Produced by Chris Curnow, Chuck Greif and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
By Miss Repplier.
BOOKS AND MEN. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25.
POINTS OF VIEW. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25.
ESSAYS IN IDLENESS. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25.
IN THE DOZY HOURS, AND OTHER PAPERS. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25.
A BOOK OF FAMOUS VERSE. Selected by Agnes Repplier.
In Riverside Library for Young People. 16mo, 75 cents;
_Holiday Edition_, 16mo, fancy binding, $1.25.
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
BOSTON AND NEW YORK.
IN THE DOZY HOURS
_AND OTHER PAPERS_
BY
AGNES REPPLIER
[Illustration: colophon]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1894
Copyright, 1894,
By AGNES REPPLIER.
_All rights reserved._
_The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass. U. S. A._
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
TO
ANNIS LEE WISTER
[Illustration: text decoration, leaf]
CONTENTS.
PAGE
IN THE DOZY HOURS 1
A KITTEN 16
AT THE NOVELIST’S TABLE 32
IN BEHALF OF PARENTS 42
AUT CÆSAR, AUT NIHIL 60
A NOTE ON MIRRORS 76
GIFTS 85
HUMOR: ENGLISH AND AMERICAN 94
THE DISCOMFORTS OF LUXURY: A SPECULATION 112
LECTURES 123
REVIEWERS AND REVIEWED 137
PASTELS: A QUERY 153
GUESTS 158
SYMPATHY 165
OPINIONS 176
THE CHILDREN’S AGE 190
A FORGOTTEN POET 201
DIALOGUES 211
A CURIOUS CONTENTION 217
THE PASSING OF THE ESSAY 226
IN THE DOZY HOURS, AND OTHER PAPERS.
IN THE DOZY HOURS.
“Montaigne and Howell’s letters,” says Thackeray, “are my bedside books.
If I wake at night, I have one or other of them to prattle me to sleep
again. They talk about themselves forever, and don’t weary me. I like to
hear them tell their old stories over and over again. _I read them in
the dozy hours, and only half remember them._”
In the frank veracity of this last confession there lies a pleasant
truth which it is wholesome to hear from such excellent and undisputed
authority. Many people have told us about the advantage of remembering
what we read, and have imparted severe counsels as to ways and means.
Thackeray and Charles Lamb alone have ventured to hint at the equal
delight of forgetting, and of returning to some well-loved volume with
recollections softened into an agreeable haze. Lamb, indeed, with
characteristic impatience, sighed for the waters of Lethe that he might
have more than his due; that he might grasp a double portion of those
serene pleasures of which his was no niggardly share. “I feel as if I
had read all the books I want to read,” he wrote disconsolately to
Bernard Barton. “Oh! to forget Fielding, Steele, etc., and read ’em
new!”
This is a wistful fancy in which many of us have had our share. There
come moments of doubt and discontent when even a fresh novel fills us
with shivery apprehensions. We pick it up reluctantly, and look at it
askance, as though it were a dose of wholesome medicine. We linger sadly
for a moment on the brink; and then, warm in our hearts, comes the
memory of happier hours when we first read “Guy Mannering,” or “The
Scarlet Letter,” or “Persuasion;” when we first forgot the world in
“David Copperfield,” or raced at headlong speed, with tingling veins and
bated breath, through the marvelous “Woman in White.” Alas! why were we
so ravenous in our youth? Like the Prodigal Son, we consumed all our
fortune in a few short years, and now the husks, though very excellent
husks indeed, and highly recommended for their nourishing and
stimulating qualities by the critic doctors of the day, seem to our
jaded tastes a trifle dry and savorless. If only we could forget the
old, beloved books, and “read ’em new”! With many this is not possible,
for the impression which they make is too vivid to be obliterated, or
even softened, by time. We may re-read them, if we choose. We do re-read
them often, for the sake of lingering repeatedly over each familiar
page, but we can never “read ’em new.” The thrill of anticipation, the
joyous pursuit, the sustained interest, the final satisfaction,--all
these sensations of delight belong to our earliest acquaintance with
literature. They are part of the sunshine which gilds the halcyon days
of youth.
But other books there be,--and it is well for us that this is so,--whose
tranquil mission is to soothe our grayer years. These faithful comrades
are the “bedside” friends whom Thackeray loved, to whom he returned
night after night in the dozy hours, and in whose generous companionship
he found respite from the fretful cares of day. These are the volumes
which should stand on a sacred shelf apart, and over them a bust of
Hermes, god of good dreams and quiet slumbers, whom the wise ancients
honored soberly, as having the best of all guerdons in his keeping. As
for the company on that shelf, there is room and to spare for poets, and
novelists, and letter-writers; room for those “large, still books” so
dear to Tennyson’s soul, and for essays, and gossipy memoirs, and
gentle, old-time manuals of devotion, and ghost lore, untainted by
modern research, and for the “lying, readable histories,” which grow
every year rarer and more beloved. There is no room for self-conscious
realism picking its little steps along; nor for socialistic dramas, hot
with sin; nor ethical problems, disguised as stories; nor “heroes of
complex, psychological interest,” whatever they may mean; nor
inarticulate verse; nor angry, anarchical reformers; nor dismal records
of vice and disease parading in the covers of a novel. These things are
all admirable in their way, but they are not the books which the calm
Hermes takes under his benign protection. Dull, even, they may be, and
provocative of slumber; but the road to fair dreams lies now, as in the
days of the heroes, through the shining portals of ivory.
