Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15,
by
Various
Part 4 out of 5
away and leave her at any moment, and which she was ever on the alert
to keep.
One night Lilian's mother had gone below, John had followed, and they
were long since folded in their quiet dreams; and Lilian, unable to
sleep, had at last arisen and thrown on some garments, and wrapping a
great cloak about her, had stolen on deck. The person still pacing the
deck, who saw her ascend and flit along with her fair hair streaming
over her white cloak and her face shining white in the starlight,
might have taken her for a spirit. But he was not the kind of man that
believes in spirits. He went and leaned with her as she leaned over
the vessel's edge, and watched the glittering rent they made in the
water. They were side by side: now and then the wind blew the silken
ends of her hair across his cheek, and his hand lay over hers as it
rested on the rail; now and then they looked at one another; now and
then they spoke.
"Are you happy, Lilian?" he said.
"Oh, perfectly!" she answered him.
As she said it there was an outcry, a sudden lurch of the vessel, a
flapping of the sails and ropes, and a vast shadow swept by them, the
hull of a huge steamer, so near that they could almost have touched it
with an outstretched hand. But as it ploughed its way on and left them
unharmed and rocking on its great waves, Reyburn released her from the
arm he had flung about her in the moment's dismay--the arm that had
never folded her before, that never did again.
"Oh no! no!" sighed Lilian with a shiver as she quickly drew
away--"not perfectly, oh not perfectly! That is impossible here, where
that black death can at any moment extinguish all our light."
"Be still! be still!" said Reyburn. "Why do you speak of it?" he cried
roughly. "Isn't it enough to know that some day it must come?--
"The iron hand that breaks our band,
It breaks my bliss--it breaks my heart!"
He left her side in a sudden agitation a moment, and walked the deck
again; and before he turned about Lilian had slipped below.
The next afternoon the Beachbird anchored within sight of shore and
outside a long low reef where they saw a palm-plume tossing, and a
boat came off, bringing Helen and her father.
John, who had begun at last to find his sea-legs, stood as eager and
impatient to welcome the new-comers, while every dip of the shining
oars lessened the distance between them, as if the cruise were just
beginning; but Lilian, in the evening shadow behind him, knew that her
share in the cruise was over.
"Is it the fierce and farouche duenna who wanted to annihilate me so
when I bade you adieu one night?" asked Reyburn, taking Lilian upon
his arm for a promenade upon the deck while they waited. "Let me see:
she was very young, was she not, and tall, and ugly? Is it her destiny
to watch over you? If she proves herself disagreeable, I will rig a
buoy and drop her overboard. After all, she is only a child. Ah no,"
he said, half under his breath, "the end is not yet."
"She is no longer a child," said Lilian, "Her father writes that he
hardly dares call her the same name, she is so changed. While I have
been withering up in the North, two equatorial years down here have
wrought upon her as they do upon the flowers. He says no Spanish woman
rivals her. Well, it will please--"
Just then Reyburn handed her the glass he had been using, and pointed
it for her.
"Can it be possible?" said Lilian. "Has Helen been transfigured to
that?" and something, she knew not what, sent a quiver through her and
made the image in the glass tremble--the image of a tall and shapely
girl whose round and perfect figure swayed to the boat's motion, lithe
as a reed to the wind, while she stood erect looking at something that
had been pointed out, and the boatmen paused with their oars in the
air; the image of a face on whose dark cheek the rose was burning, in
whose dark eye a veiled lustre was shining, around whose creamy brow
the raven hair escaped in countless tendril-like ringlets, and whose
smile, as she seemed to speak to some one while she stood in the low
sunset light, had a radiance of its own. As Lilian looked upon this
dazzling picture, backed by the golden and rosy sky, the golden and
rosy waters, the palm-plumes tossing in the purpling distance, the
silver flashing of the oars, the quiver came again, and she gave the
glass to Reyburn, who held it steadily till the boat was within
hailing distance, and who himself at last handed the shining creature
on board and led her to Lilian and her mother. And then the Beachbird
slowly spread her wings, and with her new burden softly floated away
into the dusk, and the great colors faded, and the stars one after
another seemed to drop low and hang from the heavens like lamps, and
rich odors floated off from the receding land, and they moved along
folded in the dark splendor of the tropical night. But in some vague
way every soul on board the little yacht felt the presence of another
influence, and that, though they sailed in the same waters as
yesterday, it was in another atmosphere; for an element had come among
them that should produce a transformation as powerful as though it
wrought a chemic change of their atoms.
Lilian and Reyburn still paced the deck, after their custom, when the
first greetings were over, leaving Helen and her father with John for
the present. But as the conversation dropped more personal subjects,
and John and his father were discussing political matters, Helen began
to look about, and chiefly she surveyed Lilian. And as she saw the
transparent skin, the vivid flush, the restless air--saw the way
Reyburn had, as he walked with her, as he bent to her, as he folded
her shawl about her--the way he had of absorbing her, a hasty
remembrance of the night when he stooped over Lilian's hand came to
her, and she remembered also how she herself had hated him. "The man
has bewitched her," said Helen an hour afterward--an hour of watching
and puzzling. "She is fond of John still: she cannot bear to break his
heart--she would rather break her own--and she is dying of her
attraction to the other." As she sat there, still observing them,
wondering what could be done, she turned and laid her arm on her
brother's shoulder, and rested her head beside it with her eyes full
of tears. And at the movement John bent and kissed her forehead, and
she saw that he himself was at last awake; and Reyburn, looking at
them, saw it too. Perhaps the tears dimmed her sight a little, and
gave Lilian a sort of glorified look to her, standing still a moment
with the light of the late rising moon on her face; but then as her
gaze fell again on Reyburn, on his lofty form and kingly manner, his
proud face, his bold bright eye, it seemed to her as if it were
Lucifer tempting an angel; and all at once she had resolved what she
would do to save Lilian, to save her brother. She could do it well,
she said, well and safely--she who already hated the man. Courage came
with the resolution, courage and strength: she began to laugh and
scatter jests across the grave conversation of John and her father;
presently she was humming a gay Spanish air.
"That is right, Helen," said her brother. "Sing something to us. My
father says your voice would fill the Tacon theatre."
