PART II.--THE RESULT 275

MRS. BRUMBY 321

MARY GRESLEY.

[Illustration]

MARY GRESLEY.

We have known many prettier girls than Mary Gresley, and many handsomer

women--but we never knew girl or woman gifted with a face which in

supplication was more suasive, in grief more sad, in mirth more merry.

It was a face that compelled sympathy, and it did so with the conviction

on the mind of the sympathiser that the girl was altogether unconscious

of her own power. In her intercourse with us there was, alas! much more

of sorrow than of mirth, and we may truly say that in her sufferings we

suffered; but still there came to us from our intercourse with her much

of delight mingled with the sorrow; and that delight arose, partly no

doubt from her woman’s charms, from the bright eye, the beseeching

mouth, the soft little hand, and the feminine grace of her unpretending

garments; but chiefly, we think, from the extreme humanity of the girl.

She had little, indeed none, of that which the world calls society, but

yet she was pre-eminently social. Her troubles were very heavy, but she

was making ever an unconscious effort to throw them aside, and to be

jocund in spite of their weight. She would even laugh at them, and at

herself as bearing them. She was a little fair-haired creature, with

broad brow and small nose and dimpled chin, with no brightness of

complexion, no luxuriance of hair, no swelling glory of bust and

shoulders; but with a pair of eyes which, as they looked at you, would

be gemmed always either with a tear or with some spark of laughter, and

with a mouth in the corners of which was ever lurking some little spark

of humour, unless when some unspoken prayer seemed to be hanging on her

lips. Of woman’s vanity she had absolutely none. Of her corporeal self,

as having charms to rivet man’s love, she thought no more than does a

dog. It was a fault with her that she lacked that quality of womanhood.

To be loved was to her all the world; unconscious desire for the

admiration of men was as strong in her as in other women; and her

instinct taught her, as such instincts do teach all women, that such

love and admiration was to be the fruit of what feminine gifts she

possessed; but the gifts on which she depended,--depending on them

without thinking on the matter,--were her softness, her trust, her

woman’s weakness, and that power of supplicating by her eye without

putting her petition into words which was absolutely irresistible. Where

is the man of fifty, who in the course of his life has not learned to

love some woman simply because it has come in his way to help her, and

to be good to her in her struggles? And if added to that source of

affection there be brightness, some spark of humour, social gifts, and a

strong flavour of that which we have ventured to call humanity, such

love may become almost a passion without the addition of much real

beauty.

But in thus talking of love we must guard ourselves somewhat from

miscomprehension. In love with Mary Gresley, after the common sense of

the word, we never were, nor would it have become us to be so. Had such

a state of being unfortunately befallen us, we certainly should be

silent on the subject. We were married and old; she was very young, and

engaged to be married, always talking to us of her engagement as a thing

fixed as the stars. She looked upon us, no doubt,--after she had ceased

to regard us simply in our editorial capacity,--as a subsidiary old

uncle whom Providence had supplied to her, in order that, if it were

possible, the troubles of her life might be somewhat eased by assistance

to her from that special quarter. We regarded her first almost as a

child, and then as a young woman to whom we owed that sort of protecting

care which a graybeard should ever be ready to give to the weakness of

feminine adolescence. Nevertheless we were in love with her, and we

think such a state of love to be a wholesome and natural condition. We

might, indeed, have loved her grandmother,--but the love would have been

very different. Had circumstances brought us into connection with her

grandmother, we hope we should have done our duty, and had that old lady

been our friend we should, we trust, have done it with alacrity. But in

our intercourse with Mary Gresley there was more than that. She charmed

us. We learned to love the hue of that dark gray stuff frock which she

seemed always to wear. When she would sit in the low arm-chair opposite

to us, looking up into our eyes as we spoke to her words which must

often have stabbed her little heart, we were wont to caress her with

that inward undemonstrative embrace that one spirit is able to confer

upon another. We thought of her constantly, perplexing our mind for her

succour. We forgave all her faults. We exaggerated her virtues. We

exerted ourselves for her with a zeal that was perhaps fatuous. Though

we attempted sometimes to look black at her, telling her that our time

was too precious to be wasted in conversation with her, she soon learned

to know how welcome she was to us. Her glove,--which, by-the-bye, was

never tattered, though she was very poor,--was an object of regard to

us. Her grandmother’s gloves would have been as unacceptable to us as

any other morsel of old kid or cotton. Our heart bled for her. Now the

heart may suffer much for the sorrows of a male friend, but it may

hardly for such be said to bleed. We loved her, in short, as we should

not have loved her, but that she was young and gentle, and could

smile,--and, above all, but that she looked at us with those bright,

beseeching, tear-laden eyes.

Sterne, in his latter days, when very near his end, wrote passionate

love-letters to various women, and has been called hard names by

Thackeray,--not for writing them, but because he thus showed himself to

be incapable of that sincerity which should have bound him to one love.

We do not ourselves much admire the sentimentalism of Sterne, finding

the expression of it to be mawkish, and thinking that too often he

misses the pathos for which he strives from a want of appreciation on

his own part of that which is really vigorous in language and touching

in sentiment. But we think that Thackeray has been somewhat wrong in

throwing that blame on Sterne’s heart which should have been attributed

to his taste. The love which he declared when he was old and sick and

dying,--a worn-out wreck of a man,--disgusts us, not because it was

felt, or not felt, but because it was told;--and told as though the

teller meant to offer more than that warmth of sympathy which woman’s

strength and woman’s weakness combined will ever produce in the hearts

of certain men. This is a sympathy with which neither age, nor crutches,

nor matrimony, nor position of any sort need consider itself to be

incompatible. It is unreasoning, and perhaps irrational. It gives to

outward form and grace that which only inward merit can deserve. It is

very dangerous because, unless watched, it leads to words which express

that which is not intended. But, though it may be controlled, it cannot

be killed. He, who is of his nature open to such impression, will feel

it while breath remains to him. It was that which destroyed the

character and happiness of Swift, and which made Sterne contemptible. We

do not doubt that such unreasoning sympathy, exacted by feminine

attraction, was always strong in Johnson’s heart;--but Johnson was

strong all over, and could guard himself equally from misconduct and

from ridicule. Such sympathy with women, such incapability of

withstanding the feminine magnet, was very strong with Goethe,--who

could guard himself from ridicule, but not from misconduct. To us the

child of whom we are speaking--for she was so then--was ever a child.

But she bore in her hand the power of that magnet, and we admit that the

needle within our bosom was swayed by it. Her story,--such as we have to

tell it,--was as follows.

Mary Gresley, at the time when we first knew her, was eighteen years

old, and was the daughter of a medical practitioner, who had lived and

died in a small town in one of the northern counties. For facility in

telling our story we will call that town Cornboro. Dr. Gresley, as he

seemed to have been called, though without proper claim to the title,

had been a diligent man, and fairly successful,--except in this, that he

died before he had been able to provide for those whom he left behind

him. The widow still had her own modest fortune, amounting to some

eighty pounds a year; and that, with the furniture of her house, was her

whole wealth, when she found herself thus left with the weight of the

world upon her shoulders. There was one other daughter older than Mary,

whom we never saw, but who was always mentioned as poor Fanny. There

had been no sons, and the family consisted of the mother and the two

girls. Mary had been only fifteen when her father died, and up to that

time had been regarded quite as a child by all who had known her. Mrs.

Gresley, in the hour of her need, did as widows do in such cases. She

sought advice from her clergyman and neighbours, and was counselled to

take a lodger into her house. No lodger could be found so fitting as the

curate, and when Mary was seventeen years old she and the curate were

engaged to be married. The curate paid thirty pounds a year for his

lodgings, and on this, with their own little income, the widow and her

two daughters had managed to live. The engagement was known to them all

as soon as it had been known to Mary. The love-making, indeed, had gone

on beneath the eyes of the mother. There had been not only no deceit, no

privacy, no separate interests, but, as far as we ever knew, no question

as to prudence in the making of the engagement. The two young people had

been brought together, had loved each other, as was so natural, and had

become engaged as a matter of course. It was an event as easy to be

foretold, or at least as easy to be believed, as the pairing of two

birds. From what we heard of this curate, the Rev. Arthur Donne,--for

we never saw him,--we fancy that he was a simple, pious, commonplace

young man, imbued with a strong idea that in being made a priest he had

been invested with a nobility and with some special capacity beyond that

of other men, slight in body, weak in health, but honest, true, and

warm-hearted. Then, the engagement having been completed, there arose

the question of matrimony. The salary of the curate was a hundred a

year. The whole income of the vicar, an old man, was, after payment made

to his curate, two hundred a year. Could the curate, in such

circumstances, afford to take to himself a penniless wife of seventeen?

