Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Josephine Paolucci and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
OF
POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
VOLUME XX.
[Illustration]
PHILADELPHIA:
J. B. LIPPINCOTT AND CO.
1877.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by
J.B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
LIPPINCOTT'S PRESS,
_Philadelphia_.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Abbeys and Castles _H. James, Jr._ 434
A Day's March through Finland _David Ker_ 116
A Few Letters _E. C. Hewitt_ 111
A Great Day. From the Italian of Edmondo de Amicis 340
A Kentucky Duel _Will Wallace Harney_ 578, 738
A Law unto Herself _Rebecca Harding Davis_ 39, 167,
292, 464, 614, 719
Alfred de Musset _Sarah B. Wister_ 478
Among the Kabyles (_Illustrated._) _Edward C. Bruce_ 265, 406
A Month in Sicily (_Illustrated._) _Alfred T. Bacon_ 649
An English Easter _Henry James, Jr._ 50
A Paduan Holiday (_Illustrated._) _Charlotte Adams_ 278
A Portrait _Ita Aniol Prokop_ 698
A Summer Evening's Dream _Edward Bellamy_ 320
A Venetian of the Eighteenth Century _H. M. Benson_ 347
Baden and Allerheiligen (_Illustrated._) _T. Adolphus Trollope_ 535
Brandywine, 1777 _Howard M. Jenkins_ 329
Captured by Cossacks. (_Illustrated._) Extracts from
Letters of a French Officer in 1813 _Joseph Diss Debar_ 684
Chateau Courance _John V. Sears_ 235
Chester and the Dee (_Illustrated._) _Lady Blanche Murphy_ 393, 521
Communism in the United States _Austin Bierbower_ 501
Days of my Youth _M. T._ 712
Down the Rhine (_Illustrated._) _Lady Blanche Murphy_ 9, 137
Edinburgh Jottings (_Illustrated._) _Alfred S. Gibbs_ 28
English Domestics and their Ways _Olive Logan_ 758
Folk-Lore of the Southern Negroes _William Owens_ 748
"For Percival." (_Illustrated._) 416, 546, 665
In a Russian "Trakteer" _David Ker_ 247
Irish Society in the Last Century _Eliza Wilson_ 183
Leonie Regnault:
A Study from French Life _Mary E. Blair_ 61
Little Lizay _Sarah Winter Kellogg_ 442
London at Midsummer _H. James, Jr._ 603
Madame Patterson-Bonaparte 309
Ouida's Novels _Thomas Sergeant Perry_ 732
Our Blackbirds _Ernest Ingersoll_ 376
"Our Jook" _Henrietta H. Holdich_ 494
Primary and Secondary Education in France _C. H. Harding_ 69
Some Last Words from Sainte-Beuve _Sarah B. Wister_ 104
The Bass of the Potomac _W. Mackay Laffan_ 455
The Chef's Beefsteak _Virginia W. Johnson_ 596
The Church of St. Sophia _Hugh Craig_ 629
The Doings and Goings-on of Hired Girls _Mary Dean_ 589
The Flight of a Princess _W. A. Baillie-Grohman_ 566
The Marquis of Lossie _George Macdonald_ 81, 210, 355
The New Soprano _Penn Shirley_ 249
The Paris Cafes _Gilman C. Fisher_ 202
Verona. (_Illustrated._) _Sarah B. Wister_ 155
Vina's "Ole Man." (_Illustrated._) _Lizzie W. Champney_ 194
LITERATURE OF THE DAY, comprising Reviews of the following Works:
Avery, Benjamin Parke--Californian Pictures in Prose and Verse 775
Baker, M. A., James--Turkey 135
Burroughs, John--Birds and Poets 516
Dodge, R. I.--The Plains of the Great West and their Inhabitants 262
Doudan, X.--Melanges et Lettres 646
Field, Marie E.--The Wings of Courage 776
Gill, W. F.--The Life of Edgar Allan Poe 518
Concourt, de, Edmond and Jules--Madame Gervaisais 388
Greville, Henry--Les Koumiassine 519
Hoffman, Wickham--Camp, Court and Siege 261
Kismet 392
McCoan, J. C.--Egypt as it Is 774
Mazade, de, Charles--The Life of Count Cavour 772
Migerka, Catherine--Briefe aus Philadelphia (1876) an eine Freundin 643
Nimport 642
Parkman, Francis--Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV 641
Price, Major Sir Rose Lambart--The Two Americas 132
Procter, Bryan Waller (Barry Cornwall)--An Autobiographical Fragment
and Biographical Notes 133
Reid, T. Wemyss--Charlotte Bronte 390
Robinson, Leora B.--Patsy 776
Sherwood, Mary Neal--Jack. From the French of Alphonse Daudet 645
Squier, E. George--Peru 259
Synge, W. W. Follett--Olivia Raleigh 518
Wheaton, Campbell--Six Sinners; or, School-Days in Bantam Valley 776
OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP, comprising the following Articles:
A Cheering Sign, 258; A Crying Evil, 771; A Day at the Paris
Conservatoire, 512; A Missing Item, 770; A Neglected Branch of
Philology, 385; Another Defunct Monopoly, 386; Artistic Jenkinsism, 640;
Brigham Young and Mormonism, 514; Fernan Caballero, 761; Foreign Leaders
in Russia and Turkey, 765; Francois Buloz, 382; Friend Abner in the
North-West, 254; How shall we Call the Birds? 256; Katerfelto in Repose,
387; "Les Naufrages de Calais," 637; Miridite Courtship, 253; Notes from
Moscow, 509; Punching the Drinks, 130; Realistic Art, 639; Russian and
Turkish Music, 636; The Coming Elections in France, 127; The Dead of
Paris, 122; The Departure of the Imperial Guards, 768; The Education of
Women in India, 515; The Modern French Novelists, 379; The
Nautch-Dancers of India, 132; The Octroi, 763; The Religious Struggle at
Geneva, 125; Von Moltke in Turkey, 129; Water-Lilies, 384.
POETRY:
A Wish _Henrietta R. Eliot_ 308
Fog _Emma Lazarus_ 207
For Another _S. M. B. Piatt_ 405
From the Flats _Sidney Lanier_ 115
"God's Poor" _E. R. Champlin_ 711
Heine (Buch der Lieder) _Charles Quiet_ 354
Selim _Annie Porter_ 755
Song _Oscar Laighton_ 545
Sven Duva. From the Swedish
of Johan Ludvig Runeberg _C. Rosell_ 611
The Bee _Sidney Lanier_ 493
The Chrysalis of a Bookworm _Maurice F. Egan_ 463
The Dream of St. Theresa _Epes Sargent_ 565
The Elixir _Emma Lazarus_ 60
The Marsh _S. Weir Mitchell_ 245
The Sweetener _Mary B. Dodge_ 49
To Sleep _Emilie Poulsson_ 201
LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
OF
_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE_.
JULY, 1877.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by J. B.
LIPPINCOTT & CO., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington.
DOWN THE RHINE.
THIRD PAPER.
[Illustration: EVENING CONCERT AT WIESBADEN.]
Wiesbaden (the "Meadow-Bath"), though an inland town, partakes of some
of the Rhine characteristics, though even if it did not, its notoriety
as a spa would be enough to make some mention of it necessary. Its
promenade and Kurhaus, its society, evening concerts, alleys of
beautiful plane trees, its frequent illuminations with Bengal lights,
reddening the classic peristyles and fountains with which modern taste
has decked the town, its airy Moorish pavilion over the springs, and
its beautiful Greek chapel with fire-gilt domes, each surmounted by a
double cross connected with the dome by gilt chains--a chapel built by
the duke Adolph of Nassau in memory of his wife, Elizabeth Michaelovna,
a Russian princess,--are things that almost every American traveler
remembers, not to mention the Neroberger wine grown in the neighborhood.
Schlangenbad, a less well-known bathing-place, is a favorite goal of
Wiesbaden excursionists, for a path through dense beech woods leads from
the stirring town to the quieter "woman's republic," where, before
sovereigns in incognito came to patronize it, there had long been a
monopoly of its charms by the wives and daughters of rich men, bankers,
councilors, noblemen, etc., and also by a set of the higher clergy. The
waters were famous for their sedative qualities, building up the nervous
system, and, it is said, also beautifying the skin. Some credulous
persons traced the name of the "Serpents' Bath" to the fact that snakes
lurked in the springs and gave the waters their healing powers; but as
the neighborhood abounds in a small harmless kind of reptile, this is
the more obvious reason for the name. I spent a pleasant ten days at
Schlangenbad twelve or thirteen years ago, when many of the German
sovereigns preferred it for its quiet to the larger and noisier resorts,
and remember with special pleasure meeting with fields of Scotch heather
encircled by beech and chestnut woods, with ferny, rocky nooks such
as--when it is in Germany that you find them--suggest fairies, and with
a curious village church, just restored by a rich English Catholic,
since dead, who lived in Brussels and devoted his fortune to religious
purposes all over the world. This church was chiefly interesting as a
specimen of what country churches were in the Middle Ages, having been
restored in the style common to those days. It was entirely of stone,
within as well as without, and I remember no painting on the walls. The
"tabernacle," instead of being placed _on_ the altar, as is the custom
in most churches now, and has been for two or three hundred years, was,
according to the old German custom, a separate shrine, with a little
tapering carved spire, placed in the corner of the choir, with a red
lamp burning before it. Here, as in most of the Rhine neighborhoods, the
people are mainly Catholics, but in places where summer guests of all
nations and religions are gathered there is often a friendly arrangement
by which the same building is used for the services of two or three
faiths. There was, I think, one such at Schlangenbad, where Catholic,
Lutheran and Anglican services were successively held every Sunday
morning; and in another place, where a large Catholic church has since
been built, the old church was divided down the middle of the nave by a
wooden partition about the height of a man's head, and Catholic and
Protestant had each a side permanently assigned to them for their
services. This kind of practical toleration, probably in the beginning
the result of poverty on both sides, but at any rate creditable to its
practicers, was hardly to be found anywhere outside of Germany. I
remember hearing of the sisters of one of the pope's German prelates,
Monsignor Prince Hohenlohe, who were Lutherans, embroidering
ecclesiastical vestments and altar-linen for their brother with as much
delight as if he and they believed alike; and (though this is anything
but praiseworthy, for it was prompted by policy and not by toleration)
it was a custom of the smaller German princes to bring their daughters
up in the vaguest belief in vital truths, in order that when they
married they might become whatever their husbands happened to be,
whether Lutheran, Anglican, Catholic or Greek. The events of the last
few years, however, have changed all this, and religious strife is as
energetic in Germany as it was at one time in Italy: people must take
sides, and this outward, easy-going old life has disappeared before the
novel kind of persecution sanctioned by the Falk laws. Some persons even
think the present state of things traceable to that same toleration,
leading, as it did in many cases, to lukewarmness and indifferentism in
religion. Strange phases for a fanatical Germany to pass through, and a
stranger commentary on the words of Saint Remigius to Clovis, the first
Frankish Christian king: "Burn that which thou hast worshiped, and
worship that which thou hast burnt"!