And at that she sang--not the air of the little bolero again, but a
low, melancholy song that began with a sigh, but swelled ever clearer
and higher, till, like the bursting of a flower, it opened and
deepened into one breath of passionate sweetness and triumph. The rich
voice rose to all the meaning of the music, and, though they could not
understand the words, they thrilled before the singer, Late into the
midnight she sang--the bunch of blossoms that was in her hand as she
came on board still shedding its pungent odors round her as the
blossoms died--strange wild songs that she had learned in the two
years of her tropic life; ancient and plaintive Spanish airs; Moorish
songs whose savage tunes were sweet as the honey of the rocks; wild
and mournful Indian airs that the Spaniards might have heard in those
Caribbean islands when first they burst upon their peaceful seas; and
by and by a sleepy nocturne that seemed to lull the wind, to charm the
ship, and hold the great moon hovering overhead; and as they rocked
from wave to wave of the glimmering water, and that pure voice rose
and poured out its melody, the soft vast southern night itself seemed
to pause and listen.
Helen did not appear on the deck next day till the sunset came again,
for Lilian was ill, and she remained with her; nor did Reyburn see
her. But as the heat of the day passed, and the sails, that had been
hanging idle ever since the night-breeze fell, began to fill again,
Helen ascended.
"You come with the stars," said Reyburn, giving her his hand at the
last step; but she merely put out her own hand with the gesture of
receiving aid, and passed on, her dark gauzy drapery floating behind
her, and the lace of her Spanish mantilla falling round her from her
Spanish comb. She went to her brother's side, and sat there and
talked, or rose with him and walked: there was everything to say and
hear after their two years' separation. As for Reyburn, perhaps her
manner was courteous enough to him, but certainly she hardly seemed to
see him. Nor could he claim acquaintanceship with her: the gaunt and
big-eyed child whom he had known two years ago had a different
individuality from this dark girl with the rosy stain on the oval
cheek and the immense eyelashes. He heard her gay laugh as John
complimented her--a laugh as sweet as her singing; he saw the smile
that kindled all her beauty into vivid life; he saw the still face
listening to what was said; but he scarcely learned anything further
than was thus declared. When at length she sang one parting strain, he
wondered if the singing and the beauty were all there was: it occurred
to him to find out. He remembered that moment of the evening before
when John had betrayed distrust. "I will mislead him," said Reyburn,
"and Lilian will understand it all." He stood before Helen as she rose
with her father to go down.
"Ask me no more whither doth haste
The nightingale when May is past;
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters, and keeps warm her note!"
he said, and stepped aside.
"We've taken a mermaid aboard, sir," said the sailing-master. "Nothing
else, they say, sings after that fashion, and the men are on the
lookout for foul weather."
"Never mind what the men say," said Reyburn, "while your barometer
says nothing."
When Mr. Reyburn went on deck at sunrise he found Helen standing there
with Lilian--with Lilian, who, after her day's illness, looked
strangely wan and worn, looked like the feeble shadow of the other
with her rich carnations, her glowing eyes, her picturesque outlines.
Reyburn went aft and took Lilian's hand. "You have been so ill!" he
said; and then he looked up and saw again this splendid creature,
loosely clad in white, her black hair, unbraided and unbound, flowing
in wave and ripple far down her back, her sleeve falling from the
uplifted arm and perfect hand, that held a fan of the rose-colored
spoonbill's feathers above her head, so beautiful and brilliant that
she seemed only a projection of that beautiful and brilliant hour,
with all its radiant dyes, before the sun was up; and he forgot that
Lilian had been ill, forgot for a moment that Lilian existed. "I will
find out what she is made of," thought Reyburn. "Are you made of
clay?" he said boldly.
"He shall find that there is fire in my clay," said Helen to herself
as she appeared not to heed his look or his words.
And there it began. And swift and sudden it went on to the end. She
had come on board the yacht that first night to startle it with her
beauty and her voice; last night, silent and stately, she had slipped
through the evening like a dream; now she stood before him a dazzling
creature of the morning: yesterday she was Penseroso; to-day she was
Allegro; what would she be to-morrow? How sparkling, as one day
followed another, her gayety was! and yet with no shallow sparkle:
there was always the shadow of still depths just beyond--seasons of
silence, moments of half sadness, times when he had to wonder whither
her thoughts had led her. She sang a little song of the muleteers on
the mountains, that he admired; then she must teach it to him, she
said; they sang the song together, their voices lingering on the same
note, rising in the same breath, falling in the same cadence. He had a
sonorous tenor of his own: more than once she caught herself pausing
in her part to hear it. How soft, and yet how strong, was the language
of the song! he said; he must learn Spanish, she replied; and they
hung together over the same book, and he repeated the phrase that fell
from her lips--an apt pupil, it may be, for more than once the phrase,
as he uttered it, deepened the color on her cheek. More than once she
was conscious of gazing at him to find the charm that Lilian had
found; more than once he caught her glance and held it there
suspended; more than once you might have thought, by the quick,
impatient manner in which she tore her eyes away, that she had found
the charm herself. Perhaps he made some ostentation of his attraction
before the others; perhaps the simulation of warmth was close enough
to melt a colder heart than hers; perhaps it was not wholly
simulation. It may be that her hand lay in his a moment longer than
need was, her glance fell before his a moment sooner: it may be that
as she fled all her manner beckoned him to follow. She was confiding
to him her thoughts, her aspirations, her emotions, as if she wished
that he, and he alone, should know them: he was listening as though
there were no other knowledge in the world. If presently he thought of
her as a creature of romance, if presently she felt the need of that
keen interest, what wonder? They were playing with fire, and those
that play with fire must needs be burned. And meantime, whether he
looked at her languid in the burning noon, gay with the reviving
freshness of the dusk, leaning over the bulwarks in the night and
gazing up into the great spaces of the stars, he was always fascinated
to look again. There was the profile exquisite as sculpture, there was
the color as velvet soft as rose-petals, there was the droop of the
long silken lashes half belying with its melancholy the rapture of the
smile. Whether she spoke or whether she sang, her voice was music's
self, and he was longing for the next tone; and presently--presently
Lilian had faded like a phantom before this aurora who was fresh and
rosy and dewy, with song and color and light--a sad pale phantom wan
in a mist of tears.
"It is killing me!" she cried.
But he did not perceive the meaning of her unguarded cry: he did not
know how it was with her, for he had not yet dreamed how it was with
himself. But he was soon to discover.