Mrs. Gresley was willing that the marriage should take place, and that

they should all do as best they might on their joint income. The vicar’s

wife, who seems to have been a strong-minded, sage, though somewhat hard

woman, took Mary aside, and told her that such a thing must not be.

There would come, she said, children, and destitution, and ruin. She

knew perhaps more than Mary knew when Mary told us her story, sitting

opposite to us in the low arm-chair. It was the advice of the vicar’s

wife that the engagement should be broken off; but that, if the

breaking-off of the engagement were impossible, there should be an

indefinite period of waiting. Such engagements cannot be broken off.

Young hearts will not consent to be thus torn asunder. The vicar’s wife

was too strong for them to get themselves married in her teeth, and the

period of indefinite waiting was commenced.

And now for a moment we will go further back among Mary’s youthful days.

Child as she seemed to be, she had in very early years taken a pen in

her hand. The reader need hardly be told that had not such been the case

there would not have arisen any cause for friendship between her and us.

We are telling an Editor’s tale, and it was in our editorial capacity

that Mary first came to us. Well;--in her earliest attempts, in her very

young days, she wrote--Heaven knows what; poetry first, no doubt; then,

God help her, a tragedy; after that, when the curate-influence first

commenced, tales for the conversion of the ungodly;--and at last, before

her engagement was a fact, having tried her wing at fiction, in the form

of those false little dialogues between Tom the Saint and Bob the

Sinner, she had completed a novel in one volume. She was then seventeen,

was engaged to be married, and had completed her novel! Passing her in

the street you would almost have taken her for a child to whom you might

give an orange.

Hitherto her work had come from ambition,--or from a feeling of

restless piety inspired by the curate. Now there arose in her young mind

the question whether such talent as she possessed might not be turned to

account for ways and means, and used to shorten, perhaps absolutely to

annihilate, that uncertain period of waiting. The first novel was seen

by “a man of letters” in her neighbourhood, who pronounced it to be very

clever;--not indeed fit as yet for publication, faulty in grammar,

faulty even in spelling,--how I loved the tear that shone in her eye as

she confessed this delinquency!--faulty of course in construction, and

faulty in character;--but still clever. The man of letters had told her

that she must begin again.

Unfortunate man of letters in having thrust upon him so terrible a task!

In such circumstances what is the candid, honest, soft-hearted man of

letters to do? “Go, girl, and mend your stockings. Learn to make a pie.

If you work hard, it may be that some day your intellect will suffice to

you to read a book and understand it. For the writing of a book that

shall either interest or instruct a brother human being many gifts are

required. Have you just reason to believe that they have been given to

you?” That is what the candid, honest man of letters says who is not

soft-hearted;--and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it will

probably be the truth. The soft-hearted man of letters remembers that

this special case submitted to him may be the hundredth; and, unless the

blotted manuscript is conclusive against such possibility, he reconciles

it to his conscience to tune his counsel to that hope. Who can say that

he is wrong? Unless such evidence be conclusive, who can venture to

declare that this aspirant may not be the one who shall succeed? Who in

such emergency does not remember the day in which he also was one of the

hundred of whom the ninety-and-nine must fail;--and will not remember

also the many convictions on his own mind that he certainly would not be

the one appointed? The man of letters in the neighbourhood of Cornboro

to whom poor Mary’s manuscript was shown was not sufficiently

hard-hearted to make any strong attempt to deter her. He made no

reference to the easy stockings, or the wholesome pie,--pointed out the

manifest faults which he saw, and added, we do not doubt with much more

energy than he threw into his words of censure,--his comfortable

assurance that there was great promise in the work. Mary Gresley that

evening burned the manuscript, and began another, with the dictionary

close at her elbow.

Then, during her work, there occurred two circumstances which brought

upon her,--and, indeed, upon the household to which she

belonged,--intense sorrow and greatly-increased trouble. The first of

these applied more especially to herself. The Rev. Arthur Donne did not

approve of novels,--of other novels than those dialogues between Tom and

Bob, of the falsehood of which he was unconscious,--and expressed a

desire that the writing of them should be abandoned. How far the lover

went in his attempt to enforce obedience we, of course, could not know;

but he pronounced the edict, and the edict, though not obeyed, created

tribulation. Then there came forth another edict which had to be

obeyed,--an edict from the probable successor of the late Dr.

Gresley,--ordering the poor curate to seek employment in some clime more

congenial to his state of health than that in which he was then living.

He was told that his throat and lungs and general apparatus for living

and preaching were not strong enough for those hyperborean regions, and

that he must seek a southern climate. He did do so, and, before I became

acquainted with Mary, had transferred his services to a small town in

Dorsetshire. The engagement, of course, was to be as valid as ever,

though matrimony must be postponed, more indefinitely even than

heretofore. But if Mary could write novels and sell them, then how

glorious would it be to follow her lover into Dorsetshire! The Rev.

Arthur Donne went, and the curate who came in his place was a married

man, wanting a house, and not lodgings. So Mary Gresley persevered with

her second novel, and completed it before she was eighteen.

The literary friend in the neighbourhood,--to the chance of whose

acquaintance I was indebted for my subsequent friendship with Mary

Gresley,--found this work to be a great improvement on the first. He was

an elderly man, who had been engaged nearly all his life in the conduct

of a scientific and agricultural periodical, and was the last man whom I

should have taken as a sound critic on works of fiction;--but with

spelling, grammatical construction, and the composition of sentences he

was acquainted; and he assured Mary that her progress had been great.

Should she burn that second story? she asked him. She would if he so

recommended, and begin another the next day. Such was not his advice.

“I have a friend in London,” said he, “who has to do with such things,

and you shall go to him. I will give you a letter.” He gave her the

fatal letter, and she came to us.

She came up to town with her novel; but not only with her novel, for she

brought her mother with her. So great was her eloquence, so excellent

her suasive power either with her tongue or by that look of supplication

in her face, that she induced her mother to abandon her home in

Cornboro, and trust herself to London lodgings. The house was let

furnished to the new curate, and when I first heard of the Gresleys they

were living on the second floor in a small street near to the Euston

Square station. Poor Fanny, as she was called, was left in some humble

home at Cornboro, and Mary travelled up to try her fortune in the great

city. When we came to know her well we expressed our doubts as to the

wisdom of such a step. Yes; the vicar’s wife had been strong against the

move. Mary confessed as much. That lady had spoken most forcible words,

had uttered terrible predictions, had told sundry truths. But Mary had

prevailed, and the journey was made, and the lodgings were taken.

We can now come to the day on which we first saw her. She did not write,

but came direct to us with her manuscript in her hand. “A young woman,

Sir, wants to see you,” said the clerk, in that tone to which we were so

well accustomed, and which indicated the dislike which he had learned

from us to the reception of unknown visitors.

“Young woman! What young woman?”

“Well, Sir; she is a very young woman;--quite a girl like.”

“I suppose she has got a name. Who sent her? I cannot see any young

woman without knowing why. What does she want?”

“Got a manuscript in her hand, Sir.”

“I’ve no doubt she has, and a ton of manuscripts in drawers and

cupboards. Tell her to write. I won’t see any woman, young or old,

without knowing who she is.”

The man retired, and soon returned with an envelope belonging to the

office, on which was written, “Miss Mary Gresley, late of Cornboro.” He

also brought me a note from “the man of letters” down in Yorkshire. “Of

what sort is she?” I asked, looking at the introduction.

“She aint amiss as to looks,” said the clerk; “and she’s modest-like.”

Now certainly it is the fact that all female literary aspirants are not

“modest-like.” We read our friend’s letter through, while poor Mary was

standing at the counter below. How eagerly should we have run to greet

her, to save her from the gaze of the public, to welcome her at least

with a chair and the warmth of our editorial fire, had we guessed then

what were her qualities! It was not long before she knew the way up to

our sanctum without any clerk to show her, and not long before we knew

well the sound of that low but not timid knock at our door made always

with the handle of the parasol, with which her advent was heralded. We

will confess that there was always music to our ears in that light tap

from the little round wooden knob. The man of letters in Yorkshire, whom

we had known well for many years, had been never known to us with

intimacy. We had bought with him and sold with him, had talked with him,

and perhaps, walked with him; but he was not one with whom we had eaten,

or drunk, or prayed. A dull, well-instructed, honest man he was, fond of

his money, and, as we had thought, as unlikely as any man to be waked to

enthusiasm by the ambitious dreams of a young girl. But Mary had been

potent even over him, and he had written to me, saying that Miss Gresley

was a young lady of exceeding promise, in respect of whom he had a

strong presentiment that she would rise, if not to eminence, at least to

a good position as a writer. “But she is very young,” he added. Having

read this letter, we at last desired our clerk to send the lady up.

