with the delicate aroma, how they will compare their rheumatisms,
and backaches, and headaches, and neuralgias--those inevitable signs
that the silver cords are growing looser, and that the pitchers will
soon be broken at the fountains! How they will yearn after the days
when they were young, and lament the decadence of the present! How
they will recall the scenes of fifty years ago! (Here the maiden aunt
let her eyes fall, and I fancied her lips quivered some). How they
will indulge in just the slightest gossip in the world, meantime
mysteriously shaking their frosty heads, but just as harmless as the
rage of Mignon's canary! How they will analyze and dissect the last
new baby in the neighborhood, and lament over the weakness of its
mother who will allow it to eat anything and everything! How they
will deprecate the new-fangled notions of the young pastor who has
just succeeded old Parson Tenthly, lately called home!
It is a mortifying fact that young Pastor Primrose _does_ prefer to
visit Blanche and Celeste, who dote upon him and make book-marks and
slippers for him, rather than be obliged to listen to the catalogues
of the old ladies' physical and theological complaints. You see,
Blanche and Celeste are not a severe tax upon his theological
resources, while the old ladies are. Neither can the old ladies see
why it is necessary that the young clergyman should be so particular
about his back hair and the immaculateness of his neck-tie.
February 22, 1868.
_A MASQUE._
Did you ask me if the Masquerade, this week, was a success?
Considering that nine-tenths of the people who go to balls are
idiots; that carnival folly without carnival license is Hamlet
without Hamlet; that only they in whose veins the blood is tropical
understand the real _esprit_ of the _bal masque_; and that among our
masques every man insists upon being a Harlequin and every woman a
nondescript, showing the inevitable tendency of human nature;--it was
a success.
It is impossible for Boosey in a masque to feel tropical. Champagne,
and not blood, is the natural current through his veins. Disguised
as a gorgeous Harlequin, in cap and bells, he is not at home. He
is inchoate, crude and lonesome. He may talk soft things to the
unknown Blanche, hanging upon his arm in the black tarletan, gold
stars and crescent, but the liquid eyes and beaming face tell no
story through the grinning, goggle-eyed pasteboard, and do not
disturb the placidity of the manly breast of Harlequin, or make any
intellectual impression upon him, further than to confirm us in our
original statement that he is an idiot. What Boosey may do when
the masques are off and church-yards begin to yawn, as he and the
unknown Blanche say matins at the shrine of the jolly King Gambrinus,
concerns us not.
Neither does it concern you who are reading these lines, who never
take your masque off at all.
Although my German friends sandwiched their carnival into a funny
place, making sin follow repentance, and mixing up scarlet Mardi Gras
and gray Ash Wednesday with a frightful negligence of proprieties,
it was enjoyable and delightfully sinful. Celeste, when she came to
my confessional the other day, complained of it. She was clad in
russet and serge, had sprinkled herself with ashes, was mortifying
the flesh by concealing those white shoulders and marble arms, which
are the envy of our set, and eating lentils as if she liked them.
Could I do anything but pity her when she cried _peccavi, mea culpa,
mea culpa_. And as she told me, with those pretty lips, of her
melon-colored dress, how superbly it hung; of her pearl neck-lace,
which actually looked dark on her neck; of an unknown cavalier, who
whispered something transporting over his bouquet, and then vanished;
of the wild waltz with Mephisto, whose sneering gibes were alchemized
into delicious flattery--and as the Dear Creature told me that she
had followed too much the devices and desires of her own heart, and
that all was vanity, was it a wonder that I, even in the garb of the
confessor, cheered and consoled her, and said:
My dear young friend, the only trouble with you is that Divine
Providence, instead of Canova, made you, and, in making you, gave
you a human nature. He was also at fault in making flowers that
die of their own sweetness, and grapes that burst of their own
voluptuousness, and swans that expire in their own melody. The
moralists have got hold of you, my dear, and, with their mallets
and chisels, are trying to make you into a cold, senseless, white
statue of virtue, while all the while the blood is bounding to your
finger-tips, and every pulsation of your heart is in waltz _tempo_.
