The sun which came streaming in through the windows next morning seemed
the herald of coming joy. Eve was the first to be awakened, and she soon
aroused Joan. "It won't make no difference to them because the day's
fine," she asked: "will it, Joan?"
"Not a bit: they don't care a dump what the day is, so long as the
night's only dark enough; and there'll be no show o' moon this week."
"Oh, I'm so glad!" said Eve, breaking out into a snatch of an old song
which had caught her fancy.
"Awh, my dear, don't 'ee begin to sing, not till breakfast is over,"
exclaimed Joan. "'Sing afore you bite, cry afore night.'"
"Cry with joy perhaps," laughed Eve; still, she hushed her melody and
hastened her speed to get quickly dressed and her breakfast over. That
done with, the house had to be fresh put in order, while Joan applied
herself to the making of various pies and pastries; "For, you see," she
said, "if they won't all of 'em be just ready for a jollification this
time, and no mistake!"
"And I'm sure they deserve to have one," said Eve, whose ideas of
merrymaking were on a much broader scale now than formerly. It was true
she still always avoided the sight of a drunken man and ran away from a
fight, but this was more because her feelings were outraged at these
sights than because her sense of right and wrong was any longer shocked
at the vices which led to them.
"I'll tell 'ee what I think I'll do," said Joan as, her culinary tasks
over, she felt at liberty to indulge in some relaxation: "I'll just run
in to Polly Taprail's and two or three places near, and see if the
wind's blowed them any of this news."
"Yes, do," said Eve, "and I shall go along by the Warren a little way
and look at the sea, and that--"
"Lord save the maid!" laughed Joan: "whatever you finds in the say to
look at I can't tell. I knaw 'tis there, but I niver wants to turn my
eyes that way, 'ceptin' 'tis to look at somethin' 'pon it."
"Wait till you've been in a town like I have for some time," said Eve.
"Wait? Iss, I 'spects 'twill be wait 'fore my turn comes to be in a town
for long. Awh, but I should just like to go to London, though," she
added: "wouldn't I just come back ginteel!" and she walked out of the
door with the imaginary strut such an importance would warrant her in
assuming. Eve followed, and the two walked together down Lansallos
street, at the corner of which they parted--Joan to go to Mrs.
Taprail's, and Eve along by the Warren toward Talland, for, although she
had not told her intention to Joan, she had made up her mind to walk on
to where she could get sight of Talland Bay.
She was just in that state of hope and fear when inaction becomes
positive pain, and relief is only felt while in pursuit of an object
which entails some degree of bodily movement. Joan had so laughed at her
fears for the Lottery that to a great extent her anxiety had subsided;
and everybody else seemed so certain that with Adam's caution and
foresight nothing could possibly happen to them that to doubt their
safety seemed to doubt his wisdom.
During this last voyage Adam had had a considerable rise in the opinions
of the Polperro folk: they would not admit it too openly, but in
discussions between twos and threes it was acknowledged that "Adam had
took the measure o' they new revenoo-chaps from the fust, and said they
was a cunnin', desateful lot, and not to be dealt with no ways;" and
Eve, knowing the opposition he had had to undergo, felt a just pride
that they were forced into seeing that his fears had some ground and
that his advice was worth following out.
Once past the houses, she determined no longer to linger, but walk on as
briskly as possible; and this was the more advisable because the day was
a true April one: sharp showers of mingled hail and rain had succeeded
the sun, which now again was shining out with dazzling brightness.
The sea was green and rippled over with short dancing waves, across
which ran long slanting shadows of a bright violet hue, reflected from
the sun and sky; but by the time Eve reached a jutting stone which
served as a landmark all this was vanishing, and, turning, she saw
coming up a swift creeping shadow which drew behind it a misty veil that
covered up both sea and sky and blotted them from view.
"Oh my! here's another hailstorm coming," she said; and, drawing the
hood of her cloak close over her face, she made all haste down the steep
bit of irregular rock toward where she knew that, a little way off the
path, a huge boulder would afford her shelter.
Down came the rain, and with it such a gust of wind that, stumbling up
the bit of cliff on which the stone stood, Eve was almost bent double.
Hullo! Somebody was here already, and, shaking back her hood to see who
her companion in distress might be, she uttered a sharp scream of
horror, for the man who stood before her was no other than Reuben May.
"Then you're not glad to see me, Eve?" he said, for the movement Eve had
involuntarily made was to put out her hands as if to push him away.
Eve tried to speak, but the sudden fright of his unexpected presence
seemed to have dried up her throat and tongue and taken away all power
of utterance.
"Your old chum, Capen Triggs, asked me how I should like to take a bit
of a trip with him, and I thought, as I hadn't much to keep me, I'd take
his offer; and, as he's stopped at Plymouth for a day or so, I made up
my mind to come so far as here and see for myself if some of what I've
been told is true."
"Why, what have you been told?" said Eve, catching at anything which
might spare her some of the unpleasantness of a first communication.
"Well, for one thing, that you're going to be married to your cousin."
Eve's color rose, and Reuben, thinking it might be anger, said, "Don't
make any mistake, Eve: I haven't come to speak about myself. All that's
past and over, and God only knows why I ever got such folly into my
head;" and Reuben thought himself perfectly sincere in making this
statement, for he had talked himself into the belief that this journey
was undertaken from the sole desire to carry out his trust. "What I've
come to do is to speak to you like a friend, and ask you to tell me what
sort of people these are that you're among, and how the man gets his
living that you're thinking of being married to."
Eve hesitated: then she said, "There is no need for me to answer you,
Reuben, because I can see that somebody already has been talking about
them to you--haven't they?"
"Yes, they have, but how do I know that what they've said is true?"
"Oh, I dare say it's true enough," she said: "people ain't likely to
tell you false about a thing nobody here feels ashamed to own to."
"Not ashamed of being drunkards, law-breakers, thieves?" said Reuben
sternly.
"Reuben May," exclaimed Eve, flaming up with indignation and entirely
forgetting that but a little time before she had held an exactly similar
opinion, "do you forget that you're speaking of my own father's
blood-relations--people who're called by the same name I am?"
"No, I don't forget it, Eve; and I don't forget, neither, that if I
didn't think that down here you would soon become ruined, body and soul,
I'd rather cut my tongue out than it should give utterance to a word
that could cause you pain. You speak of your father, but think of your
mother, Eve--think if she could rise up before you could you ask her
blessing on what you're going to do?"
Eve's face quivered with emotion, and Reuben, seizing his advantage,
continued: "Perhaps you think I'm saying this because I'm wanting you
for myself, but, as God will judge us, 'tisn't that that's making me
speak, Eve;" and he held out his hand toward her. "You've known me for
many a long year now--my heart's been laid more bare to you than to any
living creature: do you believe what I'm saying to you?"
"Yes, Reuben, I do," she answered firmly, though the tears, no longer
restrained, came streaming from her eyes; "and you must also believe
what I say to you--that my cousin is a man as honest and upright as
yourself, that he wouldn't defraud any one of the value of a pin's
point, nor take a thing that he didn't think himself he'd got a proper
right to."
"Good God, Eve! is it possible that you can speak like this of one who
gets his living by smuggling?" and a spasm of positive agony passed
over Reuben's face as he tried to realize the change of thought and
feeling which could induce a calm defence of such iniquity. "What's the
difference whether a man robs me or he robs the king? Isn't he stealing
just the same?"
"No, certainly not," said Eve, quickly. "I can't explain it all to you,
but I know this--that what they bring over they buy and pay for, and
certainly, therefore, have some right to."
"Have a right to?" repeated Reuben. "Well, that's good! So men have a
right to smuggle, have they? and smuggling isn't stealing? Come! I
should just like this cousin of yours to give me half an hour of his
company to argue out that matter in."
"My cousin isn't at home," said Eve, filled with a sudden horror of what
might be expected from an argument between two such tempers as Reuben
and Adam possessed. "And if you've only come here to argue, whether 'tis
with me or with them, Reuben, 'tis a waste of time that'll do no good to
you nor any of us."
Reuben did not speak. He stood and for a few moments looked fixedly at
her: then he turned away and hid his face in his hands. The sudden
change from anger to sorrow came upon Eve unexpectedly: anything like a
display of emotion was so foreign to Reuben that she could not help
being affected by it, and after a minute's struggle with herself she
laid her hand on his arm, saying gently, "Reuben, don't let me think
you've come all this long way only to quarrel and say bitter things to
me: let me believe 'tis as you said--because you weren't satisfied, and
felt, for mother's sake, you wanted to be a friend to me still. I feel
now as if I ought to have told you when I wrote that I was going to
marry my cousin Adam, but I didn't do it because I thought you'd write
to me, and then 'twould be easier to speak; and when you didn't take no
notice I thought you meant to let me go altogether, and I can't tell you
how hurt I felt. I couldn't help saying to myself over and over again
(though I was so angry with you I didn't know what to do), 'I shall
never have another such friend as Reuben--never.'"
Eve's words had their effect, and when Reuben turned his pale face to
her again his whole mood was softened. "'Tis to be the same friend I
always was that I've come, Eve," he said; "only you know me, and how I
can never keep from blurting out all at once things that I ought to
bring round bit by bit, so that they might do good and not give
offence."
"You haven't offended me yet," she said--"at least," she added, smiling
in her old way at him, "not beyond what I can look over; and so far as I
can and it will ease your mind, Reuben, I'll try to tell you all you
care to know about uncle and--the rest of them. I'm sure if you knew
them you'd like them: you couldn't help it--more particularly Joan and
Adam, if you once saw those two."
"And why can't I see them, Eve? It wouldn't seem so very strange, being
your friend--for that's all I claim to be--going there to see you, would
it?"
"No, I don't know that it would; only," and here she hesitated,
"whatever you saw that you didn't like, Reuben, you'd only speak to me
about. You wouldn't begin arguing with them, would you?"
Reuben shook his head. Then with a sudden impulse, he said, "And have
you really given all your love to this man, Eve?"
"Yes," she said, not averting her eyes, although her face was covered
with a quick blush.
"And whatever comes you mean to be his wife?"
"I don't mean to be anybody else's wife," she said.
"And he--he cares for you?"
"If he didn't be sure I should have never cared for him."
Reuben sighed. "Well," he said, "I'll go and see him. I'll have a talk
with him, and try and find out what sort of stuff he's made of. If I
could go away certain that things ain't as bad as I feared to find them,
I should take back a lighter heart with me. You say he isn't home now.
Is he at sea, then?"
"No, not at sea: he's close by."
"Then you expect him back soon?"
"Yes: we expect him back to-night."
"To-night? Then I think I'll change my plan. I meant to go back to
Plymouth and see what Triggs is about to do, for I'm going round to
London with him when he goes; but if you're expecting your cousin so
soon, why shouldn't I stop here till I've seen him?"
"Oh, but he mightn't come," said Eve, who in any case had no wish that
Reuben should appear until she had paved the way for his reception, and
above all things desired his absence on this particular occasion.
"Well, I must take my chance of that--unless," he added, catching sight
of her face, "there's any reason against my stopping?"
Eve colored. "Well," she said, "perhaps they mightn't care, as they
don't know you, about your being here. You see," she added by way of
excuse, "they have been away a long while now."
