Of scented reed the river flows,
Still murmuring to its willowy banks;
But we can never hope to share
Again that rapture fond and rare,
Unless you turn immortal there.
There is no other way to hold
These webs of mingled joy and pain;
Like gossamer their threads enfold
The journeying heart without a strain,--
Then break, and pass in cloud or dew,
And while the ecstatic soul goes through,
Are withered in the parching blue.
Hold, Time, a little while thy glass.
And Youth, fold up those peacock wings!
More rapture fills the years that pass
Than any hope the future brings;
Some for to-morrow rashly pray,
And some desire to hold to-day,
But I am sick for yesterday.
Since yesterday the hills were blue
That shall be gray for evermore,
And the fair sunset was shot through
With color never seen before!
Tyrannic Love smiled yesterday,
And lost the terrors of his sway,
But is a god again to-day.
Ah, who will give us back the past?
Ah woe, that youth should love to be
Like this swift Thames that speeds so fast,
And is so fain to find the sea,--
That leaves this maze of shadow and sleep,
These creeks down which blown blossoms creep,
For breakers of the homeless deep.
Then sit for ever, dear, in stone,
As when you turned with half a smile,
And I will haunt this islet lone,
And with a dream my tears beguile;
And in my reverie forget
That stars and suns were made to set;
That love grows cold, or eyes are wet.
LYING IN THE GRASS
Between two golden tufts of summer grass,
I see the world through hot air as through glass,
And by my face sweet lights and colors pass.
Before me dark against the fading sky,
I watch three mowers mowing, as I lie:
With brawny arms they sweep in harmony.
Brown English faces by the sun burnt red,
Rich glowing color on bare throat and head,--
My heart would leap to watch them, were I dead!
And in my strong young living as I lie,
I seem to move with them in harmony,--
A fourth is mowing, and the fourth am I.
The music of the scythes that glide and leap,
The young men whistling as their great arms sweep,
And all the perfume and sweet sense of sleep,
The weary butterflies that droop their wings,
The dreamy nightingale that hardly sings,
And all the lassitude of happy things,
Is mingling with the warm and pulsing blood,
That gushes through my veins a languid flood,
And feeds my spirit as the sap a bud.
Behind the mowers, on the amber air,
A dark-green beech wood rises, still and fair,
A white path winding up it like a stair.
And see that girl, with pitcher on her head,
And clean white apron on her gown of red,--
Her evensong of love is but half said:
She waits the youngest mower. Now he goes;
Her cheeks are redder than a wild blush-rose;
They climb up where the deepest shadows close.
But though they pass, and vanish, I am there.
I watch his rough hands meet beneath her hair;
Their broken speech sounds sweet to me like prayer.
Ah! now the rosy children come to play,
And romp and struggle with the new-mown hay;
Their clear, high voices sound from far away.
They know so little why the world is sad;
They dig themselves warm graves, and yet are glad;
Their muffled screams and laughter make me mad!
I long to go and play among them there;
Unseen, like wind, to take them by the hair,
And gently make their rosy cheeks more fair.
The happy children! full of frank surprise,
And sudden whims and innocent ecstasies;
What Godhead sparkles from their liquid eyes!
No wonder round those urns of mingled clays
That Tuscan potters fashioned in old days,
And colored like the torrid earth ablaze,
We find the little gods and Loves portrayed,
Through ancient forests wandering undismayed,
And fluting hymns of pleasure unafraid.
They knew, as I do now, what keen delight
A strong man feels to watch the tender flight
Of little children playing in his sight.
I do not hunger for a well-stored mind;
I only wish to live my life, and find
My heart in unison with all mankind.
My life is like the single dewy star
That trembles on the horizon's primrose bar,--
A microcosm where all things living are.
And if, among the noiseless grasses, Death
Should come behind and take away my breath,
I should not rise as one who sorroweth:
For I should pass, but all the world would be
Full of desire and young delight and glee,--
And why should men be sad through loss of me?
The light is flying: in the silver blue
The young moon shines from her bright window through:
The mowers are all gone, and I go too.
RUDOLF VON GOTTSCHALL
(1823-)
[Illustration: R. VON GOTTSCHALL]
Rudolf Von Gottschall was born in Breslau, September 30th, 1823. He was
the son of a Prussian artillery officer, and as a lad gave early
evidence of extraordinary talent. His father was transferred to the
Rhine, and young Gottschall was sent successively to the gymnasiums of
Mainz and Coblenz. Even in his school days, and before he entered the
university, he had through his cleverness attained a certain degree of
eminence. His career at the University of Koenigsberg, whither he went to
pursue the study of jurisprudence, was interrupted by the results
attendant upon a youthful ebullition of the spirit of freedom. His
sympathy with the revolutionary element was too boldly expressed,
and when in 1842 he published 'Lieder der Gegenwart' (Songs of the
Present), he found it necessary to leave the university in order to
avert impending consequences. In the following year he published
'Censurfluechtlinge' (Fugitives from the Censor), a poem of a kind not in
the least likely to conciliate the authorities. He remained for a time
with Count Reichenbach in Silesia, and then went to Berlin, where he was
allowed to complete his studies. He was however refused the privilege of
becoming a university docent, although he had regularly taken his degree
of _Dr. Juris_.
