lion,--a woman of great heart, clear brain, and powerful pen,--in short,
Harriet Martineau. Her travelling companions were a professor, his
comely wife, and their eight-year-old son. The last-named was much
petted by Miss Martineau, and still flourishes in perennial youth on
many pages of her books of American travel. Michigan City felt honored
in its transient guest. The whisper that a real live author was among us
filled the inn hall with a changing throng eager to obtain a glimpse of
the celebrity. Not among the least of these were "the two little girls"
she mentions in her "Society in America," page 253. At breakfast the
party served their sharpened appetites quite like ordinary folk,--Miss
Martineau in thoughtful quiet, broken now and again by a brisk question
darted at the professor, who answered in a deliberate learned way that
was quite impressive. A shiver of disgust ruffled his plump features at
the absence of cream, which the host excused by the statement that, the
population having outgrown its flocks and herds, milk was held sacred to
the use of babes. Miss Martineau listened to the professor's complaints
with a twinkle of mirth in her eyes, while that indignant gentleman
vigorously applied himself to the solid edibles at hand. Shortly after
breakfast the strangers sallied forth in search of floral treasures,
over the low sand-hills stretching toward the lake (a spur of which
penetrated the main street), where in the face of the sandy drift
nestled a shanty quite like the "dug-out" of the timberless lands in
Kansas and New Mexico. The tomb-like structure, half buried in sand,
only its front being visible, seemed to afford Miss Martineau no end of
surprised amusement as she climbed to its submerged roof on her way to
the summit of the hill. A window-garden of tittering young women
merrily watched the progress of the quick-stepping Englishwoman, and,
really, there was some provocation to mirth, from their stand-point.
Anything approaching a _blanket_, plain, plaided, or striped, had never
disported itself before their astonished gaze as a part of feminine
apparel, except on the back of a grimy squaw. Of blanket-shawls, soon to
become a staple article of trade, the Western women had not then even
heard; and here was a civilized and cultivated creature enveloped in
what seemed to be a gay trophy wrested from the bed-furniture! Then,
too, the "only sweet thing" in bonnets was the demure "cottage,"
fashioned of fine straw, while the woman in view sported a coarse, pied
affair, whose turret-like crown and flaring brim pointed ambitiously
skyward. Stout boots completed the costume criticised and laughed over
by the merry maidens who yet stood in wholesome awe of the presence of
the wearer. With what a wealth of gorgeous wild flowers and plumy ferns
the pilgrims came laden on their return! Quoting from "Society in
America," page 253, Miss Martineau says, "The scene was like what I had
always fancied the Norway coast, but for the wild flowers, which grew
among the pines on the slope almost into the tide. I longed to spend an
entire day on this flowery and shadowy margin of the inland sea. I
plucked handfuls of pea-vine and other trailing flowers, which seemed to
run all over the ground."
Miss Martineau piled her treasures on a table and culled the specimens
worthy of pressing, and it seemed to pain her to reject the least
promising of her perishable plunder. She must have had a passion for
flowers, judging from the tenderness with which she handled the lovely
fronds and delicate petals under inspection, while her mouth was
continually open in admiring exclamation.
And now came what I still fondly remember as the _Musicale_. A little
comrade came in the twilight to sing songs with me. With arms
interlaced, we paced the upper hall, vociferously warbling as breath was
given us, when a door opened, and the gifted, dark-faced woman, with
kindly eyes, beamed out on us. "Come," she called, "come in here,
children, and sing your songs for me: I am very fond of music." Very
bashfully we signified our willingness to oblige,--indeed, we dared not
do otherwise,--and sidled into the room. Closing the door, our hostess
curled herself comfortably on a gayly-cushioned lounge, and proceeded to
adjust a serpent-like, squirming appendage to her ear. With an
encouraging nod, she bade us commence, closing her eyes meanwhile with
an air of expectant rapture. But the vibrating trumpet stirred our
foolish souls to explosive laughter, partially smothered in a
simultaneous strangled cough. Wondering at the double paroxysm and
subsequent hush of shame, she unclosed her eyes, softly murmuring,
"Don't be bashful nor afraid, my dears. I am very far from home, and you
can make me very happy, if you will. Pray begin at once, and then I will
also sing for you." Taking courage, we piped as bidden, rendering in a
childish way the strains of "Blue-Eyed Mary," "Comin' through the Rye,"
"I'd be a Butterfly," and "Auld Lang Syne," Our audience, with bright,
attentive looks, regarded the performance in pleased approval, softly
tapping time on her knee with a slender finger.