"Been to France, I s'pose?" said Reuben in a tone which conveyed his
suspicions.
"No," replied Eve, determined not to seem ashamed of their occupation:
"I think they've been to Guernsey."
"Oh, well, all the same, so far as what they went to fetch. Then they're
going to _try_ and land their cargo, I s'pose?"
"I don't know what they may be going to _try_ and do"--and Eve
endeavored to imitate the sneer with which Reuben had emphasized the
word--"but I know that trying with them means doing. There's nobody
about here," she added with a borrowed spice of Joan's manner, "would
care to put themselves in the way of trying to hinder the Lottery."
"'Tis strange, then, that they shouldn't choose to come in open
daylight, rather than be sneaking in under cover of a dark night," said
Reuben aggravatingly.
"As it happens," retorted Eve, with an assumption of superior nautical
knowledge, "the dark night suits them best, by reason that at high tide
they can come in close to Down End. Oh, you needn't try to think you can
hurt me by your sneers at them," she said, inwardly smarting under the
contempt she knew Reuben felt. "I feel hurt at your wanting to say such
things, but not at all at what you say. _That_ can't touch me."
"No, so I see," said Reuben hopelessly. Then, after a minute's pause, he
burst out with a passionate, "Oh, Eve, I feel as if I could take and
jump into the sea with you, so as I might feel you'd be safe from the
life I'm certain you're goin' to be dragged down to. You may think fair
now of this man, because he's only showed you his fair side; but they
who know him know him for what he is--bloodthirsty, violent, a drunkard,
never sober, with his neck in a noose and the gallows swinging over his
head. What hold will you have over one who fears neither God nor devil?
Yes, but I will speak. You shall listen to the truth from me," for she
had tried to interrupt him. "It isn't too late, and 'tis but fit that
you know what others say of him."
Eve's anger had risen until she seemed turned into a fury, and her
voice, usually low and full, now sounded hard and sharp as she cried,
"If they said a hundred times worse of him I would still marry him; and
if he stood on the gallows, that you say swings over his head, I'd stand
by his side and say I was his wife."
"God pity you!" groaned Reuben.
"I want no pity," she said, "and so you can tell those who would throw
it away on me. Say to them that you sought me out to cast taunts at me,
but it was of no use, for what you thought I should be ashamed of I
gloried in, and could look you and all the world in the face"--and she
seemed to grow taller as she spoke--"and say I felt proud to be a
smuggler's wife;" and, turning, she made a movement as if to go.
But Reuben took a step so as to impede her. "Is this to be our parting?"
he said. "Can you throw away the only friend you've got left?"
"I don't call you a friend," she said.
"You'll know me for being so one day, though, and bitterly rue you
didn't pay more heed to my words."
"Never!" she said proudly. "I'd trust Adam with my life: he's true as
steel. Now," she added, stepping on one side, "I have no more time to
stay: I must go back; so let me pass."
Mechanically Reuben moved. Stung by her words, irritated by a sense of
failure, filled with the sharpest jealousy against his rival, he saw no
other course open to him than to let her go her way and to go his.
"Good-bye, then, Eve," he said, in a dry, cold voice.
"Good-bye," she answered.
"I don't think, after what's passed, you need expect to see me again,"
he ventured, with the secret hope that she would pause and say something
that might lead to a fresh discussion.
"I had no notion that you'd still have a thought of coming. I should
look upon a visit from you as very out of place."
"Oh, well, be sure I sha'n't force myself where I'm not wanted."
"Then you'll be wise to stay away, for you'll never be wanted where I
am."
And without another glance in his direction she walked away, while
Reuben stood and watched her out of sight. "That's ended," he said,
setting his lips firmly together and hardening the expression of his
naturally grave face. "That mad game's finished, and finished so that I
think I've done with sweet-hearting for as long as I live. Well, thank
God! a man may get on very fairly though the woman that he made a fool
of himself for flings back his love and turns him over for somebody
else." Then, as if some unseen hand had dealt him a sudden thrust, he
cried out, "Why did I ever see her? Why was I made to care for her?
Haven't I known the folly of it all along, and fought and strove from
the first to get the better of myself? and here she comes down and sees
a fellow whose eye is tickled by her looks, and he gets in a week what
I've been begging and praying for years for; and they tell you that
God's ways are just and that He rewards the good and punishes the evil!"
and Reuben's face worked with suppressed emotion, for in spirit he stood
before his Creator and upbraided Him with "Lo! these many years have I
served Thee, neither transgressed I at any time Thy commandments; and
yet this drunkard, this evil-liver, this law-breaker, is given that for
which in my soul I have thirsted!" and the devils of envy and revenge
ran by his side rejoicing, while Fate flew before and lured him on to
where Opportunity stood and welcomed his approach.
_The Author of "Dorothy Fox."_
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
POSSESSION.
She is thine own at last, O faithful soul!
The love that changed not with the changing years
Hath its reward: Desire's strong prayers and tears
Fall useless since thy hand hath touched the goal.
See how she yieldeth up to thy control
Each mystery of her beauty: enter, thou,
A vanquished victor. None can disavow
Thy royal, love-bought right unto the whole
Of love's rich feast. Oh outspread golden hair,
White brow, red lips whereon thy lips are set
With rapturous thrills undreamed of, past compare!
Oh ecstasy of bliss! And yet--and yet--
What doth it profit thee that every part
Is thine except the little wayward heart?
ELIZA CALVERT HALL.
AN OLD ENGLISH HOME: BRAMSHILL HOUSE.
A peculiar charm hangs about an Elizabethan country-house.
The castles belong to an utterly different state of things and
people--to a rougher, coarser time. Their towers and walls, where the
jackdaws build in the ivy; their moats, where the hoary carp bask and
fatten; their drawbridges and heavy doors and loopholed windows,--these
all tell of the unrest, the semi-war-like state of feudal days, when
each great seigneur was a petty king in his own county, with his private
as well as public feuds, and his little army of men-at-arms ready to do
his bidding, to sally forth and fight for the king or to defend his own
walls against some more powerful neighbor.
The great houses of the eighteenth century have a different character
again, with their Italian facades and trim terraced gardens, where the
wits and beauties of dull Queen Anne's time amused themselves after
their somewhat rude fashion. They speak of a solid luxury in keeping
with the heavy features and ponderous minds of the worthies of those
days.
But the Elizabethan, or even early Jacobean, house tells us of England
in her golden age. The walls of red brick, gray with lichens; the rows
of wide stone-mullioned windows and hanging oriels; the delicate,
fanciful chimneys rising in great clusters above the pointed gables; the
broad stone steps leading up to the hospitable door; the smooth green
terraces and bowling-lawns, walled in, it is true, but closed with gates
of curiously-wrought ironwork meant more for ornament than for
defence,--all these serve to recall the days when learning and wealth
joined hands with the Maiden Queen to raise England from the depths into
which she had sunk--the days of "the worthies whom Elizabeth, without
distinction of rank or age, gathered round her in the ever-glorious wars
of her great reign."
It was then that Burleigh and Walsingham talked statecraft; that Raleigh
and Drake, Frobisher and Grenville, sailed the seas and beat the Spanish
Armada; that the "sea-dogs" brought the treasures of the New World to
the feet of the queen, and filled men's minds with dreams of El Dorados
where gold and jewels were as common as the sand on the seashore. It was
then that English literature, all but dead during the storm of the
Reformation, began to revive. And then it was that a galaxy of poets
arose such as the world had never seen before; that Sidney wrote his
_Arcadia_, Spenser his _Faerie Queene_; that Christopher Marlowe,
Beaumont and Fletcher and merrie Ben Jonson founded the English drama;
and that Shakespeare, poet of poets, overshadowed them all with that
stupendous genius which has filled succeeding generations with wonder
and love.
Then it was that men began to think of their home as a casket in which
to enshrine the gentler tastes and luxuries which peace at home and
continental influences from without were fostering in England. The
casket must be fitted for its treasure; and so it came to pass that
throughout the length and breadth of the land those fair Elizabethan
mansions sprang up.
I see one such now in my mind's eye--one that I love well, for since my
earliest childhood it has filled me with awe and admiration and delight.
It was built by James I. as a hunting-box for his son, Prince Henry, but
ere the house was finished the young prince was dead, and all the
promise of his short life gone with him. Had he lived, our English
history for the next hundred years might have been a different story.
Bramshill then passed into other hands--first to Lord Zouch, then to the
Copes, who still own it--but in the finely-carved stone balustrade above
the great western door the three plumes of the prince of Wales's
feathers may still be seen, the sole memento of its royal origin. Only
half the original house remains: the rest was destroyed by fire a couple
of hundred years ago. Yet what still stands is verily a palace.
You enter through the heavily-nailed and barred doors, and find yourself
in a vast hall panelled up to the ceiling with old oak. The immense
fireplace with its brass dogs and andirons tells of the yule log that
still at Christmas burns upon the hearth, and trophies of arms of all
ages--from the Toledo blade that can be bent by the point into a
semicircle, so perfect is the temper of its steel, to the Sikh sword
that was brought home after the Indian mutiny--form fitting ornaments
for the walls.
Then come many rooms, with deep-embrasured windows looking out on the
terrace, each beautiful or curious in its own way--a noble dining-room
hung with old grisaille tapestry, from which you may learn the life of
Decius Mus if you have patience to disentangle the strange medley of
impossible figures in gardens with impossible flowers, where impossible
beasts roam in herds and impossible birds sing among the branches.
But the glory of the house is its first floor. The wide oak staircase
leads you up first to the chapel-room, with its oriel windows
overhanging the western door, its Italian cabinets, its rare china, its
chairs and couches covered with crewel-work more than two hundred years
old, yet with colors as fresh as on the day that Lady Zouch and her
maidens set in the stitches. Then there is the great drawing-room, with
its precious Italian marble chimney-piece, more brass dogs, more
tapestry, more recessed windows. Then the library, full of priceless
books, to which the present learned owner is constantly adding new
volumes. The mere ceilings are a study in themselves, for they are
covered with mouldings and traceries and hanging bosses of marvellous
workmanship of the time of Inigo Jones--designed, some say, by him, for
he used to stay at Eversley, hard by, with a friend and fellow-pupil of
Sir Christopher Wren. Then comes the long gallery, running the whole
width of the building, stored with curiosities, where we used to run
races and play hide-and-seek with the children of the house in bygone
days, and tremble when evening came on lest some bogie from his
lurking-place should spring out upon us. The bedrooms are panelled with
oak painted white, with splendid fireplaces and carved mantelpieces that
reach the ceiling.
And besides all these there are enchanting little rooms reached by
unexpected staircases, by secret doors in the wall, by dark passages
where one hears the rustle of ghostly brocade dresses. Those are the
most lovable rooms, for, once safely in them, one is at home and warm,
while in the state rooms one feels, as the dear old squire who died here
thirty years ago said, "like a pea in a drum."
Down from the house slopes the park, with its green glades, its
heather-covered knolls, its huge oaks, its delicate silver
birches--above all, its matchless Scotch firs, which James I. planted
here, as he did in many places in England, to remind himself of the land
of his birth. The hardy northern trees took kindly to their new home,
and they have seeded themselves and spread far and wide over vast tracts
of country. But nowhere south of Tweed are finer specimens to be found
than in this old Hampshire park. Three great avenues of them run round a
triangle half a mile across, and outside the shade of their black
branches the purple heather and waving bracken form a carpet fit for
elves and fairies.