Montaigne and James Howell, then, were Thackeray’s bedside
favorites,--“the Perigourdin gentleman, and the priggish little clerk of
King Charles’s Council;” and with these two “dear old friends” he whiled
away many a midnight hour. The charm of both lay, perhaps, not merely in
their diverting gossip, nor in their wide acquaintance with men and
life, but in their serene and enviable uncontentiousness. Both knew how
to follow the sagacious counsel of Marcus Aurelius, and save themselves
a world of trouble by having no opinions on a great variety of subjects.
“I seldom consult others,” writes Montaigne placidly, “and am seldom
attended to; and I know no concern, either public or private, which has
been mended or bettered by my advice.” Ah! what a man was there! What a
friend to have and to hold! What a courtier, and what a country
gentleman! It is pleasant to think that this embodiment of genial
tolerance was a contemporary of John Calvin’s; that this fine scholar,
to whom a few books were as good as many, lived unfretted by the angry
turbulence of men all bent on pulling the world in their own narrow
paths. What wonder that Thackeray forgave him many sins for the sake of
his leisurely charm and wise philosophy! In fact, James Howell, the
“priggish little clerk,” was not withheld by his priggishness from
relating a host of things which are hardly fit to hear. Those were not
reticent days, and men wrote freely about matters which it is perhaps as
healthy and as agreeable to let alone. But Howell was nevertheless a
sincere Churchman as well as a sincere Royalist. He was sound
throughout; and if he lacked the genius and the philosophy of Montaigne,
he was his equal in worldly knowledge and in tolerant good temper. He
heard, enjoyed, and repeated all the gossip of foreign courts, all the
“severe jests” which passed from lip to lip. He loved the beauty of
Italy, the wit of France, the spirit of the Netherlands, and the valor
of Spain. The first handsome woman that earth ever saw, he tells us, was
made of Venice glass, as beautiful and as brittle as are her descendants
to-day. Moreover, “Eve spake Italian, when Adam was seduced;” for in
that beguiling tongue, in those soft, persuasive accents, she felt
herself to be most irresistible.
There is really, as Thackeray well knew, a great deal of pleasing
information to be gathered from the “Familiar Letters,” and no pedagogic
pride, no spirit of carping criticism, mars their delightful flavor. The
more wonderful the tale, the more serene the composure with which it is
narrated. Howell sees in Holland a church monument “where an earl and a
lady are engraven, with three hundred and sixty-five children about
them, which were all delivered at one birth.” Nay, more, he sees “the
two basins in which they were christened, and the bishop’s name who did
it, not yet two hundred years ago;” so what reasonable room is left for
doubt? He tells us the well-authenticated story of the bird with a white
breast which visited every member of the Oxenham family immediately
before death; and also the “choice history” of Captain Coucy, who, dying
in Hungary, sent his heart back to France, as a gift to his own true
love. She, however, had been forced by her father into a reluctant and
unhappy marriage; and her husband, intercepting the token, had it
cooked into a “well-relished dish,” which he persuaded his wife to eat.
When she had obeyed, he told her, in cruel sport, the ghastly nature of
the food; but she, “in a sudden exaltation of joy, and with a
far-fetch’d sigh, cried, ‘This is a precious cordial indeed,’ and so
lick’d the dish, saying, ‘It is so precious that ’tis pity to put ever
any meat upon it.’ So she went to her chamber, and in the morning she
was found stone dead.” Did ever rueful tale have such triumphant ending?
Of other letter-writers, Charles Lamb and Madame de Sévigné are perhaps
best suited for our dozy hours, because they are sure to put us into a
good and amiable frame of mind, fit for fair slumber and the ivory
gates. Moreover, the bulk of Madame de Sévigné’s correspondence is so
great that, unless we have been very faithful and constant readers, we
are likely to open into something which is new to us; and as for Lamb,
those who love him at all love him so well that it matters little which
of his letters they read, or how often they have read them before. Only
it is best to select those written in the meridian of his life. The
earlier ones are too painful, the later ones too sad. Let us take him
at his happiest, and be happy with him for an hour; for, unless we go
cheerfully to bed, the portals of horn open for us with sullen murmur,
and fretful dreams, more disquieting than even the troubled thoughts of
day, flit batlike round our melancholy pillows.
Miss Austen is likewise the best of midnight friends. There stand her
novels, few in number and shabby with much handling, and the god Hermes
smiles upon them kindly. We have known them well for years. There is no
fresh nook to be explored, no forgotten page to be revisited. But we
will take one down, and re-read for the fiftieth time the history of the
theatricals at Mansfield Park; and see Mr. Yates ranting by himself in
the dining-room, and the indefatigable lovers rehearsing amorously on
the stage, and poor Mr. Rushworth stumbling through his two-and-forty
speeches, and Fanny Price, in the chilly little schoolroom, listening
disconsolately as her cousin Edmund and Mary Crawford go through their
parts with more spirit and animation than the occasion seems to demand.
