of defiant _hauteur_. “You need not go any further with us, John,”
Lawrence said. “We shall not need you. Jack, drive round to Mrs.
Gerald’s.”
And John, with his coat down to his heels—a costume in which nothing would
have induced him voluntarily to take a promenade—was forced to walk home,
comforting himself with the assurance that it was the last order he should
have to obey from that source. Perhaps, indeed, he would not have obeyed
it now, had they not driven away and left him no choice.
The sun was declining toward the west, and touching everything with the
tender glory of early spring, when they drew up at the cottage gate, the
sound of their wheels bringing Mrs. Gerald and Honora to the window, and
then to the door.
“We can’t stop to come in, Mamma Gerald,” Annette called out. “We are
going off on a little visit, and only come to say good‐by. Isn’t it
beautiful this afternoon? The trees will soon begin to bud, if this
weather continues.”
The two ladies came out to the carriage, and Mrs. Gerald caught sight of
her son’s face, which had been turned away. It had grown suddenly white.
She exclaimed: “Why, Lawrence! what is the matter?”
“Oh! another of those faint turns,” interposed his wife quickly, laying
her hand on his arm. “He has no appetite, and is really fainting from lack
of nourishment. The journey will do him good, mamma. We are going entirely
on his account.”
“Oh! yes, it’s nothing but a turn that will soon pass away,” he added, and
seemed, indeed, already better.
“Do come in and take something warm,” his mother said anxiously, her
beautiful blue eyes fixed on his face. “There is some chocolate just
made.”
“We have no time,” Annette began; but her husband immediately opened the
carriage‐door.
“Yes, mother,” he said. “I won’t keep you waiting but a minute, Ninon.”
The mother put her hand in his arm, and still turned her anxious face
toward him. “You mustn’t go to‐night, if you feel sick, my son,” she said.
“You know what happened to you before.”
“But the journey is just what I need, mother,” he answered, trying to
speak cheerfully. “Of course I won’t go if I feel unwell; but this is
really nothing. I have not quite got my strength up, and, as Annette says,
I have eaten nothing to‐day.”
Those little services of a mother, how tender and touching they are at any
time! how terrible in their pathos when we know that they will soon be at
an end for us for ever! How the hand trembles to take the cup, and the lip
trembles to touch its brim, when we know that she would have filled it
with her life‐blood, if that could have been saving to us!
“Sit here by the fire, dear, while I get your chocolate,” Mrs. Gerald
said, and pushed the chair close to the hearth. “There is really quite a
chill in the air.”
She stirred the fire, and made the red coals glow warmly, then went out of
the room.
He looked round after her the moment her back was turned, and watched her
hastening through the entry. The temptation was strong to follow her,
throw himself at her feet, and tell her all. He started up from the chair,
and took a step, but came back again. It would kill her, and he could not
see her die. He would let her live yet the four weeks left her. Perhaps
she might die a natural death before that. He hoped she would. At that
thought, a sudden flame of hope and of trust in God rose in his heart. He
dropped on his knees. “O my God! take my mother home before she hears of
this, and I will do any penance, bear anything!” he prayed, with vehement
rapidity. “Be merciful to her, and take her!”
He heard her step returning, and hastily resumed his seat, and bent
forward to the fire.
“You look better already,” she said, smiling. “You have a little color
now. Here is your chocolate, and Annette is calling to you to make haste.”
She held the little tray for him, and he managed, strengthened by that
desperate hope of his, to empty the cup, and even smile faintly in giving
it back. And then he got up, put his arm around his mother’s waist, in a
boyish fashion he had sometimes with her, and went out to the door with
her so. And there he kissed her, and jumped into the carriage, and was
driven away. It never occurred to her, so sweetly obedient had he been to
her requests, and so expressive had his looks and actions been, that he
had not uttered a word while he was in the house nor when he drove away.
He had accepted her little services with affection and gratitude, and he
had been tender and caressing, and that was enough. Moreover, he had
really looked better on leaving, which proved that her prescription had
done him good.
How Annette Gerald got away from home she could not have told afterward.
Her trunks were sent in advance, and she and her husband chose to walk to
the station in the evening. Some way she succeeded in answering all her
mother’s charges and anxious forebodings. She promised to sit in a middle
car, so as to be at the furthest point from a collision in front or rear,
and to have the life‐preservers all ready at hand in the steamer. She took
the basket of luncheon her mother put up, and allowed her bonnet to be
tied for her and her shawl pinned. And at last they were in the portico,
and it was necessary to say good‐by.
“My poor mamma! don’t be too anxious about me, whatever happens,” Annette
said. “Remember God takes care of us all. I hope he will take care of you.
Whenever you feel disposed to worry about us, say a little prayer, and all
will come right again.”
The darkness hid the tears that rolled down her cheeks as she ended, and
in a few minutes all was over, and the two were walking arm‐in‐arm down
the quiet street.
“This way!” Lawrence said when they came to the street where his mother
lived.
It was out of their way, but they went down by the house, and paused in
front of it. The windows of the sitting‐room were brightly lighted, and
they could see by the glow of the lamp that it stood on a table drawn
before the fire. As they looked, a shadow leaned forward on the white
curtain. Mrs. Gerald was leaning with her elbow on the table, and talking
to some one. They saw the slender hand that supported her chin, and the
coil of her heavy hair. They saw the slight movement with which she pushed
back a lock of hair that had a way of falling on to her forehead.
Annette felt the arm she held tremble. She only pressed it the closer,
that he might not forget that love still was near him, but did not speak.
There was nothing for her to say.
“Let’s go inside the gate to the window,” he whispered. “Perhaps I can
hear her speak.”
She softly opened the gate, and entered with him. The moonless night was
slightly overclouded, and the shadows of the trees hid them perfectly, as
they stole close to the window like two thieves. Lawrence pressed his face
to the sash, and listened breathlessly. There was a low murmur of voices
inside, then a few words distinctly spoken. “And by the way, dear, I
forgot to close the blinds. Oh! no, I will close them. Don’t rise!”
Mrs. Gerald came to the window, opened it, and leaned out so close to her
son that he heard the rustle of her dress and fancied that he felt her
breath on his cheek. She was silent a moment, looking up at the sky. “The
night is very soft and mild,” she said. “Those children will have a
pleasant journey.” One instant longer she rested there, her hand half
extended to the blind, then she sent upward a word of prayer, which
brushed her son’s cheek in passing. “O God! protect my son!” she said.
Then the blinds were drawn together, and the son was shut out from her
sight and sound for ever.
“It is our signal to go,” Annette whispered to her husband. “Come! We have
no time to lose.”
He held her by the arm a moment.
“Isn’t it better, after all, to stay and have it out here?” he asked
desperately. “I’d rather face danger than fly from it. Running away makes
me seem worse than I am.”
“You have no longer the right to consider yourself,” she answered, with a
certain sternness. “I will not submit to have a convict for a husband. I
would rather see you dead. And your mother shall not visit you in a
felon’s cell. Besides, no one is to be profited by such a piece of folly,
and you would yourself repent it when too late. Come!”
He said no more, but suffered himself to be drawn away. He could not
complain that his wife treated his heroic impulses with a disrespect
amounting almost to contempt, for he could not himself trust them.
After having closed the window, Mrs. Gerald returned to her place by the
fire. A round table was drawn up there between two armchairs, in one of
which Miss Pembroke sat, knitting a scarf of crimson wool. The shade over
the lamp kept its strong light from her eyes, and threw a faint shadow on
the upper part of her face; but her sweet and serious mouth, and the round
chin, with its faint dent of a dimple, were illuminated, her brown dress
had rich yellow lights on the folds, and the end of a straying curl on her
shoulder almost sparkled with gold. Her eyes were downcast and fixed on
her work, and crimson loop after loop dropped swiftly from the ivory
needles scarcely whiter than her hands.