Three weeks they had been wafted about from key to key, from bay to
bay; they landed and explored the quaint old towns; they made trips
into the tropical forests; great boatloads of juicy mangoes and guavas
and bananas came off to them; they scattered coins on the clear bottom
for the brown babies tumbling about the shores to dive after. Now at
noon they lay anchored in still lagoons under the shadow of an
overhanging orange-grove; now at night they were flying across the
broad seas. But Lilian felt she could endure no more of it: her life
was exhausted; she longed for the yacht's head to be turned northward,
that she might die in peace on shore. John also was impatient to be
gone. If he could have Lilian once more at home, he thought, he would
marry her in spite of her protest, and take her where forgetfulness
must needs soothe her, and strange faces make her cling to him in the
old way. The way in which she clung to him now was too bitter to be
borne. Her mother also began to think of home, and Mr. Sterling had
wearied long ago; and at length, further pretences failing, they had
been freshly provisioned and had started on their homeward way.
Reyburn had, indeed, been loath to make any change in their luxurious
summering, but he was one of those who slide along with the days.
Take the goods the gods provide thee:
The lovely Thais sits beside thee--
was a couplet that he was fond of humming, and he always waited for
some unnatural wrench to make the effort he should have made himself.
But he had consented at last to the return, because while he was still
floating in Southern waters, under Southern skies, with this delicious
voice in his ears, this delicious beauty by his side, he could not
think that a week's sailing must bring him under other conditions.
Perhaps, though, it would be more than a week's sailing, some one
said, for the fair wind that had taken them hither and yon so long,
and had waited on their fancies, was apparently on the point of
deserting them at last, and the yacht was merely drifting before a
fitful breeze that lightly moved a scud of low clouds which the sunset
had kindled into a blaze of glory hanging just above them, and whose
ragged shreds only now and then displayed a star.
"We are going to have nasty weather," the sailing-master said to his
mate. "The barometer is going down with a rush."
"Yes, sir," had come the answer: "we shall catch it in the mid-watch."
"Then stow the light sails, Mr. Mason," the captain said, "and get
everything secure for a heavy blow. Keep a sharp lookout, and call me
as soon as the weather changes."
"All right, sir."
"I am going down for forty winks," said the captain. Then as he passed
Mr. Reyburn: "I don't much like the appearance of things, sir."
"Appearance?" said Reyburn. "Why the sea is as smooth as glass!"
"Too smooth by half, sir, with the barometer falling. I've sailed with
that glass a long time, and she's never told me a lie yet. We've
already shortened sail."
"So I see. But why in the world did you do it, when you want every
stitch of it out to catch what wind there is? However, I am in no
hurry," said Reyburn laughing. "Do as you please, skipper: you're
sailing the ship."
"I am sailing her, sir," said the captain, a little nettled, "and
sailing her on the edge of a hurricane. You had better take the lady
below, sir: when it comes it will come with a crack." But Reyburn
laughed at him again, and passed over to Helen's side.
They sat together on the deck, Helen and Reyburn, long after all the
others had gone to rest; for Mr. Sterling left the arrangement of
etiquette and decorum to Lilian's mother; and whether she were a
purblind soul, looking delightedly at a new love-match, or whether,
with any surmise of the state of things, she felt pleased that
Reyburn, led by whatever inducement, should step aside from Lilian's
path, she gave no other sign than that when her early withdrawal from
the scene left the deck clear for action. As each in turn they fell
away into their dreams, those below could still hear Helen singing;
and if one there lay sleepless in the pauses of the singing, no one
guessed it. All the ship was in shadow save where a lantern shone, but
Helen lingered, still irresolute. Now and then she touched the Spanish
guitar in the measure of some tune that flitted across her thoughts,
now and then she sang the tune, now and then was silent. She was half
aware of what the approaching moments held--was half afraid. Was she
to avenge herself upon the man who had destroyed her brother's peace?
Faithful to Lilian should she go, or faithless stay? He took the
guitar himself and fingered the strings, making fewer chords than
discords; her own fingers wandered to correct him; their hands met;
the guitar slipped down unheeded; the grasp grew closer, grew
warmer--ah, Helen, was it Lilian of whom you thought, whom you would
save?--and then an arm was around her; shining eyes, only half guessed
in the glimmer that the phosphorescent swells sent through the
darkness, hung over her rosy upturned beauty; she was drawn forward
unresisting, her head was on his breast, she, heard the heavy
throbbing of his heart, and his lips lay on hers and seemed to draw
her soul away. And so they sat there in the deepening shadow,
whispering in faint low whispers, thrilling with a great rapture,
their lips meeting in long kisses. Why should he think of Lilian?
Never once had he touched _her_ mouth like this, had his arms closed
round her so, had he felt the sighing of her breath. As a pale white
rushlight burns in the sun, that love seemed now, compared with this
great sweet flame. He bowed his face over Helen's as she sat trembling
in his embrace, and neither of them remembered past or future in the
passion of the present; neither of them felt the yacht swing idly up
and down with scarcely a movement forward; neither of them heard the
listless flapping of the sails against the masts, or noticed that no
dew lay on the rail, or once looked up to see how black and close the
air had gathered round them, how deadly hot and sulphurous--till
suddenly, and as if by one accord, men were running and voices were
crying all about them. They sprang to their feet to hear the
sailing-master's shout as one beholds lightning fall out of a blue
sky: "See your halyards all clear for running."
"Ay, ay, sir!" came the ringing answer.
"Stand by your halyards and down-hauls."
"Ay, ay, sir!"
"Haul down the flying jib: take the bonnet off the jib, and put a reef
in her," came the strong swift sentences. "Brail up the foresail, and
double reef the mainsail."
There was a sound far, far off, like a mighty rush of waters, coming
nearer and swelling to a roar--an awful roar of winds and waves. And
Helen was wildly clasping Reyburn, who was plunging with her down the
companion-way.
"Here she comes!" cried the captain. "Hold on all!" And then there was
a shock that threw them prostrate, a writhing and twisting of every
plank beneath them, and the tornado had struck the yacht and knocked
her on her beam-ends.
"Cut away the weather rigging!" they heard the captain thunder through
all the rout before they had once tried to regain themselves. The
quick, sharp blows resounded across the beating of the billow and the
shrieking of the wind and cloud. "Stand clear, all!" and with a crash
as if the heavens were coming together the masts had gone by the
board, and what there was left of the Beachbird had righted and now
rolled a wreck in the trough of the sea.