We remember her step as she came to the door, timid enough

then,--hesitating, but yet with an assumed lightness as though she was

determined to show us that she was not ashamed of what she was doing.

She had on her head a light straw hat, such as then was very unusual in

London,--and is not now, we believe, commonly worn in the streets of the

metropolis by ladies who believe themselves to know what they are about.

But it was a hat, worn upon her head, and not a straw plate done up with

ribbons, and reaching down the incline of the forehead as far as the top

of the nose. And she was dressed in a gray stuff frock, with a little

black band round her waist. As far as our memory goes, we never saw her

in any other dress, or with other hat or bonnet on her head. “And what

can we do for you,--Miss Gresley?” we said, standing up and holding the

literary gentleman’s letter in our hand. We had almost said, “my dear,”

seeing her youth and remembering our own age. We were afterwards glad

that we had not so addressed her; though it came before long that we did

call her “my dear,”--in quite another spirit.

She recoiled a little from the tone of our voice, but recovered herself

at once. “Mr. ---- thinks that you can do something for me. I have

written a novel, and I have brought it to you.”

“You are very young, are you not, to have written a novel?”

“I am young,” she said, “but perhaps older than you think. I am

eighteen.” Then for the first time there came into her eye that gleam of

a merry humour which never was allowed to dwell there long, but which

was so alluring when it showed itself.

“That is a ripe age,” we said laughing, and then we bade her seat

herself. At once we began to pour forth that long and dull and ugly

lesson which is so common to our life, in which we tried to explain to

our unwilling pupil that of all respectable professions for young women

literature is the most uncertain, the most heart-breaking, and the most

dangerous. “You hear of the few who are remunerated,” we said; “but you

hear nothing of the thousands that fail.”

“It is so noble!” she replied.

“But so hopeless.”

“There are those who succeed.”

“Yes, indeed. Even in a lottery one must gain the prize; but they who

trust to lotteries break their hearts.”

“But literature is not a lottery. If I am fit, I shall succeed. Mr. ----

thinks I may succeed.” Many more words of wisdom we spoke to her, and

well do we remember her reply when we had run all our line off the reel,

and had completed our sermon. “I shall go on all the same,” she said. “I

shall try, and try again,--and again.”

Her power over us, to a certain extent, was soon established. Of course

we promised to read the MS., and turned it over, no doubt with an

anxious countenance, to see of what kind was the writing. There is a

feminine scrawl of a nature so terrible that the task of reading it

becomes worse than the treadmill. “I know I can write well,--though I am

not quite sure about the spelling,” said Mary, as she observed the

glance of our eyes. She spoke truly. The writing was good, though the

erasures and alterations were very numerous. And then the story was

intended to fill only one volume. “I will copy it for you if you wish

it,” said Mary. “Though there are so many scratchings out, it has been

copied once.” We would not for worlds have given her such labour, and

then we promised to read the tale. We forget how it was brought about,

but she told us at that interview that her mother had obtained leave

from the pastrycook round the corner to sit there waiting till Mary

should rejoin her. “I thought it would be trouble enough for you to have

one of us here,” she said with her little laugh when I asked her why she

had not brought her mother on with her. I own that I felt that she had

been wise; and when I told her that if she would call on me again that

day week I would then have read at any rate so much of her work as would

enable me to give her my opinion, I did not invite her to bring her

mother with her. I knew that I could talk more freely to the girl

without the mother’s presence. Even when you are past fifty, and intend

only to preach a sermon, you do not wish to have a mother present.

When she was gone we took up the roll of paper and examined it. We

looked at the division into chapters, at the various mottoes the poor

child had chosen, pronounced to ourselves the name of the story,--it was

simply the name of the heroine, an easy-going, unaffected, well-chosen

name,--and read the last page of it. On such occasions the reader of the

work begins his task almost with a conviction that the labour which he

is about to undertake will be utterly thrown away. He feels all but sure

that the matter will be bad, that it will be better for all parties,

writer, intended readers, and intended publisher, that the written

words should not be conveyed into type,--that it will be his duty after

some fashion to convey that unwelcome opinion to the writer, and that

the writer will go away incredulous, and accusing mentally the Mentor of

the moment of all manner of literary sins, among which ignorance,

jealousy, and falsehood, will, in the poor author’s imagination, be most

prominent. And yet when the writer was asking for that opinion,

declaring his especial desire that the opinion should be candid,

protesting that his present wish is to have some gauge of his own

capability, and that he has come to you believing you to be above others

able to give him that gauge,--while his petition to you was being made,

he was in every respect sincere. He had come desirous to measure

himself, and had believed that you could measure him. When coming he did

not think that you would declare him to be an Apollo. He had told

himself, no doubt, how probable it was that you would point out to him

that he was a dwarf. You find him to be an ordinary man, measuring

perhaps five feet seven, and unable to reach the standard of the

particular regiment in which he is ambitious of serving. You tell him so

in what civillest words you know, and you are at once convicted in his

mind of jealousy, ignorance, and falsehood! And yet he is perhaps a

most excellent fellow, and capable of performing the best of

service,--only in some other regiment! As we looked at Miss Gresley’s

manuscript, tumbling it through our hands, we expected even from her

some such result. She had gained two things from us already by her

outward and inward gifts, such as they were,--first that we would read

her story, and secondly that we would read it quickly; but she had not

as yet gained from us any belief that by reading it we could serve it.

We did read it,--the most of it before we left our editorial chair on

that afternoon, so that we lost altogether the daily walk so essential

to our editorial health, and were put to the expense of a cab on our

return home. And we incurred some minimum of domestic discomfort from

the fact that we did not reach our own door till twenty minutes after

our appointed dinner hour. “I have this moment come from the office as

hard as a cab could bring me,” we said in answer to the mildest of

reproaches, explaining nothing as to the nature of the cause which had

kept us so long at our work.

We must not allow our readers to suppose that the intensity of our

application had arisen from the overwhelming interest of the story. It

was not that the story entranced us, but that our feeling for the

writer grew as we read the story. It was simple, unaffected, and almost

painfully unsensational. It contained, as I came to perceive afterwards,

little more than a recital of what her imagination told her might too

probably be the result of her own engagement. It was the story of two

young people who became engaged and could not be married. After a course

of years the man, with many true arguments, asked to be absolved. The

woman yields with an expressed conviction that her lover is right,

settles herself down for maiden life, then breaks her heart and dies.

The character of the man was utterly untrue to nature. That of the woman

was true, but commonplace. Other interest, or other character there was

none. The dialogues between the lovers were many and tedious, and hardly

a word was spoken between them which two lovers really would have

uttered. It was clearly not a work as to which I could tell my little

friend that she might depend upon it for fame or fortune. When I had

finished it I was obliged to tell myself that I could not advise her

even to publish it. But yet I could not say that she had mistaken her

own powers or applied herself to a profession beyond her reach. There

were a grace and delicacy in her work which were charming. Occasionally

she escaped from the trammels of grammar, but only so far that it would

be a pleasure to point out to her her errors. There was not a word that

a young lady should not have written; and there were throughout the

whole evident signs of honest work. We had six days to think it over

between our completion of the task and her second visit.

She came exactly at the hour appointed, and seated herself at once in

the arm-chair before us as soon as the young man had closed the door

behind him. There had been no great occasion for nervousness at her

first visit, and she had then, by an evident effort, overcome the

diffidence incidental to a meeting with a stranger. But now she did not

attempt to conceal her anxiety. “Well,” she said, leaning forward, and

looking up into our face, with her two hands folded together.

Even though Truth, standing full panoplied at our elbow, had positively

demanded it, we could not have told her then to mend her stockings and

bake her pies and desert the calling that she had chosen. She was simply

irresistible, and would, we fear, have constrained us into falsehood had

the question been between falsehood and absolute reprobation of her

work. To have spoken hard, heart-breaking words to her, would have been

like striking a child when it comes to kiss you. We fear that we were

not absolutely true at first, and that by that absence of truth we made

subsequent pain more painful. “Well,” she said, looking up into our

face. “Have you read it?” We told her that we had read every word of it.

“And it is no good?”

We fear that we began by telling her that it certainly was good,--after

a fashion, very good,--considering her youth and necessary inexperience,

very good indeed. As we said this she shook her head, and sent out a

spark or two from her eyes, intimating her conviction that excuses or

quasi praise founded on her youth would avail her nothing. “Would

anybody buy it from me?” she asked. No;--we did not think that any

publisher would pay her money for it. “Would they print it for me

without costing me anything?” Then we told her the truth as nearly as we

could. She lacked experience; and if, as she had declared to us before,

she was determined to persevere, she must try again, and must learn more

of that lesson of the world’s ways which was so necessary to those who

attempted to teach that lesson to others. “But I shall try again at

once,” she said. We shook our head, endeavouring to shake it kindly.