Enjoy your carnivals, my dear, for soon come the snow and the
chilling winds, which will wrinkle your pretty face, and film your
bright eyes, and turn those white shoulders to parchment, and deaden
all the fire of life. Then may you wrap yourself in your black robes
and weep over the dead carnivals in the gray ashes.
And if you know of any of your friends who are so miserably
unfortunate as to be without fault, let them cast stones at you. I
may say, _entre nous_, that I do not think you will be much hurt. The
stone-throwing will be the feeblest you ever saw.
And the Dear Creature went away, as one not utterly bereft of
consolation.
March 7, 1868.
_THE MIRACLE OF CREATION._
We were sitting at the opera the other evening, Celeste and I.
Celeste was _ennuyee_. Not even the Garden music of Faust--music
which so deftly pictures the grand struggle between the Angel and the
Fiend, which is waged on the battle-field of each man's soul--music
which so vividly paints the lapse from guilelessness to guilt;
not even the closing duo, an outburst of sensuous rapture with an
under-tone of the wildest despair, seemed to have any effect upon
her. So she twirled her fan impatiently, flirted with Fitz-Herbert
opposite, through her lorgnette, and listlessly pulled the waxen
petals out of the camelia in her bouquet.
And she turned to me and said: "Don't you think this is very stupid?
Everything is so _blase_. I would give a year of my life for a
new sensation. How happy Eve must have been, when everything was
bright and fresh and new, and for the first time;" and, the camelia
destroyed, she commenced upon roses and heliotropes.
And, after the opera, I freed my mind to the Dear Creature, upon
the foolish idea--which not only she but the majority of people
have--that the world was any brighter or fresher, or any more for the
first time, in the days of Adam and Eve than now, speaking somewhat
after the following fashion:
My dear Celeste, the fault is not in the world, but in yourself, that
nothing seems bright, and fresh, and new. The miracle of creation and
the process of life are new every morning and every evening, and are
performed for the first time for each human being, yourself included.
But you have allowed conventionality and form and artificiality to
dim your eyes, destroy your taste, and blunt all your sensibilities.
The world is just as beautiful, the mountains just as grand, the
flowers just as lovely, the streams just as sparkling, the songs of
the birds just as sweet, this spring day of 1868, _Anno Domini_, as
they were on the same spring day of the year 1, _Ante Christum_. Adam
and Eve saw them for the first time, and you are seeing them for
the first time. The first sunrise which Adam and Eve saw, as they
took their morning walk in the garden, was not a whit more beautiful
than the sunrise this morning; and if that was given to them for the
first time, this was given to you for the first time--only your eyes,
albeit they are very pretty, are totally blind to the fact; and,
equally, the light of the sunset which filtered through the leaves
of the trees, and stained the whole flowery floor of the Garden with
golden glory, what time the first man and woman said vespers in God's
grand temple of Nature, was not more golden than that which flooded
the earth last evening, what time, my dear, you were yawningly doing
up your back-hair, preparatory to Mrs. Fitz-Boodle's hop, utterly
unconscious that there was a sun in the heavens, or that Nature was
painting for you for the first time the miracle of a sunset, which
she did for Adam for the first time.
The same analogy holds good in all the operations of life. Eve,
holding the wicked Cain in the cradle of her arms, experienced the
same joys and griefs of maternity; the same concentration of all that
is beautiful in the world, in the blue eyes of the nestling; the same
mysterious yearnings; the same strong, deep love; the same foreboding
pain that is experienced by the last fair-browed mother "in marble
halls," or by some tawny, wild-eyed Indian mother, crooning weird
songs to her little one under torrid palms.