“As I was saying,” Mrs. Gerald resumed, “six months of the year they were
to pass with Mrs. Ferrier have gone, and next fall they will have an
establishment of their own. It will be better for both of them. I am sure
Annette will make a good housekeeper. Besides, every married man should be
the master of a house. It gives him a place in the world, and makes him
feel his responsibilities and dignities more.”
“Yes, every one should have a home,” answered the young woman gravely. “It
is a great safeguard.”
Mrs. Gerald leaned back in her chair, and gazed into the fire. There was a
smile of contentment on her lips and an air of gentle pride in the
carriage of her head. As she thought, or dreamed, she turned about the
birth‐day ring her son had given her, and, presently becoming aware of
what she was doing, looked at it and smiled as if she were smiling in his
face.
“I never before felt so well contented and satisfied with his situation,”
she said, her happiness breaking into words. “His marriage has turned out
well. They seem to be perfectly united, and Lawrence is really proud of
his wife; and with reason. She is no more like what she was when I first
knew her than a butterfly is like a grub. She has developed wonderfully.”
She was silent a moment, then added: “I am very thankful.”
She drew a rosary from her pocket, and, leaning back in her chair with her
eyes closed, began to whisper the prayers as the beads slipped through her
fingers.
Miss Pembroke glanced at her, and smiled faintly. It was very pleasant to
see this mother happy in her son, yet how trembling and precarious was her
happiness! This woman’s heart, which bruised itself in beating, was always
ready to catch some fleeting glory on its springing tide; like the
fountain, which holds the rainbow a moment among its chilly drops.
While one woman prayed, the other thought. She had often dwelt upon this
subject of women’s lives being wrecked from love of friend, husband, or
child, and the sight of Mrs. Gerald had been to her a constant
illustration of such a wreck. These thoughts had troubled her, for she was
not one to judge hastily, and she did not know whether to pity or to blame
so ruinous a devotion. Now again the question floated up, and with it the
wish to decide once for all before life should thrust the problem on her,
when she would be too confused to think rightly. She was like one who
stands safe yet wistful on shore, looking off over troubled waters, and
Mrs. Gerald and Annette seemed to her tossing far out on the waves. She
even seemed to herself to have approached the brink so near that the salt
tide had touched her feet, and to have drawn back only just in time.
Gradually, as her fair fingers wove the glowing web, a faint cloud came
over her face, and, if it had been possible for her to frown, that deeper
shadow between the brows might have been called a frown. Her thoughts were
growing stern.
“Were we made upright, we women, only to bend like reeds to every wind?”
she asked herself. “Can we not be gentle without being slavish, and kind
and tender without pouring our hearts out like water? Cannot we reserve
something to ourselves, even while giving all and even more than our
friends deserve? Cannot we hold our peace and happiness so firmly in our
own hands that no one shall have the power to destroy them?”
Each question as it came met with a prompt answer, and resolution followed
swiftly: “Never will I suffer myself to be so enslaved by any affection as
to lose my individuality and be merged and lost in another, or be made
wretched by another, or to have my sense of justice and right confused by
the desire to make excuses for one I love. Never will I suffer the name
which I have kept stainless to be associated with the disgrace of another,
and never will I leave the orderly and honorable ways of life, where I
have walked so far, to follow any one into the by‐ways, for any pretext.
Each one is to save his own soul, and to help others only to a certain
extent. I will keep my place!”
That resolute and almost haughty face seemed scarcely to be Honora
Pembroke’s; and she felt so surely that her expression would check and
startle her companion that when she saw Mrs. Gerald drop the rosary from
her fingers, and turn to speak to her, she quickly changed her position so
as to hide her face a moment.
Mrs. Gerald’s voice had changed while she prayed, and seemed weighted with
a calm seriousness from her heavenly communion; and her first words jarred
strangely with her young friend’s thought.
“How uncalculating the saints were!” she said. “Our Lady was the only one,
I think, who escaped personal contumely, and that was not because she
risked nothing, but because God would not suffer contempt nor slander to
touch her. He spared her no pang, save that of disgrace; yet she would
have accepted that without a complaint. How tender he was of her! He gave
her a nominal spouse to shield her motherhood; it was through her Son that
her heart was pierced, and the grief of a mother is always sacred; and he
gave her always loving and devoted women, who clustered about and made her
little court. She was never alone. But she is an exception. The others
were despised and maltreated, and they seemed to be perpetually throwing
themselves away. I do not doubt that those saints who never suffered
martyrdom nor persecution were still, in their day, laughed and mocked at
by some more than they were honored by others. They never stopped to count
the cost.”
Miss Pembroke felt at the first instant as though Mrs. Gerald must have
read her thoughts, and her reply came like a retort. “It is true they did
not count the costs,” she said; “but it was God whom they loved.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Gerald replied gently, “that was what I meant.”
She was too closely wrapped in contentment to perceive the coldness with
which her companion spoke. It seemed to her that all her cares had floated
away, and left only rest and sweetness behind. She no longer feared
anything. There comes to every one some happy season in life, she thought;
and hers had come.
When, the next day, she received a note from her son, which he had written
from their first stopping‐place, she was scarcely surprised, though it was
an unusual attention.
It was but a hurried line, written with a pencil and posted in the
station‐house.
“My darling mother,” he wrote, “if you should find your violet‐bed under
the parlor window trampled, blame Larry for it. He saw his mother’s shadow
on the curtain when he was on his way to the station last night, and took
a fancy to go nearer and peep through the window. But he didn’t mean to do
any harm then, nor at some other times, when he did enough indeed. Forgive
him for everything.”
Mrs. Gerald immediately went out, letter in hand, to see what marks had
been left of this nocturnal visit; and, sure enough, there, on the newly‐
turned mould, was the print of a boot—well she knew her son’s neat
foot—and, on the other side, a tiny and delicate track where Annette had
stood! But not a leaf of the sprouting violets was crushed.
Miss Pembroke smiled to see the mother touch these tracks softly with her
finger‐tips, and glance about as if to assure herself that there was no
danger of their being effaced.
“Such a freak of those children!” she said gaily. “Do you know what I am
going to do, Honora? I mean to sow little pink quill daisies in those two
foot‐prints, and show them to Lawrence and Annette when they come back. It
was a beautiful thought of them to come to the window, and it shall be
commemorated in beauty. The ground is nearly warm enough here now for
seeds. When they come back, the tracks will be green. I wish flowers would
blossom in three weeks.”
Mrs. Ferrier also heard that day from the travellers.
“I have a particular reason for asking you to be very careful about my
letters,” Annette wrote. “Don’t let any one see or know of them. I will
tell you why presently. We are very well. Write me a line as soon as you
receive this, and direct to New York. We shall not stop there, but go
right on out West, probably. And, by the way, if you should wish ever to
hear from Mrs. Gerald’s relations, seek in New York for a letter directed
to Mrs. Julia Ward. Say nothing of this now. I will explain.”
“And why should I wish to hear from Mrs. Gerald’s relations?” wondered
Mrs. Ferrier. But she said nothing. The secret was safe with her.
Meanwhile, the travellers had lost no time on their way; and three days
from their leaving Crichton, they were on the ocean. Every stateroom and
cabin had been taken when “Mr. and Mrs. Ward” went to the office of the
steamer; but the captain, seeing the lady in great distress on account of
the sick friend she was crossing the ocean to see, kindly gave up his own
stateroom to the travellers.
It was quite as well for him to do so, indeed; for the very day they
started a storm started with them, and he was too faithful an officer to
desert his post on deck. So all night long he watched, courageous and
faithful, over the lives committed to his care, while underneath his two
special guests lay helpless and miserable, counting his footsteps, as
sleepless as he. The engine throbbed beside them, like a heavily‐beating
heart, the long waves lashed the deck, the wind sang and whistled through
the ropes, the steamer creaked and groaned.
“I have brought bad luck to the ship, Annette,” said her husband. “If I
were overboard, the storm would cease.”
“In the first place, my name is Julia,” was the answer from the lower
berth. “In the next place, there is nothing mysterious in this storm; it
is simply the equinoctial gale, which has been threatening for days. I
knew we should have it. In the third place, your being overboard would
make no difference whatever in the weather. Are you sick?”