When Sir Thomas returns, most inopportunely, from Antigua, we lay down
the book with a sigh of gentle satisfaction, knowing that we shall find
all these people in the morning just where they belong, and not, after
the fashion of some modern novels, spirited overnight to the antipodes,
with a breakneck gap of months or years to be spanned by our drooping
imaginations. Sir Walter Scott tells us, with tacit approbation, of an
old lady who always had Sir Charles Grandison read to her when she felt
drowsy; because, should she fall asleep and waken up again, she would
lose nothing of the story, but would find the characters just where she
had left them, “conversing in the cedar-parlour.” It would be possible
to take a refreshing nap--did our sympathy allow us such an
alleviation--while Clarissa Harlowe is writing, on some tiny scraps of
hidden paper, letters which fill a dozen printed pages.
Lovers of George Borrow are wont to claim that he is one of the choicest
of bedside comrades. Mr. Birrell, indeed, stoutly maintains that
slumber, healthy and calm, follows the reading of his books just as it
follows a brisk walk or rattling drive. “A single chapter of Borrow is
air and exercise.” Neither need we be very wide awake when we skim over
his pages. He can be read with half-closed eyes, and we feel his stir
and animation pleasantly from without, just as we feel the motion of a
carriage when we are heavy with sleep. Peacock is too clever, and his
cleverness has too much meaning and emphasis for this lazy delight. Yet,
nevertheless, “The Misfortunes of Elphin” is an engaging book to
re-read--if one knows it well already--in moments of drowsy
satisfaction. Then will the convivial humor of “Seithenyn ap Seithyn”
awake a sympathetic echo in our hearts, shorn for the nonce of all moral
responsibility. Then will the roar of the ocean surging through the
rotten dikes make the warm chimney corner doubly grateful. Then is the
reader pleased to follow the fortunes of the uncrowned prince among a
people who, having “no pamphleteering societies to demonstrate that
reading and writing are better than meat and drink,” lived without
political science, and lost themselves contentedly “in the grossness of
beef and ale.” Peacock, moreover, in spite of his keenness and virility,
is easily forgotten. We can “read him new,” and double our enjoyment.
His characters seldom have any substantiality. We remember the talk, but
not the talkers, and so go blithely back to those scenes of glad
good-fellowship, to that admirable conservatism and that caustic wit.
Let us, then, instead of striving so strenuously to remember all we
read, be grateful that we can occasionally forget. Mr. Samuel Pepys, who
knew how to extract a fair share of pleasure out of life, frankly admits
that he delighted in seeing an old play over again, because he was wise
enough to commit none of it to memory; and Mr. Lang, who gives _his_
vote to “Pepys’s Diary” as the very prince of bedside books, the one
“which may send a man happily to sleep with a smile on his lips,”
declares it owes its fitness for this post to the ease with which it can
be forgotten. “Your deeds and misdeeds,” he writes, “your dinners and
kisses, glide from our recollections, and being read again, surprise and
amuse us afresh. Compared with you, Montaigne is dry, Boswell is too
full of matter; but one can take you up anywhere, and anywhere lay you
down, certain of being diverted by the picture of that companion with
whom you made your journey through life.... You are perpetually the most
amusing of gossips, and, of all who have gossiped about themselves, the
only one who tells the truth.”
And the poets allied with Hermes and happy slumber,--who are they? Mr.
Browning is surely not one of the kindly group. I would as lief read Mr.
George Meredith’s prose as Mr. Browning’s verse in that hour of
effortless enjoyment. But Wordsworth holds some placid moments in his
keeping, and we may wander on simple errands by his side, taking good
care never to listen to philosophy, but only looking at all he shows us,
until our hearts are surfeited with pleasure, and the golden daffodils
dance drowsily before our closing eyes. Keats belongs to dreamier moods,
when, as we read, the music of his words, the keen creative magic of his
style, lure us away from earth. We leave the darkness of night, and the
grayness of morning. We cease thinking, and are content to feel. It is
an elfin storm we hear beating against the casement; it is the foam of
fairy seas that washes on the shore.
“Blissfully havened both from joy and pain,”
wrapped in soft, slumberous satisfaction, we are but vaguely conscious
of the enchanted air we breathe, or of our own unutterable well-being.
There is no English poem, save only “Christabel,” which can lead us like
“The Eve of St. Agnes” straight to the ivory gates, and waft us gently
from waking dreams to the mistier visions of sleep. But there are many
English poets--Herrick, and Marvell, and Gray, and Cowper, and
Tennyson--who have bedside verses for us all. Herrick, indeed, though
breathing the freshness of morning, is a delightful companion for night.
He calls us so distinctly and seductively to leave, as he did, the
grievous cares of life; to close our ears to the penetrating voice of
duty; to turn away our eyes from the black scaffold of King Charles; and
to watch, with him, the blossoms shaken in the April wind, and the
whitethorn of May time blooming on the hills, and the sheen of Julia’s
robe, as she goes by with laughter. This is not a voice to sway us at
broad noon, when we are striving painfully to do our little share of
work; but Hesperus should bring some respite even to the dutiful, and
in our dozy hours it is sweet to lay aside all labor, and keenness, and
altruism. Adonis, says the old myth, fled from the amorous arms of
Aphrodite to the cold Queen of Shadows who could promise him nothing but
repose. Worn with passion, wearied of delight, he lay at the feet of
Persephone, and bartered away youth, strength, and love for the waters
of oblivion and the coveted blessing of sleep.
A KITTEN.