[Illustration: PROMENADE AT WIESBADEN.]
[Illustration: LUTHER'S HOUSE AT FRANKFORT.]
Schwalbach is another of Wiesbaden's handmaidens--a pleasant, rather
quiet spot, from which, if you please, you can follow the Main to the
abode of sparkling hock or the vinehills of Hochheim, the property of
the church which crowns the heights. This is at the entrance of the
Roman-named Taunus Mountains, where there are bathing-places, ruined
castles, ancient bridges, plenty of legends, and, above all, dark solemn
old chestnut forests. But we have a long way to go, and must not linger
on our road to the free imperial city of Frankfort, with its past
history and present importance. Here too I have some personal
remembrances, though hurried ones. The hotel itself--what a relief such
hotels are from the modern ones with electric bells and elevators and
fifteen stories!--was an old patrician house ample, roomy, dignified,
and each room had some individuality, notwithstanding the needful amount
of transformation from its old self. It was a dull, wet day when we
arrived, and next morning we went to the cathedral, Pepin's foundation,
of which I remember, however, less than of the great hall in the Roemer
building where the Diets sat and where the "Golden Bull" is still
kept--a hall now magnificently and appropriately frescoed with subjects
from German history. Then the far-famed Judengasse, a street where the
first Rothschild's mother lived till within a score of years ago, and
where now, among the dark, crazy tenements, so delightful to the
artist's eye, there glitters one of the most gorgeously-adorned
synagogues in Europe. A change indeed from the times when Jews were
hunted and hooted at in these proud, fanatical cities, which were not
above robbing them and making use of them even while they jeered and
persecuted! The great place in front of the emperor's hall was the
appointed ground for tournaments, and as we lounge on we come to a queer
house, with its lowest corner cut away and the oriel window above
supported on one massive pillar: from that window tradition says that
Luther addressed the people just before starting for Worms to meet the
Diet. This other house has a more modern look: it is Goethe's
birthplace, the house where the noted housekeeper and accomplished
hostess, "_Frau Rath_"--or "Madam Councilor," as she was
called--gathered round her those stately parties that are special to the
great free cities of olden trade. Frankfort has not lost her reputation
in this line: her merchants and civic functionaries still form an
aristocracy, callings as well as fortunes are hereditary, and if some
modern elements have crept in, they have not yet superseded the old. The
regattas and boating-parties on the Main remind one of the stir on the
banks of the Thames between Richmond and Twickenham, where so many "city
men" have lovely retired homes; but Frankfort has its Kew Gardens also,
where tropical flora, tree-ferns and palms, in immense conservatories,
make perpetual summer, while the Zoological Garden and the bands that
play there are another point of attraction. Still, I think one more
willingly seeks the older parts--the Ashtree Gate, with its machicolated
tower and turrets, the only remnants of the fortifications; the old
cemetery, where Goethe's mother is buried; and the old bridge over the
Main, with the statue of Charlemagne bearing the globe of empire in his
hand, which an innocent countryman from the neighboring village of
Sachsenhausen mistook for the man who invented the _Aeppelwei_, a
favorite drink of Frankfort. This bridge has another curiosity--a gilt
cock on an iron rod, commemorating the usual legend of the "first living
thing" sent across to cheat the devil, who had extorted such a promise
from the architect. But although the ancient remains are attractive, we
must not forget the Bethmann Museum, with its treasure of Dannecker's
_Ariadne_, and the Staedel Art Institute, both the legacies of
public-spirited merchants to their native town; the Bourse, where a
business hardly second to any in London is done; and the memory of so
many great minds of modern times--Boerne, Brentano, Bettina von Arnim,
Feurbach, Savigny, Schlossen, etc. The Roman remains at Oberuerzel in the
neighborhood ought to have a chapter to themselves, forming as they do a
miniature Pompeii, but the Rhine and its best scenery calls us away from
its great tributary, and we already begin to feel the witchery which a
popular poet has expressed in these lines, supposed to be a warning from
a father to a wandering son:
To the Rhine, to the Rhine! go not to the Rhine! My son, I counsel thee well;
For there life is too sweet and too fine, and every breath is a spell.
The nixie calls to thee out of the flood; and if thou her smiles shouldst see,
And the Lorelei, with her pale cold lips, then 'tis all over with thee:
For bewitched and delighted, yet seized with fear,
Thy home is forgotten and mourners weep here.
[Illustration: JOHN WOLFGANG GOETHE.]
[Illustration: GOETHE'S BIRTHPLACE.]
This is the Rheingau, the most beautiful valley of rocks and bed of
rapids which occurs during the whole course of the river--the region
most crowded with legends and castles, and most frequented by strangers
by railroad and steamboat. The right bank is at first the only one that
calls for attention, dotted as it is with townlets, each nestled in
orchards, gardens and vineyards, with a church and steeple, and terraces
of odd, over-hanging houses; little stone arbors trellised with
grapevines; great crosses and statues of patron saints in the warm,
soft-toned red sandstone of the country; fishermen's taverns, with most
of the business done outside under the trees or vine-covered piazza;
little, busy wharfs and works, aping joyfully the bustle of large
seaports, and succeeding in miniature; and perhaps a burgomaster's
garden, where that portly and pleasant functionary does not disdain to
keep a tavern and serve his customers himself, as at Walluf.
[Illustration: JUDENGASSE AT FRANKFORT.]
At Rauenthal (a "valley" placed on high hills) we find the last new
claimant to the supremacy among Rhine wines, at least since the Paris
Exhibition, when the medal of honor was awarded to Rauenthal, which has
ended in bringing many hundreds of curious connoisseurs to test the
merits of the grape where it grows. Now comes a whole host of villages
on either side of the river, famous through their wines--Steinberg, the
"golden beaker;" Scharfenstein, whose namesake castle was the refuge of
the warlike archbishops of Mayence, the stumbling-block of the
archbishops of Treves, called "the Lion of Luxembourg," and lastly the
prey of the terrible Swedes, who in German stories play the part of
Cossacks and Bashi-Bazouks; Marcobrunnen, with its classical-looking
ruin of a fountain hidden among vineyards; Hattenheim, Hallgarten,
Graefenberg; and Eberbach, formerly an abbey, known for its "cabinet"
wine, the hall-mark of those times, and its legends of Saint Bernard,
for whom a boar ploughed a circle with his tusks to show the spot where
the saint should build a monastery, and afterward tossed great stones
thither for the foundation, while angels helped to build the upper
walls. Eberbach is rather deserted than ruined. It was a good deal
shattered in the Peasants' War at the time of the Reformation, when the
insurgents emptied the huge cask in which the whole of the Steinberg
wine-harvest was stored; but since 1803, when it was made over to the
neighboring wine-growers, it has remained pretty well unharmed; and its
twelfth-century chapel, full of monuments; its refectory, now the
press-house, with its columns and capitals nearly perfect; its cellars,
where every year more wine is given away than is stored--_i. e._, all
that which is not "cabinet-worthy"--as in the tulip-mania, when
thousands of roots were thrown away as worthless, which yet had all the
natural merit of lovely coloring and form,--make Eberbach well worth
seeing.
Next comes Johannisberg, with its vineyards dating back to the tenth
century, when Abbot Rabanus of Fulda cultivated the grape and Archbishop
Ruthard of Mayence built a monastery, dedicated to Saint John the
Baptist, which for centuries was owner and guardian of the most noted
Rhine vintage; but abuses within and wars without have made an end of
this state of things, and Albert of Brandenburg's raid on the monks'
cellars has been more steadily supplemented by the pressure of milder
but no less efficient means of destruction. When Napoleon saw this tract
of land and offered it to General Kellermann, who had admired its
beauty, he is said to have received a worthy and a bold answer. "I thank
Your Majesty," said the marshal, "but the receiver is as bad as the
thief." The less scrupulous Metternich became its owner, giving for it,
however, an equivalent of arable and wood land. The Metternich who for
years was Austrian ambassador at Paris during the brilliant time of the
Second Empire, and whose fast and eccentric wife daily astonished
society, is now owner of the peerless Johannisberg vineyards, among
which is his country-house. Goethe's friends, the Lade and Brentano
families, lived in this neighborhood, and the historian Nicholas Vogt
lies buried in the Metternich chapel, though his heart, by his special
desire, is laid in a silver casket within the rocks of Bingen, with a
little iron cross marking the spot. At Geisenheim we are near two
convents which as early as 1468 had printing-presses in active use, and
the mysterious square tower of Ruedesheim, which brings all sorts of
suppositions to our mind, though the beauty of the wayside crosses, the
tall gabled roofs, the crumbling walls, the fantastically-shaped rocks,
getting higher and higher on each side, and the perpetual winding of the
river, are enough to keep the eye fixed on the mere landscape. At the
windows, balconies and arbors sit pretty, ruddy girls waving their
handkerchiefs to the unknown "men and brethren" on board the steamers
and the trains; and well they may, if this be a good omen, for here is
the "Iron Gate" of the Rhine, and the water bubbles and froths in
miniature whirlpools as we near what is called the "Bingen Hole."
As we have passed the mouth of the Stein and recollected the rhyme of
Schroedter in his _King Wine's Triumph_--
[Illustration: RUeDESHEIM.]