“Currer Bell was only a young girl when she succeeded,” she added. The

injury which Currer Bell did after this fashion was almost equal to that

perpetrated by Jack Sheppard, and yet Currer Bell was not very young

when she wrote.

She remained with us then for above an hour;--for more than two

probably, though the time was not specially marked by us; and before her

visit was brought to a close she had told us of her engagement with the

curate. Indeed, we believe that the greater part of her little history

as hitherto narrated was made known to us on that occasion. We asked

after her mother early in the interview, and learned that she was not on

this occasion kept waiting at the pastrycook’s shop. Mary had come

alone, making use of some friendly omnibus, of which she had learned the

route. When she told us that she and her mother had come up to London

solely with the view of forwarding her views in her intended profession,

we ventured to ask whether it would not be wiser for them to return to

Cornboro, seeing how improbable it was that she would have matter fit

for the press within any short period. Then she explained that they had

calculated that they would be able to live in London for twelve months,

if they spent nothing except on absolute necessaries. The poor girl

seemed to keep back nothing from us. “We have clothes that will carry

us through, and we shall be very careful. I came in an omnibus;--but I

shall walk if you will let me come again.” Then she asked me for advice.

How was she to set about further work with the best chance of turning it

to account?

It had been altogether the fault of that retired literary gentleman down

in the north, who had obtained what standing he had in the world of

letters by writing about guano and the cattle plague! Divested of all

responsibility, and fearing no further trouble to himself, he had

ventured to tell this girl that her work was full of promise. Promise

means probability, and in this case there was nothing beyond a remote

chance. That she and her mother should have left their little household

gods, and come up to London on such a chance, was a thing terrible to

the mind. But we felt before these two hours were over that we could not

throw her off now. We had become old friends, and there had been that

between us which gave her a positive claim upon our time. She had sat in

our arm-chair, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and her

hands stretched out, till we, caught by the charm of her unstudied

intimacy, had wheeled round our chair, and had placed ourselves, as

nearly as the circumstances would admit, in the same position. The

magnetism had already begun to act upon us. We soon found ourselves

taking it for granted that she was to remain in London and begin another

book. It was impossible to resist her. Before the interview was over,

we, who had been conversant with all these matters before she was born;

we, who had latterly come to regard our own editorial fault as being

chiefly that of personal harshness; we, who had repulsed aspirant

novelists by the score,--we had consented to be a party to the creation,

if not to the actual writing, of this new book!

It was to be done after this fashion. She was to fabricate a plot, and

to bring it to us, written on two sides of a sheet of letter paper. On

the reverse sides we were to criticise this plot, and prepare

emendations. Then she was to make out skeletons of the men and women who

were afterwards to be clothed with flesh and made alive with blood, and

covered with cuticles. After that she was to arrange her proportions;

and at last, before she began to write the story, she was to describe in

detail such part of it as was to be told in each chapter. On every

advancing wavelet of the work we were to give her our written remarks.

All this we promised to do because of the quiver in her lip, and the

alternate tear and sparkle in her eye. “Now that I have found a friend,

I feel sure that I can do it,” she said, as she held our hand tightly

before she left us.

In about a month, during which she had twice written to us and twice

been answered, she came with her plot. It was the old story, with some

additions and some change. There was matrimony instead of death at the

end, and an old aunt was brought in for the purpose of relenting and

producing an income. We added a few details, feeling as we did so that

we were the very worst of botchers. We doubt now whether the old, sad,

simple story was not the better of the two. Then, after another

lengthened interview, we sent our pupil back to create her skeletons.

When she came with the skeletons we were dear friends and learned to

call her Mary. Then it was that she first sat at our editorial table,

and wrote a love-letter to the curate. It was then mid-winter, wanting

but a few days to Christmas, and Arthur, as she called him, did not like

the cold weather. “He does not say so,” she said, “but I fear he is ill.

Don’t you think there are some people with whom everything is

unfortunate?” She wrote her letter, and had recovered her spirits before

she took her leave.

We then proposed to her to bring her mother to dine with us on Christmas

Day. We had made a clean breast of it at home in regard to our

heart-flutterings, and had been met with a suggestion that some kindness

might with propriety be shown to the old lady as well as to the young

one. We had felt grateful to the old lady for not coming to our office

with her daughter, and had at once assented. When we made the suggestion

to Mary there came first a blush over all her face, and then there

followed the well-known smile before the blush was gone. “You’ll all be

dressed fine,” she said. We protested that not a garment would be

changed by any of the family after the decent church-going in the

morning. “Just as I am?” she asked. “Just as you are,” we said, looking

at the dear gray frock, adding some mocking assertion that no possible

combination of millinery could improve her. “And mamma will be just the

same? Then we will come,” she said. We told her an absolute falsehood,

as to some necessity which would take us in a cab to Euston Square on

the afternoon of that Christmas Day, so that we could call and bring

them both to our house without trouble or expense. “You sha’n’t do

anything of the kind,” she said. However, we swore to our

falsehood,--perceiving, as we did so, that she did not believe a word

of it; but in the matter of the cab we had our own way.

We found the mother to be what we had expected,--a weak, ladylike,

lachrymose old lady, endowed with a profound admiration for her

daughter, and so bashful that she could not at all enjoy her

plum-pudding. We think that Mary did enjoy hers thoroughly. She made a

little speech to the mistress of the house, praising ourselves with warm

words and tearful eyes, and immediately won the heart of a new friend.

She allied herself warmly to our daughters, put up with the schoolboy

pleasantries of our sons, and before the evening was over was dressed up

as a ghost for the amusement of some neighbouring children who were

brought in to play snapdragon. Mrs. Gresley, as she drank her tea and

crumbled her bit of cake, seated on a distant sofa, was not so happy,

partly because she remembered her old gown, and partly because our wife

was a stranger to her. Mary had forgotten both circumstances before the

dinner was half over. She was the sweetest ghost that ever was seen. How

pleasant would be our ideas of departed spirits if such ghosts would

visit us frequently!

They repeated their visits to us not unfrequently during the twelve

months; but as the whole interest attaching to our intercourse had

reference to circumstances which took place in that editorial room of

ours, it will not be necessary to refer further to the hours, very

pleasant to ourselves, which she spent with us in our domestic life. She

was ever made welcome when she came, and was known by us as a dear,

well-bred, modest, clever little girl. The novel went on. That catalogue

of the skeletons gave us more trouble than all the rest, and many were

the tears which she shed over it, and sad were the misgivings by which

she was afflicted, though never vanquished! How was it to be expected

that a girl of eighteen should portray characters such as she had never

known? In her intercourse with the curate all the intellect had been on

her side. She had loved him because it was requisite to her to love some

one; and now, as she had loved him, she was as true as steel to him. But

there had been almost nothing for her to learn from him. The plan of the

novel went on, and as it did so we became more and more despondent as to

its success. And through it all we knew how contrary it was to our own

judgment to expect, even to dream of, anything but failure. Though we

went on working with her, finding it to be quite impossible to resist

her entreaties, we did tell her from day to day that, even presuming she

were entitled to hope for ultimate success, she must go through an

apprenticeship of ten years before she could reach it. Then she would

sit silent, repressing her tears, and searching for arguments with which

to support her cause.

“Working hard is apprenticeship,” she said to us once.

“Yes, Mary; but the work will be more useful, and the apprenticeship

more wholesome, if you will take them for what they are worth.”

“I shall be dead in ten years,” she said.

“If you thought so you would not intend to marry Mr. Donne. But even

were it certain that such would be your fate, how can that alter the

state of things? The world would know nothing of that; and if it did,

would the world buy your book out of pity?”

“I want no one to pity me,” she said; “but I want you to help me.” So we

went on helping her. At the end of four months she had not put pen to

paper on the absolute body of her projected novel; and yet she had

worked daily at it, arranging its future construction.

During the next month, when we were in the middle of March, a gleam of

real success came to her. We had told her frankly that we would publish

nothing of hers in the periodical which we were ourselves conducting.

She had become too dear to us for us not to feel that were we to do so,

we should be doing it rather for her sake than for that of our readers.

