IN WHICH THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO MR. ABSALOM M’ARTHUR.
You must know, reader, that King street is our Boulevard of fashion;
and though not the handsomest street in the world, nor the widest, nor
the best paved, nor the most celebrated for fine edifices, we so
cherish its age and dignity that we would not for the world change its
provincial name, or molest one of the hundred old tottering buildings
that daily threaten a dissolution upon its pavement, or permit a wench
of doubtful blood to show her head on the “north sidewalk” during
promenade hours. We are, you see, curiously nice in matters of color,
and we should be. You may not comprehend the necessity for this
scrupulous regard to caste; others do not, so you are not to blame for
your ignorance of the customs of an atmosphere you have only breathed
through novels written by steam. We don’t (and you wouldn’t) like to
have our wives meet our slightly-colored mistresses. And we are sure
you would not like to have your highly-educated and much-admired
daughters meet those cream-colored material evidences of your
folly-called by Northern “fanatics” their half-sisters! You would not!
And your wives, like sensible women, as our wives and daughters are,
would, if by accident they did meet them, never let you have a bit of
sleep until you sent them to old Graspum’s flesh-market, had them sold,
and the money put safely into their hands. We do these things just as
you would; and our wives being philosophers, and very fashionable
withal, put the money so got into fine dresses, and a few weeks’ stay
at some very select watering-place in the North. If your wife be very
accomplished, (like ours,) and your daughters much admired for their
beauty, (like ours,) they will do as ours did-put wisely the cash got
for their detestable relatives into a journey of inspection over
Europe. So, you see, we keep our fashionable side of King street; and
woe be to the shady mortal that pollutes its bricks!
Mr. Absalom McArthur lives on the unfashionable side of this street, in
a one-story wooden building, with a cottage roof, covered with thick,
black moss, and having two great bow windows, and a very lean door,
painted black, in front. It is a rummy old house to look at, for the
great bow windows are always ornamented with old hats, which Mr.
McArthur makes supply the place of glass; and the house itself,
notwithstanding it keeps up the dignity of a circular window over the
door, reminds one of that valiant and very notorious characteristic of
the State, for it has, during the last twenty or more years, threatened
(but never done it) to tumble upon the unfashionable pavement, just in
like manner as the State has threatened (but never done it!) to tumble
itself out of our unfashionable Union. We are a great people, you see;
but having the impediment of the Union in the way of displaying our
might, always stand ready to do what we never intended to do. We speak
in that same good-natured sense and metaphor used by our politicians,
(who are become very distinguished in the refined arts of fighting and
whiskey-drinking,) when they call for a rope to put about the neck of
every man not sufficiently stupid to acknowledge himself a
secessionist. We imagine ourselves the gigantic and sublime theatre of
chivalry, as we have a right to do; we raise up heroes of war and
statesmanship, compared with whom your Napoleons, Mirabeaus, and
Marats-yes, even your much-abused Roman orators and Athenian
philosophers, sink into mere insignificance. Nor are we bad imitators
of that art displayed by the Roman soldiers, when they entered the
Forum and drenched it with Senatorial blood! Pardon this digression,
reader.
Of a summer morning you will see McArthur, the old Provincialist, as he
is called, arranging in his great bow windows an innumerable variety of
antique relics, none but a Mrs. Toodles could conceive a want for—such
as broken pots, dog-irons, fenders, saws, toasters, stew-pans, old
muskets, boxing-gloves and foils, and sundry other odds and ends too
numerous to mention. At evening he sits in his door, a clever picture
of a by-gone age, on a venerable old sofa, supported on legs tapering
into feet of lion’s paws, and carved in mahogany, all tacked over with
brass-headed nails. Here the old man sits, and sits, and sits, reading
the “Heroes of the Revolution,” (the only book he ever reads,) and
seemingly ready at all times to serve the “good wishes” of his
customers, who he will tell you are of the very first families, and
very distinguished! He holds distinguished people in high esteem; and
several distinguished persons have no very bad opinion of him, but a
much better one of his very interesting daughter, whose acquaintance
(though not a lady, in the Southern acceptation of the term) they would
not object to making-provided!
