Fanny we mean--is a full, commanding woman. She looks high, steps
high, and carries her head high. She has light brown hair, florid
complexion, and large, blue eyes. When she appears in company, her
color verges upon the rosy. If you talk with her in broad daylight,
she has a trick of dropping her veil, to prevent a too close scrutiny
of her features. When her veil is up, you can see that she has a
luscious cheek, large nose, slightly aquiline, mouth of character, if
not of beauty, and a vigorous chin. Fanny isn't handsome, and never
was. But she has a splendid form, a charming foot and ankle, a
fascinating expression, and the manners of a queen.
Dress and equipage are not the least part of Fanny. She is as
dependent upon these as a peacock upon his tail. She wears black
because it becomes her better than any other color. A widow of
forty--fair--in mourning--how interesting! Her magnificent, sweeping
flounces occupy the space of any five ordinary, uninflated females.
She moves with a great rustle and swell, majestic.
She is preceded by her eldest daughter, already a young lady, as a
sort of armor-bearer. Her youngest child, "Ella," follows sprucely at
her heels, like a page. And so, up and down Broadway, sails Fanny
Fern, proud, haughty, ambitious, scorned by some, admired by
many--loved by few.
XI.
FANNY AT THE TREMONT HOUSE.
Good John Walter is Fanny's man-at-arms. He is the last and most
faithful of her servants. She needs some person in that capacity, and
shrewdly manages never to be without such a champion. She was
fortunate, after many trials, in falling upon so choice an acquisition
as John Walter.
Fanny cannot be accused of choosing her champion from any such motive
as personal beauty. John isn't alarmingly handsome--not half so
beautiful as he is good. Of tall and gaunt figure, with a
lean-and-hungry-Cassius look, bran-like eyes, an oyster-like open to
his mouth, fiery hair, an incendiary whisker, a windy manner of
talking, and a gaseous atmosphere pervading his person generally--oh,
no! Fanny couldn't have chosen John for his beauty.
John's championship never shone with more dazzling lustre, than on his
visit to Boston, in her train, last summer. He came like the very
Napoleon of snobs. Boston was to be taken by storm. "The three-hilled
city," said John, "shall bow down at our coming." "John," answered
Fanny, "I regard you as a prophet. You are a man of sense. The three
hills shall bow down."
They fortified themselves in the Sebastopol of the Tremont
House,--that stronghold so formidable to turkey,--and sent forth their
proclamations. But, somehow, there was no movement of the three-hilled
city. Not a block trembled. Not a brick stirred. Fanny began to chafe.
In vain she searched the columns of the daily papers, to find
complimentary notices of her arrival. Not a word on the subject. She,
who expected a triumph equal to Jenny Lind's, found herself of no more
account in the three-hilled city, whose duty it was to bow down, than
the wife of John Smith, the joiner, who went on at the same time to
hunt up a second cousin.
Meanwhile good John Walter exerted himself. In his windiest manner, he
thrust that lank figure of his into every nook and corner, where he
hoped to generate a little interest in his famous _protégée_.
"She's come!" whispered John mysteriously, in the ear of an
influential editor.
"Ha!" said the editor, "has she?" and went on with his writing.
"She is at the Tremont House," resumed John, with an air of vast
importance, "where she receives her friends. The rush to see her is
very great, and we have to resort to every means to keep the multitude
at bay. You, of course, would be a privileged one, and I should be
happy to introduce you."
"Thank you," said the editor, as he dipped his pen.
"Do you know,"--John began to bluster--"there are vipers in human
form, in this city, who have dared to sting that woman's reputation?"
"I know nothing of the kind," replied the editor.
"You ought to know it; and I am authorized to say this: Fanny expects
her friends to vindicate her character, and crush these vipers. There
is that rascal, Mr. Blank----"
"Mr. Blank is a friend of mine, sir."
"But"--John waxed bombastic--"You cannot be a friend of his and a
friend of Fanny Fern's. He said, in his paper, that she has a husband
living----"
"Which is true, I believe," remarked the editor, quietly.
"But sir"--here John choked--"she is a _woman_, and no _gentleman_
will make remarks of the kind about a WOMAN,--a woman, sir, is sacred;
and Fanny Fern is one of the noblest of her sex. From your character
as an editor and a man, I had every reason to believe that you would
not hesitate to espouse her cause----"
"Mr. Walter," interrupted the editor, "your assumption is somewhat
astounding, but it has not quite taken away my breath--I have still a
modest word to say. I do not see that it is my duty to go and cudgel
Mr. Blank, nor do I consider the inducement you hold out, quite
sufficient to authorize me to engage in any quarrels except my own. I
will not trouble you to introduce me to Miss Fern. I wish you a good
morning, sir!"