He now devoted himself wholly to poetry and general literature. For a
while he held the position of stage manager in the theatre of
Koenigsberg, and during this period produced the dramas 'Der Blinde von
Alcala' (The Blind Man of Alcala: 1846), and 'Lord Byron in Italien'
(Lord Byron in Italy: 1848). After leaving Koenigsberg he frequently
changed his residence, living in Hamburg and Breslau, and later in
Posen, where in 1852 he was editor of a newspaper. In 1853 he went to
Italy, and after his return he settled in Leipzig. Here he definitely
established himself, and undertook the editing of Blaetter fuer
Litterarische Unterhaltung (Leaves for Literary Amusement), and also of
the monthly periodical Unsere Zeit (Our Time). He wrote profusely, and
exerted an appreciable influence upon contemporary literature. He was
ennobled by the Emperor in 1877.
As a poet and man of letters, Gottschall possesses unusual gifts, and is
a writer of most extraordinary activity. His fecundity is astonishing,
and the amount of his published work fills many volumes. His versatility
is no less remarkable than his productiveness. Dramatist and critic,
novelist and poet,--in all his various fields he is never mediocre.
Chief among his dramatic works are the tragedies 'Katharina Howard';
'King Carl XII.'; 'Bernhard of Weimar'; 'Amy Robsart'; 'Arabella
Stuart'; and the excellent comedy 'Pitt and Fox.' Of narrative poems the
best known are 'Die Goettin, ein Hohes Lied vom Weibe' (The Goddess, a
Song of Praise of Woman), 1852; 'Carlo Zeno,' 1854; and 'Sebastopol,'
1856.
He has published numerous volumes of verses which take a worthy rank in
the poetry of the time. His first 'Gedichte' (Poems) appeared in 1849;
'Neue Gedichte' (New Poems) in 1858; 'Kriegslieder'(War Songs) in 1870;
and 'Janus' and 'Kriegs und Friedens Gedichte' (Poems of War and Peace)
in 1873. In his novels he is no less successful, and of these may be
mentioned--'Im Banne des Schwarzen Adlers' (In the Ban of the Black
Eagle: 1876); 'Welke Blaetter' (Withered Leaves: 1878); and 'Das Goldene
Kalb' (The Golden Calf: 1880).
It is however chiefly as critic that his power has been most widely
exerted, and prominent among the noteworthy productions of later years
stand his admirable 'Portraets und Studien' (Portraits and Studies:
1870-71); and 'Die Deutsche Nationallitteratur in der Ersten Haelfte des
19. Jahrhunderts' (The German National Literature in the First Half of
the Nineteenth Century: 1855), continued to the present time in 1892,
when the whole appeared as 'The German National Literature of the
Nineteenth Century.'
HEINRICH HEINE
From 'Portraits and Studies'
About no recent poet has so much been said and sung as about Heinrich
Heine. The youngest writer, who for the first time tries his pen, does
not neglect to sketch with uncertain outlines the portrait of this poet;
and the oldest sour-tempered professor of literature, who turns his back
upon the efforts of the present with the most distinguished disapproval,
lets fall on the picture a few rays of light, in order to prove the
degeneration of modern literature in the Mephistophelean features of
this its chief. Heine's songs are everywhere at home. They are to be
found upon the music rack of the piano, in the school-books, in the
slender libraries of minor officers and young clerks. However difficult
it may be to compile an _editio castigata_ of his poems, every age,
every generation has selected from among them that which has delighted
it. Citations from Heine, winged words in verse and prose, buzz through
the air of the century like a swarm of insects: splendid butterflies
with gayly glistening wings, beautiful day moths and ghostly night
moths, tormenting gnats, and bees armed with evil stings. Heine's works
are canonical books for the intellectual, who season their judgments
with citations from this poet, model their conversation on his style,
interpret him, expand the germ cell of his wit to a whole fabric of
clever developments. Even if he is not a companion on the way through
life, like great German poets, and smaller Brahmins who for every day of
our house-and-life calendar give us an aphorism on the road, there are
nevertheless, in the lives of most modern men, moods with which Heine's
verse harmonize with wondrous sympathy; moments in which the intimacy
with this poet is greater than the friendship, even if this be of longer
duration, with our classic poets.
It is apparently idle to attempt to say anything new of so much
discussed a singer of modern times, since testimony favorable and
unfavorable has been drained to exhaustion by friend and foe. Who does
not know Heine,--or rather, who does not believe that he knows him? for,
as is immediately to be added, acquaintance with this poet extends
really only to a few of his songs, and to the complete picture which is
delivered over ready-made from one history of literature into another.
Nothing, however, is more perilous and more fatal than literary
tradition! Not merely decrees and laws pass along by inheritance, like a
constitutional infirmity, but literary judgments too. They form at last
a subject of instruction like any other; a dead piece of furniture in
the spiritual housekeeping, which, like everything that has been
learned, is set as completed to one side. We know enough of this sort of
fixed pictures, which at last pass along onward as the fixed ideas of a
whole epoch, until a later unprejudiced investigation dissolves this
rigid-grown wisdom, sets it to flowing, and forms out of a new mixture
of its elements a new and more truthful portrait.
It is not to be affirmed however that Heine's picture, as it stands
fixed and finished in the literature and the opinion of the present, is
mistaken and withdrawn. It is dead, like every picture; there is lacking
the living, changing play of features. We have of Heine only one picture
before us; of our great poets several. Goethe in his "storm and stress,"
in Frankfurt, Strassburg, and Wetzlar,--the ardent lover of a Friedrike
of Sesenheim, the handsome, joyous youth, is different in our minds from
the stiff and formal Weimar minister; the youthful Apollo different from
the Olympic Jupiter. There lies a young development between, that we
feel and are curious to know. It is similar with Schiller. The poet of
the 'Robbers' with its motto _In tyrannos_, the fugitive from the
military school; and the Jena professor, the Weimar court councilor who
wrote 'The Homage of the Arts,'--are two different portraits.