Wreathed in vines and crowned with reeds comes the Rhine,
And at his side with merry dance comes the Main,
While the third with his steady steps is all of stone (Stein),
And both Main and Stein are prime ministers to the Lord Rhine--
so now we peer up one of the clefts in the rocks and see the Nahe
ploughing its way along to meet the great river. Just commanding the
mouth is Klopp Castle, and not far warlike Bingen, a rich burgher-city,
plundered and half destroyed in every war from those of the fourteenth
to those of the eighteenth century, while Klopp too claims to have been
battered and bruised even in the thirteenth century, but is better known
as the scene of the emperor Henry IV.'s betrayal to the Church
authorities by his son, who treacherously invited him to visit him here
by night. A little way up the river Nahe, where the character of the
people changes from the lightheartedness of the Rhine proper to a
steadiness and earnestness somewhat in keeping with the sterner and more
mountainous aspect of the country, is Kreuznach, (or "Crossnear"), now a
bathing-resort, and once a village founded by the first Christian
missionaries round the first cross under whose shadow they preached the
gospel. Sponheim Castle, once the abode of Trithemius, or Abbot John of
Trittenheim, a famous chronicler and scholar, reminds us of the brave
butcher of Kreuznach, Michael Mort, whose faithfulness to his lawful
lord when beset by pretenders to his title in his own family won for the
guild of butchers certain privileges which they have retained ever
since; and Rheingrafenstein, where the ruins are hardly distinguishable
from the tossed masses of porphyry rock on which they are perched, tells
us the story of Boos von Waldeck's wager with the lord of the castle to
drink a courier's top-boot full of Rhine wine at one draught--a feat
which he is said to have successfully accomplished, making himself
surely a fit companion for Odin in Walhalla; but his reward on earth was
more substantial, for he won thereby the village of Hueffelsheim and all
its belongings. In a less romantic situation stands Ebernburg, so called
from the boar which during a siege the hungry but indomitable defenders
of the castle paraded again and again before the eyes of the besiegers,
whose only hope lay in starving out the garrison--the property of the
Sickengens, whose ancestor Franz played a prominent part in the
Reformation and gave an asylum in these very halls to Bucer,
Melanchthon, Oecolampadius and Ulrich von Huetten. Past Rothenfels,
where towering rocks hem in the stream, like the Wye banks in Arthur's
country on the Welsh borders; the scattered stones of Disibodenberg, the
Irish missionary's namesake convent, which afterward passed into the
hands of the Cistercians; Dhaum Castle and Oberstein Church, these two
with their legends, the first accounting for a bas-relief in the great
hall representing an ape rocking a child, the heir of the house, in the
depths of a forest, and giving him an apple to eat,--we come to a
cluster of castles which are the classical ground of the Nahe Valley.
The very rocks seem not only crowned but honeycombed with buildings:
chapels stand on jutting crags; houses, heaped as it were one on the
roof of the other, climb up their rough sides, and the roofs themselves
have taken their cue from the rocks, and have three or four irregular
lines of tiny windows ridging and bulging them out.
Taking boat again at Bingen, and getting safely through the Rhine "Hell
Gate," the "Hole," whose terrors seem as poetic as those of the Lorelei,
we pass the famous Mouse Tower, and opposite it the ruined Ehrenfels;
Assmanshausen, with its dark-colored wine and its custom of a May or
Pentecost feast, when thousands of merry Rhinelanders spend the day in
the woods, dancing, drinking and singing, baskets outspread in modified
and dainty pic-nic fashion, torches lit at night and bands playing or
mighty choruses resounding through the woods; St. Clement's Chapel, just
curtained from the river by a grove of old poplars and overshadowed by a
ruin with a hundred eyes (or windows), while among the thickly-planted,
crooked crosses of its churchyard old peasant-women and children run or
totter, the first telling their beads, the second gathering flowers,
and none perhaps remembering that the chapel was built by the survivors
of the families of the robber-knights of Rheinstein (one of the
loveliest of Rhine ruins) and three other confederated castles, whom
Rudolph of Habsburg treated, rightly enough, according to the Lynch law
of his time. They were hung wherever found, but their pious relations
did not forget to bury them and atone for them as seemingly as might be.
[Illustration: BINGEN, FROM KLOPP CASTLE.]
Bacharach, if it were not famed in Germany for its wine, according to
the old rhyme declaring that
At Wuerzburg on the Stein,
At Hochheim on the Main,
At Bacharach on the Rhine.
There grows the best of wine,
would or ought to be noticed for its wealth of old houses and its many
architectural beauties, from the ruined (or rather unfinished) chapel of
St. Werner, now a wine-press house, bowered in trees and surrounded by a
later growth of crosses and tombstones, to the meanest little house
crowding its neighbor that it may bathe its doorstep in the
river--houses that when their owners built and patched them from
generation to generation little dreamt that they would stand and draw
the artist's eye when the castle was in ruins. Similarly, the many
serious historical incidents that took place in Bacharach have lived
less long in the memory of inhabitants and visitors than the love-story
connected with the ruined castle--that of Agnes, the daughter of the
count of this place and niece of the great Barbarossa, whom her father
shut up here with her mother to be out of the way of her lover, Henry of
Braunschweig. The latter, a Guelph (while the count was a Ghibelline),
managed, however, to defeat the father's plans: the mother helped the
lovers, and a priest was smuggled into the castle to perform the
marriage, which the father, after a useless outburst of rage, wisely
acknowledged as valid. The coloring of many buildings in this part of
the Rhineland is very beautiful, the red sandstone of the neighborhood
being one of the most picturesque of building materials. Statues and
crosses, as well as churches and castles, are built of it, and even the
rocks have so appealed by their formation to the imagination of the
people that at Schoenburg we meet with a legend of seven sisters,
daughters of that family whose hero, Marshal Schomburg, the friend and
right hand of William of Orange, lies buried in Westminster Abbey,
honored as marshal of France, peer of Great Britain and grandee of
Portugal, and who, for their haughtiness toward their lovers, were
turned into seven rocks, through part of which now runs the irreverent
steam-engine, ploughing through the tunnel that cuts off a corner where
the river bends again.
Now comes the gray rock where, as all the world knows, the Lorelei
lives, but as that graceful myth is familiar to all, we will hurry past
the mermaid's home, where so much salmon used to be caught that the very
servants of the neighboring monastery of St. Goar were forbidden to eat
salmon more than three times a week, to go and take a glimpse of St.
Goarshausen, with its convent founded in the seventh century by one of
the first Celtic missionaries, and its legend of the spider who remedied
the carelessness of the brother cellarer when he left the bung out of
Charlemagne's great wine-cask by quickly spinning across the opening a
web thick enough to stop the flow of wine. A curious relic of olden time
and humor is shown in the cellar--an iron collar, grim-looking, but more
innocent than its looks, for it was used only to pin the unwary visitor
to the wall while a choice between a "baptism" of water and wine was
given him. The custom dates back to Charlemagne's time. Those who,
thinking to choose the least evil of the two, gave their voice for the
water, had an ample and unexpected shower-bath, while the wine-drinkers
were crowned with some tinseled wreath and given a large tankard to
empty. On the heights above the convent stood the "Cat" watching the
"Mouse" on the opposite bank above Wellmich, the two names commemorating
an insolent message sent by Count John III. of the castle of
Neu-Katzellenbogen to Archbishop Kuno of Falkenstein, the builder of the
castle of Thurnberg, "that he greeted him and hoped he would take good
care of his mouse, that his (John's) cat might not eat it up." And now
we pass a chain of castles, ruins and villages; rocks with such names as
the Prince's Head; lead, copper and silver works, with all the activity
of modern life, stuck on like a puppet-show to the background of a
solemn old picture, a rocky, solitary island, "The Two Brothers," the
twin castles of Liebenstein and Sternberg, the same which Bulwer has
immortalized in his _Pilgrims of the Rhine_, and at their feet, close to
the shore, a modern-looking building, the former Redemptorist convent of
Bornhofen. As we step out there is a rude quay, four large old trees and
a wall with a pinnacled niche, and then we meet a boatful of pilgrims
with their banners, for this is one of the shrines that are still
frequented, notwithstanding many difficulties--notwithstanding that the
priests were driven out of the convent some time ago, and that the place
is in lay hands; not, however, unfriendly hands, for a Catholic German
nobleman, married to a Scotch woman, bought the house and church, and
endeavored, as under the shield of "private property," to preserve it
for the use of the Catholic population of the neighborhood. Last summer
an English Catholic family rented the house, and a comfortable home was
established in the large, bare building attached to the church, where is
still kept the _Gnadenbild_, or "Grace image," which is the object of
the pilgrimage--a figure of the Blessed Virgin holding her dead Son upon
her knees. These English tenants brought a private chaplain with them,
but, despite their privileges as English subjects, I believe there was
some trouble with the government authorities. However, they had mass
said for them at first in the church on weekdays. A priest from Camp,
the neighboring post-town, was allowed to come once in a week to say
mass for the people, but with locked doors, and on other days the
service was also held in the same way, though a few of the
country-people always managed to get in quietly before the doors were
shut. On Sundays mass was said for the strangers and their household
only in a little oratory up in the attics, which had a window looking
into the church near the roof of the chancel. One of them describes "our
drawing-room in the corner of the top floor, overlooking the river," and
"our life ... studying German, reading and writing in the morning, dining
early, walking out in the evening, tea-supper when we come home....
There are such pretty walks in the ravines and hills, in woods and
vineyards, and to the castles above and higher hills beyond! We brought
one man and a maid, who do not know German, and found two German
servants in the house, who do everything.... It is curious how cheaply
we live here; the German cook left here does everything for us, and we
are saying she makes us much better soups and omelettes and souffles
than any London cook." Now, as these three things happen to be special
tests of a cook's skill, this praise from an Englishman should somewhat
rebuke travelers who can find no word too vile for "German cookery."
[Illustration: RHEINGRAFENSTEIN.]
The time of the yearly pilgrimage came round during the stay of these
strangers, "and pilgrims came from Coblenz, a four hours' walk (in
mid-August and the temperature constantly in the nineties), on the
opposite side of the river, singing and chanting as they came, and
crossed the river here in boats. High mass was at half-past nine (in the
morning) and benediction at half-past one, immediately after which they
returned in boats down the stream much more quickly. The day before was
a more local pilgrimage: mass and benediction were at eight, but
pilgrims came about all the morning." Later on, when the great heat had
brought "premature autumn tints to the trees and burnt up the grass,"
the English family made some excursions in the neighborhood, and in one
place they came to a "forest and a large tract of tall trees," but this
was exceptional, as the soil is not deep enough to grow large timber,
and the woods are chiefly low underwood. The grapes were small, and on
the 22d of August they tasted the first plateful at Stolzenfels, an old
castle restored by the queen-dowager of Prussia, and now the property of
the empress of Germany. "The view from it is lovely up and down the
river, and the situation splendid--about four hundred feet above the
river, with high wooded hills behind, just opposite the Lahn where it
falls into the Rhine." Wolfgang Mueller describes Stolzenfels as a
beautiful specimen of the old German style, with a broad smooth road
leading up over drawbridges and moats, with mullioned windows and
machicolated towers, and an artistic open staircase intersected by three
pointed arches, and looking into an inner courtyard, with a fountain
surrounded by broad-leaved tropical water-plants. The sight of a
combination of antique dignity with correct modern taste is a delight so
seldom experienced that it is worth while dwelling on this pleasant fact
as brought out in the restoration of Stolzenfels, the "Proud Rock." And
that the Rhinelanders are proud of their river is no wonder when
strangers can talk about it thus: "The Rhine is a river which grows
upon you, living in a pretty part of its course:... its less beauteous
parts have their own attractions to the natives, and its beauties,
perhaps exaggerated, unfold greatly the more you explore them, not to be
seen by a rushing tourist up and down the stream by rail or by boat, but
sought out and contemplated from its heights and windings.... In fact,
the pretty part of its course is from Bingen to Bonn. Here we are in a
wonderfully winding gorge, containing nearly all its picturesque old
castles, uninterrupted by any flat. The stream is rapid enough, four
miles an hour or more--not equal to the Rhone at Geneva, but like that
river in France. One does not wonder at the Germans being enthusiastic
over their river, as the Romans were over the yellow Tiber."