Annette knew well that a little chilly breeze would best blow away her
husband’s vapors.
“I am sick of lying here,” he said impatiently. “The rain must be over,
unless it is another flood. I wonder how it looks out?”
He drew aside the curtain, and opened the window. The rain had ceased, but
the wind still blew, and a pale light was everywhere, shining up through
the waves and down through the clouds. As the steamer rolled, Annette,
lying in her lower berth, could see alternately the gray and tumbled
clouds of air, and the gray and heaving sea, which was less like moving
water than a ruined, quaking earth, so heavily it rose and fell.
Lawrence Gerald, closely wrapped in furs, knelt on the sofa, and looked
out, humming a tune that seemed to be for ever on his lips since his wife
had first sung it to him, so that she was sometimes half sorry for having
suggested it to him. A few words broke out while she listened:
“For man never slept
In a different bed,
And to sleep, you must slumber
In just such a bed.”
His thoughts seemed to be so haunted by the image of that cold and
peaceful slumber that his wife trembled for him. He had not the enduring
strength to bear a long trial, but he had that fitful strength which
prompts to desperate deeds.
“I can see cities built and destroyed yonder,” he said. “There are white
towns between dark mountains, and little hamlets up in the crevices; they
grow, and then they are swallowed up. It is like a great earthquake. When
the world is destroyed, it will perhaps look like that, pale and ashy.”
“Suppose we should go up on deck, and see what it looks like,” said
Annette suddenly, anticipating the wish she knew he would have expressed.
“It will be a change after our three days’ imprisonment, and we may think
the stateroom a pleasant refuge when we come back.”
They escaped the crest of a wave that leaped over the rail after them, and
reached the wet and slippery deck.
“We mustn’t speak to the officers,” Annette whispered, seeing the captain
near them.
He passed them by without notice, and they hurried on to the shelter of
the smoke‐pipe, where the heat had dried the planks; and here, holding by
ropes, they could look over the rail and see the long streaks of pale
blue, where the foam slid under the surface of the water; see the gigantic
struggle of the sea, and how the brave ship pushed through it all straight
toward her unseen port.
Nothing is so perfect a figure of life as a ship on the sea, and one can
hardly behold it without moralizing.
“Suppose that this ship had a soul of its own, instead of being guided by
the will of other beings,” said Annette; “and suppose that, finding itself
in such a woful case, it should say, ‘I see no port, no pole‐star, no sun,
nor moon, and I doubt if I shall ever see them again. I may as well stop
trying, and go down here.’ Wouldn’t that be a pity for itself and for
others?”
“But suppose, on the other hand,” returned her husband, “that the ship had
got a deadly thrust from some unseen rock, and the water was running in,
and it could never gain the port. What would be the use of its striving
and straining for a few leagues further?”
“We know not where the haven of a soul is set,” said Annette, dropping the
figure. “God knows, for he has set it, near or far; and it may be nearer
than we think. It is scarcely worth while for a man to lose his soul by
jumping overboard at ten o’clock, when he may save it, and be drowned too,
at eleven.”
Lawrence drew back as a great wave rose before them. He had only been
playing at death; the reality was quite another thing. Chilled and
drenched with spray, they hurried down to their stateroom.
It was a weary journey. After the storm came head‐winds, and after the
head‐winds a fog, through which they crept, ringing the fog‐bell, and
stopping now and then.
Mr. and Mrs. Ward did not appear once among the passengers, even when
everybody crowded up to catch the first glimpse of Ireland, and they were
the last to appear when the passengers prepared to land at Liverpool. They
had been a fortnight from home, the storm having delayed them two days,
and they knew not what might have happened in that time. A telegram might
have sped under the waves in an hour while they toiled over them, and just
at the moment of escape their flight might be intercepted.
To Be Continued.
Dante Gabriel Rosetti.(84)
It is not difficult to understand the title which has been bestowed upon
Mr. Rosetti of the “Poets’ Poet.” His volume is full of delicate
rhythmical experiments—winding bouts of melody with subtle catches of
silence interspersed—which alternately pique and satisfy. No brother of
the craft could fail to obtain valuable hints from these studies. But Mr.
Rosetti is no mere word‐poiser; he is an artist in the highest sense of
the word, whose canvas teems with a thousand nameless lights, which as
they cross and disappear make all the difference between the real and the
unreal.
During the two years or more that Mr. Rosetti’s volume has been before the
English‐reading public on both sides of the Atlantic, it has been
frequently reviewed. Perhaps the best justification of the present review
is that, over and above purely literary merits, Mr. Rosetti has peculiar
claims upon the interest of Catholic readers, to which we would draw
attention.
We gather from the brief notice at the beginning of the volume that many
of these poems were composed twenty years ago, yet, if we except the
occasional appearance of a single poem in the pages of a magazine, Mr.
Rosetti has published nothing before. We can hardly believe that even the
barbarians of twenty years ago can have combined against his publishing,
like Mr. Bazzard’s friends in _Edwin Drood_, and so we must suppose that
he was fain to wait for the severest of all criticisms—that passed by a
middle‐aged man upon the productions of his youth. And now, having altered
something and burnt more—had he waited, he would have found old age more
indulgent—he publishes the remnant, all of which, he tells us justly
enough, is mature, for which his mature age is sponsor.
It would be far easier to estimate Mr. Rosetti’s position as a poet had he
written more. Nor is this precisely a truism; for one feels at once that
what he has given us is most precisely and emphatically a selection. Every
one of his poems, whatever else it may be, is at least a cunning piece of
artist’s work in this or that particular style, with a distinct flavor of
its own and true to itself throughout. If you know, and care for, the old
Scots ballad, you will at once appreciate the specimen he gives you. If
you object to the coarseness which shades the tenderness of “Stratton
Water,” your criticism is unlearned. As well complain of the peat flavor
of a “Finnan haddie.”
Poets who sing because they must sing, who pour into trembling ears great
heterogeneous floods of song, the reflection of their many moods, things
beautiful and rather beautiful, and plain and very plain; all the
thousand‐and‐one scraps which have something clever in them, or illustrate
something, or with the composition of which something interesting, whether
pleasant or painful, is associated—take, for instance, any chance volume
of Wordsworth or Browning—may be in the long run our benefactors, but they
have no claim upon the ready‐money of thanks; they charm, perhaps, but
they often also bore. If a man whose imagination has not been left out is
bored by Mr. Rosetti’s volume, it is time for him, according to the
Turkish proverb, to put his trust in God—his wine is running to the lees,
his roses wither. And this is true although the generations of poetic
taste are so short‐lived that almost before a man has reached the _mezzo
camino_, and certainly before he has lost his sense of life’s enjoyments,
he is apt to find himself somewhat out of harmony with the poetry of the
day. Mr. Rosetti is no prophet of a new theory of art or master of a new
phrase‐mint, but rather a merchant whose cargo tells a tale of every port
at which he has touched.
It is natural to compare, even if only to contrast, any new poet with Mr.
Tennyson, as the poet who has had more immediate, sensible influence than
any other upon the taste of his day; and although there is a prejudice
against comparisons, it is difficult to see how they can be avoided if one
is to do something more than point and ejaculate. In the present case,
there is at least sufficient resemblance to suggest comparison. Amongst
living poets these two are pre‐eminently artist‐poets, who finish their
work and hide well away all their literary shavings. They are almost the
only living poets who never go on talking till they can find the right
word, and who never stammer.
There is not a scrap of either of these poets that, for the refined work
there is in it, it would not be a shame to burn. Again, they are like in
this, that they have an intense sensuous appreciation of the medium which
they use, which seems to belong rather to the art of the painter or the
musician than to that of the poet. It would not be difficult to make a
color‐box of Mr. Tennyson’s favorite words, literary formulas for cool
grays and bits of scarlet. On the other hand, Mr. Rosetti’s art is rather
that of the musician than the painter; he produces his effects rather by
subtle changes of manner than by the color of single words, although his
choice in these too is exquisite. His modulations remind one of Crashaw’s
lines in “Music’s Duel”:
“The lute’s light genius now doth proudly rise,
Heaved on the surges of swoll’n rhapsodies.