John varied his manner with different people. To some he was
insinuating and smooth; to others, bluff and lowering; but all his
efforts were unsuccessful. Nobody would go and whip Mr. Blank; nobody
cared much about meeting Fanny Fern. And here let us not be
misunderstood. It was no fault of John's, that he did not succeed. He
was zealous to the last degree. Still less was it Fanny's fault. She
was, as he expressed it, "the noblest of her sex." The truth is,--and
to the shame of that city be it spoken,--there was no Don Quixote in
Boston! If Boston could have boasted of so much chivalry, Mr. Blank
would have been cudgelled, and Fanny avenged.
Having utterly failed to create any kind of a sensation,--having
waited in vain to "receive friends" at the Tremont,--it was judged
expedient to make a grand sally upon the town. An open barouche was
accordingly ordered, and Fanny, richly attired, and attended by noble
John Walter, rode ostentatiously through the streets. A kind of
sensation was produced,--but not the right kind. People looked, and
laughed, and winked. Some said, "Lucky John Walter!" Others, who knew
Fanny, said, "Poor John Walter!" Still Fanny was let alone; nobody
troubled her; the world turned round, and Boston turned with it, the
same; and Mr. Blank remains uncudgelled to this day.
And so Fanny and the redoubtable John made haste to evacuate their
Sebastopol, withdrawing their forces quietly, and returned,
inglorious, to New York.
XII.
A KEY TO "RUTH HALL."
Fanny Fern's latest literary effort is the production of a novel
entitled "Ruth Hall." Much curiosity has been excited in the minds of
the public as to the originals of her various portraitures. It will be
fully satisfied by the perusal of the following criticism from the pen
of an able reviewer.
"Wouldn't I call things by their right names? Would I praise
a book because a woman wrote it?"--_Ruth Hall_, p. 307.
"We have called Fanny Fern a literary star. We should qualify the
expression. There is no clear, strong lustre, no steady splendor, no
mild, benignant twinkle, to Fanny. She flashed into our sky like a
meteor, seemingly larger than Jupiter, and for the moment more ruddy
than Venus, more flaming than any planet or fixed star. Or perhaps we
should liken her to a rocket--going up with a great rush and whiz,
then paling, dying, falling, and finishing up with a loud, angry pop,
and a sudden shower of little fiery tadpoles, dropping on the head of
her enemies.
"The 'loud, angry pop' came with the publication of her last work,
'Ruth Hall,'--a book that appears to have been exploded in a fit of
desperation, to revive the writer's sinking fame, and to revenge
herself on her relatives, and everybody she imagines ever injured her.
Fortunately, the rockets' fiery droppings are harmless as moonbeams,
and there is little but hiss, and whiz, and crack, to its anger;--else
some very respectable families had been blown to atoms, and entirely
devoured and eaten up forever by the fiery tadpoles.
"How we used to admire Fanny! We never, indeed, saw much to love in
her writings, but the snap, and vigor, and originality of her style,
was truly refreshing. We could never sufficiently praise these
qualities in her early sketches. Her power was partly owing to native
genius, partly to the circumstances of her life. She was a full-grown
woman when she began to write. The age of feeble sentimentalism was
passed. She had seen the world; enjoyed society; known adversity. She
had been twice a wife, and twice a mother; had lost one husband by
death, and another by--no matter what. In years she was forty; in
experience at least a hundred and forty. And all this life and
knowledge she had kept bottled up, like old wine. How it sparkled and
foamed when the wires were cut and the cork blown out! She poured off
those first sketches, bubbling, frothing, effervescing, like prime
champagne newly opened. Wine of this quality soon deadens; but Fanny
kept pouring out, determined to make up in quantity what was wanting
in flavor; and now--in 'Ruth Hall'--she has squeezed the bottle and
flung it at the heads of the public.
"Speaking of this queer book, the New York Courier says, 'If the
writer ever showed the manuscript to her friends, they acted most
cruelly towards her, in not advising her to throw it into the fire.'
We think so too. We have never seen so sad a revelation of a woman's
heart. There are some flashes of genius in the book, but there are
more flashes of that unmentionable fire, supposed to be familiar to
wicked souls.