From the western front of the house a double avenue of gigantic elms
leads down to the river that gleams in silver lines beneath the bridge,
and ends where the moors begin on the opposite hill a mile away. Up this
avenue in olden days the deer were driven toward the house, to be killed
at the feet of the ladies, who stepped down in hoops and furbelows and
dainty shoes to the iron gates between two pepper-box towers where
gorgeous peacocks now strut and sun themselves.
Those were the days when, sorely against his own wish, Archbishop
Abbot, my worthy ancestor, went a-hunting in the park on Sunday at the
command of the king his master, who with the archbishop was a guest of
Lord Zouch. Well for him had it been if he had resisted the royal will,
for, as it befell, the arrow from his crossbow, glancing from a tree,
struck one of the keepers and killed him then and there. The poor
archbishop, it is said, never smiled again, and his sad, tender face in
Vandyke's noble picture looks down on me from the wall as I write and
bears out the truth of the story. Often and often when we children were
playing in the park did we wander about, trying to settle from which
tree the arrow glanced, conjuring up before our eyes the whole
scene--the king's anger and the archbishop's despair at the
catastrophe--and feeling the while a proud personal interest in it all.
Ah, what good days those were, roaming about knee-deep in heather,
catching the rare moths, chasing the squirrels that whisked up the fir
stems and mocked us from their high perch, searching the hollow trees
for woodpeckers' nests, eating the beech-nuts or pricking our fingers as
we tried to open the husks of the Spanish chestnuts that grew by the
lake! From among the bulrushes the coots sailed out at our approach, and
the tiny dabchick dived so deep that we thought, "This time she _must_
be drowned," when, lo and behold! she would appear twenty yards off, a
little black ball with a yellow bill, only to take breath and plunge
again. Sometimes in a hard winter we would hear high in the sky the cry
of a weird pack of hounds. Nearer and nearer drew that unearthly music,
till we held our breath in a kind of delightful terror, and then above
our heads appeared a flock of wild swans on the search for water; and
down they dropped, like white cannon-balls, into the lake, sending a
mass of spray into the air and shivering the smooth black surface of the
water into a thousand ripples that circled away and lapped against the
banks in mimic waves.
But I think my most exquisite moment of happiness was one spring day
when I saw close by me a little fox-cub--a furry darling, about as big
as a four-months'-old kitten, with black stripes across his fat back. He
had ventured out of the fox-earths on the other side of the park
palings, and did not know how to get back to his anxious mother. I tried
to catch him, but that was not to be, and young Reineke soon found a way
home. Nevertheless, the joy was mine, never to be forgotten, of having
seen a real wild beast so near.
Even on dark and stormy days the park has its own strange charm as one
walks up the gloomy avenue on the soft fir-needles glistening with rain.
A murmur fills the air as of sea-waves beating on the shore: it is the
wet south-west wind soughing overhead and lashing the writhing branches.
One thinks of the German fairy-tales, and half expects to meet the old
woman who led Hansel and Grethel captive, or to come suddenly upon her
house with its ginger-bread roof and barley-sugar windows.
I remember once taking a well-known musician through those fir woods one
dark afternoon as the wind was making soft music above us. He was
silent, and I was disappointed, for I had fancied that the new country
would delight him and excite his imagination. But when we reached home
he sat down to the piano in the dark, and played on and on as if he were
pouring out his whole soul in the flood of sweet melody; and when, after
an hour of marvellous improvisation, he stopped and said to us, "I
couldn't help it: I had to reel off all that I have been seeing and
hearing this afternoon," then I was content, for I knew nothing had been
thrown away on our friend, and that if he could not talk about it all he
could do even better.
But if you would see Bramshill in all its pride come on some November
morning to the first meet of the season.
Well do I recollect the excitement of those happy days. How long the
night seemed before morning broke and I was sure it was not pouring with
rain! How pleasant to run down to breakfast all neat and trim in one's
habit! And then when flask and sandwiches were safely bestowed, white
gloves buttoned and hat firmly secured, how eagerly I watched for
half-past ten to walk out to the stables, where the horses were stamping
and snorting impatiently, knowing full well by their marvellous instinct
what enjoyment was before them! Then my little bay Sintram came dancing
out, followed by Puff, the dear old brown mare. I was tossed into the
saddle, and away we went at that peculiarly unpleasant and tiring pace,
a "cover trot," which for some inscrutable reason is the right thing if
you are going to a meet. Less than a trot, more than a walk, you can
neither sit still nor rise in your stirrup, but must just jog along till
you fairly ache. The horses pull and fight with their bits as we keep
them in the soft sandy ditch up the lane to spare their precious feet.
At the few cottages we pass women and children are all standing at their
garden-gates to watch the "quality" go by. The ploughmen in the fields
discover that the furrows nearest the road need a great deal of
attention; the shepherds fold their sheep to-day close to the hedge, so
as to secure front places for the show; and if we chance to run this way
every man will leave his work and follow us as long as his breath lasts,
and his master, who is riding, will not grumble, for if hounds are
running every man, be he rich or poor, has a right to run too.
Up the sandy hill we go, and out on the wide moors, covered with soft
brown heather, which stretch away with hardly a break twenty miles south
and east to Aldershot Camp or Windsor Forest. On the brow of the hill
grows a mighty bush of furze which always goes by the name of "Miss
Bremer's furze-bush." When the dainty Swedish novelist once came to
gladden Eversley Rectory with her presence she told how she longed to
see the plant before which Linnaeus had fallen on his knees; and she
walked up this selfsame hill and with eyes full of tears gazed on the
prickly shrub with its mist of golden-colored, apricot-scented flowers.
The old Hampshire proverb says, "When furze is out of flower kissing is
out of fashion;" and, sure enough, there is not a month in the year in
which you may not find a blossom or two among the green spines.
Now we cross a green road, the Welsh Ride, which in the autumn is
covered with thousands of cattle making their way in great herds from
the Welsh mountains and Devonshire pastures to the winter fairs round
London. The drovers used to boast that they could bring their beasts all
the way from Wales without once going off turf or through a turnpike.
Now, alas! crowded cattle-trucks on the railway are fast superseding the
old-fashioned, wholesome way of travelling, and we seldom have the
autumnal air filled with the lowing of the herds, the barking of the
attendant dogs and the shouts of the drovers on their sturdy Welsh
ponies. But to-day the Welsh Ride looks gay enough, for it is dotted
with little knots of horsemen in black or red coats using it as a short
cut from Aldershot and Sandhurst. We turn off the moor into the shadow
of the fir avenue that leads half a mile up to the park-gates. The
ground, covered with a soft carpet of pine-needles and burrowed
everywhere by the roots of the trees, gives off a hollow echo to the
horses' clattering hoofs. The sombre avenue is alive in unwonted fashion
to-day. Now we pass a group of pedestrians from the village; now a young
farmer comes by on a half-broken colt which is to make its first
acquaintance with the hounds; then a break with a big party from a
country-house in Miss Mitford's village passes us with a gay greeting as
it rattles on. A tiny nutshell of a pony-carriage full of babies comes
trotting along, and its driver, poor Sheldon Williams, will make notes
of the scene and put them into one of his clever hunting-pictures,
little dreaming of the day when his early death will leave those babies
penniless. Now a group of the redcoats we saw on the Welsh Ride
overtakes us, and Sintram plunges and dances as a wild little
thorough-bred comes up to our side. His master, who has already gained
his Victoria Cross twice--first as a little lad in the trenches at
Sevastopol, and again for desperate deeds of valor in the Indian
mutiny--is to win yet further glory in 1879 at the head of the "flying
column" in Zululand--Evelyn Wood, the most gallant and humane of all
that gallant band.
The white park-gate is held wide open by a poor ne'er-do-weel in a
shabby old red coat--John Ellis by name. How he gets his living no one
knows, but if there is a meet of fox-hounds anywhere within ten miles,
there he is sure to be, holding people's horses or ready at a gate for
stray pennies and sixpences. There is usually such a hanger-on to every
pack of hounds in England--one who travels immense distances on foot to
turn up in unexpected places and get a few hard-earned shillings as his
reward. We jog along under the magnificent silver firs, only to be
equalled by those in the duke of Wellington's park at Strathfieldsaye,
hard by; then up the lime avenue which borders the cricket-ground, where
thirty years ago the most famous matches in Hampshire were played; and
as we reach the iron gates leading up to the house our little knot of
riders has swelled into a veritable cavalcade.
Down the drive we trot, past the stables, where the watch-dogs strain
angrily at their chains and a little green monkey jibbers with rage and
excitement, and in another moment we turn under the shadow of the great
house up to the western door. Here all is life and bustle. Twenty or
thirty carriages are drawn up by the widespreading lawn: grooms are
holding horses ready for their masters, who are refreshing the inner man
with cherry brandy and cold breakfast indoors. A tinkle of bells is
heard as the duchess of Wellington drives herself up with her three
ponies abreast, Russian fashion. Then a perfectly-appointed brougham,
with a pair of magnificent cobs, stops in a corner, and a soldier-like
foreigner in a red coat helps out a quiet-looking English lady wrapped
up in furs. She slips them off as her groom leads up a priceless horse
for her to mount, and in a moment is in the saddle, and will ride as
straight as any man in the field to-day. Her husband, Count Morella,
better known as the famous Carlist general Cabrera, whose strange and
terrible history many years ago fascinated the gentle English heiress,
now satisfies his war-like spirit by fox-hunting on the best horses that
money can buy, and has settled down into a quiet English country
gentleman.
The hounds have arrived before us. There they are--the beauties!--on the
green grass, and we ride in among them to have a word with Tom Swetman
the huntsman and good George Austin the whip, the latter of whom has
given me a lead over many a fence. Gallant Tom! the bravest and gentlest
of men, how little we thought that in a year or two we should never see
your honest face again on earth! But you will be long remembered, though
you are with us no more, and the story will be told for years to come of
a day when the hounds ran into their fox on the South-western Railway.
It was in a cutting fifty feet deep, with a tremendous fence at the top.
Tom arrived just in time to see his hounds on the rails, with poor
Reynard dead in their midst and the express train from Southampton
speeding up the hill at fifty miles an hour. He crammed his horse over
the great post and rails, down the almost perpendicular side of the
cutting, whipped the hounds off, and, as the train rushed screaming by,
rode out from under the very wheels of the engine and up the farther
bank with his rescued pack.
But now our master, Mr. Garth, comes down the steps--a signal that we
must no longer waste time talking with our neighbors, and like a good
old friend he gives us a private programme of the way we shall draw.
Stirrups are lengthened or shortened, girths tightened, restive horses
led away to unobserved corners where their owners can try to mount
without being seen by the assembled multitude. Sintram executes a
war-dance on his hind legs, to the delight of some schoolboys in a
wagonette, the terror of their fair companions and the extreme disgust
of his mistress at having to practice the _haute ecole_ before so large
an audience. Ah, my poor Sintram! He danced once too often, and one fine
day came to a sad end by falling backward and breaking his neck.