If
“The child is father of the man,”
why is not the kitten father of the cat? If in the little boy there
lurks the infant likeness of all that manhood will complete, why does
not the kitten betray some of the attributes common to the adult puss? A
puppy is but a dog, plus high spirits, and minus common sense. We never
hear our friends say they love puppies, but cannot bear dogs. A kitten
is a thing apart; and many people who lack the discriminating enthusiasm
for cats, who regard these beautiful beasts with aversion and mistrust,
are won over easily, and cajoled out of their prejudices by the
deceitful wiles of kittenhood.
“The little actor cons another part,”
and is the most irresistible comedian in the world. Its wide-open eyes
gleam with wonder and mirth. It darts madly at nothing at all, and then,
as though suddenly checked in the pursuit, prances sideways on its hind
legs with ridiculous agility and zeal. It makes a vast pretense of
climbing the rounds of a chair, and swings by the curtain like an
acrobat. It scrambles up a table leg, and is seized with comic horror at
finding itself full two feet from the floor. If you hasten to its
rescue, it clutches you nervously, its little heart thumping against its
furry sides, while its soft paws expand and contract with agitation and
relief;
“And all their harmless claws disclose,
Like prickles of an early rose.”
Yet the instant it is back on the carpet it feigns to be suspicious of
your interference, peers at you out of “the tail o’ its ee,” and
scampers for protection under the sofa, from which asylum it presently
emerges with cautious trailing steps, as though encompassed by fearful
dangers and alarms. Its baby innocence is yet unseared. The evil
knowledge of uncanny things which is the dark inheritance of cathood has
not yet shadowed its round infant eyes. Where did witches find the
mysterious beasts that sat motionless by their fires, and watched
unblinkingly the waxen manikins dwindling in the flame? They never
reared these companions of their solitude, for no witch could have
endured to see a kitten gamboling on her hearthstone. A witch’s kitten!
That one preposterous thought proves how wide, how unfathomed, is the
gap between feline infancy and age.
So it happens that the kitten is loved and cherished and caressed as
long as it preserves the beguiling mirthfulness of youth. Richelieu, we
know, was wont to keep a family of kittens in his cabinet, that their
grace and gayety might divert him from the cares of state, and from
black moods of melancholy. Yet, with short-sighted selfishness, he
banished these little friends when but a few months old, and gave their
places to younger pets. The first faint dawn of reason, the first
indication of soberness and worldly wisdom, the first charming and
coquettish pretenses to maturity, were followed by immediate dismissal.
Richelieu desired to be amused. He had no conception of the finer joy
which springs from mutual companionship and esteem. Even humbler and
more sincere admirers, like Joanna Baillie, in whom we wish to believe
Puss found a friend and champion, appear to take it for granted that
the kitten should be the spoiled darling of the household, and the cat a
social outcast, degraded into usefulness, and expected to work for her
living. What else can be understood from such lines as these?
“Ah! many a lightly sportive child,
Who hath, like thee, our wits beguiled,
To dull and sober manhood grown,
With strange recoil our hearts disown.
Even so, poor Kit! must thou endure,
When thou becomest a cat demure,
Full many a cuff and angry word,
Chid roughly from the tempting board.
And yet, for that thou hast, I ween,
So oft our favored playmate been,
Soft be the change which thou shalt prove,
_When time hath spoiled thee of our love_;
Still be thou deemed, by housewife fat,
A comely, careful, mousing cat,
Whose dish is, for the public good,
Replenished oft with savory food.”
Here is a plain exposition of the utilitarian theory which Shakespeare
is supposed to have countenanced because Shylock speaks of the
“harmless, necessary cat.” Shylock, forsooth! As if he, of all men in
Christendom or Jewry, knew anything about cats! Small wonder that he was
outwitted by Portia and Jessica, when an adroit little animal could so
easily beguile him. But Joanna Baillie should never have been guilty of
those snug commonplaces concerning the
“comely, careful, mousing cat,”
remembering her own valiant Tabby who won Scott’s respectful admiration
by worrying and killing a dog. It ill became the possessor of an
Amazonian cat, distinguished by Sir Walter’s regard, to speak with such
patronizing kindness of the race.
We can make no more stupid blunder than to look upon our pets from the
standpoint of utility. Puss, as a rule, is another Nimrod, eager for the
chase, and unwearyingly patient in pursuit of her prey. But she hunts
for her own pleasure, not for our convenience; and when a life of luxury
has relaxed her zeal, she often declines to hunt at all. I knew
intimately two Maryland cats, well born and of great personal
attractions. The sleek, black Tom was named Onyx, and his snow-white
companion Lilian. Both were idle, urbane, fastidious, and self-indulgent
as Lucullus. Now, into the house honored, but not served, by these
charming creatures came a rat, which secured permanent lodgings in the
kitchen, and speedily evicted the maid servants. A reign of terror
followed, and after a few days of hopeless anarchy it occurred to the
cook that the cats might be brought from their comfortable cushions
upstairs and shut in at night with their hereditary foe. This was done,
and the next morning, on opening the kitchen door, a tableau rivaling
the peaceful scenes of Eden was presented to the view. On one side of
the hearth lay Onyx, on the other, Lilian; and ten feet away, upright
upon the kitchen table, sat the rat, contemplating them both with
tranquil humor and content. It was apparent to him, as well as to the
rest of the household, that he was an object of absolute, contemptuous
indifference to those two lordly cats.