[Illustration: MOUSE-TOWER (OR BISHOP HATTO'S TOWER) AND EHRENFELS.]
[Illustration: THE LORELEI ROCK.]
Other excursions were made by the Bornhofen visitors, one up a hill on
the opposite side, over sixteen hundred feet high, whence a fine distant
view of the Mosel Valley was seen, and one also to the church of St.
Apollinaris, at Remagen, at some distance down the river, where are
"some fine frescoes by German artists covering the whole interior of
the church. One artist painted four or five large ones of the
Crucifixion, Resurrection and other events relating to the life of Our
Lord; a second several of the life of St. Apollinaris, and two others
some of Our Lady and various saints, one set being patron saints of the
founder's children, whom I think we saw at Baden--Carl Egon, Count
Fuerstenberg-Stammheim.... The family-house stands close to the church,
or one of his houses, and seems to have been made into a Franciscan
convent: the monks are now banished and the church deserted, a _custode_
(guardian) in charge. We went one day to Limburg to see the bishop of
this diocese, a dear old man who only speaks German, so E---- and
C---- carried on all the conversation. The cathedral is a fine old Norman
building with seven towers: it is undergoing restoration, and the
remains of old frescoes under the whitewash are the ground-work of
renewed ones. Where an old bit is perfect enough it is left."
[Illustration: A STREET IN LIMBURG.]
Camp, a mile from Bornhofen, is an insignificant place enough, but
claiming to have been a Roman camp, and having an old convent as
picturesque as those of far-famed and much-visited towns. The same
irregular windows, roofed turrets springing up by the side of tall
gables, a corner-shrine of Our Lady and Child, with vines and ivy making
a niche for it, mossy steps, a broken wall with trailing vines and steep
stone-roofed recess, probably an old niche,--such is a sketch of what
would make a thoroughly good picture; but in this land there are so many
such that one grows too familiar with them to care for the sight. Nearly
opposite is Boppard, a busy ancient town, with a parish church beautiful
enough for a cathedral--St. Severin's church, with carved choir-stalls
and a double nave--and the old Benedictine monastery for women, now a
cold-water cure establishment. Boppard has its legend of a shadowy
Templar and a faithless bridegroom challenged by the former, who turned
out to be the forsaken bride herself; but of these legends, one so like
the other, this part of the Rhine is full. The next winding of the
stream shows us Oberspay, with a romantic tavern, carved pillars
supporting a windowed porch, and a sprawling kind of roof; the "King's
Stool," a modern restoration of the mediaeval pulpit or platform of stone
supported by pillars, with eighteen steps and a circumference of forty
ells, where the Rhenish prince-archbishops met to choose the temporal
sovereigns who were in part their vassals; Oberlahnstein, a town famous
for its possession in perfect repair of the ancient fortifications;
Lahneck, now a private residence, once the property of the Templars;
Stolzenfels, of which we have anticipated a glimpse; the island of
Oberwoerth, with an old convent of St. Magdalen, and in the distance
frowning Ehrenbreitstein, the fortress of Coblenz.
Turning up the course of the Lahn, we get to the neighborhood of a small
but famous bathing-place, Ems, the cradle of the Franco-Prussian war,
where the house in which Emperor William lodged is now shown as an
historic memento, and effaces the interest due to the old gambling
Kursaal. The English chapel, a beautiful small stone building already
ivied; the old synagogue, a plain whitewashed building, where the
service is conducted in an orthodox but not very attractive manner; the
pretty fern- and heather-covered woods, through which you ride on
donkeyback; the gardens, where a Parisian-dressed crowd airs itself late
in the afternoon; all the well-known adjuncts of a spa, and the most
delightful baths I ever saw, where in clean little chambers you step
down three steps into an ample marble basin sunk in the floor, and may
almost fancy yourself a luxurious Roman of the days of Diocletian,--such
is Ems. But its environs are full of wider interest. There is Castle
Schaumburg, where for twenty years the archduke Stephen of Austria,
palatine of Hungary, led a useful and retired life, making his house as
orderly and seemly as an English manor-house, and more interesting to
the strangers, whose visits he encouraged, by the collections of
minerals, plants, shells and stuffed animals and the miniature
zoological and botanical gardens which he kept up and often added to. I
spent a day there thirteen years ago, ten years before he died, lamented
by his poor neighbors, to whom he was a visible providence. Another
house of great interest is the old Stein mansion in the little town of
Nassau, the home of the upright and patriotic minister of that name,
whose memory is a household word in Germany. The present house is a
comfortable modern one--a _chateau_ in the French sense of the word--but
the old shattered tower above the town is the cradle of the family. At
the village of Fruecht is the family-vault and the great man's monument,
a modern Gothic canopy, somewhat bald and characterless, but bearing a
fine statue of Stein by Schwanthaler, and an inscription in praise of
the "unbending son of bowed-down Fatherland." He came of a good stock,
for thus runs his father's funeral inscription, in five alliterative
German rhymes. I can give it but lamely:
His nay was nay, and steady,
His yea was yea, and ready:
Of his promise ever mindful,
His lips his conscience ne'er belied,
And his word was bond and seal.
Stein was born in the house where he retired to spend his last years in
study: his grave and pious nature is shown in the mottoes with which he
adorned his home: "A tower of strength is our God" over the house-door,
and in his library, above his books and busts and gathering of
life-memorials, "Confidence in God, singleness of mind and
righteousness." His contemporaries called him, in a play upon his name
which, as such things go, was not bad, "The foundation-_stone_ of right,
the stumbling-_stone_ of the wicked, and the precious _stone_ of
Germany." Arnstein and its old convent, now occupied by a solitary
priest: Balduinenstein and its rough-hewn, cyclopean-looking ruin,
standing over the mossy picturesque water-mill; the marble-quarries near
Schaumburg, worked by convicts; Diez and its conglomeration of houses
like a puzzle endowed with life,--are all on the way to Limburg, the
episcopal town, old and tortuous, sleepy and alluring, with its shady
streets, its cathedral of St. George and its monument of the
lion-hearted Conrad or Kuno, surnamed Shortbold (Kurzbold), a nephew of
Emperor Conrad, a genuine woman-hater, a man of giant strength but
dwarfish height, who is said to have once strangled a lion, and at
another time sunk a boatful of men with one blow of his spear. The
cathedral, the same visited by our Bornhofen friends, has other
treasures--carved stalls and a magnificent image of Our Lord of the
sixteenth century, a Gothic baptismal font and a richly-sculptured
tabernacle, as well as a much older image of _St. George and the
Dragon_, supposed by some to refer to the legendary existence of
monsters in the days when Limburg was heathen. Some such idea seems also
not to have been remote from the fancy of the mediaeval sculptor who
adorned the brave Conrad's monument with such elaborately monstrous
figures: it was evidently no lack of skill and delicacy that dictated
such a choice of supporters, for the figure of the hero is lifelike,
dignified and faithful to the minute description of his features and
stature left us by his chronicler, while the beauty of the leaf-border
of the slab and of the capitals of the short pillars is such as to
excite the envy of our best modern carvers.
[Illustration: CONRAD'S MONUMENT, LIMBURG CATHEDRAL.]
LADY BLANCHE MURPHY.
EDINBURGH JOTTINGS.
Whenever Scott's landau went up the Canongate, his coachman knew without
special instructions that the pace must be a walk; and no funeral, says
Lockhart, ever moved more slowly, for wherever the great enthusiast
might turn his gaze there was recalled to his mind some tradition of
blood and mystery at which his eye would sparkle and his cheek glow. How
by the force of his genius he inoculated the world with his enthusiasm
about the semi-savage Scotia of the past is a well-known story:
thousands of tourists, more or less struck with the Scott madness,
yearly wander through the streets of old Edinburgh; and although within
the quarter of a century since Sir Walter's death many memorials of the
past have been swept away under the pressure of utility or necessity,
the Old Town still poses remarkably well, and, gathering her rags and
tatters about her, contrives to keep up a strikingly picturesque
appearance.
[Illustration: THE CASTLE AND ALLAN RAMSAY'S HOUSE.]
The Old Town of Edinburgh is built upon a wedge-shaped hill, the Castle
occupying the highest point, the head of the wedge, and the town
extending along the crest, which slopes gradually down toward the east,
to Holyrood Palace in the plain. Lawnmarket, High street and Canongate
now form one continuous street, which, running along the crest of the
hill, may be considered as the backbone of the town, with wynds and
closes radiating on each side like the spines of the vertebrae. The
closes are courts, culs-de-sac--the wynds, thoroughfares. These
streets--courts where, in the past, lived the nobility and gentry of
Edinburgh--are now, for the most part, given up to squalor and misery,
and look like stage-scenes perpetually "set" for melodramatic horrors.
The late Dr. Thomas Guthrie, whose parish included a large portion of
this Egypt, used often to illustrate his eloquence with graphic
word-pictures suggested by his experiences in these dark places. "The
unfurnished floor," he writes, "the begrimed and naked walls, the
stifling, sickening atmosphere, the patched and dusty window--through
which a sunbeam, like hope, is faintly stealing--the ragged,
hunger-bitten and sad-faced children, the ruffian man, the heap of straw
where some wretched mother in muttering dreams sleeps off last night's
debauch or lies unshrouded and uncoffined in the ghastliness of a
hopeless death, are sad scenes. We have often looked on them, and they
appear all the sadder for the restless play of fancy excited by some
vestiges of a fresco-painting that still looks out from the foul and
broken plaster, the massive marble rising over the cold and cracked
hearthstone, an elaborately-carved cornice too high for shivering cold
to pull it down for fuel, some stucco flowers or fruit yet pendent on
the crumbling ceiling. Fancy, kindled by these, calls up the gay scenes
and actors of other days, when beauty, elegance and fashion graced these
lonely halls, and plenty smoked on groaning tables, and where these few
cinders, gathered from the city dustheap, are feebly smouldering,
hospitable fires roared up the chimney."