Tom now comes up to the master: "Shall we go, sir?"
"Yes--now, I think."
A crack of the whips and away trots Tom, followed by his splendid pack
and his two whippers-in. Then comes the master, and we all crowd after
them pell-mell with horses plunging and kicking, and as soon as we are
fairly out in the open a kind of stampede takes place among the unruly
young ones, and we see many an involuntary steeple-chase over the smooth
green cricket-ground. Through the dark avenues of fir trees we canter to
the temple, a little summerhouse on a promontory in the sea of wood that
lies below, and we stand admiring the far blue distant view away to the
Hogsback and the South Downs beyond Basingstoke as the hounds begin
their work. There they are: you can see their twinkling tails as they
draw the heather-covered slopes beneath us and disappear among the
golden-brown bracken, while one of the whips plunges down after them and
shakes a shower of amber leaves from the silver birches as he brushes
past them.
Something streaks away down a green drive. A young hound gives tongue,
but his note of triumph quickly changes to a yelp as the vigilant whip
catches him with the tip of his long lash and roars, "War'[1] hare!"
Poor little man! He has tried to run what is called a "short-tailed
fox," and returns to the pack a sadder and a wiser dog. But now the
tails twinkle faster than ever. A low whimper from some of the old
hounds, then a burst of joyous music from the pack.
"Gone away!" yells Tom, standing up in his stirrups and tooting his
horn.
Then that unmistakable screech which is supposed to mean "Tally-ho!"
from a group of beaters and keepers in the distance, and there, against
the park-palings, a beautiful red thing scudding along the soft ride,
flat to the ground, his bushy tail flying straight behind him. Reynard
himself! Now let all look out for themselves. Adieu, carriages! adieu,
poor pedestrians! We are off, and shall not see you again till
dinner-time. Through the park-gate we stream away, down the fir avenue,
along the Welsh Ride. We have got a splendid start, and our horses fly
on beside Countess Morella, who looks the perfection of a hunting lady
in her plain neat habit just down to her feet.
Reynard is making for Coombes's Wood, but the earths were all stopped
this morning at four o'clock; so away he speeds again, leaving the
rectory and its lovely meadows and the dear old church below us--away
past the bogs where the cotton-grass and the flycatcher, the blue
gentian and the yellow asphodel, grow among the treacherous
tussocks--away to Eversley Wood. Here the same fate--a fagot or three or
four sods in the mouth of each hole--awaits him; so, changing his
tactics, he strikes boldly across Hartfordbridge Flats for Lord
Calthorpe's woods at Elvetham.
And now woe to the unwary or to the newcomer who thinks our
heather-covered moors are all plain sailing! for along them run long
lines of ruts, the remains of the old pack-road of the Middle Ages, worn
by the traffic of centuries and now covered deep in purple heath. The
only way to get over them, unless you stop and walk, is to jump boldly
into the middle like the man in the nursery rhyme, and then jump out
again: horses that have been in the country for a while soon learn to do
this. But some luckless ensign who has lately joined his regiment at
Aldershot comes down bodily, and horse and man roll and struggle in the
deep ruts which William the Conqueror's pack-horses helped to tread out
as they came from London to Winchester.
Now the woods are drawing near, and we cross the old London road, the
high-road between the metropolis and Southampton, along which ninety
stagecoaches ran every day in the good old times. A mile off to our
right, down Star Hill, lies the famous White Lion Inn, now a miserable
pot-house, where George IV. used to stay, and where, on the day that the
London and South-western Railway was opened, the old ostler cut his
throat in sheer despair, for Othello's occupation was gone. Ten miles
up the road lies Bagshot Heath, the terror of travellers in those
coaching days. There stood, and stands still, a little wayside inn
called the Golden Farmer, where many of the coaches stopped to water the
horses. The wearied travellers of the end of last century, touched by
the tender solicitude of the charming landlord, confided to his
sympathetic ear their fears of the highwaymen who were said to infest
the heath. Cheered and encouraged with assurances from their host of the
perfect safety of the particular road they intended taking, the
travellers set out. But usually, when they had gone about a mile, the
coach would stop with a sudden jerk, and a masked man on a magnificent
horse would ride up, pistol in hand, and demand their money or their
life. Sometimes serious encounters took place with this leader and his
band, and then the wounded and terrified victims would drag themselves
back to the Golden Farmer, where the host, full of commiseration for
their misfortunes, would lavish care and kindness upon them. This went
on for years, and it was not until hundreds of robberies had been
committed that the discovery was made of the identity of the fascinating
landlord and the desperate captain of the highwaymen.
Many are the tales the old people at Eversley used to tell of the
"gentlemen of the road" in their fathers' and grandfathers' time. Even
in quiet Eversley itself a curate lived some hundred years ago whose
strange career ended on the gallows. He owned a splendid black horse
which no one ever saw him mount. But it was whispered that if any one
peeped into its stable in the morning the beautiful creature was seen
covered with foam, bathed in perspiration, trembling as if it had just
come in from a long gallop; and at last it was found out that Parson
Darby belonged to the gang of highwaymen on Bagshot Heath. He was caught
red-handed, and hanged close to the Golden Farmer in chains on a gibbet
of which the posts were still standing forty years ago. But what became
of his black horse no one ever could tell me. Now the London road is as
safe and quiet as any other well-kept highway, and the wildest
passengers upon it are a few wandering gypsies, who travel up and down
it from fair to race and from race to fair.
But Reynard is speeding away through the pleasant fir woods, and we are
following him as fast as we can lay legs to ground--scrambling over the
rotten banks, scurrying along the soft rides, lying low on our saddles
to avoid the sweeping boughs, and watching with all our eyes for the
slippery roots that crawl along the surface of the sandy soil. Down
through the bogs, across the bridge by the home farm, past the park,
into the fallow fields, with half a dozen tremendous fences which send
my heart up into my throat till Sintram lands me safe over each, into
the fir woods again, up to the foot of the Queen's Mounts; and there,
where good Queen Bess sat and watched the deer being driven up to her
feet, do we run into our gallant fox, and a "Whoo-hoop!" from Tom
proclaims that Reynard is no more.
But our run has led us far from home, and while the hounds trot on to
Dogmersfield Park to draw the coverts of the descendants of the old
regicide Mildmay, let us wend our way once more to Bramshill and linger
a while longer about the terraces and gardens of the dear old house.
Come back with me, gentle reader, through the iron gates under the
crumbling archways of the pleasaunce, where the Virginia creeper twines
its delicate wreaths and glorifies the old stones in autumn with a flush
of flame. The troco-ground, with its green turf as smooth as a
billiard-table, is just as it was in the days of King James. There in
the centre is the iron ring through which the lords and dames drove the
heavy wooden troco-balls; and if you go into the garden-hall through
that arched corridor you will see the actual balls that they used, and
the long poles, with a kind of iron cup at their ends, with which the
players pushed them--forerunners of the modern croquet-box that lies
beside them.
Under the sunny walls run straight wide borders, where the bees make
merry among pinks and lilies, mignonette and gilliflowers, and the walls
themselves are tangled with old-fashioned roses and honeysuckles. One
double yellow rose tree of prodigious age is kept as the apple of the
gardener's eye. Tradition tells that it was brought a hundred years ago
from Damascus--a fact which I am quite willing to believe, for the
knotted stem tells its own story, and certainly there never was a
sweeter rose or one more worthy of coming from the far-famed gardens of
the East. Many a thousand blossoms have I picked from its descendants,
for it is the ancestor of a hardy race: every sucker of the family grows
and thrives in the poorest soil, and covers itself each June with a
thick mass of canary-colored blossoms. During the three weeks that the
yellow briers were in flower every room in Eversley Rectory was decked
out with flat bowls of them on a ground of green ferns, and purple-black
pansies mingled with their golden blooms.
Round about the house masses of another yellow flower are planted with
no sparing hand--the great St. John's wort. It is pleasant to look upon,
but it has another value. Dare I tell it in the nineteenth century, this
age of railroads and telegraphs and iron-clads, when space and time are
in a fair way to be annihilated, and nothing is so sacred that it may
not be questioned, no problem so hard that men may not try to solve it?
In the days when Bramshill House was built our forefathers believed
firmly in a whole unseen or rarely-seen world around them of fairies,
ghosts, spirits and witches. In some out-of-the-way corners in
England--even in these days of board schools and competitive
examinations, when we are told that King Arthur never existed and that
William Tell is a "sun-myth"--some remnants of this belief still linger.
In Devonshire folks speak shyly and with bated breath of the "good
people;" and even in the year of grace 1879 a Warwickshire laborer was
had up before the magistrates for having with a pitchfork half killed a
poor old woman whom he declared to be a witch. But be that as it may, in
the reign of James I. no one doubted the existence of the spirit-world
about us, and on St. John's Eve all its denizens, good and bad, were
supposed to wander freely where they would. One only thing they feared,
and that was the great St. John's wort. Therefore, all who wished to
guard house and home from the unwelcome visitors, who pinched the maids,
turned the milk sour and plagued their victims with a thousand impish
tricks, planted it freely about their gardens; and thus it is that you
see its golden flowers amid their shining rich green leaves and crimson
shoots round nearly all old English homes.
Do not laugh at these old fables, gentle reader. When we wander over the
green turf and through the wide halls we seem to have opened a door that
leads us back into the past out of the turmoil of the nineteenth
century. And surely for a moment it can do us no harm to leave our
striving, hurrying, anxious modern life, and picture to ourselves the
days when our forefathers maybe were ignorant and superstitious, but
when they knew how to build and how to fight and how to write--the days
when England became "a nest of singing birds."
ROSE G. KINGSLEY.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In hunting dialect the warning "'ware" or "beware" is shortened to
"war'," as in the old advice, "War' horse, war' hound, war' heel!"
CANOEING ON THE HIGH MISSISSIPPI.
TWO PAPERS.--I.
[Illustration]
The Kleiner Fritz and Hattie of Louisville and the Betsy D. of
Cincinnati made the canoe-fleet which the Northern Pacific Railway
shunted out upon its station-platform at Detroit City, Minnesota, in the
early gray of last July's first Thursday. We had bargained by post with
Beaulieu, a shrewd, wiry, reckless French half-breed, for transportation
of ourselves, canoes, equipment and provisions to Itasca Lake, or to a
point upon the Mississippi five miles below the lake, as we might elect.
His assurance was that four days and forty-one dollars would carry us to
our first objective point. His helpers were a lively young half-breed,
son-in-law of the murdered chief Hole-in-the-Day, another big mongrel,
fat, plodding and reticent, and a young Indian who could speak a few
English words, but was destitute of ideas in either English or Chippewa.
Their motive-power was grazing on the open prairie back of the ragged
village. The Reservation Indian, denied liquor at home, reckons upon a
trip out of bounds as fair opportunity for a spree, so that catching and
harnessing the ponies and cattle was a tedious task that covered the
hours from breakfast well on toward noon; but at last the Hattie was
firmly imbedded in prairie-grass and soft luggage upon one wagon, the
Fritz and the Betsy were bound together upon a second, and the men of
the fleet, with the stores, filled the third.