"The principal characters in Ruth Hall bristle all over with iron
spikes of selfishness and cruelty. The able critic of the Boston Post
declares that 'art would never admit such stony-hearted monsters in a
story of real life.' Now, 'Ruth Hall' is understood to be an
autobiography. That it was intended as such by the writer, there can
be no doubt in the mind of any person who knows her and reads her
book. Following this view of the subject, we have, first and foremost
among the monsters, Fanny's own father. He is the 'old Ellet' of the
story--a man who 'thinks more of one cent than of any child he ever
had;' who coldly leaves his daughter and grandchildren to suffer
almost the extremes of want and privation; who would not, indeed,
throw them a crumb, were it not that, as a church-member, he has a
'Christian reputation to sustain,' and fears public opinion. The
caricature is gross and awful. Yet it is not even a caricature. Fanny
(Ruth Hall) has daubed the hideous picture of an impossible character,
and scrawled beneath it the angry words, 'This is my father! let all
the world see and abhor him!' O, Goneril! O, Regan! could woman's hate
do more? Oh, dear and sweet revenge upon a parent! because, forsooth,
the white-haired old man, who, even now, totters daily up his office
stairs to earn a livelihood, possessed too much calm wisdom to
impoverish himself in order that she might sit a queen--because he
deemed it sufficient, in all love and justice, to support her
comfortably, as his means afforded--because her own indiscretions, and
extravagant and unreasonable demands, had called down upon her head
deserved severity and reproof--this is the fire kindled in her heart!
We are sorry to speak in this strain. But if we speak at all, we must
utter what justice and truth call out of us. Even were Mrs.
Farrington's charges against her father well-founded, we could not but
cry out in condemnation of the parricidal spirit that seeks so
devilish a revenge.
"Her first husband's father, the late Dr. Eldredge, meets with a
similar treatment. The grave that has closed over him could not shield
his breast from the tearing claws of the vampire of vengeance. He
figures as Dr. Hall--just such another unfeeling, unnatural,
impossible monster, as the old man Ellet. Mrs. Hall (Fanny's
mother-in-law, Mrs. Eldredge,) is a slice from the same raw material,
with the addition of a little feminine salt and pepper. Fanny had an
opportunity to write something of her own spirit in 'Mrs. Hall'--thus
relieving the deadness of the character with occasional sparks of real
human nature.
"Mr. N. P. Willis appears in the book as Mr. Hyacinth Ellet--'a
mincing, conceited, tip-toeing, be-curled, be-perfumed popinjay.' Like
the other monsters, he has not a grain of heart in his composition.
Such a burlesque of a gentleman so well known for his fine qualities
of heart and mind as Mr. N. P. Willis, is simply disgusting. It is too
coarse and flat to be tolerated even in a farce.
"Other monsters in the book may be briefly alluded to. The Millets are
the----s,--represented as horrid people, of course, being so
unfortunate as to be related to Fanny. Mr. Lescom, editor of the
'Standard,' is the late Mr. Norris, of the Olive Branch. The True Flag
is personified as 'Mr. Tibbets.'
"Now with regard to the angels in the book. First, of course, is Fanny
herself. She is 'Ruth Hall'--a perfect celestial. We are surprised
that any person, whose judgment was not altogether swallowed up in
vanity and egotism, should have made so bald and sickening an attempt
at self-exaltation. Ruth is a model wife, a model mother, a model
widow, a model saint. She is very beautiful, and a great genius. There
was never a woman on earth until Ruth was let down out of heaven. What
a capital joke, that so rare a creation should have been born the
daughter of old Ellet, and the sister of Hyacinth!
"'Harry Hall' is the name given to Fanny's first husband. It is a
singular fact, by the way, that no allusion is made to her second
marriage. Why is Mrs. Farrington so anxious to suppress the fact, and
the subject of her divorce? She should not have neglected so good an
opportunity to give Mr. F., what in the vulgar idiom is termed 'fits.'
"Mr. Horace Gates, Hyacinth's assistant, on the 'Irving Magazine,' is
Mr. J. Parton, late of the Home Journal. Mr. Parton has recently
written a book for Fanny's new publishers, so she thought proper to
puff him. Mr. P. is a talented writer, and may, for aught we know, be
an excellent man; but he is unfortunate in sitting for the portrait of
Mr. Horace Gates. We should prefer anything rather than praise from
such a quarter.