[Illustration: OLD EDINBURGH BY NIGHT.]
These houses are built upon the "flat" system, some of the better ones
having a court in the centre like French houses, and turrets at the
corners for the circular staircases connecting the different flats.
Fires and improvements are rapidly sweeping them away, and the traveler
regrets or not their disappearance, according as his views may be
sentimental or sanitarian. They are truly ill adapted to modern ideas of
hygiene, or to those cunning modern devices which sometimes poison their
very inventors. While we may smile at our ancestors' free and easy way
of pitching things out of the window, we should at least remember that
they knew nothing of the modern plague of sewer-gas stealing its
insidious way into the apparently best-regulated households. But without
entering upon the vexed question of hygiene, the fact is that where
there is no reason for propping up a tottering roof except that it once
sheltered some bloody, cattle-stealing chieftain of the Border,
utilitarian sentiments carry the day; nor ought any enthusiast to deny
that the heart-shaped figure on the High street pavement, marking the
spot where the Heart of Mid Lothian once stood, is a more cheerful sight
than would be presented by the foul walls of that romantic jail.
[Illustration: RIDDLE'S CLOSE, WHERE HUME COMMENCED HIS "HISTORY OF
ENGLAND."]
The modes of life in old Edinburgh have been amply illustrated by many
writers. Among the novel-writers, Scott and Miss Ferrier have especially
dwelt upon them. The tavern-haunting habits of the gentlemen are
pleasantly depicted in the "high jinks" in _Guy Mannering_, and the
depth of potations may be estimated by Burns's "Song of the Whistle." As
to the ladies, we should not have found their assemblies very hilarious,
where partners for the dance were obtained by drawing tickets, and the
lucky or unlucky swain danced one solemn minuet with his lady, and was
not expected to quit her side during the evening--
Through a long night to watch fair Delia's will,
The same dull swain was at her elbow still.
The huge stack of buildings called James's Court is associated with the
names of Boswell and of Hume. Half of it has been destroyed by fire,
and precisely that half in which these two worthies once dwelt, but
there is quite enough of it left to show what a grim monster it was,
and, for that matter, still is. In Boswell's time it was a fine thing to
have a flat in James's Court. Here Boswell was living when Dr. Johnson
came to visit him. Boswell, having received a note from Johnson
announcing his arrival, hastened to the inn, where he found the great
man had just thrown his lemonade out of the window, and had nearly
knocked down the waiter for sweetening the said lemonade without the aid
of the sugar-tongs.
"Mr. Johnson and I walked arm-in-arm up the High street," says Boswell,
"to my house in James's Court: it was a dusky night: I could not prevent
his being assailed by the evening effluvia of Edinburgh. As we marched
slowly along he grumbled in my ear, 'I smell you in the dark.'"
Mrs. Boswell had never seen Johnson before, and was by no means charmed
with him, as Johnson was not slow to discover. In a matrimonial aside
she whispered to her husband, "I have seen many a bear led by a man, but
I never before saw a man led by a bear." No doubt her provocations were
great, and she wins the compassionate sympathy of all good housekeepers
when they read of Ursa Major brightening up the candles by turning the
melted wax out on the carpet.
Many years after this, but while Boswell was still living in James's
Court, a lad named Francis Jeffrey one night helped to carry the great
biographer home--a circumstance in the life of a gentleman much more of
an every-day or every-night affair at that time than at present. The
next day Boswell patted the lad on the head, and kindly added, "If you
go on as you have begun, you may live to be a Bozzy yourself yet."
The stranger who enters what is apparently the ground-floor of one of
these houses on the north side of High street is often surprised to find
himself, without having gone up stairs, looking from a fourth-story
window in the rear. This is due to the steep slope on which the houses
stand, and gives them the command of a beautiful view, including the New
Town, and extending across the Firth of Forth to the varied shores of
Fife. From his flat in James's Court we find David Hume, after his
return from France, writing to Adam Smith, then busy at Kirkcaldy about
the _Wealth of Nations_, "I am glad to have come within sight of you,
and to have a view of Kirkcaldy from my windows."
Another feature of these houses is the little cells designed for
oratories or praying-closets, to which the master of the house was
supposed to retire for his devotions, in literal accordance with the
gospel injunction. David Hume's flat had two of these, for the spiritual
was relatively better cared for than the temporal in those days: plenty
of praying-closets, but _no drains_! This difficulty was got over by
making it lawful for householders, after ten o'clock at night, to throw
superfluous material out of the window--a cheerful outlook for Boswell
and others being "carried home"!
[Illustration: BUCCLEUGH PLACE, WHERE THE "EDINBURGH REVIEW" WAS
PROJECTED.]
[Illustration: COLLEGE WYND, WHERE SCOTT WAS BORN.]
At the bottom of Byre's Close a house is pointed out where Oliver
Cromwell stayed, and had the advantage of contemplating from its lofty
roof the fleet which awaited his orders in the Forth. The same house was
once occupied by Bothwell, bishop of Orkney, and is associated with the
memory of Anne, the bishop's daughter, whose sorrows are enbalmed in
plaintive beauty in the old cradle-song:
Baloo,[A] my boy, lie still and sleep,
It grieves me sair to see thee weep:
If thou'lt be silent, I'll be glad;
Thy mourning makes my heart full sad.
Baloo, my boy, thy mother's joy,
Thy father bred me great annoy.
Baloo, Baloo, etc.
Baloo, my boy, weep not for me,
Whose greatest grief's for wranging thee,
Nor pity her deserved smart,
Who can blame none but her fond heart;
For too soon trusting latest finds
With fairest tongues are falsest minds.
Baloo, Baloo, etc.
When he began to court my love,
And with his sugared words to move,
His tempting face and flutt'ring cheer
In time to me did not appear;
But now I see that cruel he
Cares neither for his babe nor me.
Baloo, Baloo, etc.
Baloo, my boy, thy father's fled,
When he the thriftless son has played:
Of vows and oaths forgetful, he
Preferred the wars to thee and me;
But now perhaps thy curse and mine
Makes him eat acorns with the swine.
Baloo, Baloo, etc.
Nay, curse not him: perhaps now he,
Stung with remorse, is blessing thee;
Perhaps at death, for who can tell
But the great Judge of heaven and hell,
By some proud foe has struck the blow,
And laid the dear deceiver[B] low.
Baloo, Baloo, etc.
I wish I were into the bounds
Where he lies smother'd in his wounds,
Repeating, as he pants for air,
My name, whom once he call'd his fair.
No woman's yet so fiercely set
But she'll forgive, though not forget.
Baloo, Baloo, etc.
[Illustration: ANCHOR CLOSE.]
The tourist finds much to read, as he runs through old Edinburgh, in the
mottoes on the house-fronts. These are mostly of a scriptural and devout
character, such as: "Blissit.Be.God.In.Al.His.Giftis;" or,
"Blissit.Be.The.Lord.In.His.Giftis.For.Nov.And.Ever." If he peeps into
Anchor Close, where once was a famous tavern, he will find it entirely
occupied by the buildings of the _Scotsman_ newspaper, but the
mottoes have been carefully preserved and built into the walls.
The first is, "The.Lord. Is.Only.My.Svport;" a little farther
on, "O.Lord.In.The.Is.Al.My.Traist;" and over the door,
"Lord.Be.Merciful.To.Me." On other houses he may read,
"Feare.The.Lord.And.Depart.From.Evill;" "Faith.In.Chryst.Onlie.Savit;"
"My.Hoip.Is.Chryst;" "What.Ever.Me.Befall.I.Thank.The.Lord.Of.All."
There are also many in the Latin tongue, such as, "Lavs Vbique Deo;"
"Nisi Dominvs Frvstra" (the City motto);
"Pax Intrantibvs,
Salvs Exevntibvs."
Here is one in the vernacular:
"Gif.Ve.Died.As.Ve.Sovld.Ve.Mycht.Haif.As.Ve.Vald;" which is translated,
"If we did as we should, we might have as we would."
[Illustration: JOHN KNOX'S STUDY.]
Near the end of the High street, on the way to the Canongate, stands
John Knox's house, which has been put in order and made a show-place.
The exterior, from its exceedingly picturesque character, is more
attractive than the interior. The house had originally belonged to the
abbot of Dunfermline, and when taken by Knox a very snug little study
was added, built of wood and projecting from the front, in accordance
with an order from the magistrates, directing "with al diligence to make
ane warm studye of dailles to the minister John Knox, within his
hous, aboue the hall of the same, with light and wyndokis
thereunto, and al uther necessaris." The motto of this house is
"Lvfe.God.Abvfe.Al.And.Yi.Nychtbovr.As.Yi.Self." A curious image at one
corner was long thought to represent Knox preaching, and probably still
does so in the popular belief; but others now think it represents Moses.
It is an old man kneeling, with one hand resting on a tablet, and with
the other pointing up to a stone above him carved to resemble the sun,
and having on its disk the name of the Deity in three languages:
"[Greek: THEOS].Deus.God."
Of the style of Knox's preaching, even when he was enfeebled by
ill-health, one gets a good idea from the following passage in James
Melville's diary: "And by the said Rickart and an other servant, lifted
up to the pulpit whar he behovit to lean, at his first entrie; bot or he
had done with his sermon, he was sa active and vigorous, that he was lyk
to ding that pulpit in blads and flie out of it."
[Illustration: ROOM IN WHICH KNOX DIED.]
Passing on down Canongate, once the court suburb, we come to Moray
House, the former residence of the earls of Moray, and at one time
occupied by Cromwell. It is now used for a school, and is in much better
preservation than many of its neighbors. At the very bottom of the
Canongate, not far from Holyrood House, stands the White Horse Inn. The
house has not been an inn for many years, but was chosen by Scott as the
quarters of Captain Waverley: its builders probably thought little of
beauty when they built it, yet squalor, dilapidation and decay have
given it the elements of the picturesque, and the fact that Scott has
mentioned it is sufficient to nerve the tourist to hold his nose and
admire.
A black, gaunt, forbidding-looking structure near at hand was once the
residence of the dukes of Queensberry. Charles, the third duke, was born
in it: it is his duchess, Lady Catherine Hyde, whose pranks are so
frequently recorded in Horace Walpole's letters--"very clever, very
whimsical, and just not mad." Their Graces did not often occupy their
Scottish residences, but in 1729, the lord chamberlain having refused
his license to Gay's play, _Polly_, a continuation of the _Beggar's
Opera_, the duke and duchess took Gay's part so warmly as to leave the
court and retire to Queensberry House, bringing the poet with them.
[Illustration: WHITE HORSE INN.]