A half hour's work, but it had done more than wreck a ship: it had
wrecked a passion. For as Helen still clung round Reyburn, sobbing and
screaming, he had seen the opposite door open, and Lilian landing
there, white-robed, white-shawled, with her bright hair about her face
as white as a spirit's. "John," she said, "we are in a hurricane."
"Yes, Lilian," he had answered from where he was stationed close
beside her door. "But the worst must be over. The wind already abates,
and as soon as the sea goes down--"
As he spoke there came the terrible cry, loud above all other clamor,
"A leak! a leak!" and then followed the renewed trampling of feet
overhead, and the hoarse wheeze of the pumps.
"We are going down," Lilian said, and turned that white face away.
"Oh, John!, before we go forgive me," she cried; and John held his
outstretched arms toward her and folded her within them.
Reyburn saw it, and even in that supreme moment, when life and death
swung in the balance, an awful revulsion seized him. He beheld now
with a sickening shudder the woman cowering at his feet whose beauty
an hour ago had melted his soul: she was flesh to him only--her beauty
was of the earth, and flesh and the earth were passing, and it was
other things on which such moments as these were opening--things such
as shone in the transfigured face of Lilian--of Lilian whom, if this
marsh-light had not dazzled him from his way, he might now be holding
to his heart triumphant; for here disguises would have fallen and he
could have claimed his own. For, whether it were the terror of the
time, or the trancelike and spiritual look of Lilian, or whether it
were the jealous pang of seeing her in another's arms, the love on
which he had been waiting for two years and more, to which he had
sacrificed time and endeavor, which had brought him here to this
danger and this death, returned now and overwhelmed him, and the
passion of a day and night fell apart and left him in its ruins. This
woman at his feet filled him with a strange disgust: that other
woman--If this were the last hour of time, he would have risked his
chances in eternity to have held her as John did. He threw himself,
face down, on the divan, and he cursed God and called upon the
drowning wave to come.
The captain leaped down the companion-way, and caught his pistols from
a drawer. "Mr. Reyburn, we need you and the other gentlemen," he
cried. "We are throwing out our ballast. All hands must take spells at
the pumps, for the leak gains, and I shall have all I can do to keep
the men at work and the yacht afloat."
"Let her sink!" yelled Reyburn into the cushions where he lay. "Damn
her! let her sink!" And he did not stir. But John had gently released
Lilian and placed her in a chair near the sofa where her mother lay
gasping, and had sprung on deck with his father and the captain.
A horrid hour crept by--a bitter blank below, hard and fierce work
above--and then the pumps were choked. Lilian and her mother had crept
on deck, holding by whatever they could find, and surveying the
amazing scene around them. For the great black storm-cloud was flying
up and away, flying into the north-east, and through the torn vapors
that followed in its rack a waning moon arose. A tremendous sea was
running, monstrous wave breaking on monstrous wave in a mad white
frolic far as the eye could see; as one billow bounded along, curling
and feathering and swelling on its path, a score leaped round it to
powder themselves in a common cloud of spray; and every cloud of spray
as it shot upward caught the long ray of the half-risen moon, that but
darkly lighted and revealed an immensity of heaven, till all the
weltering tumult of gloom and foam was sown with a myriad lunar
rainbows.
The beauty of it almost overcame the terror with Lilian as she grasped
her mother's hand.
"It is a fit gate to enter heaven by," said John, coming to her side.
"We have done all we can," he added.
At the moment the bows dipped with a prodigious sea. Somebody forward
sang out, "She's settling, sir! she's settling, sir!" The cry ran
along the deck like fire: there was one panicstricken shriek that
followed, and the men had jumped for the boats, into which water and
provision had been already thrown. Reyburn came staggering up the
companion-way with Helen. The dingy and one of the quarter-boats were
already swamped in the wild haste: the men were crowding into the
other, which had been safely lowered.
"You brutes!" the captain shouted, "are you going to leave the women?"
"Let them come, then," answered a voice, "and make haste about it;"
and Lilian found herself drawn forward and looking over the side into
the shadow below.
"Are you going, John?" she said hurriedly.
"No, darling: it is impossible, you see, but--"
"Nor I, either," she answered quickly.
"Lilian!"
"No," she said, "no! We were to be together in life, and we shall be
in death. Oh, John, do you think I can leave you now?"
"Make haste about it," was repeated harshly from the boat.
"I am going to stay," repeated Lilian firmly.
"Here," cried Reyburn, as he drew up the ropes to bind them round
Helen's waist. "Take _her_." But the boat was already clear of the
ship and away; and he flung the ropes down again with a motion of
abhorrence, and stood leaning against the stump of the mast, where he
could hear the murmurs of John and Lilian, straining his ears to
listen, as if he must needs torment himself--to listen to those few
low, fervent whispers, with one eager to pour out the love so long
restrained, the other to receive it--both in the face of death making
the life so lately found too sweet a thing to leave.
Soon the little company remaining on the wreck had clustered around
that portion of it; the captain and Mr. Mason were near by, and
Lilian's mother sat beside her and kept her hand; Mr. Sterling, not
far off, held Helen, who lay faint with fright--faint too with many a
pang, snatched as she had been from a dream of warmth and joy to a
nightmare of horror; one moment ruling in a heart that in the next
moment had cast her forth to be trampled on; bewildered by the
repugnance she had too plainly seen in the face of her passionate
lover of two hours ago; half heartbroken with the remembrance of the
tone in which he had called to the crew of the quarter-boat to take
her, and cold with the awful expectancy of the moment. The moon swam
slowly up, and the sky cleared about her; the sea rose and fell less
violently, its dark expanse everywhere running fire; but the broken
yacht still rolled like a log, and they clung to each other as she
rolled. She settled slowly, and another hour had passed and left her
still afloat.
"We are safe," cried the captain, coming back to their side after a
brief absence with the mate. "Mr. Reyburn, do you see?" But Mr.
Reyburn did not even hear. A soft lustre began to blanch the violet
depths of the lofty sky; a rosy flare welled up from the horizon and
half drowned the shriveled moon; a star that was steady in the east
was shaking a countless host of stars in the shaking waters round
them. And then the rosy flare was a yellow flame that filled the
heavens; the long swells that ran up to break against them were like
sheets of molten jewels--rubies and beryls and sapphires and
chrysolites, changing and flashing as they broke into a thousand
splendors; strange mild-eyed birds were hovering about them and
alighting on the wreck; the moon was gone; the vaporous gold that
overflowed the east was burned away in the increasing glory, and the
sunshine fell about them.