But we did procure for her the publication of two short stories

elsewhere. For these she received twelve guineas, and it seemed to her

that she had found an El Dorado of literary wealth. I shall never forget

her ecstasy when she knew that her work would be printed, or her renewed

triumph when the first humble cheque was given into her hands. There are

those who will think that such a triumph, as connected with literature,

must be sordid. For ourselves, we are ready to acknowledge that money

payment for work done is the best and most honest test of success. We

are sure that it is so felt by young barristers and young doctors, and

we do not see why rejoicing on such realisation of long-cherished hope

should be more vile with the literary aspirant than with them. “What do

you think I’ll do first with it?” she said. We thought she meant to send

something to her lover, and we told her so. “I’ll buy mamma a bonnet to

go to church in. I didn’t tell you before, but she hasn’t been these

three Sundays because she hasn’t one fit to be seen.” I changed the

cheque for her, and she went off and bought the bonnet.

Though I was successful for her in regard to the two stories, I could

not go beyond that. We could have filled pages of periodicals with her

writing had we been willing that she should work without remuneration.

She herself was anxious for such work, thinking that it would lead to

something better. But we opposed it, and, indeed, would not permit it,

believing that work so done can be serviceable to none but those who

accept it that pages may be filled without cost.

During the whole winter, while she was thus working, she was in a state

of alarm about her lover. Her hope was ever that when warm weather came

he would again be well and strong. We know nothing sadder than such hope

founded on such source. For does not the winter follow the summer, and

then again comes the killing spring? At this time she used to read us

passages from his letters, in which he seemed to speak of little but his

own health.

In her literary ambition he never seemed to have taken part since she

had declared her intention of writing profane novels. As regarded him,

his sole merit to us seemed to be in his truth to her. He told her that

in his opinion they two were as much joined together as though the

service of the Church had bound them; but even in saying that he spoke

ever of himself and not of her. Well;--May came, dangerous, doubtful,

deceitful May, and he was worse. Then, for the first time, the dread

word, consumption, passed her lips. It had already passed ours,

mentally, a score of times. We asked her what she herself would wish to

do. Would she desire to go down to Dorsetshire and see him? She thought

awhile, and said that she would wait a little longer.

The novel went on, and at length, in June, she was writing the actual

words on which, as she thought, so much depended. She had really brought

the story into some shape in the arrangement of her chapters; and

sometimes even I began to hope. There were moments in which with her

hope was almost certainty. Towards the end of June Mr. Donne declared

himself to be better. He was to have a holiday in August, and then he

intended to run up to London and see his betrothed. He still gave

details, which were distressing to us, of his own symptoms; but it was

manifest that he himself was not desponding, and she was governed in her

trust or in her despair altogether by him. But when August came the

period of his visit was postponed. The heat had made him weak, and he

was to come in September.

Early in August we ourselves went away for our annual recreation:--not

that we shoot grouse, or that we have any strong opinion that August and

September are the best months in the year for holiday-making,--but that

everybody does go in August. We ourselves are not specially fond of

August. In many places to which one goes a-touring mosquitoes bite in

that month. The heat, too, prevents one from walking. The inns are all

full, and the railways crowded. April and May are twice pleasanter

months in which to see the world and the country. But fashion is

everything, and no man or woman will stay in town in August for whom

there exists any practicability of leaving it. We went on the

10th,--just as though we had a moor, and one of the last things we did

before our departure was to read and revise the last-written chapter of

Mary’s story.

About the end of September we returned, and up to that time the lover

had not come to London. Immediately on our return we wrote to Mary, and

the next morning she was with us. She had seated herself on her usual

chair before she spoke, and we had taken her hand asked after herself

and her mother. Then, with something of mirth in our tone, we demanded

the work which she had done since our departure. “He is dying,” she

replied.

She did not weep as she spoke. It was not on such occasions as this that

the tears filled her eyes. But there was in her face a look of fixed and

settled misery which convinced us that she at least did not doubt the

truth of her own assertion. We muttered something as to our hope that

she was mistaken. “The doctor, there, has written to tell mamma that it

is so. Here is his letter.” The doctor’s letter was a good letter,

written with more of assurance than doctors can generally allow

themselves to express. “I fear that I am justified in telling you,” said

the doctor, “that it can only be a question of weeks.” We got up and

took her hand. There was not a word to be uttered.

“I must go to him,” she said, after a pause.

“Well;--yes. It will be better.”

“But we have no money.” It must be explained now that offers of slight,

very slight, pecuniary aid had been made by us both to Mary and to her

mother on more than one occasion. These had been refused with adamantine

firmness, but always with something of mirth, or at least of humour,

attached to the refusal. The mother would simply refer to the daughter,

and Mary would declare that they could manage to see the twelvemonth

through and go back to Cornboro, without becoming absolute beggars. She

would allude to their joint wardrobe, and would confess that there would

not have been a pair of boots between them but for that twelve guineas;

and indeed she seemed to have stretched that modest incoming so as to

cover a legion of purchases. And of these things she was never ashamed

to speak. We think there must have been at least two gray frocks,

because the frock was always clean, and never absolutely shabby. Our

girls at home declared that they had seen three. Of her frock, as it

happened, she never spoke to us, but the new boots and the new gloves,

“and ever so many things that I can’t tell you about, which we really

couldn’t have gone without,” all came out of the twelve guineas. That

she had taken, not only with delight, but with triumph. But pecuniary

assistance from ourselves she had always refused. “It would be a gift,”

she would say.

“Have it as you like.”

“But people don’t give other people money.”

“Don’t they? That’s all you know about the world.”

“Yes; to beggars. We hope we needn’t come to that.” It was thus that she

always answered us, but always with something of laughter in her eye,

as though their poverty was a joke. Now, when the demand upon her was

for that which did not concern her personal comfort, which referred to a

matter felt by her to be vitally important, she declared, without a

minute’s hesitation, that she had not money for the journey.

“Of course you can have money,” we said. “I suppose you will go at

once?”

“Oh yes,--at once. That is, in a day or two,--after he shall have

received my letter. Why should I wait?” We sat down to write a cheque,

and she, seeing what we were doing, asked how much it was to be.

“No;--half that will do,” she said. “Mamma will not go. We have talked

it over and decided it. Yes; I know all about that. I am going to see my

lover,--my dying lover; and I have to beg for the money to take me to

him. Of course I am a young girl; but in such a condition am I to stand

upon the ceremony of being taken care of? A housemaid wouldn’t want to

be taken care of at eighteen.” We did exactly as she bade us, and then

attempted to comfort her while the young man went to get money for the

cheque. What consolation was possible? It was simply necessary to admit

with frankness that sorrow had come from which there could be no present

release. “Yes,” she said. “Time will cure it,--in a way. One dies in

time, and then of course it is all cured.” “One hears of this kind of

thing often,” she said afterwards, still leaning forward in her chair,

still with something of the old expression in her eyes,--something

almost of humour in spite of her grief; “but it is the girl who dies.

When it is the girl, there isn’t, after all, so much harm done. A man

goes about the world and can shake it off; and then, there are plenty of

girls.” We could not tell her how infinitely more important, to our

thinking, was her life than that of him whom she was going to see now

for the last time; but there did spring up within our mind a feeling,

greatly opposed to that conviction which formerly we had endeavoured to

impress upon herself,--that she was destined to make for herself a

successful career.

She went, and remained by her lover’s bed-side for three weeks. She

wrote constantly to her mother, and once or twice to ourselves. She

never again allowed herself to entertain a gleam of hope, and she spoke

of her sorrow as a thing accomplished. In her last interview with us she

had hardly alluded to her novel, and in her letters she never mentioned

it. But she did say one word which made us guess what was coming. “You

will find me greatly changed in one thing,” she said; “so much changed

that I need never have troubled you.” The day for her return to London

was twice postponed, but at last she was brought to leave him. Stern

necessity was too strong for her. Let her pinch herself as she might,

she must live down in Dorsetshire,--and could not live on his means,

which were as narrow as her own. She left him; and on the day after her

arrival in London she walked across from Euston Square to our office.

“Yes,” she said, “it is all over. I shall never see him again on this

side of heaven’s gates.” We do not know that we ever saw a tear in her

eyes produced by her own sorrow. She was possessed of some wonderful

strength which seemed to suffice for the bearing of any burden. Then she

paused, and we could only sit silent, with our eyes fixed upon the rug.

“I have made him a promise,” she said at last. Of course we asked her

what was the promise, though at the moment we thought that we knew. “I

will make no more attempt at novel writing.”

“Such a promise should not have been asked,--or given,” we said

vehemently.

“It should have been asked,--because he thought it right,” she answered.

“And of course it was given. Must he not know better than I do? Is he

not one of God’s ordained priests? In all the world is there one so

bound to obey him as I?” There was nothing to be said for it at such a

moment as that. There is no enthusiasm equal to that produced by a

death-bed parting. “I grieve greatly,” she said, “that you should have

had so much vain labour with a poor girl who can never profit by it.”