The duchess was much sung by the poets of her day, among them Prior, who
is now so little read that we may recall a few of his once well-known
verses:
"Shall I thumb holy books, confined
With Abigails forsaken?
Kitty's for other things designed,
Or I am much mistaken.
Must Lady Jenny frisk about,
And visit with her cousins?
At balls must she make all the rout,
And bring home hearts by dozens?
"What has she better, pray, than I?
What hidden charms to boast,
That all mankind for her should die,
Whilst I am scarce a toast?
Dearest mamma, for once let me,
Unchained, my fortune try:
I'll have my earl as well as she,
Or know the reason why.
"I'll soon with Jenny's pride quit score,
Make all her lovers fall:
They'll grieve I was not loosed before--
She, I was loosed at all."
Fondness prevailed, mamma gave way:
Kitty, at heart's desire,
Obtained the chariot for a day,
And set the world on fire!
On the death of Duke Charles, Queensberry House came into the possession
of his cousin, the earl of March, a singular man-about-town in London,
known as "Old Q.:" he stripped it of all its ornaments, without and
within, and sold it to the government for a barracks. It is now used as
a house of refuge. On its gate are the following notices: "White-seam
sewing neatly executed." "Applications for admission by the destitute
any lawful day from 10 to 12." "Bread and soup supplied from 1 to 3,
afternoon. Porridge supplied from 8 to 9, morning, 6 to 7, evening."
"Night Refuge open at 7 P.M. No admission on Sundays." "No person
allowed more than three nights' shelter in one month." Such are the
mottoes that now adorn the house which sheltered Prior's Kitty.
A striking object in the same vicinity is the Canongate Tolbooth, with
pepper-box turrets and a clock projecting from the front on iron
brackets, which have taken the place of the original curiously-carved
oaken beams. Executions sometimes took place in front of this building,
which led wags to find a grim joke in its motto: "Sic.Itvr.Ad.Astra." A
more frequent place of execution was the Girth Cross, near the foot of
the Canongate, which marked the limit of the right of sanctuary
belonging to the abbey of Holyrood. At the Girth Cross, Lady Warriston
was executed for the murder of her husband, which has been made the
subject of many ballads:
My mother was an ill woman:
In fifteen years she married me.
I hadna wit to guide a man:
Alas! ill counsel guided me.
O Warriston! O Warriston!
I wish that ye may sink fire in:
I was but bare fifteen years auld
When first I entered your gates within.
I hadna been a month married,
Till my gude lord went to the sea:
I bare a bairn ere he came hame,
And set it on the nourice knee.
But it fell ance upon a day
That my gude lord return'd from sea:
Then I did dress in the best array,
As blythe as ony bird on tree.
I took my young son in my arms,
Likewise my nourice me forebye,
And I went down to yon shore-side,
My gude lord's vessel I might spy.
My lord he stood upon the deck,
I wyte he hail'd me courteouslie:
"Ye are thrice welcome, my lady gay:
Wha'se aught that bairn on your knee?"
She turn'd her right and roundabout,
Says, "Why take ye sic dreads o' me?
Alas! I was too young married
To love another man but thee."
"Now hold your tongue, my lady gay:
Nae mair falsehoods ye'll tell to me;
This bonny bairn is not mine;
You've loved another while I was on sea."
In discontent then hame she went,
And aye the tear did blin' her e'e:
Says, "Of this wretch I'll be revenged
For these harsh words he said to me."
She's counsel'd wi' her father's steward,
What way she cou'd revenged be:
Bad was the counsel then he gave:
It was to gar her gude lord dee.
The nourice took the deed in hand:
I wat she was well paid her fee:
She keist the knot, and the loop she ran
Which soon did gar this young lord dee.
[Illustration: HOLYROOD AND BURNS'S MONUMENT.]
Another version has:
The nurice she knet the knot,
And oh, she knet it sicker:
The ladie did gie it a twig,
Till it began to wicker.
The murder was committed on the 2d of July, 1600, and with the speedy
justice of that time the punishment followed on the 5th. The lady was
sentenced to be "wooried at the stake and brint," but her relatives had
influence enough to secure a modification of the sentence, so that she
was beheaded by the "maiden," a form of guillotine introduced by the
Regent Morton. The original sentence was executed upon the nurse, who
had no powerful relatives.
[Illustration: STONE ON WHICH THE COVENANT WAS SIGNED.]
Directly opposite the Canongate Tolbooth is a very antiquated dwelling,
with three gables to the street, which converses with the passer-by on
envy and backbiting. It begins: "Hodie.Mihi.Cras.Tibi.Cur.Igitur.Curas"
("To-day, mine; to-morrow, thine; why then care?"). As if premising an
unsatisfactory answer, it continues: "Ut Tu Linguae Tuae, Sic Ego Mear.
Aurium, Dominus Sum." ("As thou of thy tongue, so I of my ears, am
lord"), and finally takes refuge in "Constanti Pectori Res Mortalium
Umbra" ("To the steadfast heart the affairs of mortals are but
shadows").
In the plain at the foot of the Canongate stands Holyrood Abbey and
Palace, which, with the exception of one wing containing Queen Mary's
apartments, has been rebuilt within comparatively modern times. The
abbey church is a crumbling ruin, although a power amid its decay, for
it possesses still the right of sanctuary. This refuge offered by the
Church was a softening and humanizing influence when private feuds were
settled by the sword and the Far-West principle of death at sight
generally prevailed: later on, it became an abuse, and gradually
disappeared. The Holyrood sanctuary is the only one now existing in
Great Britain, but is available for insolvent debtors only: it includes
the precincts of the palace and the Queen's Park (five miles in
circumference), but it contains no buildings except in that portion of
the precincts extending from the palace to the foot of Canongate, about
one hundred and thirty yards in a direct line. Within this limited
district the debtor seeks his lodging, has the Queen's Park for his
recreation, and on Sundays is free to go where he likes, as on that day
he cannot be molested. It was a curious relic of old customs to read in
Edinburgh newspapers in the year 1876 the following extract from a
debtor's letter, in which he makes his terms with the sheriff: "However
desirous I am to obey the order of the sheriff to attend my examination,
I am sorry to be obliged to intimate that in consequence of the
vindictive and oppressive proceedings of some of my creditors I cannot
present myself in court at the diet fixed unless protection from
personal diligence be granted. I will have much pleasure, however, in
attending the court in the event of the sheriff granting a special
warrant to bring me from the sanctuary, which warrant shall protect me
against arrest for debt and other civil obligations while under
examination, and on the way to and from the place of examination." The
sheriff granted the warrant.
From Holyrood we fancy the traveler next remounting the hill into the
Old Town, and seeking out the churchyard of Greyfriars, whose
monuments, full of interest to the student and the antiquary, are in
themselves an epitome of Scottish history. The church has been ravaged
by fire and rebuilt, so that it retains but little antiquity: the
churchyard, on the other hand, has seen few changes except in the
increase of its monuments as time has passed on.
Here the Solemn League and Covenant was entered into. It was first read
in the church, and agreed to by all there, and then handed to the crowd
without, who signed it on the flat tombstones.
Among the most conspicuous monuments in this churchyard are, on the one
hand, that to those who died for their fidelity to this Covenant, and on
the other the tomb of Sir George Mackenzie, king's advocate and public
prosecutor of the Covenanters.
On the Martyrs' Monument, as it is called, one reads: "From May 27th,
1661, that the most noble marquis of Argyle was beheaded, until Feb.
18th, 1688, there were executed in Edinburgh about one hundred noblemen,
gentlemen, ministers and others: the most of them lie here.
"But as for them no cause was to be found
Worthy of death, but only they were sound,
Constant, and steadfast, zealous, witnessing
For the prerogatives of Christ their King,
Which truths were sealed by famous Guthrie's head."
And so on.
Dr. Thomas Guthrie, who, as we have seen, found much inspiration in the
scenes of his daily walks, sought to trace his origin back to this
Guthrie of the Martyrs' Monument. "I failed," he wrote, "yet am
conscious that the idea and probability of this has had a happy
influence on my public life, in determining me to contend and suffer, if
need be, for the rights of Christ's crown and the liberties of His
Church."
The learning and accomplishments of Sir George Mackenzie were forgotten
amid the religious animosities of his day, and he came down to posterity
as the terror of nursery-maids and a portentous bugaboo under the name
of Bloody Mackenzie. It is related that the boys of the town were in the
habit of gathering at nightfall about his tomb and shouting in at the
keyhole,
Bluidy Mackenzie, come out if ye daur:
Lift the sneck and draw the bar!
after which they would scatter, as if they feared the tenant might take
them at their word. The tomb is a handsome circular Roman temple, now
much dilapidated by weather and soot, and so dark and sombre as to make
it very uncanny in the gloaming, especially to one approaching it with
the view of shouting "Bluidy Mackenzie" through the keyhole. This
popular superstition was once turned to account by a youth under
sentence of death for burglary. His friends aided him in escaping from
prison, and provided him with a key to this mausoleum, where he passed
six weeks in the tomb with the Bluidy Mackenzie--a situation of horror
made tolerable only as a means of escape from death. Food was brought to
him at night, and when the heat of pursuit was over he got to a vessel
and out of the country.
[Illustration: MACKENZIE'S TOMB.]
The New Town of Edinburgh is separated from the Old Town by the ravine
of the North Loch, over which are thrown the bridges by which the two
towns are connected. The loch has been drained and is now occupied by
the Public Gardens and by the railway. The New Town is substantially the
work of the last half of the past century and the first half of the
present one--a period which sought everywhere except at home for its
architectural models. In some of the recent improvements in the Old Town
very pretty effects have been produced by copying the better features of
the ancient dwellings all around them, but the grandiloquent ideas of
the Georgian era could not have been content with anything so simple and
homespun as this. Its ideal was the cold and pompous, and it succeeded
in giving to the New-Town streets that distant and repellent air of
supreme self-satisfaction which makes the houses appear to say to the
curious looker-on, "Seek no farther, for in us you find the perfectly
correct thing." The embodiment of this spirit may be seen in the bronze
statue of George IV. by Chantrey, in George street: the artist has
caught the pert strut so familiar in the portraits, at sight of which
one involuntarily exclaims, "Behold the royal swell!"
[Illustration: THE NORTH BRIDGE.]