"We are not going down," cried Lilian, her face aglow and lovely in
the light. "That smoke in the horizon is a steamer's, and she will
take us off. Oh, John, we have our lives before us yet!"
The captain and Mr. Mason had already signaled the steamer, and before
very long the wreck was quite abandoned, and those whom it had carried
were on their northward way again.
It was a singular wedding that I saw one day about two months after
the wreck of the Beachbird. I was going by the church of St. Saviour,
and being of an inquiring mind in the matter of weddings, I went in.
There were two brides there: the husband of the first, the fair one,
was just turning away with her. So calm, so pure, so peaceful, so
content, were the faces of that new husband and wife, that I could
long have looked upon them, as on some picture of strong spirits in
the presence of God, had not the beauty of the second bride arrested
me. But that was a beauty one hardly sees twice in a lifetime--so
perfect in outline, under snowy veils and blossoms, the dark eyes so
softly, dewily dark, the white brow whiter for its tendril-like rings
of raven hair; and where had I ever seen groom so stately, so lofty,
so proud? But what did the pantomime mean? a stranger might well have
asked. Was that the man's natural demeanor? or had he brought his mind
to the task of taking her by an effort that had destroyed every
sentiment of his soul but scorn? And for her? Had the rose forsaken
her cheek and the smile her lip because she looked on life as on a
desert? Was that utter sadness and dejection a thing that should one
day fade away and leave a sparkle of hope behind it? Or was it the
scar of one who had played with fire, who had not the strength to
release a pledge, and was marrying a man who she knew loathed her and
her beauty together?
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
RECOLLECTIONS OF THE TUSCAN COURT UNDER THE GRAND DUKE LEOPOLD.
When the wretched, worthless and worn-out debauchee Gian Gaston dei
Medici, grand duke of Tuscany, died on the 9th of July, 1737, the
dynasty of that famous family became extinct. For some years before
his death the prospect of a throne without any heir by right divine to
claim it had set the cupidity of sundry of the European crowned heads
in motion. Various schemes and arrangements had been proposed in the
interest of different potentates. But the "vulpine cunning," as an
Italian historian calls it, of Cardinal Fleury, the minister of Louis
XV., at length succeeded in inducing the European powers to accede to
an arrangement which secured the greater part of the advantage to
France. It was finally settled that the duke of Lorraine should cede
to France his ancestral states, which the latter had long coveted, and
that he should be married to Maria Teresa, the heiress of the Austrian
dominions, carrying in his hand Tuscany, the throne of which was
secured to him at the death of Gian Gaston. It was further promised to
the Tuscans, discontented at the prospect of having an absentee
sovereign, that on the death of the emperor Francis, Tuscany should
have a ruler of its own in the person of his second son. This Francis,
who gave up the duchy of Lorraine to become the husband of Maria
Teresa, reigned over Tuscany till his sudden death by apoplexy on the
18th of August, 1765. His second son, Leopold, reigned in Tuscany
till, on the death of his elder brother on the 24th of December, 1789,
he was in his turn also called to ascend the imperial throne.
Thereupon the second son of Leopold became grand-duke in 1789, and
reigned as Ferdinand III. till 1824, when, on the 18th of June, his
son succeeded him as Leopold II. Now, though the sovereignty of
Tuscany was thus entirely and definitively separated from that of
Austria, all these princes were of the blood-royal of Austria, and
might in the course of Nature have succeeded to the imperial throne.
For this reason they were held, though only dukes of Tuscany, to be
entitled to the style and title "imperial and royal," according to the
custom of the House of Austria; and thus every grimy little
tobacco-shop and lottery-office in Tuscany, in the days when I first
knew it, in 1841, styled itself "imperial and royal."
The Tuscans had been greatly discontented when the arrangements of the
great powers of Europe, entered into without a moment's thought as to
the wishes of the population of the grand duchy on the subject, had
decided that they were to be ruled over by a German prince of whom
they knew absolutely nothing. It was not that the later Medici had
been popular, or either respected or beloved. The misgovernment of
especially the last two of the Medicean line had reduced the country
to the lowest possible social, moral and economical condition. But yet
the change from the known to the utterly unknown was unwelcome to the
people. They feared they knew not what changes and innovations in
their old easy-going if downward-tending ways. But Providence, in the
shape of the ambitions and intrigues of the great powers, had better
things in store for them than they dreamed of. The princes of the
Lorraine dynasty so ruled as not only quickly to gain the respect and
affection of their subjects, but gradually to render Tuscany by far
the most civilized and prosperous portion of Italy. The first three
princes of the Lorraine line were enlightened men, far in advance not
only of the generality of their own subjects, but of their
contemporaries in general. They were conscientious rulers, earnestly
desirous of ameliorating the condition of the people they were called
on to govern. Of the last of the line the same cannot in its entirety
be said. A portion of the eulogy deserved by his predecessors may be
awarded to him unquestionably. He was, I fully believe, a good and
conscientious man, anxious to do his duty, and desirous of the
happiness and well being of his people. But he was by no means a wise
or enlightened man. It could hardly be said that he was popular or
beloved by his subjects at the time when I first knew Florence. The
Tuscans were very far better off than any other Italians at that time,
and they were fully conscious that they were so. But this superiority
was justly credited to the wise rule of the grand duke's father and
grandfather, rather than to any merit of his own. Yet he was liked in
a sort of way--I am afraid I must say in a contemptuous sort of way.
The general notion was that he was what is generally described by the
expressive term "a poor creature." He probably was so, in truth, from
his birth upward. It was said--and I believe with truth--that he had
been in his childish years reared with the greatest difficulty; and
strange as it may seem, it is, I believe, a fact that a wet-nurse made
an important part of the establishment of the prince at the Pitti
Palace till he was about twenty years old. How far physiologists may
deem that such an abnormal circumstance may have been influential in
producing a diathesis of mind and body deficient in vigor, energy and
"hard grit" of any kind, I do not know. But if that is what such a
bringing-up may be expected to produce, then the expectation was in
the case in question certainly justified. Nevertheless, Italians had
been for so many generations and centuries taught by bitter experience
to consider kings and princes of all sorts as malevolent and
maleficent scourges of humanity that a sovereign who really did no
harm to any one was, after a fashion, as I have said, popular.