"Now it is my turn," said Miss Martineau. Straightening herself and
casting aside the trumpet, primly folding her hands and pursing her
mouth curiously, she began, in a high, quavering voice, a song whose
burden was the fixed objection on the part of a certain damsel to
forsaking the pleasures of the world for the seclusion and safety of a
convent:
Now, is it not a pity such a pretty girl as I
Should be sent to a nunnery to pine away and die?
But I _won't_ be a nun,--- no, I _won't_ be a _nun_;
I'm _so_ fond of _pleasure_ that I _cannot_ be a nun.
It is impossible to give an idea of the jerky style of the lady's
singing which so tickled our sensitive ears. At every repetition of the
refrain, Susy and I squeezed our locked fingers spasmodically in order
to suppress the unseemly laughter bubbling to our lips. At every
emphatic word she nodded at us merrily, thus adding to our inward
disquiet.
I like now, when picturing Harriet Martineau entertaining with noble
themes the men and women of letters she drew around her in England and
America, to remember, in connection with her strong, plain face and
brilliant intellect, the simple kindliness with which she once unbent to
a brace of little Hoosier maids in the "Far West."
F.C.M.
LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
"Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence[A]." Edited by Elizabeth
Cary Agassiz. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
The northeastern corner of the ancient Pays de Vaud, only part of which
is included in the modern canton, is little known to tourists. It lies
away from the chief lines of travel, and it has neither the magnificent
views that draw the visitor aside to Orbe nor the associations that
induce him to stop at Coppet or Clarens. Yet its breezy upland plains
and its quiet villages--some of them once populous and prosperous
towns--are not devoid of charm, or of the interest connected with
historical epochs and famous names. The "lone wall" and "lonelier
column" at Avenches date from the period when this was the Roman capital
of Helvetia. Morat still shows many a mark and relic of its siege by
Charles the Bold and of the overthrow of his forces by the Swiss.
Payerne was the birthplace, in 1779, of Jomini, the greatest of all
writers on military operations, whose precocious genius, while he was a
mere stripling and before he had witnessed any battles or manoeuvres,
penetrated the secret of Bonaparte's combinations and victorious
campaigns, which veteran commanders were watching with mere wonderment
and dismay. At Motiers, a few miles farther north, was born, in 1807,
Louis Agassiz, who at an equally early age displayed a like intuitive
comprehension of many of the workings of Nature, and who subsequently
became the chief exponent of the glacial theory and the highest
authority on the structure and classification of fishes. Each of these
two men gave his ripest powers and longest labors to a great country far
from their common home,--Jomini to Russia, Agassiz to the United States;
and, dissimilar as were their objects and pursuits, their intellectual
resemblance was fundamental. The pre-eminent quality of each was the
power of rapid generalization, of mastering and subordinating details,
of grasping and applying principles and laws. Agassiz differed as much
from an animal-loving collector like Frank Buckland, whose father was
one of his stanchest friends and co-workers, as Jomini differed from a
fighting general like Ney, to whom he suggested the movements that
resulted in the French victory at Bautzen. Switzerland is equally proud
of the great strategist and the great naturalist, but to Americans in
general the former is at the most a mere name, while the career of the
latter is an object of wide-spread and even national interest.