His little shop is lumbered with boxes and barrels, all containing
relics of a by-gone age—such as broken swords, pistols of curious make,
Revolutionary hand-saws, planes, cuirasses, broken spurs,
blunderbusses, bowie, scalping, and hunting-knives; all of which he
declares our great men have a use for. Hung on a little post, and over
a pair of rather suspicious-looking buckskin breeches, is a rusty
helmet, which he sincerely believes was worn by a knight of the days of
William the Conqueror. A little counter to the left staggers under a
pile of musty old books and mustier papers, all containing valuable
matter relating to the old Continentals, who, as he has it, were all
Carolinians. (Dispute this, and he will go right into a passion.)
Resting like good-natured policemen against this weary old counter are
two sympathetic old coffins, several second-hand crutches, and a
quantity of much-neglected wooden legs. These Mr. McArthur says are in
great demand with our first families. No one, except Mr. Soloman
Snivel, knows better what the chivalry stand in need of to prop up its
declining dignity. His dirty little shelves, too, are stuffed with
those cheap uniforms the State so grudgingly voted its unwilling
volunteers during the Revolution.
See Senator Sumner’s speech in Congress on Plantation manners. Tucked
in here and there, at sixes and sevens, are the scarlet and blue of
several suits of cast-off theatrical wardrobe he got of Abbott, and now
loans for a small trifle to Madame Flamingo and the St. Cecilia
Society-the first, when she gives her very seductive bal-masques; the
second, when distinguished foreigners with titles honor its costume
balls. As for Revolutionary cocked hats, epaulettes, plumes, and
holsters, he has enough to supply and send off, feeling as proud as
peacocks, every General and Colonel in the State-and their name, as you
ought to know, reader, is legion.
The stranger might, indeed, be deceived into the belief that Absalom
McArthur’s curiosity shop was capable of furnishing accoutrements for
that noble little army, (standing army we call it!) on which the State
prides itself not a little, and spends no end of money. For ourselves,
(if the reader but permit us,) we have long admired this little Spartan
force, saying all the good things of it our prosy brain could invent,
and in the kindest manner recommending its uniform good character as a
model for our very respectable society to fashion after. Indeed, we
have, in the very best nature of a modern historian, endeavored to
enlighten the barbarian world outside of South Carolina as to the
terrible consequences which might accrue to the Union did this noble
little army assume any other than a standing character. Now that
General Jackson is out of the way, and our plebeian friends over the
Savannah, whom we hold in high esteem, (the Georgians,) kindly consent
to let us go our own road out of the Union, nothing can be more
grateful than to find our wise politicians sincerely believing that
when this standing army, of which other States know so little, shall
have become allied with those mighty men of Beaufort, dire consequences
to this young but very respectable Federal compact will be the result.
Having discharged the duties of a historian, for the benefit of those
benighted beings unfortunate enough to live out of our small but
highly-civilized State, we must return to McArthur.
He is a little old-maidish about his age, which for the last twenty
years has not got a day more than fifty-four. Being as sensitive of his
veracity as the State is of its dignity, we would not, either by
implication or otherwise, lay an impeachment at his door, but rather
charge the discrepancy to that sin (a treacherous memory) the legal
gentry find so convenient for their purposes when they knock down their
own positions. McArthur stood five feet eight exactly, when young, but
age has made him lean of person, and somewhat bent. His face is long
and corrugated; his expression of countenance singularly serious. A
nose, neither aquiline nor Grecian, but large enough, and long enough,
and red enough at the end, to make both; a sharp and
curiously-projecting chin, that threatens a meeting, at no very distant
day, with his nasal organ; two small, watchful blue eyes deep-set under
narrow arches, fringed with long gray lashes; a deeply-furrowed, but
straight and contracted forehead, and a shaggy red wig, poised upon the
crown of his head, and, reader, if you except the constant working of a
heavy, drooping lower lip, and the diagonal sight with which his eyes
are favored, you have his most prominent features. Fashion he holds in
utter contempt, nor has he the very best opinion in the world of our
fashionable tailors, who are grown so rich that they hold mortgages on
the very best plantations in the State, and offer themselves candidates
for the Governorship. Indeed, Mr. McArthur says, one of these knights
of the goose, not long since, had the pertinacity to imagine himself a
great General. And to show his tenacious adherence to the examples set
by the State, he dresses exactly as his grandfather’s great-grandfather
used to, in a blue coat, with small brass buttons, a narrow crimpy
collar, and tails long enough and sharp enough for a clipper-ship’s
run. The periods when he provided himself with new suits are so far
apart that they formed special episodes in his history; nevertheless
there is always an air of neatness about him, and he will spend much
time arranging a dingy ruffled shirt, a pair of gray trowsers, a black
velvet waistcoat, cut in the Elizabethan style, and a high, square
shirt collar, into which his head has the appearance of being jammed.