There is none of this superb unconcern in the joyous eagerness of
infancy. A kitten will dart in pursuit of everything that is small
enough to be chased with safety. Not a fly on the window-pane, not a
moth in the air, not a tiny crawling insect on the carpet, escapes its
unwelcome attentions. It begins to “take notice” as soon as its eyes
are open, and its vivacity, outstripping its dawning intelligence, leads
it into infantile perils and wrong doing. I own that when Agrippina
brought her first-born son--aged two days--and established him in my
bedroom closet, the plan struck me at the start as inconvenient. I had
prepared another nursery for the little Claudius Nero, and I endeavored
for a while to convince his mother that my arrangements were best. But
Agrippina was inflexible. The closet suited her in every respect; and,
with charming and irresistible flattery, she gave me to understand, in
the mute language I knew so well, that she wished her baby boy to be
under my immediate protection. “I bring him to you because I trust you,”
she said as plainly as looks can speak. “Downstairs they handle him all
the time, and it is not good for kittens to be handled. Here he is safe
from harm, and here he shall remain.” After a few weak remonstrances,
the futility of which I too clearly understood, her persistence carried
the day. I removed my clothing from the closet, spread a shawl upon the
floor, had the door taken from its hinges, and resigned myself, for the
first time in my life, to the daily and hourly companionship of an
infant.
I was amply rewarded. People who require the household cat to rear her
offspring in some remote attic, or dark corner of the cellar, have no
idea of all the diversion and pleasure that they lose. It is delightful
to watch the little blind, sprawling, feeble, helpless things develop
swiftly into the grace and agility of kittenhood. It is delightful to
see the mingled pride and anxiety of the mother, whose parental love
increases with every hour of care, and who exhibits her young family as
if they were infant Gracchi, the hope of all their race. During Nero’s
extreme youth, there were times, I admit, when Agrippina wearied both of
his companionship and of her own maternal duties. Once or twice she
abandoned him at night for the greater luxury of my bed, where she slept
tranquilly by my side, unmindful of the little wailing cries with which
Nero lamented her desertion. Once or twice the heat of early summer
tempted her to spend the evening on the porch roof which lay beneath my
windows, and I have passed some anxious hours awaiting her return, and
wondering what would happen if she never came back, and I were left to
bring up the baby by hand.
But as the days sped on, and Nero grew rapidly in beauty and
intelligence, Agrippina’s affection for him knew no bounds. She could
hardly bear to leave him even for a little while, and always came
hurrying back to him with a loud frightened mew, as if fearing he might
have been stolen in her absence. At night she purred over him for hours,
or made little gurgling noises expressive of ineffable content. She
resented the careless curiosity of strangers, and was a trifle
supercilious when the cook stole softly in to give vent to her fervent
admiration. But from first to last she shared with me her pride and
pleasure; and the joy in her beautiful eyes, as she raised them to mine,
was frankly confiding and sympathetic. When the infant Claudius rolled
for the first time over the ledge of the closet, and lay sprawling on
the bedroom floor, it would have been hard to say which of us was the
more elated at his prowess. A narrow pink ribbon of honor was at once
tied around the small adventurer’s neck, and he was pronounced the most
daring and agile of kittens. From that day his brief career was a series
of brilliant triumphs. He was a kitten of parts. Like one of Miss
Austen’s heroes, he had air and countenance. Less beautiful than his
mother, whom he closely resembled, he easily eclipsed her in vivacity
and the specious arts of fascination. Never were mother and son more
unlike in character and disposition, and the inevitable contrast between
kittenhood and cathood was enhanced in this case by a strong natural
dissimilarity which no length of years could have utterly effaced.
Agrippina had always been a cat of manifest reserves. She was only six
weeks old when she came to me, and had already acquired that gravity of
demeanor, that air of gentle disdain, that dignified and somewhat
supercilious composure, which won the respectful admiration of those
whom she permitted to enjoy her acquaintance. Even in moments of
self-forgetfulness and mirth her recreations resembled those of the
little Spanish Infanta, who, not being permitted to play with her
inferiors, and having no equals, diverted herself as best she could with
sedate and solitary sport. Always chary of her favors, Agrippina cared
little for the admiration of her chosen circle; and, with a single
exception, she made no friends beyond it.
Claudius Nero, on the contrary, thirsted for applause. Affable,
debonair, and democratic to the core, the caresses and commendations of
a chance visitor or of a housemaid were as valuable to him as were my
own. I never looked at him “showing off,” as children say,--jumping from
chair to chair, balancing himself on the bedpost, or scrambling
rapturously up the forbidden curtains,--without thinking of the young
Emperor who contended in the amphitheatre for the worthless plaudits of
the crowd. He was impulsive and affectionate,--so, I believe was the
Emperor for a time,--and as masterful as if born to the purple. His
mother struggled hard to maintain her rightful authority, but it was in
vain. He woke her from her sweetest naps; he darted at her tail, and
leaped down on her from sofas and tables with the grace of a diminutive
panther. Every time she attempted to punish him for these misdemeanors
he cried piteously for help, and was promptly and unwisely rescued by
some kind-hearted member of the family. After a while Agrippina took to
sitting on her tail, in order to keep it out of his reach, and I have
seen her many times carefully tucking it out of sight. She had never
been a cat of active habits or of showy accomplishments, and the daring
agility of the little Nero amazed and bewildered her. “A Spaniard,”
observes that pleasant gossip, James Howell, “walks as if he marched,
and seldom looks upon the ground, as if he contemned it. I was told of a
Spaniard who, having got a fall by a stumble, and broke his nose, rose
up, and in a disdainful manner said, ‘This comes of walking on the
earth.’”