"But of all the overdone specimens of goodness, the character of
virtuous John Walter is the most ridiculous to those who know the
original. John Walter is----laugh, ye gods! and hold your
sides!--is--but we will spare the poor man's blushes. This pure and
fragrant gentleman--who, by the way, never knew Fanny until after the
establishment of her reputation, and her contract with Derby & Miller,
for the publication of 'Fern Leaves'--has since devoted himself to her
service, contented to lick what crumbs may fall to him from her
table, as a reward for his brave championship. He 'puts through' the
newspaper puffing which heralds her books, acting as her counsellor,
companion, and gentleman friend generally--and so she makes an angel
of him out of gratitude. Delicious John Walter!
"The story of Ruth Hall is nothing. There is no plot whatever; no
thread of interest to hold one to its pages. There are some spicy,
quite Ferny sketches, in the first half of the volume--but the rest is
all chaff, filled in to swell the covers to a respectable
capaciousness. Towards the close, for want of better matter, we are
surfeited with letters from people nobody cares anything about, and a
tedious phrenological examination, designed to set off the
transcendent mental, moral and affectional qualities of that heavenly
creature, Ruth--alias Fanny!
"The book abounds with horrors of cruelty and neglect--which all who
are aware in what style Mrs. Farrington used to live, know to be
false--until we come to the introduction of good John Walter, when
everybody commences laughing. Indeed, such expressions as 'said Ruth,
laughing,' 'said Mr. Walter, laughing,' 'said Katy, laughing,' 'said
Ruth, beginning to laugh,' occur _ad nauseam_. Sometimes we have 'said
Ruth, smiling,' which amounts to the same thing. And so the book
draws to a verbose and feeble close. We are glad to have shut it up,
never to open it again. We love not these bad-hearted books. Let us
then hasten to take leave of this one, and of Fanny Fern, forever. It
was no agreeable task we had to do, but we have done it
conscientiously and faithfully; and here let it end."
XIII.
A WORD ABOUT N. P. WILLIS.
Of the command, "Honor thy father and mother," says the Boston
Transcript, _Ruth Hall_ has been a significant reminder, to those who
know the excellent man vilified in that novel as the heroine's father,
and admitted in many ways to be intended by "Fanny Fern" as a picture
of her own father, Mr. Willis. How differently he is looked upon by
his other children it is a relief to humanity to know, and we are glad
to be able to copy from the "Youth's Companion," the paper which Mr.
Willis publishes in his declining years, the following lines addressed
to him by his son, N. P. Willis, the brother of "Fanny Fern."
TO MY AGED FATHER.
[ON HEARING OF HIS RECENT CALAMITY, IN HAVING HIS OFFICE
DESTROYED BY THE LATE FIRE IN SCHOOL-STREET.]
BY N. P. WILLIS.
Cares thicken round thee as thy steps grow slow,
Father beloved!--not turn'd upon, as once,
And battled back with steadfastness unmov'd--
(That battle without fame or trump to cheer--
That hardest battle of the world--_with care_--
Thy life one patient victory till now!)
Faint has thy heart become. For peace thou prayest--
For less to suffer as thy strength grows less.
For, oh, when life has been a stormy wild--
The bitter night too long, the way too far--
The aged pilgrim, ere he lays him down,
Prays for a moment's lulling of the blast--
A little time, to wind his cloak about him,
And smooth his gray hairs decently to die.
Yet, oh, not vain the victories unsung!
Not vain a life of industry to bless.
And thou, in angel-history--where shine
The _silent self-forgetful who toil on_
_For others until death_--art nam'd in gold
In heaven it is known, thou hast done well!
But, not all unacknowledg'd is it, here.
Children thou hast, who, for free nurture, given
With one hand, while the other fought thy cares,
Grow grateful as their own hands try the fight.
And more--they thank thee more! The name thou leavest
Spotless and blameless as it comes from thee--
For this--their pure inheritance--a life
Of unstained honor gone before our own--
The father that we love an "honest man"--
For this, thy children bless thee.
Cheer thee, then!--
Though hopelessly thy strength may seem to fail,
And pitilessly far thy cares pursue!
What though the clouds follow to eventide,
Which chased thy morn and noon across the sky!
From these thy trying hours--the hours when strength,
Most sorely press'd, has won its victories--
From _life's dark trial clouds_, that follow on,
Even to sunset--glory comes at last!
Clouds are the glory of the dying day--
A glory that, though welcoming to Heaven,
Illumes the parting hour ere day is gone.
XIV.
IDEAS ABOUT BABIES.
Fanny's sentiments on this subject are decidedly contradictory. If one
were to read any two of her articles, without a definite knowledge of
her circumstances, they would be at a loss to determine whether she is
maid or matron. The language of the first article which we shall quote
is certainly very _anti_-motherly.