In the volumes before us the story of that career is clearly and
completely, yet concisely, set forth. Readers of biography who delight
mainly in social gossip may complain of the absence of everything of the
kind; but such matter neither belonged to the subject nor was required
for its elucidation. We are prone to draw a distinction between what we
call a man's personal life and the larger and more active part of his
existence, and to fancy that the clue to his character lies in some
minor idiosyncrasies, or in habits and tastes that were perhaps
accidentally formed. But every earnest worker reveals in his methods and
achievements not alone his intellectual capacities, but all the deep
and essential qualities of his nature. With Agassiz this was
conspicuously the case. The enthusiasm, the singleness of purpose, and
the indefatigable energy that constituted the _fond_, so to speak, of
his character were as open to view as the features of his countenance.
Hence the single and strong impression he produced on all with whom he
came in contact, the sympathy he so quickly kindled, and the
co-operation he so readily enlisted. It was easily perceived that he was
no self-seeker, that no thought of personal interest mingled with his
devotion to science, and that he was not more intent on absorbing
knowledge than desirous of diffusing it. No one has ever more fully and
happily blended the qualities of student and teacher, and it was in this
double capacity that he became so public and prominent a figure and
exerted so wide an influence in the country of his adoption.
Some men overcome obstacles and attain their ends by sheer persistency
of will, others by tact and persuasiveness, while there is a third
class, before whom the barred doors open as they are successively
approached, through what are called either fortunate accidents or
Providential interventions, but are seen, on closer inspection, to have
been the direct and natural effects of the force unconsciously exerted
by an harmonious combination of qualities. Agassiz's career was full of
such instances. The insistent desire of his parents, while stinting
themselves to secure his education, that he should adopt a bread-winning
profession, yielded, not to any urgent appeals or dogged display of
resolution, but to the proof given by his labors that he was choosing
more wisely for himself. Cuvier, without any request or expectation,
resigned to the neophyte who, after following in his footsteps, was
outstripping him in certain lines, drawings and notes prepared for his
own use. Humboldt, at a critical moment, saved him from the necessity
for abandoning his projects by an unsolicited loan, supplemented by many
further acts of assistance of a different kind. In England every
possible facility and aid was afforded to him as well by private
individuals as by public institutions. In America, men like Mr.
Nathaniel Thayer and Mr. John Anderson needed only in some chance way to
become acquainted with his plans to be ready to provide the means for
carrying them out. It was the same on all occasions. The United States
government, the Coast Survey, the legislature of Massachusetts, private
individuals throughout the country, showed a rare willingness, and even
eagerness, to forward his views. The man and the object were identified
in people's minds, and, as in all such cases, a feeling was roused and
an impulse generated which could have sprung from no other source.
The attractiveness and charm which everybody seems to have found in him
had perhaps the same origin. It does not appear that his nature was
peculiarly sympathetic, that it was through any unusual flow and warmth
of feeling toward others that he so quickly became the object of their
attachment or regard. Of course, we do not intend to intimate that he
was deficient in strength of affection or in the least degree cold or
unresponsive. But his "magnetism," to use the current word, lay in the
ardor and singleness of his devotion to science, not as an abstraction,
but as a potent agency in civilization, in the union of elevation with
enthusiasm, in an openness that seemed to reveal everything, yet nothing
that should have been hidden. Hence this biography, little as it deals
with purely personal matters, awakens an interest of precisely the same
kind as that which the living Agassiz was accustomed to excite. For the
student of comparative zoology or of glacial action all that is here
told about these subjects can have only an historical value. But no
reader can follow the successive steps of a career that was always in
the truest sense upward without being touched by that inspiring
influence which it constantly diffused, and which Americans, above all
others, have reason to hold in grateful remembrance.
Illustrated Books.
"The Sermon on the Mount." Boston: Roberts Brothers.
"Poems of Nature." By John Greenleaf Whittier. Illustrated from Nature
by Elbridge Kingsley. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
"Childe Harold's Pilgrimage." A Romaunt. By Lord Byron. Boston: Ticknor
& Co.
"The Last Leaf." Poem. By Oliver Wendell Holmes. Illustrated by George
Wharton Edwards and F. Hopkinson Smith. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
"Pepper and Salt; or, Seasoning for Young Folks." Prepared by Howard
Pyle. New York: Harper & Brothers.