Now Nero seldom walked on the earth. At least, he never, if he could
help it, walked on the floor; but traversed a room in a series of flying
leaps from chair to table, from table to lounge, from lounge to desk,
with an occasional dash at the mantelpiece, just to show what he could
do. It was curious to watch Agrippina during the performance of these
acrobatic feats. Pride, pleasure, the anxiety of a mother, and the faint
resentment of conscious inferiority struggled for mastership in her
little breast. Sometimes, when Nero’s radiant self-satisfaction grew
almost insufferable, I have seen her eyelids narrow sullenly, and have
wondered whether the Roman Empress ever looked in that way at her
brilliant and beautiful son, when maternal love was withering slowly
under the shadow of coming evil. Sometimes, when Nero had been prancing
and paddling about with absurd and irresistible glee, attracting and
compelling the attention of everybody in the room, Agrippina would jump
up on my lap, and look in my face with an expression I thought I
understood. She had never before valued my affection in all her little
petted, pampered life. She had been sufficient for herself, and had
merely tolerated me as a devoted and useful companion. But now that
another had usurped so many of her privileges, I fancied there were
moments when it pleased her to know that one subject, at least, was not
to be beguiled from allegiance; that to one friend, at least, she always
was and always would be the dearest cat in the world.
I am glad to remember that love triumphed over jealousy, and that
Agrippina’s devotion to Nero increased with every day of his short
life. The altruism of a cat seldom reaches beyond her kittens; but she
is capable of heroic unselfishness where they are concerned. I knew of a
London beast, a homeless, forlorn vagrant, who constituted herself an
out-door pensioner at the house of a friendly man of letters. This cat
had a kitten, whose youthful vivacity won the hearts of a neighboring
family. They adopted it willingly, but refused to harbor the mother, who
still came for her daily dole to her only benefactor. Whenever a bit of
fish or some other especial dainty was given her, this poor mendicant
scaled the wall, and watched her chance to share it with her kitten, her
little wealthy, greedy son, who gobbled it up as remorselessly as if he
were not living on the fat of the land.
Agrippina would have been swift to follow such an example of devotion.
At dinner time she always yielded the precedence to Nero, and it became
one of our daily tasks to compel the little lad to respect his mother’s
privileges. He scorned his saucer of milk, and from tenderest infancy
aspired to adult food, making predatory incursions upon Agrippina’s
plate, and obliging us finally to feed them in separate apartments. I
have seen him, when a very young kitten, rear himself upon his baby
legs, and with his soft and wicked little paw strike his mother in the
face until she dropped the piece of meat she had been eating, when he
tranquilly devoured it. It was to prevent the recurrence of such
scandalous scenes that two dining-rooms became a necessity in the
family. Yet he was so loving and so lovable, poor little Claudius Nero!
Why do I dwell on his faults, remembering, as I do, his winning
sweetness and affability? Day after day, in the narrow city garden, the
two cats played together, happy in each other’s society, and never a
yard apart. Night after night they retired at the same time, and slept
upon the same cushion, curled up inextricably into one soft, furry ball.
Many times I have knelt by their chair to bid them both good-night; and
always, when I did so, Agrippina would lift her charming head, purr
drowsily for a few seconds, and then nestle closer still to her
first-born, with sighs of supreme satisfaction. The zenith of her life
had been reached. Her cup of contentment was full.
It is a rude world, even for little cats, and evil chances lie in wait
for the petted creatures we strive to shield from harm. Remembering the
pangs of separation, the possibilities of unkindness or neglect, the
troubles that hide in ambush on every unturned page, I am sometimes glad
that the same cruel and selfish blow struck both mother and son, and
that they lie together, safe from hurt or hazard, sleeping tranquilly
and always, under the shadow of the friendly pines.
AT THE NOVELIST’S TABLE.
“Compare,” said a friend to me recently, “the relative proportion of
kissing and venison pasties in Scott’s novels and Miss Rhoda
Broughton’s,”--and I did. It was a lame comparison, owing to my limited
acquaintance with part of the given text; but I pursued my
investigations cheerfully along the line of Waverley, and was delighted
and edified by the result. Years ago, a sulky critic in Blackwood,
commenting acrimoniously on Miss Susan Warner’s very popular tales,
asserted that there was more kissing in one of these narratives than in
all the stories Sir Walter ever wrote. Probably the critic was right. As
far as I can recollect Miss Warner’s heroines,--and I knew several of
them intimately when a child,--they were always either kissing or
crying, and occasionally they did both together. Ellen Montgomery,
dissolved in tears because John has forgotten to kiss her good-night,
was as cheerless a companion as I ever found in the wide world of
story-book life.