“I don’t believe the labour will have been vain,” we answered, having

altogether changed those views of ours as to the futility of the pursuit

which she had adopted.

“I have destroyed it all,” she said.

“What;--burned the novel?”

“Every scrap of it. I told him that I would do so, and that he should

know that I had done it. Every page was burned after I got home last

night, and then I wrote to him before I went to bed.”

“Do you mean that you think it wicked that people should write novels?”

we asked.

“He thinks it to be a misapplication of God’s gifts, and that has been

enough for me. He shall judge for me, but I will not judge for others.

And what does it matter? I do not want to write a novel now.”

They remained in London till the end of the year for which the married

curate had taken their house, and then they returned to Cornboro. We saw

them frequently while they were still in town, and despatched them by

the train to the north just when the winter was beginning. At that time

the young clergyman was still living down in Dorsetshire, but he was

lying in his grave when Christmas came. Mary never saw him again, nor

did she attend his funeral. She wrote to us frequently then, as she did

for years afterwards. “I should have liked to have stood at his grave,”

she said; “but it was a luxury of sorrow that I wished to enjoy, and

they who cannot earn luxuries should not have them. They were going to

manage it for me here, but I knew I was right to refuse it.” Right,

indeed! As far as we knew her, she never moved a single point from what

was right.

All these things happened many years ago. Mary Gresley, on her return to

Cornboro, apprenticed herself, as it were, to the married curate there,

and called herself, I think, a female Scripture reader. I know that she

spent her days in working hard for the religious aid of the poor around

her. From time to time we endeavoured to instigate her to literary work;

and she answered our letters by sending us wonderful little dialogues

between Tom the Saint and Bob the Sinner. We are in no humour to

criticise them now; but we can assert, that though that mode of

religious teaching is most distasteful to us, the literary merit shown

even in such works as these was very manifest. And there came to be

apparent in them a gleam of humour which would sometimes make us think

that she was sitting opposite to us and looking at us, and that she was

Tom the Saint, and that we were Bob the Sinner. We said what we could to

turn her from her chosen path, throwing into our letters all the

eloquence and all the thought of which we were masters: but our

eloquence and our thought were equally in vain.

At last, when eight years had passed over her head after the death of

Mr. Donne, she married a missionary who was going out to some forlorn

country on the confines of African colonisation; and there she died. We

saw her on board the ship in which she sailed, and before we parted

there had come that tear into her eyes, the old look of supplication on

her lips, and the gleam of mirth across her face. We kissed her

once,--for the first and only time,--as we bade God bless her!

THE TURKISH BATH.

[Illustration]

THE TURKISH BATH.

It was in the month of August. The world had gone to the moors and the

Rhine, but we were still kept in town by the exigencies of our position.

We had been worked hard during the preceding year, and were not quite as

well as our best friends might have wished us;--and we resolved upon

taking a Turkish bath. This little story records the experience of one

individual man; but our readers, we hope, will, without a grudge, allow

us the use of the editorial we. We doubt whether the story could be told

at all in any other form. We resolved upon taking a Turkish bath, and at

about three o’clock in the day we strutted from the outer to the inner

room of the establishment in that light costume and with that air of

Arab dignity which are peculiar to the place.

As everybody has not taken a Turkish bath in Jermyn Street, we will give

the shortest possible description of the position. We had entered of

course in the usual way, leaving our hat and our boots and our

“valuables” among the numerous respectable assistants who throng the

approaches; and as we had entered we had observed a stout, middle-aged

gentleman on the other side of the street, clad in vestments somewhat

the worse for wear, and to our eyes particularly noticeable by reason of

the tattered condition of his gloves. A well-to-do man may have no

gloves, or may simply carry in his hands those which appertain to him

rather as a thing of custom than for any use for which he requires them.

But a tattered glove, worn on the hand, is to our eyes the surest sign

of a futile attempt at outer respectability. It is melancholy to us

beyond expression. Our brother editors, we do not doubt, are acquainted

with the tattered glove, and have known the sadness which it produces.

If there be an editor whose heart has not been softened by the feminine

tattered glove, that editor is not our brother. In this instance the

tattered glove was worn by a man; and though the usual indication of

poor circumstances was conveyed, there was nevertheless something jaunty

in the gentleman’s step which preserved him from the desecration of

pity. We barely saw him, but still were thinking of him as we passed

into the building with the oriental letters on it, and took off our

boots, and pulled out our watch and purse.

We were of course accommodated with two checked towels; and, having in

vain attempted to show that we were to the manner born by fastening the

larger of them satisfactorily round our own otherwise naked person, had

obtained the assistance of one of those very skilful eastern boys who

glide about the place and create envy by their familiarity with its

mysteries. With an absence of all bashfulness which soon grows upon one,

we had divested ourselves of our ordinary trappings beneath the gaze of

five or six young men lying on surrounding sofas,--among whom we

recognised young Walker of the Treasury, and hereby testify on his

behalf that he looks almost as fine a fellow without his clothes as he

does with them,--and had strutted through the doorway into the

bath-room, trailing our second towel behind us. Having observed the

matter closely in the course of perhaps half-a-dozen visits, we are

prepared to recommend that mode of entry to our young friends as being

at the same time easy and oriental. There are those who wear the second

towel as a shawl, thereby no doubt achieving a certain decency of garb;

but this is done to the utter loss of all dignity; and a feminine

appearance is produced, such as is sometimes that of a lady of fifty

looking after her maid-servants at seven o’clock in the morning and

intending to dress again before breakfast. And some there are who carry

it under the arm,--simply as a towel; but these are they who, from

English perversity, wilfully rob the institution of that picturesque

orientalism which should be its greatest charm. A few are able to wear

the article as a turban, and that no doubt should be done by all who are

competent to achieve the position. We have observed that men who can do

so enter the bath-room with an air and are received there with a respect

which no other arrangement of the towel will produce. We have tried

this; but as the turban gets over our eyes, and then falls altogether

off our brow, we have abandoned it. In regard to personal deportment,

depending partly on the step, somewhat on the eye, but chiefly on the

costume, it must be acknowledged that “the attempt and not the deed

confounds us.” It is not every man who can carry a blue towel as a

turban, and look like an Arab in the streets of Cairo, as he walks

slowly down the room in Jermyn Street with his arms crossed on his naked

breast. The attempt and not the deed does confound one shockingly. We,

therefore, recommend that the second towel should be trailed. The effect

is good, and there is no difficulty in the trailing which may not be

overcome.

We had trailed our way into the bath-room, and had slowly walked to one

of those arm-chairs in which it is our custom on such occasions to seat

ourselves and to await sudation. There are marble couches; and if a man

be able to lie on stone for half an hour without a movement beyond that

of clapping his hands, or a sound beyond a hollow-voiced demand for

water, the effect is not bad. But he loses everything if he tosses

himself uneasily on his hard couch, and we acknowledge that our own

elbows are always in the way of our own comfort, and that our bones

become sore. We think that the marble sofas must be intended for the

younger Turks. If a man can stretch himself on stone without suffering

for the best part of an hour,--or, more bravely perhaps, without

appearing to suffer, let him remember that all is not done even then.

Very much will depend on the manner in which he claps his hands, and the

hollowness of the voice in which he calls for water. There should, we

think, be two blows of the palms. One is very weak and proclaims its own

futility. Even to dull London ears it seems at once to want the eastern

tone. We have heard three given effectively, but we think that it

requires much practice; and even when it is perfect, the result is that

of western impatience rather than of eastern gravity. No word should be

pronounced, beyond that one word,--Water. The effect should be as though

the whole mind were so devoted to the sudorific process as to admit of

no extraneous idea. There should seem to be almost an agony in the

effort,--as though the man enduring it, conscious that with success he

would come forth a god, was aware that being as yet but mortal he may

perish in the attempt. Two claps of the hand and a call for water, and

that repeated with an interval of ten minutes, are all the external

signs of life that the young Turkish bather may allow to himself while

he is stretched upon his marble couch.

We had taken a chair,--well aware that nothing god-like could be thus

achieved, and contented to obtain the larger amount of human comfort.

The chairs are placed two and two, and a custom has grown up,--of which

we scarcely think that the origin has been eastern,--in accordance with

which friends occupying these chairs will spend their time in

conversation. The true devotee to the Turkish bath will, we think, never

speak at all; but when the speaking is low in tone, just something

between a whisper and an articulate sound, the slight murmuring hum

produced is not disagreeable. We cannot quite make up our mind whether

this use of the human voice be or be not oriental; but we think that it

adds to the mystery, and upon the whole it gratifies. Let it be

understood, however, that harsh, resonant, clearly-expressed speech is

damnable. The man who talks aloud to his friend about the trivial

affairs of life is selfish, ignorant, unpoetical,--and English in the

very worst sense of the word. Who but an ass proud of his own capacity

for braying would venture to dispel the illusions of a score of bathers

by observing aloud that the House sat till three o’clock that morning?