But the New Town has two superb features, about whose merits all are
agreed: we need hardly say these are Princes street and the Calton
Hill. Princes street extends along the brow of the hill over-hanging the
ravine which separates the two towns, and which is now occupied by
public gardens: along their grassy slopes the eye wanders over trees and
flowers to the great rock which o'ertops the greenery, bearing aloft the
Castle as its crown, while from the Castle the Old Town, clustering
along the height, streams away like a dark and deeply-colored train. The
Calton Hill offers to the view a wide-spreading panorama. At our feet
are the smoking chimneys of Auld Reekie, from which we gladly turn our
eyes to the blue water and the shores of Fife, or seek out in the shadow
of Salisbury Crags and Arthur's Seat the tottering arch of Holyrood
Abbey. The hill is well dotted over,
All up and down and here and there,
With Lord-knows-what's of round and square;
which on examination prove to be monuments to the great departed. A
great change has taken place in the prevalent taste since they were
erected, and they are not now pointed out to the stranger with fond
pride, as in the past generation. The best one is that to Dugald
Stewart, an adaptation, the guide-books say, of the Choragic Monument of
Lysicrates. The all-pervading photograph has made it so familiar that it
comes upon one as an old friend.
The Burns Monument is a circular edifice with columns and a cupola. It
has all the outward semblance of a tomb, so that one is rather startled
to find it tenanted by a canny Scot--a live one--who presides with
becomingly sepulchral gravity over a twopenny show of miscellaneous
trumpery connected with Robert Burns. Everywhere in old Edinburgh we
have seen going on the inevitable struggle between utility and
sentiment: at Burns's Monument it ceases, and we conclude our ramble at
this point, where the sentimentalist and the utilitarian shake hands,
the former deeply sympathizing with the sentiment which led to the
building of the monument, while the latter fondly admires the ingenuity
which can turn even a cenotaph to account.
ALFRED S. GIBBS.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Baloo is a lullaby, supposed to be from the French _Bas, la le
loup_--"Lie still, the wolf is coming."
[B] The "dear deceiver" was said to have been her cousin, the Hon.
Alexander Erskine, brother to the earl of Mar. He came to a violent
death, although not in the manner suggested in the ballad. While
stationed at Dunglass Castle, engaged in collecting levies for the army
of the Covenanters, an angry page thrust a red-hot poker into the
powder-magazine, and blew him up with a number of others, so that there
was "never bone nor hyre seen of them again."
A LAW UNTO HERSELF.
CHAPTER I.
On a raw, cloudy afternoon in early spring a few years ago a
family-carriage was driven slowly down a lonely road in one of the
outlying suburbs of Philadelphia, stopping at last in front of an
apparently vacant house. This house was built of gray stone, and stood
back from the road, surrounded by a few sombre pines and much rank
shrubbery: shrubbery and trees, and the house itself, had long been
abandoned to decay.
"Heah am de place, sah," said the footman, opening the carriage-door.
An old gentleman in shabby clothes, embellished dramatically by a red
necktie, an empty sleeve pinned to his breast, sprang out briskly; a
lady followed, and stood beside him: then a younger man, his head
muffled in a close fur cap, a yellow shawl wrapped about his neck,
looked feebly out of the window. His face, which a pair of pale,
unkindled eyes had never lighted since he was born, had been incomplete
of meaning in his best days, and long illness had only emphasized its
weakness. He half rose, sat down again, stared uncertainly at the house,
yawned nervously, quite indifferent to the fact that the lady stood
waiting his pleasure. His money and his bodily sufferings--for he was
weighted heavily with both--were quite enough, in his view, to give him
the right to engross the common air and the service of other men and
women. Indeed, a certain indomitable conceit thrust itself into view in
his snub nose and retreating chin, which made it highly probable that if
he had been a stout day-laborer in the road yonder, he would have been
just as complacent as now, and have patronized his fellows in the ditch.
"Will you take my arm, William?" said the old man waiting in the road.
"This is the house."
"No. I have half a mind to drop the whole matter. Why should I drag out
the secrets of the grave? God knows, I shall find them out soon enough!"
"Just so. Precisely. It's a miserable business for this April day. Now,
I don't want to advise, but shall we drive out on the Wissahickon and
fish a bit? You'll catch a perch, and Jane shall broil it over the
coals, eh?"
"Oh, of course I'm going through with it," scowling and blinking through
his eye-glasses. "But we are ten minutes before the time. I can't sit in
a draughty room waiting. Tell David to drive slowly down the road until
four, Captain Swendon."
"Certainly, certainly," with the nervous conciliatory haste of a man
long used to being snubbed.--"You hear Mr. Laidley, David?--We'll
arrange it in this way, then. Miss Fleming and I will stroll down the
road, William, until the time is up.--No, Jane," as his daughter was
going to leave the carriage. "Stay with your cousin." The captain was
his peremptory self again. Like every man conscious of his own
inability, he asserted himself by incessant managing and meddling for
his neighbors.
The carriage jolted down the rutted road. The little man inside tossed
on the well-padded cushions, and moaned and puffed spasmodically at his
cigar.
Buff and David, stiff in green and gold on the box, nodded significantly
at each other. "He's nigh unto de end," said Buff. "De gates of glory am
creakin' foh him."
"Creakin', shore nuff. But 'bout de glory I'm not so shore. Yoh see, I
knows," rubbing his gray whiskers with the end of the whip. "I have him
in charge. Mass' Swendon gib orders: 'Yoh stick by him, Dave.' 'S got no
friends: 's got no backbone. Why, wid a twinge ob toothache he squirms
like an eel in de fire--swears to make de debbil turn pale. It'll be an
awful sight when Death gits a holt on him. But I'll stick."
Captain Swendon and Miss Fleming, left alone under the pines, both
turned and looked at the house as if it were an open grave.
"So it is here the dead are to come back?" said the captain with a
feebly-jocular giggle. "We'll go down the road a bit. 'Pon my soul, the
atmosphere here is ghastly."
They struck into the meadows, sauntered through a strip of woodland
where the sparrows were chirping in the thin green boughs overhead, and,
crossing some newly-ploughed fields, came suddenly upon a row of
contract-houses, bold, upright in the mud, aggressively new and genteel.
They were tricked out with thin marble facings and steps. A drug-shop
glittered already at one end of the block, and a milliner's furbelowed
window closed the other with a red-lettered sign, which might have
served as a motto for the whole: "Here you buy your dollar's worth of
fashion for your dime of cash."
"Ah!" cried the captain, "no ghostly work here!--the last place where
one would look for any miraculous stoppage of the laws of Nature."
"Stoppage, you should say, of the social laws of 'gents' and their
ladies, which are much more inexorable," said his companion. "Oh I know
them!" glancing in at the windows, as she tramped through the yellow
mud, with keen, amused eyes. "I know just what life must be in one of
these houses--the starving music-teacher on one side of you, and the
soapboiler on the other: the wretched small servant going the rounds of
the block to whiten the steps every evening, while the mistresses sit
within in cotton lace and sleazy silks, tinkling on the piano, or
counting up the greasy passbook from the grocer's. Imagine such a life
broken in upon by a soul from the other world!"
"Yet souls go out from it into the other world. And I've known good
women who wore cheap finery and aped gentility. Of course," with a
sudden gusty energy, "_I_ don't endorse that sort of thing; and I don't
believe the dead will come back to-day. Don't mistake me," shaking his
head. The captain was always gusty and emphatic. His high-beaked,
quick-glancing face and owlish eyes were ready to punctuate other men's
thoughts with an incessant exclamation-point to bring out their true
meaning. Since he was a boy he had known that he was born a
drill-sergeant and the rest of mankind raw recruits. "Now, there's
something terribly pathetic to me," he said, "in this whole expedition
of ours. The idea of poor Will in his last days trying to catch a
glimpse of the country to which he is going!"
Cornelia Fleming nodded, and let the subject drop. She never wasted her
time by peering into death or religion. She belonged to this world, and
she knew it. A wise racer keeps to the course for which he has been
trained, and never ventures into the quagmires beyond. She stopped
beside a tiny yard where a magnolia tree spread its bare stalks and dull
white flowers over the fence, and stood on tiptoe to break a bud. The
owner of the house, an old man with a box of carpenter's tools in his
hand, opened the door at the moment. She nodded brightly to him. "I am
robbing you, sir. For a sick friend yonder," she said.
He came down quickly and loaded her with flowers, thinking he had never
heard a voice as peculiar and pleasant. The captain, a little behind,
eyed her critically from head to foot, his mouth drawn up for a
meditative whistle, as she stood on tiptoe, her arm stretched up among
the creamy buds. The loose sleeve fell back: the arm was round and
white.
"Very good! ve-ry good!" the whistle meant; "and I know the points of a
fine woman as well as any of these young fellows."
Two young fellows, coming up, lingered to glance at the jimp waist and
finely-turned ankle, with a shrug to each other when, passing by, they
saw her homely face.
The captain gallantly relieved her of her flowers, and paraded down the
road, head up, elbows well out, as he used, thirty years ago, to escort
pretty Virginie Morot in the French quartier of New Orleans. It was long
since he had relished conversation as he did with this frank, generous
creature. No coquetry about her! It was like talking to a clever,
candid boy. Every man felt, in fact, with Cornelia, that she was only a
younger brother. He liked the hearty grasp of her big white hand; he
liked her honest, downright way of stating things, and her perfect
indifference to her own undeniable ugliness. Now, any other woman of her
age--thirty, eh? (with a quick critical glance)--would dye her hair: she
never cared to hide the streaks of gray through the yellow. She had
evidently long ago made up her mind that love and marriage were
impossible for women as unprepossessing as she: she stepped freely up,
therefore, to level ground with men, and struck hands and made
friendships with them precisely as if she were one of themselves.
The captain quite glowed with the fervor of this friendship as he
marched along talking energetically. A certain subtle instinct of
kinship between them seemed to him to trench upon the supernatural: it
covered every thought and taste. She had a keen wit, she grasped his
finest ideas: not even Jane laughed at his jokes more heartily. She
appreciated his inventive ability: he was not sure that Jane did. There
were topics, too, on which he could touch with this mature companion
that were caviare to Jane. It was no such mighty matter if he blurted
out an oath before her, as he used to do in the army. Something, indeed,
in the very presence of the light, full figure keeping step with his
own, in the heavy odor of the magnolias and the steady regard of the
yellowish-brown eyes, revived within him an old self which belonged to
those days in the army--a self which was not the man whom his daughter
knew, by any means.
They were talking at the time, as it happened, of his military
experience: "I served under Scott in Mexico. Jane thinks me a hero, of
course. But I confess to you that I enlisted, in the first place, to
keep the wolf out of the house at home. I had spent our last dollar in
manufacturing my patent scissors, and they--well, they wouldn't cut
anything, unless--I used to suspect Atropos had borrowed them and meant
to snip the thread for me, it was stretched so tightly just then."
She looked gravely at his empty sleeve.