And when, my dear Madame, you laid your little Johnny or Susie, all
covered with immortelles and rosebuds, under the violets; or when you
received a letter, written in a strange hand, that your first and
only one, who had grown to man's estate, and who went sailing over
the seas, was down among the sea-tangles and the corals; when, as by
a sudden breath, every light of joy was blown out; when that terrible
silence of death lay on the household; when, in the night watches,
you listened for some tidings from that far-off shore of the To Be,
whither the child had sailed all alone, without your watchful care
over him; when it seemed to you that the heavens should be hung with
black, and you wondered that the sun could shine, and the birds sing,
and men and women come and go as if nothing had occurred--when all
this happened, you were experiencing, for the first time, the same
feelings that Eve experienced for the first time, as she looked into
the stark face of Abel.
March 24, 1868.
_FASHIONABLE WEDDINGS._
I was sitting last evening in the library, absorbed in that wonderful
book of Auerbach's--"On the Heights"--a book which always has the
charm of being new whenever I take it up, and always gives me some
fresh insight into the beauties of this world, and the sublimity of
human nature. It was twilight, the time to read it. Minerva on the
one shelf was drowsily nodding at Clytie on the other, and Dante
on his bracket was looking out of the window into the sky, as if
momentarily expecting Beatrice to float luminously down in shining
garments. The flowers in the window were shutting up their petals for
the night. And thus we sat there--Auerbach, Clytie, Minerva, Dante,
the flowers, and I; and as the lines of the book dimmed over in the
receding light, our star appeared goldening in the Western sky, just
over the crimson of the dying day.
When who should walk in but the Dear Children, Boosey and Celeste,
arm in arm! Minerva at once woke up and looked wisely at B., and
my calla, which always recognizes Celeste as a butterfly, leaned
lovingly towards her, as if inviting her to fly into her milk-white
bosom and sleep there for the night.
They cautiously and modestly informed me of their engagement, and had
come to ask me for some advice relative to the wedding and how it
should be celebrated. Whereupon I laid Auerbach down, and spoke to
them somewhat after the following manner:
My Dear Children, I will give you some views on weddings in general,
which you may apply to your own case. While it is eminently proper to
invite personal friends to a wedding, and the more the merrier, avoid
publicity. Publicity in private matters inevitably tends towards
snobbishness, and often towards vulgarity. You may lay the gilt on
vulgarity just as thickly as you please and it will only make it the
more glaring, just as the process of varnishing a poor picture makes
its defects more obvious. A wedding will always be public enough
without any courting of publicity, and it is a very poor way of
starting off in life, by trying to outdo some one else in the way of
show and expense. It is like throwing out your ace of trumps without
stopping to see whether you have got suit in your hand to win the
game with. The lavish expenditure of money on a wedding, merely to
outdo some one else, is only for popular effect, and what is done
only for popular effect is very apt to be vulgar. By vulgarity, of
course I do not mean anything that is morally wrong, but simply
common and snobbish. The motive is a very cheap one, and is apparent
to the most superficial observer; and the least justifiable occasion
for the exercise of that motive is a wedding, which should be free
from tinsel and frippery. An event so important, and in a certain
degree so sacred, should be celebrated with a delicacy and dignity
befitting its character. It is the turning-point for weal or wo in
two lives, and it is not well to make it a public show. The occasions
in society-life for display of gilt and gingerbread, sugar candy and
gewgaws, are amply sufficient, without seizing upon the hymeneal
altar and exhibiting the sacred fire to a curious public, with blare
of trumpets and glare of trappings.
One of the worst features of our fashionable weddings is the insane
desire of the parties to it to make their appearance in the public
prints, and figure with stunning head-lines among the announcements
of the last raid upon gamblers, police court trials, sensational
divorces, murders, rapes and suicides. The avidity with which this
publicity is sought will be astonishing to the general reader. In
some instances printed, and in others written invitations, have been
sent to the reporters of the daily press, stating the exact time
and place when and where they can visit the dressmaker and have the
mysteries of the bridal toilet explained to them, when and where
they can inspect other toilets, and when and where they can see the
wedding gifts and be informed of their nature and cost; all of which,
of course, will be unfolded in due time to the admiring public, and
small female vanity and large female curiosity will be gratified.