This collar he ties with a much-valued red and yellow Spittlefields,
the ends of which flow over his ruffle. Although the old man would not
bring much at the man-shambles, we set a great deal of store by him,
and would not exchange him for anything in the world but a regiment or
two of heroic secessionists. Indeed we are fully aware that nothing
like him exists beyond the highly perfumed atmosphere of our State. And
to many other curious accomplishments the old man adds that of telling
fortunes. The negroes seriously believe he has a private arrangement
with the devil, of whom he gets his wisdom, and the secret of
propitiating the gods.
Two days have passed since the emeute at the house of the old hostess.
McArthur has promised the young missionary a place for Tom Swiggs, when
he gets out of prison (but no one but his mother seems to have a right
to let him out), and the tall figure of Mister Snivel is seen entering
the little curiosity shop. “I say!—my old hero, has she been here yet?”
inquires Mr. Snivel, the accommodation man. “Nay, good friend,” returns
the old man, rising from his sofa, and returning the salutation, “she
has not yet darkened the door.” The old man draws the steel-bowed
spectacles from his face, and watches with a patriarchal air any change
that comes over the accommodation man’s countenance. “Now, good friend,
if I did but know the plot,” pursues the old man.
“The plot you are not to know! I gave you her history yesterday— that
is, as far as I know it. You must make up the rest. You know how to
tell fortunes, old boy. I need not instruct you. Mind you flatter her
beauty, though-extend on the kindness of the Judge, and be sure you get
it in that it was me who betrayed her at the St. Cecelia. All right old
boy, eh?” and shaking McArthur by the hand warmly, he takes his
departure, bowing himself into the street. The old man says he will be
all ready when she comes.
Scarcely has the accommodation man passed out of sight when a
sallow-faced stripling makes his appearance, and with that
characteristic effrontery for borrowing and never returning, of the
property-man of a country theatre, “desires” to know if Mr. McArthur
will lend him a skull.
“A skull!” ejaculates the old man, his bony fingers wandering to his
melancholy lip—“a skull!” and he fusses studiously round the little
cell-like place, looking distrustfully at the property-man, and then
turning an anxious eye towards his piles of rubbish, as if fearing some
plot is on foot to remove them to the infernal regions.
“You see,” interrupts Mr. Property, “we play Hamlet to-night—expect a
crammed house—and our star, being scrupulous of his reputation, as all
small stars are, won’t go on for the scene of the grave-digger, without
two skulls-he swears he won’t! He raised the very roof of the theatre
this morning, because his name wasn’t in bigger type on the bill. And
if we don’t give him two skulls and plenty of bones to-night, he
swears-and such swearing as it is!—he’ll forfeit the manager, have the
house closed, and come out with a card to the public in the morning. We
are in a fix, you see! The janitor only has one, and he lent us that as
if he didn’t want to.”
Mr. McArthur says he sees, and with an air of regained wisdom stops
suddenly, and takes from a shelf a dingy old board, on which is a
dingier paper, bearing curious inscriptions, no one but the old man
himself would have supposed to be a schedule of stock in trade. Such it
is, nevertheless. He rubs his spectacles, places them methodically upon
his face, wipes and wipes the old board with his elbow. “It’s here if
it’s anywhere!” says the old man, with a sigh. “It comes into my head
that among the rest of my valuables I’ve Yorick’s skull.”