From Detroit City to Itasca Lake is about forty miles in a straight
line, but no practicable way thither approximates to a direct line, and
he who would see the beautiful lake and the head of the great river must
travel for seven or eight days and endure many hardships. Sixty miles
were to be done on wheels. The first day's travel was to White Earth
Agency, twenty-two miles across a rolling prairie which steadily rises
toward its climax in the Hauteur des Terres. The soil is of rare
fertility, and the unbounded fields were clothed in the greenest of
green, flecked with wild flowers of every hue in luxuriant profusion.
Clumps of trees gave variety to the broad and beautiful view, while
scores of clear little lakes gemmed the prairie as with great drops of
molten silver. The eye swept an horizon of twenty miles, and once twenty
leagues were within our visual grasp. The plodding fat man went his way
in a dignified walk, but the passenger vehicle and that which bore the
other boats, travelling by order of Beaulieu, who had in him more
Detroit whiskey than ordinary discretion, came more than half the way at
a terrible gait, spite of our remonstrances and greatly to our
trepidation. Examination showed that the Betsy was racked and pounded
beyond all excuse, while the poor Fritz revealed a hole in its graceful
side like that made by a six-pound cannon-shot--a sad beginning for so
long a cruise. Thence we went on slowly to the agency, where our first
task was to find a clever Vermont Yankee reputed as the man to repair
the unwelcome and inexcusable damage. The ingenious and genial fellow
worked through the hot Fourth of July, while we mingled with the Indians
and took part in their celebration, the first ever conducted entirely by
themselves.
White Earth Agency is the seat of government of three reservations which
embrace the homes of all the Chippewas. White Earth Reservation is
thirty-six miles square, and is peopled by nearly seventeen hundred
Indians and half-breeds. These were formerly gathered upon Crow Wing
River, near Brainerd, where they existed in drunkenness, barbarism and
destitution. In 1868 they were removed here, and the institutions of
Christian civilization were introduced. They live in comfortable cabins
and bark lodges. The agent, Major C.A. Ruffee, is a gentleman of
capacity and integrity. Using his authority well and wisely, he is a
king throughout his dominion of thirteen hundred square miles. His happy
blending of civil and military government gives satisfaction to all who
are well disposed. The Chippewas deal kindly among themselves, and have
no quarrels with the whites. They have a well-arranged police system,
with a chief, lieutenants and sergeants, embracing sixteen men in all,
and directly responsible to the agent. No liquor is allowed on the
reservation. They have no pilfering, and the few locks and bolts are
rarely needed. In case of trespass or disagreement the parties come or
are summoned before the agent, who examines the case on its merits,
weighs the facts and the equities, decides; and there the quarrel ends.
The seat of the agency is an orderless village gathered about a
green-shored little lake, and includes the office of the agent, the
post-office, a warehouse for supplies, a meat-shop, two trading-stores
and an untidy and comfortless hotel. Near by is the neat cottage of the
agent, a large and comely boarding-school, an industrial school, and the
residences of the chief clerk and of the head-farmer, who teaches and
aids the Indians in practical farming. Not far away to the south is the
Roman Catholic church; a mile to the north is the hospital, a large and
cheerful building; and near the hospital are the tasteful Protestant
Episcopal chapel and the rectory of the Rev. Mr. Gilfillan, who for
fourteen years has worthily occupied a parish coextensive with the
Chippewa Nation. The true solution of the Indian question is being
worked out at White Earth in results that augur well for the future.
Each child may secure education, and the minds and morals of all ages
are cared for. Their churches are well attended and their schools have
outgrown present accommodations. Their religious services and schools
are conducted in their own language. They have an educated Indian
clergyman who can scarcely speak English, while Mr. Gilfillan speaks the
Chippewa as fluently as his mother-tongue. They have few quarrels, no
thieving, no drunkenness, no abject poverty. They are not more perfect
than others of human kind, but according to their light and sphere they
are as good as a similar average of whites anywhere. The wise purpose is
to make them kind, moral, educated and industrious Indians, not
make-believe white men, and the work is doing and promising well in
sincere and capable hands.
The Indian Fourth-of-July celebration took place in an open, treeless
prairie. The festivities centred in a series of races run in pairs by
the small and wiry Indian ponies over a curved, mowed and rolled
half-mile course. Nearly all the young men were betters, in stakes of
from twenty-five cents to ten dollars. There were no pools, but hard
running, straight betting and square paying. The chief of police was the
president of the course. All were in good-humor. There was no liquor,
neither was there a harsh word or a blow among the five hundred. After
the races eatables, tea, coffee and ice-water were enjoyed with laughter
and chat. In the evening we cruisers gave a show of rockets and Roman
candles, to the great delight of the Indians, and the day closed with a
dance in the large dining-hall of the boarding-school.
[Illustration: ACROSS THE PRAIRIE.]
Our damaged boats repaired and preparations completed for three weeks'
absence from civilization, we set out near mid-day of Saturday for the
march to Wild Rice River, eighteen miles. Our way lay among the cabins,
lodges and farms of the Chippewas, over a billowy, green immensity
bordered on the east by the lines of the Hauteur des Terres, which shut
us from the Mississippi Valley, and horizoned on the west by the slopes
beyond the famed Red River of the North. Our day's journey terminated,
in a driving rainstorm, on the banks of Wild Rice River, where are a
trading-store, the cabin of the trader and a neat chapel of the
Protestant Episcopal mission. Our habitation for the night was a dark,
muddy, odorous storehouse, in whose nether apartment we munched a frugal
supper, then climbed a ladder to beds upon the bare floor between stacks
of snake-root, which had accumulated from barterings with the Indians.
During the night the rainstorm grew to a gale which rocked our night's
home like a ship at sea to the music of heaven's grand diapasons. Sunday
morning, impelled by the expense of our large retinue and the
cheerlessness of our refuge, we pushed on for the foot of Wild Rice
Lake, twenty miles distant over prairies and through forests. Two miles
out we were overtaken by another fierce storm, which drove us to the
shelter of the last human habitation, save two others near by, that we
should see for three weeks. The broad, sweeping bow of the black cloud,
the peculiar detonations of thunder in that clear atmosphere, the rush
of wind, rain and hail, unhindered by the treeless and trackless moor,
were lessons of God's majesty and power more impressive than cathedral
mass or prayer and song and psalm of men. Out of the storm's first onset
we rushed unasked into the hut of an Indian family, and surprised a pair
of squaws and a six-months' pappoose squatting on a dirty and
rain-pooled floor in almost total darkness. In an hour the storm had
gone its eastward way, the sun shone out, and we resumed our trail among
spruces, pines, oaks and elms to the foot of the lake, where we were to
dismiss our prairie-schooners. Monday, with the early sun, we left teams
and drivers, to push on by lakes, up rivers and through the pathless
wilderness beyond all roads and habitations. Our party was reduced to
the barest needs for the severe work before us. Besides our three
selves we had a corps of five Indians as guides and packers, each of
whom was a character, and all bore themselves through four days of
severe work honestly, cheerfully and helpfully. They were Henry St.
Clair, a half-breed, our interpreter, to whom we could only address
measured monosyllables with any hope of imparting ideas, but always
faithful, frank and wise; Kewashawkonce, the guide, a man of push and a
genuine wag; Kawaybawgo, a huge hunter, whose old long shot-gun has
banged over almost every acre of these wilds; Metagooe, a sleepy,
thick-headed fellow; and Waisonbekton, young and active, always ready
for work or burden and constantly alert for new and interesting things
in Nature.
At the foot of Wild Rice Lake we prepared our canoes for voyaging, and
began our long paddle toward the source of the Mississippi, whence we
were to descend to civilization. A brief description of our little ships
and equipment will help to a better understanding of our cruise. Each
voyager had a Rob Roy canoe, slightly improved as to model and built
upon the incomparable plan of Mr. Rushton of Canton, New York. The
canoes are fourteen feet long, ten and a half inches deep and
twenty-seven inches wide, decked over except a man-hole sixteen by about
thirty-six inches, and weighing, with the mast and lug sail, from fifty
to fifty-six pounds. The paddle is eight feet long, bladed at each end,
grasped in the middle, and drives the canoe by strokes alternating on
each side. The traveller sits flat upon the boat's floor, facing the
bow. The canoe is not only a vehicle, but furnishes a dry and secure bed
for sleeping at night, and, with its rubber apron, is a refuge from rain
and storm. Each boat was equipped with an air-pillow, rubber blanket,
rubber poncho, woollen blankets, rubber navy-bag and haversack. The
general outfit represented a fine double shot-gun, a small and effective
rifle, a revolver, fishing-tackle for each man, compass, aneroid
barometer, thermometer, folding stove, stew-pans in nests, frying-pan,
broiler, table-ware, and provisions for three weeks based upon the army
ration, with dried fruits, condensed milk, brandy, medicines, etc.,
purchased at St. Paul.
Our stores and equipment suitably divided between the canoes, we paddled
up through the outlet and into the lake, followed by Metagooe and
Waisonbekton in a large birch-bark canoe bearing the provisions and
camp-supplies of the Indians, while their companions walked across the
country.
Wild Rice Lake is about one mile by five miles in extent. It is named
from the wild rice which grows up from its shallow depths over almost
its whole extent. Each autumn hundreds of Indians gather upon its shores
in tents and lodges to secure the crop. Two squaws pass slowly through
the thick rice in a birch canoe, one paddling at the stern and the other
at the bow, drawing the ripe rice over the gunwale and with a club
flailing the grain out of the straw into the boat. There and thus every
family upon the reservation may secure an important part of the winter's
provisions.
Through and over this green and productive sea we paddled about four
miles to the mouth of Wild Rice River, which flows out of Upper Wild
Rice Lake, then up the narrow, deep and crooked river. At our noon
rendezvous Kawaybawgo and his foot-companions came in with a fine deer,
the victim of his old but effective gun. In the early afternoon our
progress became slow and excessively wearying from the shallowing of the
river and its wonderful crookedness. The current ran like a mill-race
around hundreds of short turns, and had its own exasperating way upon
our keels. Finally, we were obliged to wade and drag the canoes after us
in water varying between ankle-and waist-deep. A few hours of this wore
us all out, and we called a halt and camp, utterly exhausted, with not
more than twelve miles to the credit of the hard day's work. The Betsy
D.'s skipper rolled over dead-beaten and sick; the Hattie's captain
floundered up into the deep grass, incapable of further effort; while he
of the Kleiner Fritz, scarcely better off, prescribed camphor and black
coffee for the one and cherry brandy for the other, discreetly mixing
the prescription for himself. Medication, an hour's rest and juicy
rashers of broiled venison from the Indians' generous store soon brought
the expedition to its wonted cheer and vigor.
[Illustration: TAKING WATER, WILD RICE LAKE.]
Supper over, we filled the pipes of the Indians with fine tobacco and
asked for a council. We all sat around a bright fire, and soon effected
a bargain with the Indians to drag our canoes on up the little river,
leaving us to walk across the country with the guide. Early the
following morning we started, four of our party with the canoes, and we
on foot with Kewashawkonce. The guide was pantomimed by our fat man for
a conservative pace becoming the hot morning and the difficult route.