Whose flourish, meteor‐like, doth curl the air
With flash of high‐born fancies; here and there
Dancing in lofty measures, and anon
Creeps on the soft touch of a tender tone,
Whose trembling murmurs, melting in wild airs,
Run to and fro, complaining his sweet cares.”
And so, having drifted into points of difference, we will continue. They
are unlike because, although both affect the quaintnesses of mediæval art,
the laureate has done little more than utilize, for poetic purposes, the
antiquarian and art knowledge of a gentleman of the period with a turn
that way. But Mr. Rosetti is a mediæval artist heart and soul; and, though
it may not be literally true that he has no end beyond his art, he would
certainly feel that he was doing evil that good might come of it if he
sacrificed a point of art to any object whatsoever.
Mr. Tennyson’s pictures of the middle‐age, beautiful and lifelike as they
are, are the less true for their somewhat formal flourish of antiquity,
whereby they give themselves, as it were, a modern frame. Of course,
Tennyson’s knights are not modern gentlemen in the sense that Racine’s
Greeks are French courtiers, but anyhow they are the realized aspirations
of modern gentlemen of culture and refinement, and measures of fashionable
reaction against the spirit of the day.
I think the consciousness that he wants a loosely‐fitting mediævalism, or,
so to speak, the armor without any particular quality of man inside, makes
Mr. Tennyson affect the hybrid mediævalism of the Round Table in
preference to the genuine strain of the old chroniclers. His mail‐clad
knights always remind us somewhat of a common scene in a marine aquarium—a
whelk‐shell inspired with an energy not its own by the intrusion of a
hermit‐crab, who, having disposed of the original occupant, manipulates
the shell at his pleasure.
It may be urged, with some justice, that a poet is no mere collector of
old china and old lace. He gathers to himself of all precious things, to
frame for his thought such vehicle as he wants; but he has no duties to
his materials that they should be in keeping with one another or with
themselves, provided they minister to his design. Yes, but it must be
remembered that both these poets belong to a school which owes its success
to the religious observance of such duties, even though self‐imposed; and
it must always remain true that the more a poet can afford to borrow
wholes instead of parts or aspects, and these plead the poet’s cause each
in its own tongue, not his, the greater is his triumph. I am not
indicating any failure on the part of Mr. Tennyson when I speak of his
Arthurian poems as a splendid masque. He knows where his strength lies. He
has chosen his legend as a man might choose an antique wine‐cooler for his
wine; but the liquor inside, though superlatively good, is not hippocras
or metheglin, but port and sherry. On the other hand, if we turn to Mr.
Rosetti’s treatment of mediæval subjects, “Dante at Verona,” “Sister
Helen,” “The Staff and Scrip,” we find that his mediæval figures live,
indeed, with the intensest kind of life, but that that life, from its woof
to its outermost fringe, is stained with the color of its own day and
country. It is this union of purism and vitality which is Mr. Rosetti’s
distinguishing characteristic.
It is now time for us to examine some of Mr. Rosetti’s poems in detail.
“The Blessed Damozel,” the first poem in the volume, were it not for its
title, would be perfect; but we confess that the ultra quaintness of the
title is the one point in the mediæval dress which does not, to our mind,
harmonize with the Catholicity of the subject.
The subject would be trite enough in many hands. A young man has lost his
love, and dreams of her night and day, until at length the soul of his
imagination pierces that heaven into which she has been received ten years
ago:
“Her seemed she scarce had been a day
One of God’s choristers;
The wonder was not yet quite gone
From that still look of hers,
Albeit, to them she left, her day
Had counted as ten years.”
With the calm, unhesitating realism of Fra Angelico, he paints his lady
leaning out towards him “from the gold bar of heaven,” with stars in her
hair and lilies in her hand; and the outline is so clear and firm, so free
from the mist of modern sentimentalism, that the paroxysm of doubt which
breaks in at the end of the fourth stanza, and which for a moment makes
the radiant vision tremulous, is really wanted to remind us of the abyss
which the imagination is spanning:
“It was the rampart of God’s house
That she was standing on,
By God built over the sheer depth
The which is space begun;
So high that, looking downward thence,
You scarce might see the sun.”
“The tides of day and night” alternate far down in the abyss beneath her
feet, where the earth is spinning about the sun “like a fretful midge.” If
any one is tempted to doubt if the heavens of modern science, with their
vast distances and harmonious order, are more poetical than the star‐
spangled cope upon which the Chaldean shepherds gazed, let him read this
poem. The simple imagery with which Mr. Rosetti clothes the abysses of
heaven seems, without destroying their immensity, to render them visible:
“From the fixed place of heaven she saw
Time like a pulse shake fierce
Through all the world....”
Again:
“The sun was gone now; the curled moon
Was like a little feather
Fluttering far down the gulf.”
He sees that she is looking for him, and then she speaks, not to him, for
she sees him not, but of him, of what their life in heaven will be when he
has come—for he must come, she says. And again, as she talks of the life
in heaven, it is Fra Angelico in words; lush meadow‐grass, so soft to
road‐worn feet, and golden‐fruited trees, and tender intercourse from
which all the acerbities and conventionalities of life are banished; an
atmosphere in which the freshness of morning and the peace of evening are
woven into one eternal day, which, as he says elsewhere, “hours no more
offend.” How thoroughly Dantesque in its homely sublimity is the
conception of Our Lady and her handmaids at their weaving:
“Into the fine cloth, white like flame,
Weaving the golden thread
To fashion the birth‐robes for them
Who are just born, being dead.”
We hardly think that this poem of Mr. Rosetti’s strikes a single false
chord even to Catholic ears. The utmost that can be said is that the
blessed soul is too absorbed by her longing for her earthly love. But then
the heaven of theology is an assemblage of paradoxes which faith alone can
knit together; and, in its entirety, wholly without the realm of art. In
this poem we have one aspect of the life of the blessed, “securus quidem
sibi sed nostri solicitus,” as S. Bernard says, presented to us most
vividly in the only colors an artist’s pencil can command—those of earthly
love. But this love is serene and pure, and, despite its intensity, free
from all pain and impatience. The passion is supplied by the refrain in
the earthly lover’s heart, as in his touching commentary upon the
confidence of her “we two” will do thus and thus when he comes:
“Alas! we two, we two, thou sayst!
Yea, one wast thou with me
That once of old. But shall God lift
To endless unity
The soul whose likeness with thy soul
Was but its love for thee?”
Having ended her description of heaven’s mysterious joys:
“She gazed and listened, and then said,
Less sad of speech than mild,
‘All this is when he comes.’ She ceased.
The light thrilled towards her filled
With angels in strong level flight.
Her eyes prayed and she smiled.”
But soon the smile fades away as the angelic convoy glides past, for he is
not there—
“And then she cast her arms along
The golden barriers,
And laid her face between her hands,
And wept (I heard her tears).”
If it be objected that this is too gross a violation of the state in which
all tears are wiped away, I answer, first, that there are tears and tears;
secondly, that if anthropomorphism is allowable in our realizations of
God, _à fortiori_ is it allowable in our realizations of those who,
although they are raised above the estate of humanity, are still human.
Again, even the angels of Christian art have a prescriptive right to
tears, and is it not written, Isai. xxxiii. 7, “Angeli pacis amarè
flebunt?”