Unless, as is always the case, reporters are human and printers
capricious; whereupon it happens that great expectations are not
always realized--as, for instance, when that diamond pin, which
cost $2,000, appears in print at the ridiculously small figure of
$200; when Mrs. Croesus, who has devoted days of toil and nights
of anxiety, and has distracted her dressmakers over her superb
silk--who has flattered herself upon the sensation her point lace
will make, and the universal admiration which will greet her diamond
set--appears in print clad in blue tarletan, with Brussels lace
and pearl jewelry; when the two thousand invitations appear on
paper as two hundred; when the reporter, who came late, mistakes a
bridesmaid for the bride, and goes into glowing raptures over the
loveliness of the young creature; when another reporter, who has not
had an opportunity of writing up the gifts beforehand, gets into a
chaos of ormolu clocks, bronzes, and silverware, and mixes them up
indiscriminately; when John Thomas, the family driver, who is not
free from the failings of human nature any more than his superiors,
by a quiet little reportorial bribe, or a secret visit to the place
so dear to every well-organized reporter--the wine cellar--gets his
name mentioned for the graceful manner in which he presided over the
white ribbons and the rosetted steeds; when all these things happen,
as happen they will, and people laugh, then the great expectations
are not realized; and Mrs. Midas, who lives next door to Mrs.
Croesus, had a small difficulty with her and was not invited to the
wedding, has her revenge.
On general principles, this avidity of people to get their garments
advertised in the public prints, while it may minister to their
foolish vanity, is pernicious in its effects, and a positive injury
to society. It has one of two effects. It will either keep a great
many ladies away from places of public amusement, who cannot afford
to dress in a showy manner, and are too sensitive to have their
plain toilets spread before the universal eye; or it will encourage
them to foolishly fling away money, in order that they may make
a presentable appearance. And beyond these effects, it directly
encourages, or rather compels a competition in dress which is ruinous
to good taste, not to speak of purses.
And now, my Dear Children, let me advise you to avoid all show. A
house full of wedding presents and dear friends, and detectives to
watch the costly presents, lest the dear friends steal them, is not
desirable. A wedding _trousseau_ constructed regardless of expense,
to outdo some other _trousseau_ and to create popular effect, is
very vulgar. A lavish display of diamonds and silver, and glittering
gewgaws, exhibited merely for ostentation, may make your curious
friends envious, but it will make your judicious friends grieve.
A clean flag-stone walk to the church will not injure your dainty
feet any more than the Brussels carpet, and I would not favor your
feet too much, for they may have to walk in some very flinty places
yet. It is well, also, to have some regard to the proprieties of the
church itself, and not transform it so much, that if St. Paul should
happen to drop in, he wouldn't know whether he was in a circus or a
menagerie.
I always tremble for the bride who starts off in life in this manner.
We cannot always float smoothly along, reclining on velvet cushions,
with favoring winds swelling silken sails, and golden oars keeping
time to music. It has been discreetly ordered that reverses shall
overtake us all before we get into the snug haven of old age. And in
that night of tempests, when the whole heavens seem shutting grimly
down, and not a star of hope can peep through the wild wrack, the
fate of a Canary bird in a thunder-storm is the fate of this bride.
The first move is the key to all the rest. It is well, therefore, to
have that move made calmly, deliberately and thoughtfully, without
any reference to the opinions or the curiosities of others, with all
the contingencies of life steadily in view, and with the two lives in
one, braced and fortified to meet them.
My say was ended, and as Boosey and Celeste thanked me and went out
seriously, she with a little faster hold upon his arm, and he with
a firmer look of resolution upon his face, as if he were mentally
bidding good bye to his follies, I sent my blessing out with them,
for I was sure that he would get the vessel into such good trim that
he and the Butterfly would be uninjured in any storm.
March 28, 1868.
_APRIL._
Although this snivelling humbug, April, as I write, has spread out
one of the bluest and softest of skies, and is coaxing the leaves
to unroll their little green packages, and the grass to shoot up
through the brown sod, and the birds to come up from the warm South,
I can only say with the Rabbi in Uriel Acosta, "We have seen all this
before."