But Scott’s young people never seem to hunger for embraces. They allow
the most splendid opportunities to slip by without a single caress. When
Quentin Durward rescues the Countess Isabella at the siege of Liége, he
does not pause to passionately kiss her cold lips; he gathers her up
with all possible speed, and makes practical plans for getting her out
of the way. When Edith Bellenden visits her imprisoned lover, no thought
of kissing enters either mind. Henry Morton is indeed so overcome by
“deep and tumultuous feeling” that he presses his visitor’s “unresisting
hands;” but even this indulgence is of brief duration. Miss Bellenden
quickly recovers her hands, and begins to discuss the situation with a
great deal of sense and good feeling. Henry Bertram does not appear to
have stolen a single kiss from that romantic and charming young woman,
Julia Mannering, in the whole course of their clandestine courtship; and
the propriety of Lord Glenvarloch’s behavior, when shut up in a cell
with pretty Margaret Ramsay, must be remembered by all. “Naething for
you to sniggle and laugh at, Steenie,” observes King James reprovingly
to the Duke of Buckingham, when that not immaculate nobleman betrays
some faint amusement at the young Scotchman’s modesty. “He might be a
Father of the Church, in comparison of you, man.”
In the matter of venison pasties, however, we have a different tale to
tell. There are probably ten of these toothsome dishes to every kiss,
twenty of them to every burst of tears. Compare Quentin Durward as a
fighter to Quentin Durward as a lover, and then, by way of understanding
how he preserved his muscle, turn back to that delightful fourth
chapter, where the French King plays the part of host at the famous inn
breakfast. So admirably is the scene described in two short pages, so
fine is the power of Scott’s genial human sympathy, that I have never
been able, since reading it, to cherish for Louis XI. the aversion which
is his rightful due. In vain I recall the familiar tales of his cruelty
and baseness. In vain I remind myself of his treacherous plans for poor
Durward’s destruction. ’Tis useless! I cannot dissociate him from that
noble meal, nor from the generous enthusiasm with which he provides
for, and encourages, the splendid appetite of youth. The inn breakfast
has but one peer, even in Scott’s mirthful pages, and to find it we must
follow the fortunes of another monarch who masquerades to better purpose
than does Maître Pierre, whose asylum is the hermitage of St. Dunstan,
and whose host is the jolly Clerk of Copmanhurst. The gradual progress
and slow development of the holy hermit’s supper, which begins
tentatively with parched pease and a can of water from St. Dunstan’s
well, and ends with a mighty pasty of stolen venison and a huge flagon
of wine, fill the reader’s heart--if he has a heart--with sound and
sympathetic enjoyment. It is one of the gastronomic delights of
literature. Every step of the way is taken with renewed pleasure, for
the humors of the situation are as unflagging as the appetites and the
thirst of the revelers. Even the quarrel which threatens to disturb the
harmony of the feast only adds to its flavor. Guest and host, disguised
king and pretended recluse, are as ready to fight as to eat; and, with
two such champions, who shall say where the palm of victory hides? Any
weapon will suit the monk, “from the scissors of Delilah, and the
tenpenny nail of Jael, to the scimitar of Goliath,” though the good
broadsword pleases him best. Any weapon will suit King Richard, and he
is a match for Friar Tuck in all. Born brothers are they, though the
throne of England waits for one, and the oaks of Sherwood Forest for the
other.
“But there is neither east, nor west, border, nor breed, nor birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from
the ends of the earth.”
In his descriptions of eating and drinking, Scott stands midway between
the snug, coarse, hearty enjoyment of Dickens, and the frank
epicureanism of Thackeray, and he easily surpasses them both. With
Dickens, the pleasure of the meal springs from the honest appetites
which meet it--appetites sharpened often by the pinching pains of
hunger. With Thackeray, it is the excellence of the entertainment itself
which merits approbation. With Scott, it is the spirit of genial
good-fellowship which turns a venison pasty into a bond of brotherhood,
and strengthens, with a runlet of canary, the human tie which binds us
man to man. Dickens tries to do this, but does not often succeed, just
because he tries. A conscious purpose is an irresistible temptation to
oratory, and we do not want to be preached to over a roast goose, nor
lectured at through the medium of pork and greens. Scott never turns a
table into a pulpit; it is his own far-reaching sympathy which touches
the secret springs that move us to kind thoughts. Quentin Durward’s
breakfast at the inn is worthy of Thackeray. Quentin Durward’s appetite
is worthy of Dickens. But Quentin Durward’s host--the cruel and
perfidious Louis--ah! no one but Scott would have dared to paint him
with such fine, unhostile art, and no one but Scott would have
succeeded.
In point of detail, however, Dickens defies competition. Before his vast
and accurate knowledge the puny efforts of modern realism shrink into
triviality and nothingness. What is the occasional dinner at a
third-class New York restaurant, the roast chicken and mashed potatoes
and cranberry tart, eaten with such ostentatious veracity, when compared
to that unerring observation which penetrated into every English
larder, which lifted the lid of every pipkin, and divined the contents
of every mysterious and forbidding meat pie! Dickens knew when the
Micawbers supped on lamb’s fry, and when on breaded chops; he knew the
contents of Mrs. Bardell’s little saucepan simmering by the fire; he
knew just how many pigeons lurked under the crust of John Browdie’s
pasty; he knew every ingredient--and there are nearly a dozen of
them--in the Jolly Sandboys’ stew. There was not a muffin, nor a bit of
toasted cheese, nor a slab of pease-pudding from the cook-shop, nor a
rasher of bacon, nor a slice of cucumber, nor a dish of pettitoes eaten
without his knowledge and consent. And, as it cost him no apparent
effort to remember and tell all these things, it costs us no labor to
read them. We are naturally pleased to hear that Mr. Vincent Crummles
has ordered a hot beefsteak-pudding and potatoes at nine, and we hardly
need to be reminded--even by the author--of the excellence of Mr.