Accessibility is always one sure means of making a sovereign
acceptable to large classes of his subjects; and nothing could be
easier than to gain access to the presence of Leopold II., grand duke
of Tuscany. A little anecdote of an occurrence that took place at the
time when Lord Holland, to the regret of everybody in Florence,
English or Italian, ceased to be the representative of England at the
grand ducal court, will show the sort of thing that used to prevail in
the matter of the admission of foreigners to the Pitti Palace.
English travelers on the continent of Europe are, and have been for
many years, as it is hardly necessary to state, a very motley and
heterogeneous crowd. The same thing may be said of American travelers
now, but it was not so much the case at the time of which I am
writing. It is not so with the people of any other nation; and
foreigners are apt to sneer on occasion at the unkempt and queer
specimens of humanity which often come to them from the two
English-speaking nations. We can well afford to let them stare and
smile, well knowing that if a similar amount of prosperity permitted
the people of other countries to travel for their pleasure in similar
numbers, the result would be at the very least an equally--shall I say
undrawing-room-like contribution to cosmopolitan society? When Sir
George Hamilton assumed the duties of British representative at
Florence, the yearly throng of English visitors was becoming more
numerous and more heterogeneous, and all wanted to be invited to the
balls at the Pitti Palace. Those were the most urgent in their
applications, as will be easily understood, whose claims to such
distinction were the most problematic. The practice was for the
minister to present to the grand duke whom he thought fit, and those
so presented went to the balls as a matter of course. The position of
the minister, it will be seen, was an invidious one. Under the
pressure of these circumstances, Sir George Hamilton declared that he
would in no case take upon himself to decide on the fitness or
unfitness of any person, but would act invariably upon the old
recognized rule of etiquette observed at other courts in such
matters--i.e., he would present anybody who had been presented at the
court of St. James, and none who had not been so presented. The result
was soon apparent in a singular thinning of the magnificent suites of
rooms of the Pitti on ball-nights. The general appearance of the rooms
might be something more like what the receiving-rooms of princes are
wont to look like, but all that was gained in _quality_ was attained
by a very marked sacrifice of _quantity_. In a week or two Sir George
received a hint to the effect that the grand duke would be pleased if
the minister would be less strict in the matter of presenting such
English as might desire to come to the Pitti. "Oh!" said Sir George,
"if _that_ is what is desired, there can be no difficulty about it. I
am sure _I_ won't stand in the way of filling the Pitti ball-room. Let
them all come." And accordingly everybody who asked to be presented
_was_ presented without any pretence of an attempt at discrimination.
This was the manner in which the thing was done: All new-comers were
told that if they wished to go to the Pitti balls they must notify to
the English minister their desire to be presented to the grand duke.
In return, they received an intimation that they must be in the
ante-room of the suite of receiving-rooms at eight o'clock on such an
evening--ladies in ball-dress; gentlemen in evening-dress with white
neckcloths. It may be observed here that this matter of the white
neckcloth was the only point insisted on. Both ladies and gentlemen
were allowed to exercise the utmost latitude of private judgment as to
what constituted "ball-dress" and "evening-dress." I have seen a black
stuff gown fitting closely round the throat pass muster for the first,
and a gray frockcoat for the second. But the officials at the door
would refuse to admit a man with a black neckerchief; and I once saw a
man thus rejected retire a few steps into a corridor, whip off the
offending black silk and put it in his pocket, obtain a fragment of
white tape from some portion of a lady's dress, put _that_ round his
shirt-collar, and then again presenting himself be recognized by the
officials as complying with the exigencies of etiquette. The aspirants
to "court society" having assembled, from twenty to fifty, perhaps, in
number, according as it was earlier or later in the season, presently
the minister bustled in, and with a hurried "Now then!" led his motley
flock into the presence-chamber, where they were formed into line.
Much about the same moment (for the grand duke had "the royal
civility" of punctuality, and rarely kept people waiting) His Serene
Imperial and Royal Highness came shambling into the room in the
white-and-gold uniform of an Austrian general officer, and looking
very much as if he had just been roused out of profound slumber, and
had not yet quite collected his senses. Walking as if he had two odd
legs, which had never been put to work together before, he came to a
standstill in front of the row of presentees. If there was any person
of any sort of distinction among them, the minister whispered a word
or two in the grand ducal ear, and motioned the lion to come forward.
His Imperial and Royal Highness, after one glance of helpless
suffering at the stranger, fixed his gaze on his own boots. A long
pause ensued, during which courtly etiquette forbade the stranger to
utter a word. At last His Highness shifted his weight on to his left
foot, hung his head down on his shoulder on the same side, and said
"Ha!" Another pause, the presentee hardly considering himself
justified in replying to this observation. The duke finding he had
made a false start and accomplished nothing, shifted his weight to the
right foot, simultaneously hanging his head on his shoulder on that
side, and said "Hum!" It would often occur that when he had reached
that point he would make a duck forward with his head to signify that
the audience was at an end.
If there was anything that the presenting official thought might be
appropriately remarked to the distinguished presentee, he would
whisper a hint to that effect in the grand ducal ear, of which His
Highness was usually glad to avail himself. I remember one amusing
instance in point, when it needed all the sense of the majesty of the
sovereign presence to preserve in the bystanders the gravity due to
the occasion. It was in the case of an American presentation. The
United States had at that time no recognized representative at the
grand ducal court, and Americans, much fewer in number then than of
late years, were generally presented by a banker who had almost all
the American business. This gentleman, having to present some one--I
forget the name--who was connected by blood or in some other special
manner with Washington, whispered to the grand duke that such was the
case. His Serene Highness bowed his appreciation of the fact. Then,
after going through the usual foot-exercise, and after a longer pause
than usual, he looked up at the expectant visitor standing in front of
him, and said, but with evident effort, "Ah-h-h! Le grand Vaash!"
There was nothing more forthcoming. Having thus delivered himself, he
made his visitor a low bow, and the latter retired. It was evident
that the grand duke of Tuscany heard of "Le grand Vaash" then for the
first time in his life.
After any specialty of this sort had been disposed of, the ruck of
presentees, standing like a lot of school-boys in a long row, were
"presented," which ceremony was deemed to have been effectually
accomplished by one duck of the grand ducal head, to be divided among
all the recipients, and an answering duck from each of them in return.