“The very skull we want!” interrupts Property. And the old man quickens
the working of his lower jaw, and continues to rub at the board until
he has brought out the written mystery. “My ancestors were great
people,” he mumbles to himself, “great people!” He runs the crusty
forefinger of his right hand up and down the board, adding, “and any
customers are all of the first families, which is some consolation in
one’s poverty. Ah! I have it here!” he exclaims, with childlike
exultation, frisking his fingers over the board. “One Yorick’s skull-a
time-worn, tenantless, and valuable relic, in which graveyard worms
have banqueted more than once. Yes, young man, presented to my
ancestors by the elder Stuarts, and on that account worth seven skulls,
or more.” “One Yorick’s skull,” is written on the paper, upon which the
old man presses firmly his finger. Then turning to an old box standing
in the little fire-place behind the counter, saying, “it’s in here-as
my name’s Absalom McArthur, it is,” he opens the lid, and draws forth
several old military coats (they have seen revolutionary days! he says,
exultingly), numerous scales of brass, such as are worn on British
soldiers’ hats, a ponderous chapeau and epaulets, worn, he insists, by
Lord Nelson at the renowned battle of Trafalgar. He has not opened, he
adds, this box for more than twelve long years. Next he drags forth a
military cloak of great weight and dimensions. “Ah!” he exclaims, with
nervous joy, “here’s the identical cloak worn by Lord Cornwallis-how my
ancestors used to prize it.” And as he unrolls its great folds there
falls upon the floor, to his great surprise, an old buff-colored silk
dress, tied firmly with a narrow, green ribbon. “Maria! Maria! Maria!”
shouts the old man, as if suddenly seized with a spasm. And his little
gray eyes flash with excitement, as he says—“if here hasn’t come to
light at last, poor Mag Munday’s dress. God forgive the poor wretch,
she’s dead and gone, no doubt.” In response to the name of “Maria”
there protrudes from a little door that opens into a passage leading to
a back-room, the delicate figure of a female, with a face of great
paleness, overcast by a thoughtful expression. She has a
finely-developed head, intelligent blue eyes, light auburn hair, and
features more interesting than regular. Indeed, there is more to admire
in the peculiar modesty of her demeanor than in the regularity of her
features, as we shall show. “My daughter!” says the old man, as she
nervously advances, her pale hand extended. “Poor woman! how she would
mourn about this old dress; and say it contained something that might
give her a chance in the world,” she rather whispers than speaks,
disclosing two rows of small white teeth. She takes from the old man’s
hand the package, and disappears. The anxiety she evinces over the
charge discloses the fact that there is something of deep interest
connected with it.
Mr. McArthur was about to relate how he came by this seemingly
worthless old package, when the property-man, becoming somewhat
restless, and not holding in over high respect the old man’s rubbish,
as he called it in his thoughts, commences drawing forth, piece after
piece of the old relics. The old man will not allow this. “There, young
man!” he says, touching him on the elbow, and resuming his labor. At
length he draws forth the dust-tenanted skull, coated on the outer
surface with greasy mould. “There!” he says, with an unrestrained
exclamation of joy, holding up the wasting bone, “this was in its time
poor Yorick’s skull. It was such a skull, when Yorick lived! Beneath
this filthy remnant of past greatness (I always think of greatness when
I turn to the past), this empty tenement, once the domain of wisdom,
this poor bone, what thoughts did not come out?” And the old man shakes
his head, mutters inarticulately, and weeps with the simplicity of a
child.
“The Star’ll have skulls and bones enough to make up for his want of
talent now-I reckon,” interposes the property-man. “But!—I say, mister,
this skull couldn’t a bin old Yorick’s, you know—”
“Yorick’s!—why not?” interrupts the old man.
“Because Yorick-Yorick was the King’s jester, you see-no nigger; and no
one would think of importing anything but a nigger’s skull into
Charleston—”
“Young man!—if this skull had consciousness; if this had a tongue it
would rebuke thee;” the old man retorts hastily, “for my ancestors knew
Yorick, and Yorick kept up an intimate acquaintance with the ancestors
of the very first families in this State, who were not shoemakers and
milliners, as hath been maliciously charged, but good and pious
Huguenots.” To the end that he may convince the unbelieving Thespian of
the truth of his assertion, he commences to rub away the black coating
with the sleeve of his coat, and there, to his infinite delight, is
written, across the crown, in letters of red that stand out as bold as
the State’s chivalry—“Alas! poor Yorick.” Tears of sympathy trickle
down the old man’s cheeks, his eyes sparkle with excitement, and with
womanly accents he mutters: “the days of poetry and chivalry are gone.
It is but a space of time since this good man’s wit made Kings and
Princes laugh with joy.”
This skull, and a coral pin, which he said was presented to his
ancestors by Lord Cornwallis, who they captured, now became his hobby;
and he referred to it in all his conversation, and made them as much
his idol as our politicians do secession. In this instance, he dare not
entrust his newly-discovered jewel to the vulgar hands of Mr. Property,
but pledged his honor-a ware the State deals largely in notwithstanding
it has become exceedingly cheap-it would be forthcoming at the
requisite time.