Ke, as we abbreviated him, strode into an unbroken forest, grown with
dense underbrush, strewn with fallen trees at almost every step,
diversified by swamps and thickets through which he beat his way by main
strength, and now and then traversed by rivers--all streams are rivers
there--into which he plunged with never an interrogation-mark, and so on
briskly, up hill and down, till, with three miles of walking, wading,
climbing and struggling, we were brought to bay, tired out. Half an
hour's rest and some refreshing wild strawberries prepared us for such
another stage. Then an hour more of this terrible strain made us drop
again for rest. Another hour, and before noon, hot and jaded, we came
out upon a low bluff overhanging the river, and stopped for lunch. The
guide, apparently fresh and unwearied, cut a sheet of birch bark for
tinder, lit a fire as defence against mosquitos, and in sixty seconds
was snoring. We were not slow in following his example, and the sun was
dropping over into the west when we awoke. The guide examined the river,
and informed us that our wading section was yet below. Standing in
mid-stream drinking from his hands, he saw a fine pickerel's graceful
movements a rod away, reached out for a half-sunken bit of a tree's
branch, plunged it dexterously at the fish, struck it fairly in the
back, and brought it up to us with a satisfied grunt. We lounged the
afternoon away, and at six o'clock Metagooe came wearily to our camp
with the Fritz at his heels. Half an hour later his comrades came with
the other Rob Roys, their camp-traps loaded upon the decks and upon the
interpreter's back. Our inquiry as to what had become of their birch
canoe brought from Henry, as he dropped his pack, the sententious
answer, "Busted." Over the evening's pipes and camp-fire, less than
eight miles of actual distance accomplished, we resolved to abandon the
shallow river and to portage directly to Upper Wild Rice Lake. The
skipper of the Betsy proposed for the three of us a joint bed:
Cincinnati feet have a troublesome time under a Rob Roy's low deck. We
assented, stretched our rubber blankets, spread our woollens, adjusted
the Betsy's long mosquito-bar and crawled carefully under it in
expectation of a glorious sleep under the stars and the pines; but the
dreams of the Hattie's captain, the trombonings of the Betsy's nose, the
tossings of the Fritz and the savage industry of the mosquitos drove
anything but troubled sleep from our eyelids, and we welcomed the early
"Ho! ho! ho!" and improvised gong of the irrepressible Kawaybawgo.
[Illustration: MINNESOTA MOSQUITOS.]
Before we had done with our coffee, venison and slap-jacks the Indians
had made yokes for carrying the canoes on their heads and shoulders, and
had reduced the camp to packs. Soon we were off upon the first _pose_ of
a regular Indian portage. Each of three Indians had upon his shoulders
one of the canoes, his head within its hot and darkening sides, its bow
pointing forward high in the air and its stern hanging low behind his
heels. The other two squatted upon heel and toe, drew the broad strap of
their carrying-thongs over their foreheads, and with a plunge and a
grunt sprang to their feet, each with a great hump of six score pounds.
Then we plunged, in Indian file, into a trackless forest, and jogtrotted
our way for three miles, when in a clump of pines, without a word or a
signal, down came the boats and the packs. Three of the splendid fellows
loosed their pack-thongs and took their rest in tramping back unloaded
to camp for what had been left. The others, with us, rested a few
moments: then we pushed on till two miles brought us out upon the low,
jungled shore of a beautiful lake about one mile by two in extent. The
guide, without a word, laid down his load, but not his clothes, and with
a swift rush sprang far out into the lake, swam up and down, splashing,
shouting and laughing, came dripping to shore, lit his smudge-fire, lay
down in a sunny place, snored an hour, awoke dry and vigorous, and with
a whoop he and Waisonbekton dashed into the woods to go back for their
share of the luggage left behind. While they were gone we enjoyed our
lunch and gave a name to the lovely lake which had rippled so long, far
away from the haunts of men, without identity. We christened it Rob Roy
Lake, in honor of our fleet. It lies half a mile to the south-west of
Upper Wild Rice Lake, into which its waters flow, and is set down on
Colton's sectional map in the township range numbered thirty-seven. Our
entire party reunited, we canoeists paddled across to the lake's outlet,
a narrow, miry stream which loses itself in a swamp, and that in turn
merges into the Upper Wild Rice Lake. We paddled and poled down to the
end of the little river, and came to a dead stand in the matted roots of
the swamp-grass: then waded waist-deep in the mire and slime, each
dragging his canoe with the aid of an Indian, until we came out upon the
open water. Thence a paddle of two miles along the coast brought us to
another little stream flowing into the lake. As we came to its mouth
Kawaybawgo was feasting upon a duck he had killed and broiled, of which
he offered me a portion with a smile and interrogative grunt which
seemed to compassionate my wet, weary and forlorn appearance. A splendid
pike, two feet long, came gracefully out of the stream and hung
motionless in the clear water. I pointed him out to the Indian and the
Hattie's captain, both of whom were standing near him. At the instant
their eyes fell upon him he moved: then, as they started for him, he
darted like a flash for deep water, pursued by the two men at the top of
their speed through a sheet of water six inches deep for nearly a
hundred feet out. It was a fair race, and the six-feet-three Indian made
a splendid spurt, but the pike won.
[Illustration: THE MISSISSIPPI AT LAST!]
The stream bore us upward to the floating bog out of which it flowed. We
drew the canoes out upon a meadow which undulated in graceful billows at
our every movement. A step would shake all the surface for a rod about
us, while our combined tread sent waves of grassy earth in every
direction. A sudden leap so shook the cup of cold coffee sitting by one
of the Indians, six or seven yards away, that the liquid spilled over
the cup's edge. The whole meadow, solid to the eye, is but one of those
monster sponges that hold in abeyance waters which otherwise would sweep
like a flood down the great rivers. Beyond this billowy field we came to
the open water of another unnamed lake, about one mile long, fringed
about with green pines, to which we gave the name of Longworth, in honor
of Cincinnati's distinguished judge, and to a lovely little green island
thickly grown with trees we gave the name of another canoeist left
behind, Mr. Empson of Louisville. At the head of Longworth Lake, and in
plain view of Empson Island, within a space cleared out of a dense
jungle, we made our last camp before reaching the coveted Mississippi.
Our stay here was marked in red by the most vindictive attack from
mosquitos in all the cruise. No one unacquainted with the Northern
Minnesota wilderness in midsummer, or with a region having a similar
insect population, can at all imagine the number and fierceness of the
ravenous aerial hosts that had beset us all the way from White Earth. In
mid-day they keep one constantly alert, while at night they are beyond
credible report. They are small, shrewd and persistent. As I lay awake
their myriad voices about and above me made a great chorus, really grand
and impressive, out of which for a few seconds at a time there came
bursts of harmony which I could hardly separate from the idea of a
vast, distant chorus of human voices. Against their voracity no ordinary
bar is a bar at all. We had gone to their haunts provided with netting
which at home gave immunity, but through its meshes these mosquitos
inserted their bills, then their heads, then struggled through bodily,
and came down upon us like demons. We were dressed in woollens, our
hands were in dogskin gloves and our heads and necks in thick calico
hoods and capes, but all such protections were naught when those
screaming villains had a mind for blood. At one onslaught they would go
into the shrinking flesh through two thicknesses of wool and two of
cotton, or through a heavy dogskin glove, or through the thick and
hardened skin of the hand's palm or the foot's ball, or through a
buckskin moccasin and cotton hose--through any protection at our command
except a cotton canopy hung wide of our heads and bodies.
Sung and stung out of all endurance by the very centre of that army of
the wilderness, we were astir in the grayest of our second Thursday's
dawn, and were soon in readiness for our final portage over the crests
of the Heights of Land to the river, which out of our long and severe
march had become to us a veritable Mecca. Our way was up a gentle range
of hills, whose tops, but a few yards wide, divide the waters which flow
southward to the great Gulf from those which seek their far northward
trend through the Red River of the North. The first division of our
party reached the Mississippi before noon with a joy born out of a
week's toil and hardship, and in a trice I was drinking of and laving in
its swift, bright water. We could hardly realize that in this deep,
rushing brook, not more than four or five paces wide, we saw the
beginnings of that majestic current which drains half a continent. Soon
our second division came up, we ate our last lunch in company, and the
Indians, each shaking us by the hand with a grunt and a smile, then
going off into the forest with a cheer, left us alone in that vast and
uninhabited wilderness. Late in the afternoon we launched our canoes
into the little river, and loaded them for our journey to its head,
camping about three miles above our point of embarkation.
[Illustration: HEAD OF THE MISSISSIPPI.]
The next morning we started with light hearts upon what we supposed
would be but a short journey to the river's source, to meet an
exasperating disappointment. We had made a bargain for transportation
from the railway to Itasca Lake or to a point five miles below, all
fully diagrammed and understood by correspondence, but found ourselves
set down by the employes of the rascally half-breed--who had been
careful to leave us at Wild Rice Lake--in an unknown land, six days from
civilization, at a point nearly or quite thirty miles below the lake,
below a region of rapids and obstructions against which we had
especially stipulated, and up which no craft had ever travelled. A
mile's work brought us to the beginning of this second series of
troubles. Lying across the river at all heights, depths and angles were
the tough pine logs we had dreaded, and at every mile or two were
tumbling rapids. All that long Friday we took our turns with the axe,
lopping off branches that we might squeeze under or shunt over logs;
climbing with our stores and boats over great log-drifts held by the
grip of the rocky defiles; wading through shoals and dragging our canoes
through mud and sand; plunging suddenly into holes that engulfed us to
our armpits; paddling astride our decks over pools too deep for wading;
chopping and wrenching logs that forbade other means of passage;
fighting inch by inch up plunging gorges, down which and over whose
rugged boulders the narrowed waters foamed in almost resistless fury and
milky foam--on and up, rod by rod, half a mile in the hour, till we came
to a weary and desolate camp not two leagues from our breakfasts. There
we cooked our suppers and ate in hoods and gloves, fighting mosquitos
and black flies for every morsel, speculating as to the morrow's
probabilities and discussing the question of victory or defeat. We rose
from the night's sleep resolved upon seeing Itasca, and until
mid-afternoon fought over again the battles of yesterday, and at last
came out upon a smooth, placid stream, up which we paddled with easy
swing some nine miles. Then the river narrowed and shallowed, and we
again took to our feet upon a beautiful gravelly bottom. At times the
way was closed to sight by rushes and wild rice, and we could only beat
our way through. At last the water, thickly grown with reeds, broadened
and deepened, and a score of paddle-strokes carried us through the green
curtain out upon Itasca's beautiful surface, over which we glided, under
the shadows of the setting sun, up to Schoolcraft's Island for a
Sunday's quiet.