"FOLLY--For girls to expect to be happy without marriage.
Every woman was made for a mother, consequently, babies are
as necessary to their 'peace of mind,' as health. If you
wish to look at melancholy and indigestion, look at an old
maid. If you would take a peep at sunshine, look in the face
of a young mother."
"Now I _won't stand that_! I'm an old maid myself; and I'm neither
melancholy nor indigestible! My 'PIECE _of mind_' I'm going to give
you, (in a minute!) and I never want to _touch_ a baby except with a
_pair of tongs_! 'Young mothers and sunshine!' Worn to fiddle-strings
before they are twenty-five! When an old lover turns up he thinks he
sees his grandmother, instead of the dear little Mary who used to make
him feel as if he should crawl out of the toes of his boots! Yes! my
mind is _quite_ made up about _matrimony;_ but as to the '_babies_,'
(sometimes I think, and then again I don't know!) but on _the whole I
believe_ I consider 'em a d----ecided humbug! It's a _one-sided_
partnership, this marriage! the _wife casts up all the accounts_!
"'Husband' gets up in the morning and pays his '_devours_' to the
looking-glass; curls his fine head of hair; puts on an immaculate
shirt-bosom; ties an excruciating cravat; sprinkles his handkerchief
with cologne; stows away a French roll, an egg, and a cup of coffee;
gets into the omnibus, looks _slantendicular_ at the pretty girls, and
makes love between the pauses of business during the forenoon
_generally_. Wife must 'hermetically seal' the windows and exclude all
the fresh air, (because the baby had the 'snuffles' in the night;) and
sits gasping down to the table more dead than alive, to finish her
breakfast. Tommy turns a cup of hot coffee down his bosom; Juliana has
torn off the string of her school-bonnet; James 'wants his geography
covered;' Eliza can't find her satchel; the butcher wants to know if
she'd like a joint of mutton; the milkman would like his money; the
ice man wants to speak to her 'just a minute;' the baby swallows a
bean; husband sends the boy home from the store to say _his partner_
will dine with him; the cook leaves 'all flying,' to go to her
'sister's dead baby's wake,' and husband's thin coat must be ironed
before noon. '_Sunshine and young mothers!!_' Where's my
smelling-bottle?"
To the foregoing denunciation of the infant-angels, the following
defence furnishes quite a decided contrast.
"Baby-carts on narrow side-walks are awful bores, especially
to a hurried business man."
"_Are_ they? Suppose you, and a certain pair of blue eyes, that you
would give half your patrimony to win, were _joint proprietors_ of
that baby! _I_ shouldn't dare to stand _very near_ you, and call it 'a
nuisance.' It's all very well for bachelors to turn up their _single
blessed_ noses at these little dimpled Cupids; but just wait till
_their_ time comes. See 'em, the minute their name is written 'Papa,'
pull up their dickies, and strut off down street as if the
Commonwealth owed them a pension! When they enter the office, see
their old married partner (to whom babies have long since ceased to be
a novelty) laugh in his sleeve at the new-fledged dignity with which
_that_ baby's advent is announced! How perfectly astonished they feel
that they should have been so infatuated as not to perceive that a man
is a _perfect cypher_ till he is at the head of a family! How
frequently one may see them now, looking in at the shop windows, with
intense interest, at little hats, coral and bells, and baby-jumpers.
How they love to come home to dinner, and press that little velvet
cheek to their _business faces_! Was there ever music _half_ so sweet
to their ear, as its _first lisped 'Papa'_? Oh, how closely and
imperceptibly, one by one, that little plant winds its tendrils round
the parent stem! How anxiously they hang over its cradle when the
cheek flushes and the lip is fever-parched; and how wide, and deep,
and long a shadow in their happy homes, its _little grave_ would cast!
"My DEAR sir, depend upon it, _one's own baby is never_ '_a
nuisance_.' _Love_ heralds its birth."
It's just possible though, that Fanny may be actuated by a spirit of
sheer contradiction; for, happening in some of her readings, to come
across Tupper's declaration, that
"A babe in the house is a well-spring of pleasure,"
she takes up the gauntlet, and holds forth in the following vigorous
style:--
"Now, Mr. Tupper, allow me to ask you, did you ever _own_ a baby? I
_meant_ to say, did you ever _have_ one? Because I knew a woman _once_
that _had_; and shall use the privilege of an American '_star and
stripe_' female, to tell you that _that_ English sentiment of yours,
_won't pass this side the water_!