They were then as free to amuse themselves in any manner it seemed
good to them as if they had been at a public place of entertainment
and had paid for their tickets. And not only that, but they were free
to return and do the same, without any fresh presentation ceremony,
every time there was a ball at the palace, which was at least once a
week from the beginning of the year to the end of Carnival.
Nor were the amusements thus liberally provided by any means to be
despised. There was a magnificent suite of rooms, with a really grand
ball-room, all magnificently lighted; there was a large and very
excellent band; there was a great abundance of card-tables, with all
needed appurtenances, in several of the rooms; ices and sherbets and
bonbons and tea and pastry were served in immense profusion during the
whole evening. At one o'clock the supper-rooms were opened, and there
was a really magnificent supper, with "all the delicacies of the
season," and wine in abundance of every sort. And the old hands, who
would appear knowing, used to say to new-comers, "Never mind the
champagne--you can get that anywhere--but stick to the Rhine wine: it
comes from the old boy's own vineyards." To tell the truth, the scene
at that supper used to be a somewhat discreditable one. The spreading
of such a banquet before such an assemblage of animals as had gone up
into that ark was a leading them into unwonted temptation which was
hardly judicious. Not that the foreigners were by any means the worst
offenders against decent behavior there. If they carried away bushels
of bonbons in their loaded pockets, the Italians would consign to the
same receptacles whole fowls, vast blocks of galantine, and even
platefuls of mayonnaise, packed up in paper brought thither for the
purpose. They were like troops plundering a taken town. Despite the
enormous quantity of loot thus carried off, inexhaustible fresh
supplies refurnished the board again and again till all were
satisfied. I never saw English or Americans pocket aught save
bonbons, which seemed to be considered fair game on all sides, but the
quantity of these that I have seen made prizes of was something
prodigious.
The grand duchess had hardly more to say for herself than the grand
duke, and her manner was less calculated to please her visitors. That
which in the grand duke was evidently shyness and want of ready wit,
took in the grand duchess the appearance of _hauteur_ and the distant
manner due to pride. She was a sister of the king of Naples, and was
liked by no one. The one truly affable member of the court circle,
whose manner and bearing really had something of royal grace and
graciousness, was the dowager grand duchess, the widow of the late
grand duke, who to all outward appearance was as young as, and a far
more elegant-looking woman than, the reigning grand duchess. She had
been a princess of the royal family of Saxony, and was no doubt in all
respects, intellectual and moral as well as social, a far more highly
cultivated woman than the scion of the Bourbon House of Naples. She
was the late grand duke's second wife, and not the mother of the
reigning duke.
Why were all these balls given--at no small cost of money and
trouble--by the grand duke and duchess? Why did his Serene Imperial
and Royal Highness intimate to the English minister his wish that
every traveling Briton from Capel Court or Bloomsbury should be
brought to share his hospitality and the pleasures of his society? The
matter was simply this: His Serene Highness was venturing a small fish
to catch a large one. As a good and provident ruler, anxious for the
prosperity and well-being of his subjects, he was making a bid for the
valuable patronage of the British Cockney. He was acting the part of
land-lord of a gratuitous "free-and-easy," in the hope of making
Florence an attractive place of residence to that large class of nomad
English to whom gratuitous court-balls once a week appeared to be a
near approach to those "Saturnia regna" when the rivers ran champagne
and plum-puddings grew on all the bushes. And it cannot be doubted
that the grand duke's patriotic endeavors were crowned with success,
and that his expenditure in wax-lights, music, ices and suppers was
returned tenfold to the shopkeepers and hotel and lodging-house
keepers of his capital.
One other point may be mentioned with reference to these balls, as a
small contribution to the history of a system of social manners and
usages which has now passed away. The utmost latitudinarianism, as has
been mentioned, was allowed in the matter of costume, but this rule
was subject to one exception. On the night of New Year's Day, on
which there was always a ball at the Pitti, all those who attended it
were expected to appear in proper court-dress. Those who were entitled
to any official costume, military or other, donned that. I have seen a
clergyman of the Church of England make his academical robes do duty
as a court-dress, as indeed they properly do at St. James. But in the
rooms at the Pitti His Reverence became the observed of all observers
to a remarkable degree. Those who could lay claim to no official
costume of any sort had to fall back on the old court-dress of the
period of George I., still worn, oddly enough, at the English court.
It is a sufficiently handsome dress in itself, and had at all events
the advantage of looking extremely unlike the ordinary costume of
nineteenth-century mortals, It was often a question with American
civilians what dress they should wear on these occasions, and I used
to endeavor to persuade my American friends to insist upon their
republican right to ignore in Europe court-tailor mummeries of which
they knew nothing at home; being perfectly sure that they would have
carried the point victoriously, and not unmindful of Talleyrand's
remark when Castlereagh at Vienna appeared in a plain black coat,
without any decoration, among the crowd of continental diplomatists
bedizened with ribbons of every color and stars and crosses of every
form and kind: "_Ma foi! c'est fort distingue_!" But I never could
prevail, having, as I take it, the female influence against me on the
subject; and Americans used to adopt generally a blue cloth coat and
trousers well trimmed with gold lace, and a white waistcoat.
In later days, when popular discontent and the agitation arising from
it were gradually boiling up to a dangerous height in every part of
Italy, and the hatred felt toward the different sovereigns was
reflected in many an audacious squib and satire, the grand duke of
Tuscany never shared to any great degree the odium which pursued his
fellow-monarchs. It was with a scathing vigor of satire that Giuseppe
Giusti characterized each of the Italian crowned heads of that period
in burning verses, which were circulated with cautious secresy in
manuscript from hand to hand, long before a surreptitious edition,
which it was dangerous (anywhere in Italy save in Tuscany) to possess,
appeared, to be followed in after years by many an avowed one. These
have given the name of Giusti a high and peculiar place on the roll of
Italian poets. But the satirist's serpent scourge is changed for a
somewhat contemptuously used foolscap when the Tuscan ruler is
introduced in the following lines:
Il Toscano Morfeo vien' lemme, lemme,
Di pavavero cinto e di lattuga.
Then comes the Tuscan Morpheus, creepy, crawly,
With poppies and with lettuce crowned.
These lines, however, represent pretty accurately about the worst that
his subjects had to say of poor old "Ciuco," as the last of the grand
dukes was irreverently and popularly called: "Ciuco," I am sorry to
state, means "donkey." And it must be owned that the two lines I have
quoted from Giusti's verses, with their untranslatable "lemme,
lemme"--of which I have endeavored, with imperfect success, to give
the meaning--present a very graphic picture of the man and the nature
and characteristics of his government. Everything went "lemme, lemme,"
in the Sleepy Hollow of Tuscany in those days.