Our heavy and restful sleep was not broken till long after the sun was
glinting upon us through the trees. Our first work was given to building
a lodge of underbrush and making preparations for two days' stay on the
lonely island, completed by unfurling the signal of the New York Canoe
Club from a high stump hard by the camp-fire. Barring the mosquitos,
Sunday's rest was a pleasant and refreshing sequence to ten days of toil
and struggle, and Monday found us in hearty readiness for a thorough
exploration of Itasca Lake and its feeders. We took a lunch, our guns
and scientific instruments, and paddled up the south-west arm of the
lake to find and explore the leading tributary. We found the outlets of
five small streams, two having well-defined mouths and three filtering
into the lake through bogs. Selecting the larger of the two open
streams, we paddled into its sluggish waters, ten feet wide and one foot
deep where they enter the lake. Slow and sinuous progress of two hundred
yards brought us to a blockade of logs and to shallow water. We landed,
fastened the canoes, took our bearings by compass and started for a
tramp through thicket and forest to Elk Lake, which we reached after a
rapid walk of thirty-five minutes. This lake is an oval of about one
mile in its longest diameter. It lies about half a mile in a straight
line south from Itasca. Its shores are marshy, bordered by hills densely
timbered. Its sources are boggy streams having little or no
clearly-defined course. To all appearance, these bogs and this small
lake are the uttermost tributaries to Itasca Lake, and the latter,
concentrating these minor streams and sending them out as one, is the
true head of the Father of Waters.
Elk Lake was a place of misadventure to us. Our struggle through the
thicket and dense forest was hot and exhausting. Our scientist left
there a fine aneroid barometer, which a second hot walk failed to
recover. Our photographer, arrived at the lake with a grievous burden of
camera, plates, tripod, etc., found that he had forgotten his lens
tubes, and was compelled to double his tracks back to the canoes, then
wade out into the swampy borders of the lake, waist-deep in slime, to
secure a view of this highest Mississippi water, only to have his plate
light-struck and ruined by an accident on the homeward journey.
While the artist was gone for his forgotten lenses our Nimrod missed a
fine eagle which swept over our heads at long range. So we returned to
our island camp in no very good mood, but a successful troll for
lake-trout, and a good supper off two fine fellows baked under the coals
in birch jackets, sent us to bed in good spirits and with no regrets
save for the lost barometer.
A.H. SIEGFRIED.
NATIONAL MUSIC AN INTERPRETER OF NATIONAL CHARACTER.
The popular music of any people is, in a great measure, the thermometer
of its physical sensitiveness and its moral sentiments; and the reason
of this is evident. The shepherd tending his flock, the fisherman
mending his nets, the soldier on the march, the peasant at the plough,
has no inducement to sing unless his heart's emotion incite him to it. A
true national music is, then, what the Germans call _Volksmusik_, and,
springing from the hearts of the people, it is psychologically one of
their best interpreters. For this reason the composers of national
melodies are seldom known to fame. A national song composes itself: the
musician's lyre is the musician's heart, and from the sorrow, triumph
and travail of life comes the child of song.
The assertion, then, that music is a universal language is only half
true: it has a great variety of dialects; and it is this very
sensitiveness to human influence which makes it so universally eloquent.
Let us turn first to the East, for it still retains its primitive music,
and at this very hour some muezzin is calling from his minaret or some
Jew intoning his Talmud in the same musical cadence with which Syrian
maidens sang the hymns to Cybele.
All Oriental music is distinguished by a pathetic, long--drawn, wailing
monotony quite in keeping with the stationary and contemplative
character of the people. We are struck at once with its frequent
repetitions of one note and its short and cautious transitions, the
intervals rarely being greater than a half, or at most a full, note. The
conclusion of a measure is generally a descent, and the commencement of
a new one seems to be a feeble effort to rise from the dreamy apathy in
which Eastern imagination delights; but it is immediately followed by
the fall of the rhythmus, re-establishing its languid repose. The
frequent use of half notes induces a predominance of the minor key, and
this, with the constant recurrence of the rhythmical fall, imparts to
Semitic and Hindoo music that melancholy, lethargic uniformity which
expresses in a striking manner the benumbed energies and undeveloped
spirit of the people among whom it is found. When a race has substituted
habit and custom for national feeling, its music is necessarily
monotonous and characterless, for the stronger the national feeling of
any people, the more intense, vivid and pronounced will be its music.
Hindoo music is almost untranslatable to Western ears, but Sir W. Jones,
in an essay on the musical modes of the Hindoos--to be found in the
third volume of the _Asiatic Researches_--makes an attempt to render one
of their most popular songs. The original, of which he also gives a
copy, looks like a mixture of Egyptian hieroglyphics and Chinese
characters, and how far our notation represents it it is impossible to
say; for, though Sir W. Jones was an erudite Oriental scholar, that of
itself would not render him a good translator of Hindoo music. The air
is a song of love and spring, and the measure is indicated, "rapid and
gay:"
[Illustration: MUSIC.]
Kindred to Semitic and Hindoo music, though venturing on bolder
intervals, is Chinese, Persian and Arabian. The almost untranslatable
airs of India assume in China something like an artless melody. Their
smallest intervals are semitones, which have been in use, like
everything else in China, from time immemorial. Nevertheless, in the
diatonic series of seven intervals the Chinese usually avoid the two
semitones by omitting the fourth and the seventh, so that their scale
consists really of only five intervals, and as they regard F as their
principal key (just as we regard C as ours), the Chinese scale stands
thus:
[Illustration: CHINESE SCALE.]
This scale is, however, by no means confined to China, but is met with
in several Asiatic countries--Japan, Siam, Java, etc. In order to judge
how it affects the character of music, I have copied the following
Chinese air and Japanese song from Carl Engel's _Researches into Popular
Songs and Customs_:
[Illustration: CHINESE AIR, "MOO-LEK-WHA."]
[Illustration: JAPANESE AIR.]
Arabic music, which is Asiatic in its foundation, shows decided traces
of the wider civilization and greater independence of character to which
this race attained. The delicate gradations of sounds are still adhered
to in the form of multitudes of grace-notes, but the intervals are
longer and the melodies more decided. The overloading of the melody by
an excessive use of trills and grace-notes by Persians, Arabians, and
even Spaniards, in their popular music, indicates some common sentiment;
and it is remarkable that the European Jews preserve this same Oriental
ornamentation in the vocal performances of their synagogues. Numerous
examples of Arabic music may be found in Lane's _Modern Egypt_. This
writer professes great admiration for it, and says he "never heard the
song of the Mekka water-carriers without emotion," though it consists of
only three notes:
[Illustration: MUSIC.]
The translation of the line is, "Paradise and forgiveness be the lot of
him who gave you this water!" It is said that the Arabic music is a
powerful exponent of the wild, fierce and yet romantic nature of that
people, though it did not commend itself to Engel and other musicians at
the Paris Exposition. But, however void of beauty and expression any
national music is to us, it is certainly felt to possess these qualities
by the people to whom it belongs; and it is very likely that our music
would seem to them just as unintelligible and discordant. When the
French missionary Amiot played some of Boildieu's and Rossini's melodies
to a Chinese mandarin he said, with a polite shake of the head, "They
are sadly devoid of meaning and expression, while the Chinese music
penetrates the soul."
Both Venice and Spain show traces of Arabic influence in their national
music. In Venetian airs it is only a dim memory, manifesting itself by
the frequent repetition of single notes, whereas the Spanish melodies
are often so Moorish in construction and sentiment that it is easy to
fancy in them tones like the call of the muezzin. Thus, too, the
following Spanish song, judged by its repetitions and short intervals,
might easily be taken for an Arabic air:
[Illustration: MUSIC.]
It is to be noted that instruments of percussion are the natural
exponents of such primitive music, and that, therefore, the East has its
drum, gong and cymbals, Arabia its tambourine, Spain its castanets.
The Sclavs, being a pure race, have also a very decided national music.
Its peculiarity is smooth, lisping, sibillating sounds, analogous to the
rustling of leaves in a forest. Having no native accent in their own
language, they easily imitate that of others; and this imparts to the
Sclavonic races that admirable facility for speaking foreign languages
which distinguishes them. This characteristic of their speech is
faithfully reproduced in their music, especially in that of the southern
Sclavs. It is indicated by continuous notes of the same value, and by a
compass scarcely ever exceeding a fifth. Its negative peculiarities
harmonize exactly with the history of the Russians. The sad, doleful
monotony of their existence in the past is pathetically interpreted by
their narrow, sombre, subdued melodies. They are the voice of a people
whose ideas revolved in a narrow circle--of people who dwelt on vast
gray plains dotted with sad brown huts, and who heard no sounds but the
sighing of the wind through the dark pine forests. The "Vesper Hymn,"
known to every ordinary player, is a very good example of the general
character of Russian melodies. The songs of the peasants are further
distinguished by their frequent modulation from the major to the minor
key, as if not long could they be joyful, and also by the peculiar way
in which they are rendered. The tonic and the dominant are the prevalent
intervals, and the intermediate notes are slurred or slightly sounded.
Rochlitz found it impossible to convey this peculiarity by notation, but
gives the following melody as a favorite accompaniment to the serf-songs
of Northern Russia:
[Illustration: MUSIC.]
The Poles, members of this family, have had a great national existence,
and their national music echoes its history and its character. The
heartstirring strains of their mazurkas make many a bosom beat and ache
as they remind the listeners of past times. Polish music is the voice of
a light-minded, brave-hearted people who lived in a gay turmoil and
drained with eager lips and reckless spirits the cup of glory and of
joy. The Polish polkas and mazurkas, with their changing and fugitive
rhythmus and their lively, uneven time, admirably embody the light and
graceful spirit of this people.
In striking contrast to the character and music of the Slavic peoples
are the character and music of the Hungarians. Living on the confines of
the East and West, this people belong to the former by descent and to
the latter by civilization. Between two elements, they have been exposed
to the attacks of both, and their history records only a continual
struggle for existence as a nation. This prolonged warfare has made
_nationality_ the uppermost thought in the life of the Hungarian: it is
the influence controlling all his ideas, his feelings, his poetry and
his art. His music embalms a thousand years of struggle for it, and
every note of its wild, melancholy strains breathes tales of war and
sorrow, of hope and triumph. The music interpreting such an intense
nationality ought to be a peculiar one; and it is. A foreigner, having
once heard it, can never mistake its sounds for those of any other
national music.
But to understand the Magyar music you must apprehend the Magyar's
character. He is a singular mixture of East and West, habitually passive
and melancholy, yet easily roused to the wildest excitement. His step is
slow, his face pensive, his manners imposing and dignified; yet when
once roused he rushes forward with a furious impetuosity which his
enemies have learned to estimate and dread. His eloquence is wonderful,
and after success he throws aside his solemnity and gives himself up
with wild abandon to the feast, the dance and the song. All this various
character he has imparted to his national music: it is full of pathos
and earnestness, yet often impetuous and even hilarious. The "Rakotzy"
is so perfectly national that it thrills like a shout from the Hungarian
heart, and it is no wonder that the Austrian government found it
necessary to forbid it to be played on public occasions, and even to
confiscate all printed copies of it. "When I hear the 'Rakotzy,'" said a
famous Hungarian, "I feel as if I must arise and conquer the world." As
my readers can easily procure a copy of it, it would be a kind of
sacrilege to give so grand a march shorn of any of its noble
proportions; and I can with far more justice give an example which
embraces two of the most predominant traits of Hungarian songs--the
Scotch _catch_ introduced in the middle or end of the bar, instead of at
the beginning as in Scotch music, and the beautiful modulations from the
major to the minor key of the minor third--a change very unusual in any
national music but the Hungarian:
[Illustration: HUNGARIAN AIR.]