And now we will say what we have to say of perhaps the most wonderful of
all Mr. Rosetti’s poems, which somehow, for more reasons than one,
suggests itself as a pendant to “The Blessed Damozel.” He has called it
“Jenny,” and Jenny is the name—neither French nor Greek will mend the
matter—of a young prostitute. We freely confess that there are two or
three lines in this poem which we heartily wish Mr. Rosetti had never
written; but, take it as it stands, few will be disposed to deny that it
is a very real sermon against lust, all the more impressive because it is
indirect. The story, such as it is, is this: A man, young but not in his
first youth, who has been for some years settling down to a student’s
life, throws his work aside one evening, and goes off to one of his old
haunts. Having spent half the night in dancing, and being smitten with
Jenny’s youthful beauty, he goes home with her. She, poor thing, utterly
tired, falls dead asleep at supper, and he, watching her, falls to
moralizing, half cynically, half tenderly, upon innocence and lust and
destiny, until at last the pity of it all wholly possesses him and kills
every other thought. And so musing till early dawn, till
“Now without, as if some word
Had called upon them that they heard,
The London sparrows far and nigh
Clamor together suddenly,”
he slips some gold pieces into her hair, and goes with the half‐expressed
hope that, as God has been merciful to him, so he will be merciful to her
also.
What first touches him is her evident longing for rest:
“Glad from the crush to rest within,
From the heart‐sickness and the din,
Where envy’s voice at virtue’s pitch
Mocks you because your gown is rich,
And from the pale girl’s dumb rebuke,
Whose ill‐clad grace and toil‐worn look
Proclaim the strength that keeps her weak
And other nights than yours bespeak,
And from the wise, unchildish elf,
To schoolmate lesser than himself
Pointing you out what thing you are.”
The girl herself, beyond her youth and beauty, is nowise better than her
fellows, and so she individualizes a larger pathos, and is in some sense a
more touching representative of the victims of man’s lust—
“Poor handful of bright spring water
Flung in the whirlpool’s shrieking face.”
He is penetrated by the contrast between the fate of this poor girl and
that of his cousin, just such another girl in natural disposition—
“And fond of dress, and change, and praise,
So mere a woman in her ways”;
but in the guarded atmosphere of her home, with every point in her
character blooming into good.
“So pure—so fallen! how dare to think
Of the first common kindred link?
Yet Jenny, till the world shall burn,
It seems that all things take their turn,
And who shall say but this fair tree
May need, in changes that shall be,
Your children’s children’s charity?
Scorned then, no doubt, as you are scorned,
Shall no man hold his pride forewarned
Till in the end, the day of days,
At judgment, one of his own race,
As frail and lost as you, shall rise,
His daughter with his mother’s eyes?”
Many a man would be fain to listen to such a sermon who would reject any
other. For the preacher is no missionary in disguise, but a fellow‐sinner
converted in the presence of his sin, if we may call it conversion; at
least, beaten down and overwhelmed by the colossal horror and pity of it,
as a wild beast is tamed by a prairie‐fire.
Many beautiful things have been said by non‐Catholic poets of Our Blessed
Lady. Indeed, a very pretty book might be made of these Gentile
testimonies, from Milton, Cowley, Crashaw (before his conversion),
Wordsworth, Keble, and many others. It would seem that Parnassus is as one
of the high places of Baal, where the Spirit of the Lord rushes upon the
poet, whose eyes are opened and he must needs bless her whom he that
blesseth “shall also himself be blessed, and he that curseth shall be
reckoned accursed,” and he cries, “How beautiful are thy tabernacles,” O
Mary, Mother of God, “as woody valleys, as watered gardens near the
rivers, as tabernacles which the Lord has pitched as cedars by the water‐
side.” But with Mr. Rosetti it is something more than this. One is tempted
to fancy that with his Italian name he must have really inherited an
Italian’s devotion to the Madonna. His poem “Ave” is neither more nor less
than a meditation upon the joyful, sorrowful, and glorious mysteries of
Our Lady’s life, and it breathes a devotion as tender and sensitive—in a
word, as Catholic—as though it had been written by F. Faber. We shall
venture to transfer the whole of it to our pages, for we cannot otherwise
justify what we have said, and part of its specific beauty is that it is
in one breath:
Ave.
Mother of fair delight,
Thou handmaid perfect in God’s sight,
Now sitting fourth beside the Three,
Thyself a woman Trinity,
Being a daughter born to God,
Mother of Christ from stall to Rood,
And wife unto the Holy Ghost:—
Oh! when our need is uttermost,
Think that to such as death may strike
Thou wert a sister, sisterlike!
Thou head‐stone of humanity,
Ground‐stone of the great mystery,
Fashioned like us, yet more than we!
Mind’st thou not (when June’s heavy breath
Warmed the long days in Nazareth)
That eve thou didst go forth to give
Thy flowers some drink that they might live
One faint night more amid the sands,
Far off the trees were as pale wands
Against the fervid sky; the sea
Sighed further off eternally
As human sorrow sighs in sleep.
Then suddenly the awe grew deep,
As of a day to which all days
Were footsteps in God’s secret ways:
Until a folding sense like prayer
Which is, as God is, everywhere,
Gathered about thee; and a voice
Spake to thee without any noise.
Being of the silence: “Hail,” it said,
“Thou that art highly favorèd;
The Lord is with thee here and now;
Blessed among all women thou.”
Ah! Knew’st thou of the end, when first
That Babe was on thy bosom nursed?
Or when he tottered round thy knee
Did thy great sorrow dawn on thee—
And through his boyhood year by year
Eating with him the Passover,
Didst thou discern confusedly
That holier Sacrament, when He,
The bitter cup about to quaff,
Should break the bread and eat thereof?
Or came not yet the knowledge, even
Till on some day forecast in Heaven
His feet passed through thy door to press
Upon his Father’s business?—
Or still was God’s high secret kept?
Nay, but I think the whisper crept
Like growth through childhood. Work and play,
Things common to the course of day,
Awed thee with meanings unfulfill’d,
And all through girlhood, something still’d
Thy senses like the birth of light,
When thou hast trimmed thy lamp at night
Or washed thy garments in the stream:
To whose white bed had come the dream
That He was thine and thou wert His
Who feeds among the field‐lilies.
O solemn shadow of the end,
In that wise spirit long contain’d!
O awful end! and those unsaid
Long years when it was Finished!
Mind’st thou not (when the twilight gone
Left darkness in the house of John)
Between the naked window‐bars
That spacious vigil of the stars?
For thou, a watcher even as they,
Wouldst rise from where throughout the day
Thou wroughtest raiment for his poor;
And, finding the fixed terms endure
Of day and night which never brought
Sounds of his coming chariot,
Wouldst lift through cloud‐waste unexplor’d
Those eyes which said “How long, O Lord”?
Then that disciple whom he loved,
Well heeding, haply would be moved
To ask thy blessing in his name;
And that one thought in both, the same
Though silent, then would clasp ye round
To weep together—tears long bound,
Sick tears of patience, dumb and slow.
Yet, “Surely I come quickly,” so
He said, from life and death gone home.
Amen: even so, Lord Jesus come!
But oh! what human tongue can speak
That day when death was sent to break
From the tired spirit like a veil,
Its covenant with Gabriel
Endured at length unto the end?
What human thought can apprehend
That mystery of motherhood
When thy Beloved at length renew’d
The sweet communion severèd—
His left hand underneath thine head
And his right hand embracing thee?
Lo! He was thine, and this is He!
Soul, is it Faith, or Love, or Hope,
That lets me see her standing up
Where the light of the Throne is bright?
Unto the left, unto the right,
The cherubim, arrayed, conjoint,
Float inward to a golden point,
And from between the seraphim
The glory issues for a hymn.
O Mary Mother! be not loth
To listen—thou whom the stars clothe,
Who seest and mayst not be seen
Hear us at last, O Mary Queen!
Into our shadow bend thy face,
Bowing thee from the secret place,
O Mary Virgin, full of grace!