She has dallied so long with that wild roysterer, March, that
there is suspicion in the hem of her garments. She has indulged in
boisterous and disgraceful revelries with him. She has listened
to his bold license of speech. She has allowed him entrance at
unseasonable hours. And she comes from the contact, no longer the
coy, bashful, weeping maiden of yore, but a bold, unblushing hoyden,
clothing herself to-day in her old beauty and softness, but still
with the vile breath of March upon her lips.
And, worst of all, while couched in the fierce passion of March, she
forgot her old friends who have never forgotten her, and so the buds
were blasted, and the birds who had listened to her syren song died,
and the flowers turned over and went back to their odorous sleep; and
the arbutus which should be now showing its little pink and white
face, under the dead leaves, shrunk back affrighted from her, as she
went noisily through the woods, boasting her shame in the robes with
which March covered her nakedness as he thrust her away.
It is only a few Sundays ago that I told you of the little blue
trumpeter who was heralding spring from the dry boughs. He, too,
was sacrificed, and yesterday I saw him lying upon his back in the
brown stubble, his claws bent with the pain of the cold, the light
of his eyes quenched, his song forever hushed, and his soul fled to
the Bird Heaven, where all the good blue birds, robins, orioles, and
nightingales go; where they sing forever among the asphodels and in
the lotuses to those who loved them and cared for them among the elms
and the oaks; and where all the little captives who are caged here
below regain their liberty and soar and sing untrammelled.
The blue trumpeter suffered the fate of all reformers. He came before
his time. He was heralding the truth before the world was ready for
it, and he died unheard and neglected. And hundreds of other heralds
are lying dead to-day in the fields, victims to the merciless rigor
of the rain and the snow and the cold.
And I therefore plead for all the birds who have come to us from
the South. Shelter them whenever you can. Feed them and care for
them. Summer, without its choir of birds, will be as blank as heaven
without stars, a house without a child, a garden without flowers. The
clearest indications of Paradise we get on earth, are the birds, the
flowers, and the little children, and the man or woman who doesn't
love them will have a trying time in Paradise, if he or she ever gets
there.
I have never seen it recorded that they have any of these things in
the other place.
Therefore, again I say, deal gently with the birds and the flowers,
for not a sparrow falls to the ground without His notice, and Solomon
in all his glory was not arrayed like the lilies of the fields.
April 17, 1868.
_A SUMMER REVERIE._
Can you inform me why it was necessary for every man, woman and child
whom I have met to-day, to remind me that it was hot? Why had all
these people the right to assume that I did not know it was hot?
I am serious on this subject. I have been used this way before. I am
continually informed by somebody that it is hot, or it is cold, or it
rains, or it snows. To be informed once in the course of twenty-four
hours that it is hot, is bad enough of itself; but to be apprised of
that fact by every person you meet, is an improper interference with
the funeral.
Now, for the benefit of the public at large, which is so eager to
inform me that it is hot, I want to announce that I know it is hot.
My knowledge on that score is positive, large and satisfactory. I am
prepared, if necessary, to make a statement in writing that it is
hot; to get me to a notary and make affidavit that it is hot.
Do I not know that it is hot, sitting here, with a vista of brick
walls on every side, from which the sun glares at me; fanned through
the open window by zephyrs, which bear on their wings nothing less
cooling than coal smoke and caloric; with the hot whirling of
machinery on one side and the rumble of the dusty, sweltering street
on the other? Through an open space in the walls, I can see a patch
of sky as large as a lady's pocket-handkerchief, across which bits
of cloud go with thoughts of rain in them; and with the infinite
longing with which poor Marie Stuart watched the clouds which were
floating across from her prison to France, and as she, prisoned in
Fotheringay, sent her thoughts and wishes by those cloudy messengers,
with that kind of longing, I think of distant fields and woods, of
cooling waters and leafy shades to which they are hastening, and
so I send messages to the trees, and the rocks, and the flowers,
and to the least living thing that "praises God by rubbing its legs
together," as Thackeray so finely puts it.