We cannot leave Hungarian music without noticing the fact that it has
been greatly influenced by the gypsies of that country, by whom it is
mainly cultivated as an art. In Hungary, indeed, there is no stately
festival, no public rejoicing, no private merrymaking, without some
gypsy band; and it would be impossible to find more sympathetic
interpreters of its intense and passionate spirit. But if professional
musicians, they are nomadic ones: they wander through all the towns and
villages of Transylvania and Wallachia, and are everywhere welcome. In
dance-music the life and impetuosity of their musical movements, their
varying rhythms and the strange thrill of their wild dissonances are
absolutely enthralling. Charles Boner, in his work on Transylvania, says
that even the aged find it impossible to resist the dance when a gypsy
band invites them to it. Their prelude is slow and sonorous, the music
quickens, there is a rush of tones, the fantastic melody hastens on at a
head-long pace--every one, old and young, is under its spell.
Many of the Hungarian gypsies are composers as well as performers.
Pougratz and Patikarus are names beloved wherever the "Czardas" is
listened to; and where, in Hungary, is not the "Czardas" listened to? No
one can play a "Czardas" like a gypsy, and he is often rewarded for it
in the most exaggerated manner; for he soon has his audience so excited
that they call for it again and again, and heap recompense on
recompense, until, in their passionate delight, the last ducat, the last
watch, ring, and even horse, has been bestowed. The gypsies of Hungary
conclude all pieces ending in the minor key by substituting the major
chord for the minor chord; for instance, a passage written thus,
[Illustration: MUSIC.]
they finish thus:
[Illustration: MUSIC.]
following instinctively a rule which we find frequently observed in the
most classical compositions. The following is a martial dance of the
gypsies, but the most elaborate notation would only be the skeleton of
any example: the best parts of all their performances are those they
improvise while playing:
[Illustration: MUSIC.]
It may be said that the gypsy has no nationality, and can therefore have
no national music. This is hardly true. The gypsy has no country, but
his sentiment of nationality is strong and persistent, and his music is
as peculiar as his language and customs. It is true that he steals the
music of the country in which he sojourns just as readily as he steals
the poultry from the roost or the linen from the line, but he always
imparts to it some echo of his far Eastern home and some flavor of the
tent and the hedgerow. Twice in my life this fact has struck me in a
remarkable manner. Once, on the skirts of a pine forest in the wilds of
Argyleshire, I came suddenly on a gypsy-camp celebrating a wedding. The
women were dancing the "Romalis" to a violin and tambourine. The music,
the dance, the conical tents, the flashing swarthy faces, the careless
piquant dresses, were all so Oriental in character that in spite of the
mountains, the moors and the heather I found it hard to realize that I
was in the heart of Scotland. Even when the most distinctive Scotch
pibrochs were played I was quite conscious of an Eastern clash in them
which no Scot could or would have given. Again: eighteen months ago I
found a camp of English gypsies in the Rocky Mountains a little beyond
Golden. One man was leaning against a tree fiddling negro melodies to
the birds, but negro melodies with the flavor of the tent instead of the
cabin. At my request he played "Yankee Doodle," and imparted to it a
revolutionary dash, a piquant mocking defiance, which convinced me that
he knew its history and was interpreting it from his own heart--a fact
which a subsequent conversation confirmed. I often wonder that no
musical speculator has ever organized a band of Russian, Hungarian and
English gypsies. Certainly, it would give us a far more characteristic
entertainment than bands of blackened "minstrels."
The Swiss love their national music as they love their mountains and
their freedom; and at first sight it seems singular that a people so
blended with the progress of liberty should possess a music singularly
simple and pastoral. But in this fact we perceive how truly music
explains character, for as early as the fourteenth century their
political faith, like their mode of life, was simple and averse to
display. In a few ordinary words the deputies of Appenzell said all that
has since been said with infinite bombast: "We are convinced that
mankind are born for order, but not for servitude--that they must have
magistrates whom they themselves elect, but not masters to grovel
under." The essentials of true freedom having thus early become an
every-day enjoyment, a people so plain and simple sang naturally
melodies suggestive of the calm pastoral life so dear to them.
[Illustration: SWISS SONG.]
We must notice that the favorite instrument of the Swiss, the Alp-horn,
has caused a predilection for a certain progression of intervals. The
Alp-horn is a long tube of fir-wood having the same compass as the
trumpet. But on both these instruments the upper F is not an exact F,
neither is it an exact F sharp, and thus in most Alpine tunes there are
passages like the following, where the notes marked x ought to be F
natural, but are nearly F sharp. However, this irregular tone charms the
Swiss, and is one of the peculiarities of their "Ranz des Vaches:"
[Illustration: MUSIC.]
But it is in the national music of the Celtic race that we find the most
familiar examples of melody symbolizing character. The purest form of it
is undoubtedly the Irish; and who will not bear witness that in its
half-laughing and half-sobbing notes we hear the voice of the race? Its
musical distinction is the emphatic and striking introduction of the
sixth major, but this peculiarity is also prominent in Scotch and Welsh
airs, and is a favorite termination in all mountainous countries. To a
fine sensibility there is, I think, a much more peculiar trait in Irish
music, whether gay or sad--a strain of _longing_ which imparts a charm
like songs of memory--a strain so subtle that my explanation can only be
intelligible to those who have already apprehended it.
Kindred to the Irish is the Welsh and the Scotch music. The Welsh has a
more hopeless sob, the Scotch a wilder mirth. We feel in the old Welsh
tunes that terrible struggle they had, first with the Romans, and then
with the Anglo-Normans; and whoever has heard the "March of the Men of
Haerlech" will understand why King Edward slew the Welsh Bards.
The most striking examples of Scotch music are the pibrochs and
strathspeys. These compositions generally ring with a wild laughter that
is almost harassing, especially when it is enhanced by the abrupt close
with the fifth instead of the keynote. The ear, which has been longing
for the rest, has a sense of being teased and deluded with the
rollicking strain. As exponents of the cautious, cannie Scot we should
think them a satire did we not know what a wild vein of Celtic wit runs
through the granite foundation of his character. If it be true that
national musics embalm peculiar humanities, of no country is this so
true as of Scotland, for no people and no history is so highly
picturesque and so full of the broadest lights and shadows. In their
earliest history we find this antithesis. They lived rudely as peasants:
they fought as if possessed by the very spirit of chivalry. When they
abolished the magnificence of the papacy they inaugurated the barest of
churches. They were the first to betray Charles Stuart, and the last to
lay down arms for the rights of his descendants. They are worldly-wise
to a proverb, and yet wildly susceptible to poetry and romance.
The songs of such a people have necessarily a great variety: the color
and the perfume of life are in them. Listen to the mocking, railing
drollery of "There cam' a young man," the sly humor of the "Laird o'
Cockpen," or "Hey, Johnnie Cope!" and you may understand one side of
Scottish character. The Border ballads, that go lilting along to the
galloping of horses and jingling of spurs, are the interpretation of
another side. The same _active_ influence accompanies the Jacobite
songs--"Up wi' the bonnets for bonnie Dundee!" filled many a legion for
Prince Charles--and the blood kindles yet to their fife-like and
drum-like movements. Again, the stately rhythm and march of some of the
oldest airs make them peculiarly suitable for patriotic songs; and Burns
took advantage of this when he adapted "Scots wha hae" to the air of
"Hey, Tuttie Taittie!" for to this spirit-stirring strain Bruce and his
heroes marched to the field of Bannock-burn.
Scotch music is a good example of the fact that the favorite musical
instruments of the different nations have undoubtedly caused some
favorite group of notes, constituting _motives_ of a peculiar rhythm,
which are employed with evident preference. Thus, the use of the minor
seventh instead of the major seventh (as in "Wha'll be King but
Charlie?"), and the sudden modulation from the minor key to the major
key, a whole tone below, are in exact accord with the bagpipe, and are
more certain in the strathspeys, reels and dances which are universally
played on that instrument; the intervals of which are
[Illustration: MUSIC.]
with the bass of the drone emitting A, so that A minor must be regarded
as the principal key of this instrument. Indeed, Macdonald, in his
_Complete Tutor for the Great Highland Bagpipe_, gives the odd rule that
the "piper is to pay no attention to the flats and sharps marked on the
clef, as they are not used in pipe-music."
In Scotch music are also continually found motives of a rhythm in which
the first note has only one-fourth the duration of the second. This is
known as the Scotch catch or snap, and evidently originated in the
strathspeys, though it is now a distinction of many fine songs, notably
so of "Roy's Wife of Aldavalloch."
That these old melodies are the voice of ancient Scotland is proved by
the fact that no modern musician has been able to imitate them. Haydn
tried to rearrange some of them, and failed, and Geminiani blotted
quires of paper in attempting to write a second part to the "Broom o'
the Cowdenknowes." No: ere we can add anything to the national music of
Scotland we must restore the precise national conditions of which it was
the articulate idea.
English music, until the days of the Tudors, was really French: England
sang, as all Europe did, the songs of the Troubadours. But the "Chanson
de Roland" and the "Complaint of the Chatelain de Courcy" were not
English strains, for a national song is a winged fact. France was the
legitimate successor of the Troubadours, and many of their oldest songs
would serve to-day as _airs de vaudeville_. The French national music
has mostly grown out of civil dissensions and party conflicts. What
scenes do the "Carillon," the atrocious "Carmagnole" and the
"Marseillaise" bring up! The "Carillon" had been Marie Antoinette's
favorite tune: it pursued her from her palace to her prison, startled
her on her way to her trial, and was probably the last sound she heard
as she lay bound under the guillotine.
When not breathing blood and anarchy French popular music has a
wonderful range: it is gallant, mocking, elegant, or full of absolute
nonsense and frivolity. In fact, French music has always been so
intensely national that it would have been impossible for England to
have long borrowed it; and in the days of the Tudors we find English
character beginning to explain itself in those admirable tunes and
ballads which form a regular and successive declaration of English
principles, with their sound piety, broad fun, perfect liberty of speech
and capital eating and drinking. They have neither the wailing grief nor
the boisterous merriment of Celtic music, and they lack entirely the
monotonous tenderness of the Troubadours; but they are full of buoyant,
daring independence, and have a certain _homeliness_ which strikes in a
very powerful manner some chord in the Anglo-Saxon heart.
The cosmopolitan nature of the German speaks to all the world in his
music. Of all national musics it is the grandest and the most developed:
we see this in the position it gives to rhythms. National musics with
undeveloped rhythms are the speech of people just awakening, while
music that has them strongly marked and regularly introduced belongs to
people of fully-matured energies. Only in the _Jodlers_ and _Landlers_
of the Tyrolese, Austrian and Swiss mountains is the original Teutonic
iambic preserved in its purity. In all other German music every kind of
rhythm is met with, no kind being predominant. For the musical language
of Germany embraces not only the few octaves of passion, but the whole
keyboard of existence. It has preludes, symphonies and sonatas for every
phase of life. Nothing smaller than this range would suffice to express
the multiform ideas of a people so thoughtful and cosmopolitan. And
though by this universal sympathy German music may have lost a purely
national life, it is a most sufficing compensation to have gained the
power of expressing the ideas of a whole epoch.