The captain caught the glance, and coughed uncomfortably: "Oh, I did not
lose that in the service, you understand. No such luck! Five days after
I was discharged, after I had come out of every battle with a whole
skin, I was on a railway-train going home. Collision: arm taken off at
the elbow. If it had happened just one week earlier, I should have had a
pension, and Jane--Well, Jane has had a rough time of it, Miss Fleming.
But it was my luck!"
They had returned through the woods, and were in sight again of the
house standing darkly among the pines. Two gentlemen, pacing up and down
the solitary road, came down the hill to meet them.
"Tut! tut! It is that Virginia lawyer who has come up to get into
practice here--Judge Rhodes. You know him, Miss Fleming. There's an end
to our quiet talk. That fellow besieges a woman with his click-clack:
never leaves a crack for a sensible man to edge in a word."
Miss Fleming turned her honest eyes full on his for a moment, but did
not speak. The captain's startled, foolish old heart throbbed with a
feeling which he had not known since that day in the boat on the bayou
when Virginie Morot first put her warm little hand in his. Virginie as a
wife had been a trifle of a shrew. Love in the remembrance often has a
bitter twang. But this was friendship! How sweet were the friendship and
confidence of a woman! Pretty women of late years approached the captain
in his fatherly capacity, much to his disrelish. A man need not have his
gray hairs and rheumatism thrown in his teeth at every turn. Miss
Fleming, now, saw beneath them: she saw what a gallant young fellow he
was at heart. He looked down at her eagerly, but she was carelessly
inspecting the judge and his companion.
"Who is the fair-haired, natty little man?"
"Oh! Phil Waring, a young fellow about town. Society man. Too fond of
cards. Nice lad, but no experience: no companion for you, Miss Fleming."
A vague, subtle change passed over her. It was no definable alteration
in mind or body, yet a keener observer than the captain might have
suspected a readjustment of both to suit some possible new relation.
Mr. Waring and the judge joined them, and they all walked together
toward the house, engrossed with their errand. Miss Fleming never
expected from men the finical gallantry usually paid to young ladies,
and even the gallant Virginian did not give it to her. The captain
indeed, perceiving that she was occupied with Judge Rhodes, gave her up
to his escort. "It is almost four. I will go down the road and find the
carriage and William," he said, and left them.
Judge Rhodes, as they drew near the house, regarded it darkly: "Decay!
death and decay!" waving his pudgy red hands theatrically. "A gloomy
gate indeed, through which the dead might well choose to return."
"I should call it a badly-set stage for a poor melodrama," said Miss
Fleming coolly.
"But your character is so practical! You are fortunate in that." The
judge, who was a stout, bald man, gazed at the house with vague
abstraction and dilating nostrils. "Now, I am peculiarly susceptible to
spiritual influences. I have been since a boy as sensitive to pain, to,
ah--sympathies, to those, ah--electric cords, as Byron says, wherewith
we're darkly bound, as--as a wind-harp. I really dread the effect upon
myself of the revelations of to-day."
Miss Fleming was silent. The judge, as she knew, was one of those shrewd
common-sense men who, when lifted out of their place into the region of
sentiment or romance, swagger and generally misconduct themselves, like
a workman conscious of his ill-fitting Sunday finery.
One or two carriages drove up to the gate and stopped.
"Who are those people, Mr. Waring?" said the judge, dropping into his
ordinary tone.
Mr. Waring put on his eye-glasses. He knew everybody, and had as keen
an eye and strong an antipathy for eccentric characters in conventional
Philadelphia as a proof-reader for false type. "There is Dehr, the
German homoeopath and Spiritualist," he said in a little mild voice,
which oddly reminded Miss Fleming of the gurgling flow of new milk.
"That woman marching before him is his wife."
"I know," muttered the judge--"strong-minded. Most extraordinary women
turn up every day here. This one lectures on hygiene. Mad, undoubtedly."
"Oh no," said Waring--"very dull, good people, both of the Dehrs. Not
two ideas to share between them. But there are a dozen tow-headed
youngsters at home: they drive the old people into such out-of-the-way
courses to scratch for a living. That man in white is the great
Socialist, Schaus. The others are scientific fellows from New York and
Boston."
"I wish Van Ness was here," said the judge, nodding ponderously. "Van
Ness is better known in Richmond than any other Philadelphian, sir. Most
remarkable man. Science is well enough as far as it goes, but for clear
intelligence, give me Pliny Van Ness."
"No doubt," said Mr. Waring gravely. "Great reformer, I hear. Don't meet
him in society. Of a new family."
"Mr. Laidley objected to his coming," said Cornelia.
"He did, eh? I'm astonished at that," said the judge. "I consider Van
Ness--But Laidley had the right to object, of course. The meeting is one
of the captain's famous schemes--to amuse Laidley. But they tell me that
he knows he is dying, and has determined to bring a certain spirit out
of the other world to ask an important question."
"I should think," said Miss Fleming dryly, "Mr. Laidley would always
require supernatural aid to make up his mind for him. After I talk to
him I have the feeling that I have been handling froth. Not clean froth
either." When Miss Fleming made the men and women about her the subjects
of her skill in dissection, her voice took a neat incisive edge,
suggestive of the touch of a scalpel. Little Mr. Waring, pulling his
moustache thoughtfully, studied her for a moment without reply.
"Hoh!" laughed the judge. "You have a keen eye! There can be no doubt,"
suddenly sobering, "that Laidley has been uncommonly fast. But his blood
is good--none better in Maryland. High-toned family, the Laidleys. Mr.
Waring here could give you his life chapter by chapter if he would. But
he would skip over the dirty bits as carefully as he is doing in the
road."
"Laidley's life is so very nearly over," suggested Mr. Waring quietly.
There was an awkward silence of a moment.
"Now, I can't understand," blustered the judge, "how Captain Swendon can
nurse that fellow as tenderly as he is doing. I've got my share of
humanity and forgiveness, and all that. But if any man had thrust my
wife and child out of their property, as he has done, he had better have
kept out of my sight, sir. I know all about them, you see, for two
generations. Captain's wife was a New Orleans girl--Virginia Morot. It
wasn't a matter of property: it was starvation. Poor little
Virginie--pretty creature she was too!--would have been alive to-day,
there's no doubt of it, if she could have had proper food and medicines.
And there's his daughter! What kind of a life has she had for a girl
with such blood in her veins? Why, if I should tell you the sum on which
that child has supported herself and her father in Baltimore and here
since her mother died, you wouldn't believe me. And Laidley did nothing
for them. Not a penny! Under the circumstances it was a crime for him to
be alive."
"What were the circumstances?" asked Miss Fleming.
"The property, you understand, was old Morot's--Morot of New Orleans.
Virginie was his only child: she married Swendon, and her father came to
live with them in Baltimore. The two men were at odds from the first
day. Old Morot was a keen, pig-headed business-man: he knew nothing
outside of the tobacco-trade; worked in the counting-house all day; his
one idea of pleasure was to swill port and terrapin half the night.
Swendon--Well, you know the captain. He was a brilliant young fellow in
those days, full of ideas that never came to anything--an invention
every month which was to make his fortune. They quarreled, of course the
wife sided with her husband, and Morot, in a fit of rage, left the whole
property to his nephew, Will Laidley. When he was on his deathbed,
however, the old man relented and sent for Laidley. It was too late to
alter the will, but he charged him to do justice to his daughter.
Laidley has told me that much himself. But it never occurred to him that
justice meant anything more than to keep the estate, and allow it at his
death to revert to Jane and her father."
"Well, well!" cried Mr. Waring hastily, "that cannot be far off now.
Laidley is so nearly a thing of the past, judge, that we might afford to
bury his faults with him, decently out of sight."
"I can't put out of sight the years of want for Virginie and her child
while he was throwing their money to the dogs in every gambling-hell in
Baltimore and New York. Why, the story was so well known that when he
came down to Richmond he was not recognized, sir! Not recognized. He
felt it. Left the county like a whipped cur."
"Yet, legally, the money was his own," remarked Cornelia.
"Oh, legally, I grant you! But morally, now--" The judge had counted on
Miss Fleming's sympathy in his story. Only the day before he had seen
the tears come to her eyes over his hurt hound. He was disappointed that
she took little Jane's misfortunes so coolly. "Of course this sort of
crime is unappreciable in the courts. But society, Virginia society,
knows how to deal with it."
"I happen to know," said Waring, "that Laidley's will was made a year
ago, leaving the whole property to Miss Swendon."
"And he knows that in the mean time she is barely able to keep herself
and her father alive. Pah-h!"
"Really, Jane has quite a dramatic history, and you are precisely the
person to tell it with effect, judge," said Miss Fleming, smiling
good-humoredly, with that peculiar affable intonation which always numbs
the hearer into a conviction that his too excessive emotion is being
humored as the antics of an ill-disciplined child.
The judge grew red.
"Yes," continued Miss Fleming, her eyes upon him, "Jane _is_ pretty.
Your zeal is excusable." The road was muddy at this point, and she
passed on in front of them, picking her steps.
"Damn it!" said the judge, "they're all alike! No woman can be just to a
pretty face. I thought this girl had sense enough to lift her above such
petty jealousy."
"She is not jealous," said Waring, looking critically at her back as he
arranged his thin tow-colored moustache. "She is an Arab among her own
sex. It's a common type in this part of the country. She fraternizes
with men, horses and Nature, and sneers at other women as she would at
artificial flowers and perfumery. I don't know Miss Fleming, but I know
her class very well."
The Virginian, whose blood revolted at this censure of a lady, rushed to
the rescue: "She's honest, at any rate. No mean feminine tricks about
her. She's offensively truthful. And, after all, she's right: Swendon is
a good-for-nothing, a well-born tramp; and Jane is hardly a subject for
pity. She's a remarkably healthy girl; a little dull, but with more
staying power in her than belongs to a dozen of those morbid,
strong-minded women of yours in the North. I suppose I do let my
sympathy run away with me."
They joined Cornelia and entered the broken gate. The door of the house
swung open at a touch. Within were bare halls and rooms covered with
dust, the floors of which creaked drearily under their tread. Following
the sound of stifled voices, they went up to a large upper chamber. The
walls of this room were stained almost black; a thick carpet deadened
the floor; the solid wooden shutters were barred and heavily curtained.
They made their way to the farther end of the room, a little apart from
a group of dark figures who talked together in whispers. Miss Fleming
noticed a nervous trepidation in the manner of both men, and instantly
became grave, as though she too were more deeply moved than she cared to
show.
The whispers ceased, and the silence was growing oppressive when steps
were heard upon the stairs.
"Hoh!" puffed the judge. "Here is Laidley at last."