But though friends may talk in low voices, a man without a friend will

hardly fall into conversation at the Turkish bath. It is said that our

countrymen are unapt to speak to each other without introduction, and

this inaptitude is certainly not decreased by the fact that two men meet

each other with nothing on but a towel a piece. Finding yourself next to

a man in such a garb you hardly know where to begin. And then there lies

upon you the weight of that necessity of maintaining a certain dignity

of deportment which has undoubtedly grown upon you since you succeeded

in freeing yourself from your socks and trousers. For ourselves we have

to admit that the difficulty is much increased by the fact that we are

short-sighted, and are obligated, by the sudorific processes and by the

shampooing and washing that are to come, to leave our spectacles behind

us. The delicious wonder of the place is no doubt increased to us, but

our incapability of discerning aught of those around us in that low

gloomy light is complete. Jones from Friday Street, or even Walker from

the Treasury, is the same to us as one of those Asiatic slaves who

administer to our comfort, and flit about the place with admirable

decorum and self-respect. On this occasion we had barely seated

ourselves, when another bather, with slow, majestic step, came to the

other chair; and, with a manner admirably adapted to the place,

stretching out his naked legs, and throwing back his naked shoulders,

seated himself beside us. We are much given to speculations on the

characters and probable circumstances of those with whom we are brought

in contact. Our editorial duties require that it should be so. How

should we cater for the public did we not observe the public in all its

moods? We thought that we could see at once that this was no ordinary

man, and we may as well aver here, at the beginning of our story, that

subsequent circumstances proved our first conceptions to be correct.

The absolute features of the gentleman we did not, indeed, see plainly.

The gloom of the place and our own deficiency of sight forbade it. But

we could discern the thorough man of the world, the traveller who had

seen many climes, the cosmopolitan to whom East and West were alike, in

every motion that he made. We confess that we were anxious for

conversation, and that we struggled within ourselves for an apt subject,

thinking how we might begin. But the apt subject did not occur to us,

and we should have passed that half-hour of repose in silence had not

our companion been more ready than ourselves. “Sir,” said he, turning

round in his seat with a peculiar and captivating grace, “I shall not, I

hope, offend or transgress any rule of politeness by speaking to a

stranger.” There was ease and dignity in his manner, and at the same

time some slight touch of humour which was very charming. I thought that

I detected just a hint of an Irish accent in his tone; but if so the

dear brogue of his country, which is always delightful to me, had been

so nearly banished by intercourse with other tongues as to leave the

matter still a suspicion,--a suspicion, or rather a hope.

“By no means,” we answered, turning round on our left shoulder, but

missing the grace with which he had made his movement.

“There is nothing,” said he, “to my mind so absurd as that two men

should be seated together for an hour without venturing to open their

mouths because they do not know each other. And what matter does it make

whether a man has his breeches on or is without them?”

My hope had now become an assurance. As he named the article of clothing

which peculiarly denotes a man he gave a picturesque emphasis to the

word which was certainly Hibernian. Who does not know the dear sound?

And, as a chance companion for a few idle minutes, is there any one so

likely to prove himself agreeable as a well-informed, travelled

Irishman?

“And yet,” said we, “men do depend much on their outward paraphernalia.”

“Indeed and they do,” said our friend. “And why? Because they can trust

their tailors when they can’t trust themselves. Give me the man who can

make a speech without any of the accessories of the pulpit, who can

preach what sermon there is in him without a pulpit.” His words were

energetic, but his voice was just suited to the place. Had he spoken

aloud, so that others might have heard him, we should have left our

chair, and have retreated to one of the inner and hotter rooms at the

moment. His words were perfectly audible, but he spoke in a fitting

whisper. “It is a part of my creed,” he continued, “that we should never

lose even a quarter of an hour. What a strange mass of human beings one

finds in this city of London!”

“A mighty maze, but not without a plan,” we replied.

“Bedad,--and it’s hard enough to find the plan,” said he. It struck me

that after that he rose into a somewhat higher flight of speech, as

though he had remembered and was desirous of dropping his country. It is

the customary and perhaps the only fault of an Irishman. “Whether it be

there or not, we can expatiate free, as the poet says. How

unintelligible is London! New York or Constantinople one can

understand,--or even Paris. One knows what the world is doing in these

cities, and what men desire.”

“What men desire is nearly the same in all cities,” we remarked,--and

not without truth as we think.

“Is it money you mane?” he said, again relapsing. “Yes; money, no doubt,

is the grand desideratum,--the ‘to prepon,’ the ‘to kalon’ the ‘to

pan!’” Plato and Pope were evidently at his fingers’ ends. We did not

conclude from this slight evidence that he was thoroughly imbued with

the works either of the poet or the philosopher; but we hold that for

the ordinary purposes of conversation a superficial knowledge of many

things goes further than an intimacy with one or two. “Money,” continued

he, “is everything, no doubt;--rem--rem; rem, si possis recte, si

non,----; you know the rest. I don’t complain of that. I like money

myself. I know its value. I’ve had it, and,--I’m not ashamed to say it,

Sir,--I’ve been without it.”

“Our sympathies are completely with you in reference to the latter

position,” we said,--remembering, with a humility that we hope is

natural to us, that we were not always editors.

“What I complain of is,” said our new friend still whispering, as he

passed his hand over his arms and legs, to learn whether the temperature

of the room was producing its proper effect, “that if a man here in

London have a diamond, or a pair of boots, or any special skill at his

command, he cannot take his article to the proper mart, and obtain for

it the proper price.”

“Can he do that in Constantinople?” we enquired.

“Much better and more accurately than he can in London. And so he can in

Paris!” We did not believe this; but as we were thinking after what

fashion we would express our doubts, he branched off so quickly to a

matter of supply and demand with which we were specially interested,

that we lost the opportunity of arguing the general question. “A man of

letters,” he said, “a capable and an instructed man of letters, can

always get a market for his wares in Paris.”

“A capable and instructed man of letters will do so in London,” we said,

“as soon as he has proved his claims. He must prove them in Paris before

they can be allowed.”

“Yes;--he must prove them. By-the-bye, will you have a cheroot?” So

saying, he stretched out his hand, and took from the marble slab beside

him two cheroots which he had placed there. He then proceeded to explain

that he did not bring in his case because of the heat, but that he was

always “muni,”--that was his phrase,--with a couple, in the hope that he

might meet an acquaintance with whom to share them. I accepted his

offer, and when we had walked round the chamber to a light provided for

the purpose, we reseated ourselves. His manner of moving about the place

was so good that I felt it to be a pity that he should ever have a rag

on more than he wore at present. His tobacco, I must own, did not

appear to me to be of the first class; but then I am not in the habit of

smoking cheroots, and am no judge of the merits of the weed as grown in

the East. “Yes;--a man in Paris must prove his capability; but then how

easily he can do it, if the fact to be proved be there! And how certain

is the mart, if he have the thing to sell!”

We immediately denied that in this respect there was any difference

between the two capitals, pointing out what we believe to be a

fact,--that in one capital as in the other, there exists, and must ever

exist, extreme difficulty in proving the possession of an art so

difficult to define as capability of writing for the press. “Nothing but

success can prove it,” we said, as we slapped our thigh with an energy

altogether unbecoming our position as a Turkish bather.

“A man may have a talent then, and he cannot use it till he have used

it! He may possess a diamond, and cannot sell it till he have sold it!

What is a man to do who wishes to engage himself in any of the

multifarious duties of the English press? How is he to begin? In New

York I can tell such a one where to go at once. Let him show in

conversation that he is an educated man, and they will give him a trial

on the staff of any news paper;--they will let him run his venture for

the pages of any magazine. He may write his fingers off here, and not an

editor of them all will read a word that he writes.”

Here he touched us, and we were indignant. When he spoke of the

magazines we knew that he was wrong. “With newspapers,” we said, “we

imagine it to be impossible that contributions from the outside world

should be looked at; but papers sent to the magazines,--at any rate to

some of them,--are read.”

“I believe,” said he, “that a little farce is kept up. They keep a boy

to look at a line or two and then return the manuscript. The pages are

filled by the old stock-writers, who are sure of the market let them

send what they will,--padding-mongers who work eight hours a day, and

hardly know what they write about.” We again loudly expressed our

opinion that he was wrong, and that there did exist magazines, the

managers of which were sedulously anxious to obtain the assistance of

what he called literary capacity, wherever they could find it. Sitting

there at the Turkish bath with nothing but a towel round us, we could

not declare ourselves to a perfect stranger, and we think that as a rule

editors should be impalpable;--but we did express our opinion very

strongly.