Mr. Rosetti certainly does not affect classical subjects. There is nothing
in his curious Treasury at all corresponding to those most exquisite of
all Mr. Tennyson’s poems, “Ulysses” and “Tithonus.” In the few instances
in which he does handle classical legend, it is always its quaint
reflection in the mediæval mind that attracts him, as in “Troy Town,” but
he is at home everywhere. “Eden Bower” and “Sister Helen” are like and
unlike enough for comparison. They are both monologues of deadly sin; the
first is spite, the second hate, set to music. The conception of Lilith in
“Eden Bower” is a monstrous waif of rabbinical tradition. She is a sort of
woman‐snake, supposed to have been Adam’s first wife before the creation
of Eve, and in her jealousy of the wife who supplanted her is found the
origin of her conspiracy with the king‐snake of Eden which brings about
the Fall. The poem is one prolonged musical but most diabolical chuckle of
Lilith over the immortal mischief she is about to perpetrate. She is
indeed all the while coaxing the serpent to help her, but her tone
throughout is one of assured triumph. The woman and the fiend are
interwoven with marvellous subtlety—a fiend’s colossal blasphemy and a
woman’s petty spite. The fiend does not shrink from declaring open war
against heaven.
“Strong is God, the fell foe of Lilith
(And O the bower and the hour!)—
Naught in heaven or earth may affright him,
But join thou with me and we will smite him.”
The woman thus in anticipation stabs her rival with her husband’s
cowardice.
“Hear, thou Eve, the man’s heart in Adam
(And O the bower and the hour!)—
Of his brave words hark to the bravest,
This the woman gave that thou gavest.”
How she wriggles and gasps and hugs herself at the thought of the woe she
is to bring upon her victims, gloating over every detail of their desolate
exile, and forecasting the death of one son and the damnation of another.
Lilith after all is a fiend, and, as a creation of art, a fiend is a
creature that lives and revels in wickedness as a salamander was supposed
to inhabit fire, with a keen sense of pleasure and without moral
responsibility; but in “Sister Helen” we have something much more dreadful
because more human—“Hate born of Love”—hate that has devoured all love,
even love of self—the hatred that is despair. A ruined girl, dwelling in a
lonely tower with her little brother, seeks vengeance upon her seducer
after the mediæval manner, by consuming his waxen image before the fire.
And now upon the third night she is nigh upon its achievement, for the wax
is wasting fast. The child takes a child’s interest in the little figure
that was once so plump, but through which the flame is now shining red. He
prattles about it, but understands nothing, nor yet that there is anything
to understand. His sister coaxes him out into the balcony to look out and
say what he sees, for she knows what must come. And one after the other
the brothers and father of the dying man ride up in the wild night and
implore her mercy, at first that she will save his life, and then that at
least she will forgive and save him from his despair, that body and soul
may not perish. There is something simply appalling in the way in which
each entreaty, as it comes to her repeated by her little brother’s voice,
is slain by the calm, ruthless, sometimes ironical comment in which she
conveys her refusal.
“ ‘He calls your name in his agony, Sister Helen,
That even dead love must weep to see.’
‘Hate born of Love is blind as he, Little brother!’
(_O mother, Mary mother_,
_Love turned to hate, between hell and heaven!_)
‘Oh! he prays you, as his heart would rive, Sister Helen,
To save his dear son’s soul alive.’
‘Nay, flame cannot slay it, it shall thrive, Little brother!’
(_O mother, Mary mother,_
_Alas, alas, between hell and heaven!_)”
All entreaties are useless, the death‐knell sounds, and the riders turn
their horses—
“ ‘Ah! what white thing at the door has cross’d, Sister Helen?
Ah! what is this that sighs in the frost?’
‘A soul that’s lost, as mine is lost, Little brother!’
(O mother, Mary mother,
Lost, lost, all lost, between hell and heaven!)”
One is tempted to say of Mr. Rosetti as was said of his patron Dante, “Lo,
he that strolls to hell and back at will.” We speak advisedly of his
“patron Dante,” for his devotion to his great namesake is of the intensest
kind. Almost the longest poem in the volume is “Dante at Verona,” in which
every conceivable detail in the poet’s painful exile at that court is
dwelt upon with a solicitude that reminds one of an early Christian
sponging up a martyr’s blood. To appreciate the poem thoroughly, one ought
to share with Mr. Rosetti in the intimacy of the great Florentine. There
are, however, many exquisite bits of description in it that must come home
to every one. Surely the Gran Cane’s jester will live for ever:
“There was a jester, a foul lout
Whom the court loved for graceless arts;
Sworn scholiast of the bestial parts
Of speech; a ribald mouth to shout
In folly’s horny tympanum
Such things as make the wise man dumb.
“Much loved, him Dante loathed; and so
One day when Dante felt perplex’d
If any day that could come next
Were worth the waiting for or no,
And mute he sat amid the din—
Can Grande called the jester in.
“Rank words with such are wit’s best wealth.
Lords mouthed approval; ladies kept
Twittering with clustered heads, except
Some few that took their trains by stealth
And went. Can Grande shook his hair
And smote his thighs and laughed i’ the air.
“Then facing on his guest, he cried:
‘Say, Messer Dante, how it is
I get out of a clown like this
More than your wisdom can provide?
And Dante: ’Tis man’s ancient whim
That still his like seems good to him.’ ”
We cannot of course pretend to catalogue all Mr. Rosetti’s beauties. But
for the sake of quoting one stanza, we must say a word of the “Staff and
Scrip.” A knight vowed to defend wronged innocence, finds himself, whilst
returning from Palestine, in the land of a fair lady, which her triumphant
foemen are ravaging, and where all hope of resistance is dead. He goes out
on her behalf, and conquers and dies. This is the description of his
return on the night of his victory:
“The first of all the rout was sound,
The next were dust and flame,
And then the horses shook the ground:
And in the thick of them
A still band came.”
Nearly a third of Mr. Rosetti’s volume consists of sonnets. Now, a sonnet
should be grave but not heavy. It must have a severity tempered by
sweetness like the breviary character of the Venerable Bede. It must
linger meditatively; it must not loiter, or fumble with its meaning. It
must be sinuous, never headlong; feeling its rhymes delicately, not
falling upon them; for these are less rhymes than the most prominent of
many assonances, upon all of which the rhythm hangs. Indeed, the texture
of the sonnet resembles more that of blank‐verse than that of any other
metre we possess. Without denying the perfection of some two or three of
Milton’s sonnets, and perhaps in a lesser degree of about as many of
Wordsworth’s, we may be permitted to say that among our sonnet‐writers
Milton, as a general rule, is too fierce and headlong, as Wordsworth says
of him, in words of praise which to our ears suggest blame. In his hands,
“the thing became a trumpet”; whilst Wordsworth has too poor a vocabulary
for a composition in which every word ought to tell. Shakespeare’s sonnets
are only sonnets in name. They do not fall into two, or rather one and a
half, like an acorn and its cup, but are simply short poems of three
independent stanzas of alternate rhymes, the whole concluding with a
rhyming couplet. The Elizabethan writers who used the genuine
sonnet—Sidney, Spenser, Drummond, especially the last—attained, we cannot
help thinking, to a more exquisite use of the sonnet than either Milton or
Wordsworth, although the beauty of their sonnets is somewhat marred by the
twanging effect of the concluding rhyming couplet to which they
persistently cling. Many of Mr. Rosetti’s sonnets strike us not only as
beautiful poems, but as very finished specimens of the sonnet. He seems to
have attained to the Italian delicacy of the best of the Elizabethan
sonneteers, without loss of originality and force. He is, however, perhaps
rather too fond of fretting the melody of his lines by a harsh emphasis,
which, effective enough in a liquid medium like Italian, is rather trying
to the naturally broken music of the English tongue. An example of this
may be noted in the sixth line of the following very beautiful sonnet. He
has called it “Inclusiveness”—a title with which we venture to quarrel,
for the phenomenon described is not a quality of anything, but a fact or
law; we would substitute, in spite of its technical flavor,
“Introsusception.”
“The changing guests, each in a different mood
Sit at the roadside table and arise:
And every life among them in like wise
Is a soul’s board set daily with new food.
What man has bent o’er his son’s sleep, to brood
How that face shall watch his when cold it lies?
Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes,
Of what her kiss was when his father wooed?
May not this ancient room thou sit’st in, dwell
In separate living souls for joy or pain?
Nay, all its corners may be painted plain
Where Heaven shows pictures of a life spent well;
And may be stamped a memory all in vain,
Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell.”