"Davy the Goblin; or, What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland,'" By Charles E. Carryl. Boston; Ticknor & Co.
"Bric-à-Brac Stories." By Mrs. Burton Harrison. Illustrated by Walter
Crane. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
"Rudder Grange." By Frank R. Stockton. Illustrated by A.B. Frost. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
In turning over the pictorial books of the season one experiences a
genuine pleasure in coming upon this illustrated edition of "The Sermon
on the Mount," which belongs to a high order of merit from its
satisfactory interpretation of the subject and the beauty of its general
design and careful detail. It is, of course, a modern performance, and
nothing is more characteristic of most modern art than that it does
consciously, from reminiscence and with a reaching after certain
effects, what was once done simply, intuitively, and from the urgency of
poetic feeling. A great difference must naturally exist not only in the
outward mode but in the spirit of a group of modern artists who set to
work to illuminate a sacred text, and that in which the task was
undertaken by cloistered monks in whose gray lives a longing for beauty,
for color, found expression only here. Thus one realizes that the
decorative borders--which one looks at over and over again in this
volume, and which actually satisfy the eye--do not represent the
artist's own actual dreams, but are founded instead upon the ecstatic
visions of Fra Angelico and others as they bent over their work in their
silent cells; but they are beautiful nevertheless, far transcend what is
merely decorative, and are full of imagination and feeling. In fact,
into this frame-work, which might have contained nothing beyond
conventional imitation, Mr. Smith has put vivid touches which show that
he has the faculty to conceive and the skill to handle which belong to
the true artist. It would be easy to instance several of these borders
as remarkably good in their way: that which surrounds the "Lord's
Prayer" suggests dazzling effects in jewelled glass. The book is made up
in a delightful way, with full-page pictures interspersed with vignettes
illustrating the text and set round with those richly-designed borders
to which we have alluded. Mr. Fenn's pictures of actual places in the
Holy Land, besides striking the key-note of veracity which puts us in a
mood to see the whole story under fresh lights, are full of beauty and
charm. We are inclined to like everything in the book, although in the
various ways in which the beatitudes are interpreted we are conscious of
some incongruities, and wish that certain illustrations had made way for
designs showing more unity of conception among the artists. For
instance, Mr. Church's introduction of a New England scene of
tomahawking Indians cannot be said to throw a flood of light upon the
meaning of "Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness'
sake." Mr. St. John Harper's pictures are a trifle obscure; but their
obscurity veils their want of pertinence and suggests subtilties that
flatter the imagination into fitting the application to suit itself. Any
mention of the book which failed to include Mr. Copeland's work on the
engrossed text would be altogether inadequate, for it is very perfect,
very beautiful, full of surprises and delightful quaintnesses, and helps
to make the book what it actually is, a complete whole, which really
answers our wishes of what an illustrated book should be.
Mr. Whittier's "Poems of Nature" make the felicitous occasion this year
for one of Messrs. Houghton & Mifflin's rich and attractive series of
their authors' selected works. An admirable etching of the poet faces
the title-page, and the poems, chiefly descriptive of New England
scenes, are illustrated by designs from nature, the work of a single
artist. That Mr. Kingsley is in sympathy with the poet, and that he is
an impassioned lover of nature and the various moods of nature, no one
can doubt, and the impression of truthfulness which his work produces on
the mind makes his pictures interesting and full of sentiment even when
they are not entirely successful. Perhaps he aims in general at rather
too large effects to bring them out vividly; for when the scene he
chooses is least composite he is at his best. "Deer Island Pines," for
example, and "The Merrimac" are excellent, and we find much charm in "A
Winter Scene" and in a Boughton-like "November Afternoon."
There is a certain temerity in undertaking to illustrate a work like
"Childe Harold," which, if it has been read at all, has aroused its own
distinct conceptions of scenery in the mind of its reader which must
make any ordinary pictures setting off familiar lines tame and insipid.