Swiveller’s purl. The advantage of unconscious realism over the
premeditated article is a lack of stress on the author’s part, and a
corresponding lack of fatigue on ours.
Thackeray reaches the climax of really good cooking, and, with the art
of a great novelist, he restrains his gastronomic details, and keeps
them within proper bounds. Beyond his limits it is not wise to stray,
lest we arrive at the land of gilded puppets, where Disraeli’s dukes and
duchesses feast forever on ortolans, and pompetones of larks, and
lobster sandwiches; where young spendthrifts breakfast at five o’clock
in the afternoon on soup and claret; and where the enamored Lothair
feeds Miss Arundel “with cates as delicate as her lips, and dainty
beverages which would not outrage their purity.” The “pies and
preparations of many lands” which adorn the table of that distinguished
dinner-giver, Mr. Brancepeth, fill us with vague but lamentable doubts.
“Royalty,” we are assured, “had consecrated his banquets” and tasted of
those pies; but it is the province of royalty, as Mr. Ruskin reminds us,
to dare brave deeds which commoners may be excused from attempting. Hugo
Bohun, at the Duke’s banquet, fired with the splendid courage of his
crusading ancestry, dislodges the ortolans from their stronghold of
aspic jelly, and gives to the entertainment that air of glittering
unreality which was Disraeli’s finest prerogative, and which has been
copied with facile fidelity by Mr. Oscar Wilde. “I see it is time for
supper,” observes the æsthetic Gilbert of the dialogues. “After we have
discussed some Chambertin and a few ortolans, we will pass on to the
question of the critic, considered in the light of the interpreter.” And
when we read these lines, our lingering doubts as to whether Gilbert be
a man or a mere mouthpiece for beautiful words, “a reed cut short and
notched by the great god Pan for the production of flute-melodies at
intervals,” fade into dejected certainty. That touch about the ortolans
is so like Disraeli, that all Gilbert’s surpassing modern cleverness can
no longer convince us of his vitality. He needs but a golden plate to
fit him for the ducal dining-table, where royalty, and rose-colored
tapestry, and “splendid nonchalance” complete the dazzling illusion.
After which, we may sober ourselves with a parting glance at the
breakfast-room of Tillietudlem, and at the fare which Lady Margaret
Bellenden has prepared for Graham of Claverhouse and his troopers. “No
tea, no coffee, no variety of rolls, but solid and substantial
viands--the priestly ham, the knightly surloin, the noble baron of beef,
the princely venison pasty.” Here in truth is a vigorous and an
honorable company, and here is a banquet for men.
IN BEHALF OF PARENTS.
It is a thankless task to be a parent in these exacting days, and I
wonder now and then at the temerity which prompts man or woman to assume
such hazardous duties. Time was, indeed, when parents lifted their heads
loftily in the world; when they were held to be, in the main, useful and
responsible persons; when their authority, if unheeded, was at least
unquestioned; and when one of the ten commandments was considered to
indicate that especial reverence was their due. These simple and
primitive convictions lingered on so long that some of us can perhaps
remember when they were a part of our youthful creed, and when, in life
and in literature, the lesson commonly taught was that the province of
the parent is to direct and control, the privilege of the child is to
obey, and to be exempt from the painful sense of responsibility which
overtakes him in later years. In very old-fashioned books, this point of
view is strained to embrace some rather difficult conclusions. The
attitude of Evelina to her worthless father, of Clarissa Harlowe to her
tyrannical parents, seemed right and reasonable to the generations which
first read these novels, while we of the present day are amazed at such
unnatural submissiveness and loyalty. “It is hard,” says Clarissa’s
mother, in answer to her daughter’s despairing appeals, “if a father and
mother, and uncles and aunts, all conjoined, cannot be allowed to direct
your choice;” an argument to which the unhappy victim replies only with
her tears. How one longs to offer Mrs. Harlowe some of these little
manuals of advice which prove to us now so conclusively that even a
young child is deeply wronged by subjection. “Looked at from the highest
standpoint,” says one of our modern mentors, “we have no more right to
interfere with individual choice in our children than we have to
interfere with the choice of friends;” a statement which, applied as it
is, not to marriageable young women, but to small boys and girls,
defines matters explicitly, and does away at once and forever with all
superannuated theories of obedience.
A short perusal of these text-books of training would lead the
uninitiated to conclude that the children of to-day are a down-trodden
race, deprived of their natural rights by the ruthless despotism of
parents. It is also indicated with painful and humiliating distinctness
that adults have no rights--at least none that children are bound to
respect--and that we have hardened ourselves into selfishness by looking
at things from a grown-up, and consequently erroneous, point of view.
For example, to many of us it is an annoyance when a child wantonly
destroys our property. This is ungenerous. “With anointed eyes we might
often see in such a tendency a great power of analysis, that needs only
to be understood to secure grand results;”--which reflection should make
us prompt to welcome the somewhat disastrous results already secured. I
once knew a little boy who, having been taken on a visit to some
relatives, succeeded within half an hour in purloining the pendulums of
three old family clocks, a passion for analysis which ought to have made
him one of the first mechanics of his age, had not his genius, like that
of the political agitator, stopped short at the portals of
reconstruction.