Here is an exquisite vindication of one of the least popular of the
condemnations in the Syllabus—that of non‐intervention.
It is called “On the Refusal of Aid between Nations”:
“Not that the earth is changing, O my God!
Nor that the seasons totter in their walk,—
Not that the virulent ill of act and talk
Seethes ever as a wine‐press ever trod,—
Not therefore are we certain that the rod
Weighs in thine hand to smite the world; though now
Beneath thine hand so many nations bow,
So many kings:—not therefore, O my God:—
But because man is parcelled out in men
Even thus; because, for any wrongful blow,
No one not stricken asks, ‘I would be told
Why thou dost strike’; but his heart whispers then,
‘He is he, I am I.’ By this we know
That the earth falls asunder, being old.”
Mr. Rosetti has adopted, as we have already indicated, more fully than a
Catholic could approve, a principle which is obtaining a very dangerous
prominence amongst the rising generation of English poets, that art is
justified of her children—that to the artist all things are chaste. Thus
inevitably there are some lines one could wish unwritten, and more that
one would not have every one read. Yet for all this the _ethos_ of the
book is chaste and noble, nor do we know any poet by whom purity is more
honestly appreciated and worshipped. The volume is a remarkable example of
the extent to which a love of the Madonna and the ascetic inspiration of
Dante can counteract and restrain the growing sensuousness of English
poetry.
If Mr. Rosetti is sometimes obscure, it is not that his touch is ever
otherwise than delicate and precise, but because his art is rather the art
of the musician than of the painter. His changes of key, so to speak, are
so swift and subtle, and the harmonies with which the theme is clothed are
so manifold and so quaint, that his compositions have sometimes the
difficulty of a sonata of Beethoven, and require considerable familiarity
before their proportions can be grasped. Indeed, we must confess that
there are passages the meaning of which we despair of ever grasping with
any precision; we must be content to accept them as a sort of
hieroglyphic, for splendor or purity, like the scroll and lily‐work of a
mediæval goldsmith. This is the more provoking, as obscurity is not here,
as often in Mr. Browning’s poems, covered by an oracular use of certain
crabbed expressions, which at least indicate the nut that is to be
cracked, but coexists with a diction consistently pure and flowing.
Although we have compared Mr. Rosetti’s art to that of the musician rather
than to that of the painter, we have been told that he is a painter of a
high order. Anyhow, his fondness for painting is proved by the number of
sonnets which he has made upon pictures, ancient and modern. We cannot
more fitly conclude our review than with his sonnet, “For our Lady of the
Rocks, by Leonardo da Vinci”:
“Mother, is this the darkness of the end,
The shadow of death? and is that outer sea
Infinite, imminent eternity?
And does the death‐pang by man’s seed sustain’d
In Time’s each instant cause thy face to bend
Its silent prayer upon the Son, while he
Blesses the dead with his hand silently
To his long day which hours no more offend?
“Mother of grace, the pass is difficult,
Keen as these rocks, and the bewildered souls
Throng it like echoes, blindly shuddering through.
Thy name, O Lord, each spirit’s voice extols,
Whose peace abides in the dark avenue
Amid the bitterness of things occult.”
For Ever.
Those we love truly never die,
Though year by year the sad memorial‐wreath—
A ring and flowers, types of life and death—
Are laid upon their graves.
For death the pure life saves,
And life all pure is love, and love can reach
From heaven to earth, and nobler lessons teach,
Than those by mortals read.
Well blest is he who has a dear one dead:
A friend he has whose face will never change,
A dear communion that will not grow strange:
The anchor of a love is death.
The blessed sweetness of a loving breath
Will reach our cheek all fresh through fourscore years:
For her who died long since, ah! waste not tears—
She’s thine unto the end.
Thank God for one dead friend,
Whose mother‐face no miles of road or sea
Or earthly bonds can hold apart from me—
First friend in life and death.
Visit To An Artist’s Studio.
I do not know if, outside his own small circle of patrons and
acquaintances, any one has heard of the artist Van Muyden. Yet hidden
talent is none the less a divine gift because few know it; it gives a more
pathetic interest to a life to know that it is a life harassed with care,
vexed by non‐appreciation, hampered with poverty. Perhaps Van Muyden is
only obscure because he would not lower his art to suit the dealers’ terms
or the public taste. When I visited his studio, he was settled in a small
house in the suburbs of Geneva, Switzerland. His own appearance was
striking: the supple form, not very tall, but very spare; the large eyes
that seemed to dart through you and search your soul, the high forehead,
wrinkled and bald, told of a man with an intellect higher than that of his
fellow‐men, an ideal enthroned beyond the region of which they know the
bearings, and of the cares with which they can sympathize. He was a man
past the prime of life, eager and enthusiastic—eccentric, perhaps, as the
world’s estimate goes; but who is not?—I mean amongst those whose
characteristics are worth studying at all. He wore over his vest and
trowsers an old brown dressing‐gown, suggestive of the appearance one is
used to connect with mediæval scholars and seers. His forte is not
landscape‐painting, and, indeed, he seemed lost at Geneva, despite the
southern beauty of its environs, for Van Muyden’s predilections were
evidently for the representation of the human kind. But then, if it was
man that he loved to copy, it was not broad‐cloth man, sleek, respectable,
decorous, well‐off, but man as you find him in Italy or Spain—picturesque
as his scanty surroundings; an unconscious artist, a born model; man
imbued with the spirit of the sun‐god; man carolling and trilling without
effort, believing himself born to sing like the birds; man in himself a
study, a picture, a statue, a marvel.
Van Muyden explained his theories very freely, and they were well worth
listening to.
“In the north, you see,” he said, “an artist is forced, if he wishes to be
truthful, to copy a thousand pitiful details of upholstery. Such pictures
are called _genre_; and this realistic, mathematical accuracy, utterly
destructive of the picturesque, is lauded to the skies; but, good God!
could not a Chinese do as well with his wonderful imitative faculty,
altogether apart from the _feeling_ of art? The North makes up for the
picturesque by the comfortable; what a compensation for the artist! But
modern art has more to contend with than vitiated taste or the loss of
that free and natural life which in simpler times was more conducive to
artistic inspiration; we have to struggle on without a school or a
standard of taste. We no longer have those centres where the traditions of
art were religiously kept; those high‐priests who gathered round them
numerous and docile disciples, as of old the Athenian philosophers in the
groves of Academe. Even in Italy, in Rome itself, no such centre can be
found. A young artist has to make his own solitary way, pursue his ideal
alone, keep up his enthusiasm by his own unaided exertions, and probably
find neither patron nor master to care for his works or guide his
attempts.”
The artist was surely right; for the great schools of painting were to art
what the religious orders are to the church—centres towards which a vague
vocation may be directed and find its true mission, with brethren to share
its enthusiasm and superiors to guide its aspirations. Most of his
pictures were Italian scenes, some domestic, but mostly treating of the
monastic life. The cool cloister, with its ilex or orange‐trees seen
cornerwise through the railings; the old portico, with a monk seated in
meditation on the fragment of a sculptured pillar: the noon‐day siesta;
the begging friar coming home with his sack of food; the preacher starting
meekly, staff in hand, for the distant station where he is to preach a
Lent; the novice arranging the altar; the monk digging his own grave in
the sunny cloister, or washing the altar‐plate in the sparkling fountain,
etc. etc.—such were chiefly the subjects chosen. Why? He was not a
Catholic, this artist; but it seems to have come to him intuitively that
there is more room for artistic expression and artistic liberty in things
pertaining to the old church. His own studio was as perfect a picture as
any he could have painted; a treasure‐house of antiquities carelessly
displayed. It was lighted by two immense windows, one of which was shaded
by a sort of slanting tester, throwing the light on the easel in the
middle of the room. Between these windows stood a nondescript piece of
furniture in carved oak, very black and old—a species of _secrétaire_,
with an “extension” holding a small washing‐bowl, surmounted by a
dolphin’s head, which was crowned for the nonce with a scarlet _berrétta_.