It is the triumph of art when the artist can bring out meanings and
beauties in the text hitherto undreamed of; but we acquit the artists of
the present book of any failure in that respect, for their intention
seems never to have gone beyond amiable commonplace. The little cuts are
all pleasant, trim, and, if not suggestive, at least not sufficiently
the reverse to be displeasing. The head-pieces to the cantos are
extremely good, and the two scenes "There is a pleasure in the pathless
woods" and "There is a rapture on the lonely shore" we like sufficiently
well to exempt them from the accusation of insipidity.
Happy the poet who lives to see one of the poems he carelessly flung off
in early youth come back to him in his old age in such a setting as is
here given to Dr. Holmes's "Last Leaf." "Just when it was written," the
author says in his delightful and characteristic "_Envoi_" to the
reader, "I cannot exactly say, nor in what paper or periodical it was
first published. It must have been written before April, 1833,"--that
is, when he was in the early twenties. The poem has always been a
favorite, its sentiment suggesting Lamb's "All, all are gone, the old
familiar faces." It must henceforth be ranked as a classic, for it is
the happy destiny of the two artists who have worked together to give it
this exquisite setting forth to make its actual worth clear to every
reader. They have put nothing into the lines which was not there
already, but they have shown fine insight in their choice of subjects
and in conveying delicate and far-reaching meanings. They have
subordinated--as designers do not invariably do--their instinctive
methods and capricious inclinations to a careful study of their subject.
The result is--instead of a pretty but chaotic decorativeness
interspersed with florid and meaningless exaggerations--a complete and
beautiful whole marred by no redundancy or incongruity. Their full play
of intelligence brought to bear upon the suggestions of the poet has
developed a series of pictures which give occasionally a delightful
sense of surprise at their grace and unexpectedness. For example, the
three which illustrate
The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom
have absolutely a magical effect. Besides the full-page pictures,
etchings, and photo-gravures, the minor details of title-lines,
head- and tail-pieces, and the like, are executed in a way so pretty and
clever as to leave nothing to be desired. The rich quarto is sumptuously
bound, and, altogether, as a holiday gift-book the work has every
element of beauty and appropriateness.
"Pepper and Salt" is one of those brilliantly clever books for little
people which rouse a wonder as to whether the juvenile mind keeps pace
with the highly stimulated imaginative powers of modern artists and
finds solid entertainment in the richly-seasoned feast prepared for it.
There is plenty of humor and whim in this volume, in which many old
apologues appear in new shapes; wit, too, is to be found, and a
sprinkling of wisdom. Effective designs, droll, fantastic, and
invariably ingenious, set off the least of the poems and stories, and
make it as striking and attractive a quarto as will be found among the
young people's books this season.
"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" gave a new stimulus to children's
literature, with its effective magic for youthful minds and its
brilliant success among all classes of readers. "Davy the Goblin" is one
of the many volumes which have been founded, so to say, on its idea and
been carried along by its impulse. Thus little can be said for the
actual originality of the book, although it deals in new combinations
and abounds in droll situations. It is well printed and illustrated, and
most children will be glad to have a new excursion into Wonderland.
Mrs. Burton Harrison's "Bric-à-Brac Stories," illustrated by Walter
Crane, make an attractive volume with a good deal of solid reading
within its covers. The stories are told with the _verve_ and skill of a
genuine story-teller, old themes are reset, and new material dexterously
worked in, with characters drawn from fairy- and dream-land, and, set off
by Mr. Crane's delightful drawings, the whole book is particularly
attractive.
"Rudder Grange" is one of the books which it is essential to have always
with us, and we are glad to see the stories so well illustrated,
although the subject passes the domain of the artist, Mr. Stockton's
humor being of that delicate and elusive order which strikes the inward
and not the outward sense. "Pomona reading" in the wrecked canal-boat is
a droll contribution, and many of the cuts show that the artist is in
full harmony with the spirit of the author.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: On another occasion he remarked of Trollope, "What drivel
the man writes! He is the very essence of the commonplace."]
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
[Note A: Original reads 'Corresponddence']
End of Project Gutenberg's Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885, by Various