“And you believe,” said he, with something of scorn in his voice, “that

if a man who had been writing English for the press in other

countries,--in New York say, or in Doblin,--a man of undoubted capacity,

mind you, were to make the attempt here, in London, he would get a

hearing.”

“Certainly he would,” said we.

“And would any editor see him unless he came with an introduction from

some special friend?”

We paused a moment before we answered this, because the question was to

us one having a very special meaning. Let an editor do his duty with

ever so pure a conscience, let him spend all his days and half his

nights reading manuscripts and holding the balance fairly between the

public and those who wish to feed the public, let his industry be never

so unwearied and his impartiality never so unflinching, still he will,

if possible, avoid the pain of personally repelling those to whom he is

obliged to give an unfavourable answer. But we at the Turkish bath were

quite unknown to the outer world, and might hazard an opinion, as any

stranger might have done. And we have seen very many such visitors as

those to whom our friend alluded; and may, perhaps, see many more.

“Yes,” said we. “An editor might or might not see such a gentleman:

but, if pressed, no doubt he would. An English editor would be quite as

likely to do so as a French editor.” This we declared with energy,

having felt ourselves to be ruffled by the assertion that these things

are managed better in Paris or in New York than in London.

“Then, Mr. ----, would you give me an interview, if I call with a little

manuscript which I have to-morrow morning?” said my Irish friend,

addressing us with a beseeching tone, and calling us by the very name by

which we are known among our neighbours and tradesmen. We felt that

everything was changed between us, and that the man had plunged a dagger

into us.

Yes; he had plunged a dagger into us. Had we had our clothes on, had we

felt ourselves to possess at the moment our usual form of life, we think

that we could have rebuked him. As it was we could only rise from our

chair, throw away the fag end of the filthy cheroot which he had given

us, and clap our hands half-a-dozen times for the Asiatic to come and

shampoo us. But the Irishman was at our elbow. “You will let me see you

to-morrow?” he said. “My name is Molloy,--Michael Molloy. I have not a

card about me, because my things are outside there.”

“A card would do no good at all,” we said, again clapping our hands for

the shampooer.

“I may call, then?” said Mr. Michael Molloy.

“Certainly;--yes, you can call if you please.” Then, having thus

ungraciously acceded to the request made to us, we sat down on the

marble bench and submitted ourselves to the black attendant. During the

whole of the following operation, while the man was pummelling our

breast and poking our ribs, and pinching our toes,--while he was washing

us down afterwards, and reducing us gradually from the warm water to the

cold,--we were thinking of Mr. Michael Molloy, and the manner in which

he had entrapped us into a confidential conversation. The scoundrel must

have plotted it from the very first, must have followed us into the

bath, and taken his seat beside us with a deliberately premeditated

scheme. He was, too, just the man whom we should not have chosen to see

with a worthless magazine article in his hand. We think that we can be

efficacious by letter, but we often feel ourselves to be weak when

brought face to face with our enemies. At that moment our anger was hot

against Mr. Molloy. And yet we were conscious of a something of pride

which mingled with our feelings. It was clear to us that Mr. Molloy was

no ordinary person; and it did in some degree gratify our feelings that

such a one should have taken so much trouble to encounter us. We had

found him to be a well-informed, pleasant gentleman; and the fact that

he was called Molloy and desired to write for the magazine over which we

presided, could not really be taken as detracting from his merits. There

had doubtless been a fraud committed on us,--a palpable fraud. The man

had extracted assurances from us by a false pretence that he did not

know us. But then the idea, on his part, that anything could be gained

by his doing so, was in itself a compliment to us. That such a man

should take so much trouble to approach us,--one who could quote Horace

and talk about the “to kalon,”--was an acknowledgment of our power. As

we returned to the outer chamber we looked round to see Mr. Molloy in

his usual garments, but he was not as yet there. We waited while we

smoked one of our own cigars, but he came not. He had, so far, gained

his aim; and, as we presumed, preferred to run the risk of too long a

course of hot air to risking his object by seeing us again on that

afternoon. At last we left the building, and are bound to confess that

our mind dwelt much on Mr. Michael Molloy during the remainder of that

evening.

It might be that after all we should gain much by the singular mode of

introduction which the man had adopted. He was certainly clever, and if

he could write as well as he could talk his services might be of value.

Punctually at the hour named he was announced, and we did not now for

one moment think of declining the interview. Mr. Molloy had so far

succeeded in his stratagem that we could not now resort to the certainly

not unusual practice of declaring ourselves to be too closely engaged to

see any one, and of sending him word that he should confide to writing

whatever he might have to say to us. It had, too, occurred to us that,

as Mr. Molloy had paid his three shillings and sixpence for the Turkish

bath, he would not prove to be one of that class of visitors whose

appeals to tender-hearted editors are so peculiarly painful. “I am

willing to work day and night for my wife and children; and if you will

use this short paper in your next number it will save us from starvation

for a month! Yes, Sir, from,--starvation!” Who is to resist such an

appeal as that, or to resent it? But the editor knows that he is bound

in honesty to resist it altogether,--so to steel himself against it that

it shall have no effect upon him, at least, as regards the magazine

which is in his hands. And yet if the short thing be only decently

written, if it be not absurdly bad, what harm will its publication do

to anyone? If the waste,--let us call it waste,--of half-a-dozen pages

will save a family from hunger for a month, will they not be well

wasted? But yet, again, such tenderness is absolutely incompatible with

common honesty,--and equally so with common prudence. We think that our

readers will see the difficulty, and understand how an editor may wish

to avoid those interviews with tattered gloves. But my friend, Mr.

Michael Molloy, had had three and sixpence to spend on a Turkish bath,

had had money wherewith to buy,--certainly, the very vilest of cigars.

We thought of all this as Mr. Michael Molloy was ushered into our room.

The first thing we saw was the tattered glove; and then we immediately

recognised the stout middle-aged gentleman whom we had seen on the other

side of Jermyn Street as we entered the bathing establishment. It had

never before occurred to us that the two persons were the same, not

though the impression made by the poverty-stricken appearance of the man

in the street had remained distinct upon our mind. The features of the

gentleman we had hardly even yet seen at all. Nevertheless we had known

and distinctly recognised his outward gait and mien, both with and

without his clothes. One tattered glove he now wore, and the other he

carried in his gloved hand. As we saw this we were aware at once that

all our preconception had been wrong, that that too common appeal would

be made, and that we must resist it as best we might. There was still a

certain jauntiness in his air as he addressed us. “I hope thin,” said he

as we shook hands with him, “ye’ll not take amiss the little ruse by

which we caught ye.”

“It was a ruse then, Mr. Molloy?”

“Divil a doubt o’ that, Mr. Editor.”

“But you were coming to the Turkish bath independently of our visit

there?”

“Sorrow a bath I’d’ve cum to at all, only I saw you go into the place.

I’d just three and ninepence in my pocket, and says I to myself, Mick,

me boy, it’s a good investment. There was three and sixpence for them

savages to rub me down, and threepence for the two cheroots from the

little shop round the corner. I wish they’d been better for your sake.”

It had been a plant from beginning to end, and the “to kalon” and the

half-dozen words from Horace had all been parts of Mr. Molloy’s little

game! And how well he had played it! The outward trappings of the man as

we now saw them were poor and mean, and he was mean-looking too, because

of his trappings. But there had been nothing mean about him as he

strutted along with a blue-checked towel round his body. How well the

fellow had understood it all, and had known his own capacity! “And now

that you are here, Mr. Molloy, what can we do for you?” we said with as

pleasant a smile as we were able to assume. Of course we knew what was

to follow. Out came the roll of paper of which we had already seen the

end projecting from his breast pocket, and we were assured that we

should find the contents of it exactly the thing for our magazine. There

is no longer any diffidence in such matters,--no reticence in preferring

claims and singing one’s own praises. All that has gone by since

competitive examination has become the order of the day. No man, no

woman, no girl, no boy, hesitates now to declare his or her own

excellence and capability. “It’s just a short thing on social manners,”

said Mr. Molloy, “and if ye’ll be so good as to cast ye’r eye over it, I

think ye’ll find I’ve hit the nail on the head. ‘The Five-o’clock

Tay-table’ is what I’ve called it.”

“Oh!--‘The Five-o’clock Tea-table.’”

“Don’t ye like the name?”

“About social manners, is it?”