Large jars of old porcelain were placed here and there, either on the
ground or on substantial _étagères_, and two corners of the room were
filled with high chests equally carved, on whose capacious tops rested a
medley of distaffs, horns, helmets, old swords, a spinning‐wheel, and a
confused mass of tattered garments or drapery, dingy and time‐stained,
crimson cloaks, blue tunics, purple veils, etc. An array of pipes, hooked
into the wall for security, stood on the high mantel‐piece, together with
one of those common brass kitchen lamps in use at Rome, with four
projections enclosing wicks, and whose shape has never been altered since
the days when Nero rode in the arena and the Christians went calmly to the
stake. On the unoccupied spaces on the wall hung the artist’s pictures,
some few representing touching family scenes (all Italian) strewed among
the monastic subjects. Right in the centre of the ceiling hung a movable
apparatus, in which was placed a lamp—modern, alas! This came down quite
close to the easel, and gave all the light required for night‐work. A
carved table with curiously‐twisted legs, and two high‐backed mediæval
arm‐chairs covered with tapestry, completed the furniture, besides a green
baize stage for the models. This reminded me of the _palco_ used for
preaching in Italian churches, even when there is a proper pulpit; some of
my readers may remember these miniature stages, raised about five feet
from the floor, and on which the excited orator can promenade like a lion
in his cage while hurling his burning periods at his awe‐stricken
listeners. Van Muyden has a wife and nine children, which fact we
ascertained through the reply to a question prompted by the enormous
quantity of under‐linen hung out to dry on the balusters outside the
studio. We did not see Mme. Van Muyden, and were thankful we did not; for
such a reckless display of household secrets must argue a woman whose
appearance would frighten romance out of the veriest sentimentalist that
ever lived. So we speculated in silence on this domestic guardian of the
artist’s peace—an excellent and worthy woman, no doubt, a capital house‐
keeper, a careful mother, a faithful wife, but scarcely a help‐mate, a
companion, a Beatrice, to her husband. How few men of sensitive nature,
high‐strung character, aspiring organization, have fit wives! Why is it
that they generally take a fancy to peculiarly unsuitable women? Is it
that they are so soft‐hearted that they cannot resist the attraction of
the first pretty face they see, or so rapt above the reach of common
interests that they form, as it were inevitably, an incongruous union, and
only wake up to find themselves irretrievably tied to a showy slattern, or
a plodding, unappreciative housewife? What perverse fairy casts her spell
on the poor artist’s marriage‐day, and makes of the chime of his wedding‐
bells the knell of his possible fame?
Poverty is the safest ladye‐love for an artist, as one of Dante’s friends
was always telling him. Artists and scholars are the Francis‐of‐Assisiums
of the intellectual world, and the same bride as that spiritually wooed by
the heroic voluntary beggar, is the most fitting companion for them. With
her, at least, they can enjoy the perfect freedom from care which alone
makes want supportable; they can throw around their destitution that halo
of romance which the prosaic details of a household invariably strangle
out of existence. But in the early choice of a wife more hopes go down,
more aspirations are smothered, than those whose aim is worldly success
and the favor of the great. The ideal is the victim _par excellence_; for
the struggling artist, tied by his own hasty imprudence to a woman of
inferior mould, soon feels the spark of genius die within him; the
incentive to “do and dare” has dwindled down to the necessity of “earning
and eating.” A woman with uncomprehensive soul peevishly reminds him at
every moment of the world of matter, without even offering him the
compensation of a blind and admiring worship of his talents in his own
peculiar sphere; in short, he is a living example of the adage, “A man
that’s married is a man that’s marred.”
Far be it from me to bring this reproach on any particular individual; but
such was the train of thought naturally induced by the unsightly array of
house‐linen hung like delusive flags of truce on the balusters of the
artist’s home. Early marriage is undoubtedly best for the generality of
men in the world, but it is intellectual ruin to artists. Let us wish them
the rare fortune of a wife that will be a real helpmate to their higher
and better selves, a staff to lean on up the thorny road to Parnassus, and
then recommend early marriage; but unless such exceptions be found, let
them beware of the fate typified by the prosaic decoration of Van Muyden’s
abode at Geneva.
Visions.
The white stars gleamed in the jessamine bush,
And the bright stars up in the sky,
And Gilfillan stood at the garden‐gate,
And so at the gate stood I.
The apple‐boughs bent as we lingered there,
And showered their rosy rain—
Is it all that shall fall in that pleasant path,
If we meet at the gate again?
O Gilfillan gay! why seek away
From lady‐love, kith, and kin
The world’s Well‐done, or ’neath foreign sun
The golden spurs to win?
O womanly heart! be still, be still!
It is threescore years to‐day—
And thou canst throb with this wild, wild tide,
And I all withered and gray!
And Gilfillan’s bones ’neath the kirk‐yard stones
Of a foreign and far‐off land—
No preacher so loud of the coffin and shroud,
And the house that is built on sand!
Oh! a rare, rare castle of human hope
We builded aloft in our pride!
And, oh! woe betide so weary a dream;
For my lover is by my side.
We have known no partings, no weary years,
We have known no days of sorrow;
For I am but seventeen to‐day,
And we shall be married to‐morrow!
A Word For Women.
By One Of Themselves.
It has been urged that women should refrain from writing for the public,
and busy themselves with interests more strictly within their own domain
than those of literature. The demand might claim respectful notice, if all
women would give heed to it. Since they will not, is there any reason why
those who employ their pens in the production of sensational stories and
other demoralizing works should have the field all to themselves? Or is it
right that others of equal ability should shrink from entering it in
defence of religion and morality?
The space is ample for all combatants. Our learned and venerable doctors,
stern champions of truth, who keep their logical and polemical lances ever
poised to strike the foe, to demolish error, and force conviction upon
minds firmly closed against less cogent weapons, need not fear being
jostled by humble handmaidens of the same mistress, who have ventured
within the lists. These may do good service, also, with a large class whom
their telling blows shall fail to reach.
Our women and youth, who will read and be influenced for good or evil by
“feminine literature,” cannot be amused with metaphysical discussions that
gain an attentive hearing from men of philosophical tastes, or even by
moral essays and reflections, however excellent and edifying.
Unfortunately, it is not a question of forming the tastes of readers.
Alas! these are already formed by a vitiated literature, flowing from a
godless system of education, and carrying the poison through the whole
length of its course.
The only question is, Where shall the antidote be found, and how
administered? Certainly not in moral lectures that will not be read, or in
fiction of the goody‐goody sort.
Our only hope—and it is a bright one—for the future of our young Catholics
lies in the blessed awakening—effected by the clear tones of that
infallible voice which never, in any age, gave forth an uncertain
sound—that is causing schools for Christian culture to spring up through
the whole length and breadth of our country. But what for our children of
a larger growth, whose tastes are already perverted?
We think it is unquestionable that, as the daughters of the first Eve,
according to the flesh, have aided powerfully in commending the forbidden
fruit to the lips of a deluded public, so the daughters of the second Eve,
according to the spirit, may do much to remedy the consequences of the
fatal banquet.
There are certain influences exercised almost exclusively by women. There
are certain subjects to the consideration of which the flexibility of her
nature enables her to bend her efforts with graceful success, and to far
better purpose than the “stern masculinity” of man’s heart, head, and pen
can compass.
Well, then, if women _may_ write, it behooves them to treat of such
matters, and in such manner, as shall secure readers. For our people must
and will read. Right or wrong, it is a necessity of the age. From the
abodes of wealth and leisure, in the metropolis of fashion, to village
homes and rural firesides, our people must and will read. Happy for them
if the nourishment their fevered imaginations so morbidly crave be at
least harmless! A highly‐seasoned sensational literature has stimulated
the craving to a degree of frenzy, if not to actual organic disease;
happy, indeed, for them could such mental pabulum, such agreeable viands
and cooling fruits, be furnished and accepted as would gradually assuage
the wild thirst for excitement, until wholesome correctives should become
palatable!