Used as he was to be laughed at, Leopold could occasionally be made
sleepily half angry by impertinences which had something of a sting in
them. Here is an amusing instance of that fact, and of the way in
which things used to be done in Tuscany. Most of the Italian
provinces--or larger cities, rather--have been from time immemorial
personated in the popular fancy by certain comic types, supposed to
represent with more or less accuracy the special characteristics of
each district. Venice, as all the world knows, has, and still more
had, her "Pantaloon," Naples her "Pulcinello," etc. The specialties of
the Florentine character are popularly supposed to be embodied in
"Stenterello," who comes on the Florentine stage, in pieces written
for the purpose, every Carnival, to the never-failing delight of the
populace. Stenterello is an absurd figure with a curling pigtail,
large cocked hat, and habiliments meant to represent those of a Tuscan
citizen of some hundred years or so ago. He is a sort of shrewd fool,
doing the most absurd things, lying through thick and thin with a sort
of simple, self-confuting mendacity, yet contriving to cheat
everybody, and always having, amid all his follies, a shrewd eye to
his own interest. He talks with the broadest possible Florentine
accent and idiom, and despite his cunning is continually getting more
kicks than halfpence. Well, there was in those days a famous
Stenterello, really a very clever fellow in his way, who for many
years had been the delight of the Florentines every Carnival. But one
year a rival theatre produced a new and rival Stenterello. Of course
the old and established Stenterello could not stand this without using
the license of the popular stage to overwhelm his rival with ridicule.
"This sort of thing," said he, "will never do! How many Stenterelli
are we to have? Two is the regular established number in Florence.
There are I and my brother over there at the great house on the other
side of the Arno: we are the Florentine Stenterelli by right divine,
as is well known. Who is this pretender who comes to interfere with
us?" etc. Now, this was a little too much, even for Florence. And a
day or two afterward the old original Stenterello was ordered to go to
prison. Nobody was ever _arrested_, as we should call it, or _taken_
to prison. A man who for any cause was to suffer imprisonment used to
be told to _go_ to prison. Stenterello told the officer who announced
his doom that it was out of the question that he should go just then:
he had to appear on the boards that night. This was deemed to be a
just impediment, and he was told to go next day. The next day was a
"festa:" of course a sufficient reason for putting off everything. The
day after, on presenting himself at the prison-door, the actor was
told that the governor of the prison was out of Florence, and he must
"call again" in a few days. When the governor returned, Stenterello
was indisposed for a few days. When he got well the governor was
indisposed, and when _he_ got well there was another "festa;" and when
at last the offending actor did apply to the prison official to be
imprisoned, he was told there was no room for him. Long before that
the higher authorities had totally forgotten all about the matter.
That was the way things were done in Tuscany in the good old time.
The more serious faults with which Leopold II. was chargeable were due
to the narrowness of his religious bigotry, and, in the difficult and
trying circumstances of the latter years of his reign, the lack of the
courage needed to enable him to be truthful and to keep faith with his
people. When the frightened and fickle pope ran away from Rome, strong
influences were brought to bear on the grand duke of Tuscany to induce
him to refrain from following the example and to ally himself with
Piedmont. His confessor of course took the opposite side, and strove
with every weapon he could bring to bear on his Serene penitent to
induce him to throw in his lot with the pope. At last the invisible
world had to be appealed to. Saint Philomena, who had been a special
object of the devotion of the grand ducal family, took to appearing to
the confessor, and expressing her earnest hope that her devotee would
not risk the salvation of a soul in which she took so tender an
interest by refusing to follow the path marked out for him by the Holy
Father. The saint became very importunate upon the subject, and each
one of her celestial visitations was duly reported to the grand duke,
and made the occasion of fresh exhortations on the part of the holy
man who had been favored by them. The upshot is well known: Ciuco
followed the advice of Saint Philomena and lost his dukedom.
Sometimes, however, this submission of his mind to his clergy was not
altogether proof against a certain simple shrewdness, aided perhaps by
an inclination to save money, to which he was said not to be
insensible. Of course his grandfather, the enlightened and reforming
Duke Leopold I., had not been at all in the good graces of the Church,
and for a series of years Leopold II. had been in the habit of giving
a sum of money for masses for the repose of the soul of his
grandfather. But upon one occasion it happened that the archbishop of
Lucca (a very special hierarchical big-wig, and the greatest
ecclesiastical authority in those parts, being, by reason of some
ancient and peculiar privileges, a greater man than even the
archbishop of Florence), in the course of an argument with the grand
duke, the object of which was to induce the latter to modify in some
respects some of those anti-ecclesiastical measures by which the elder
Leopold had made the prosperity of Tuscany, was so far carried away by
his zeal as to declare that the author of the obnoxious constitutions
which he wished altered had incurred eternal damnation by the
enactment of them. The grand duke bent his head humbly before the
archiepiscopal denunciation, and said nothing in reply. But when the
time came round for the disbursement of the annual sum for masses for
Leopold I., his pious grandson declared that it was useless to spend
any more money for that purpose, for that the archbishop of Lucca had
informed him that his unhappy predecessor's soul was in hell, and
accordingly past help and past being prayed--or paid--for.
I remember an amusing instance of the same sort of simple shrewdness
on the lookout for the main chance which was exemplified in the above
anecdote showing itself in quite a different sphere. There was in
those days living in Florence an Englishman bearing the name of
Sloane. He had made a large fortune by the intelligent and
well-ordered management of some copper-mines in the neighborhood of
Volterra, which in his hands had turned out to be of exceptional and
unexpected richness. He was a man who did much good with his money,
and was considered a very valuable and important citizen of his
adopted country. He was a Roman Catholic too, which made him all the
more acceptable to the Florentines, and especially to the grand duke,
with whom he was a great favorite. This Mr. Sloane had bought some
years before the date of my anecdote the ancient Medicean villa of
Careggi, with a considerable extent of land surrounding it. One day
the grand duke paid him a visit at his villa of Careggi, and in the
course of it proposed a walk up the slope of the Apennines through
some fine woods that made a part of Mr. Sloane's property. They went
together, enjoying the delightful walk through the woods over a dry
and excellently well-made road, where everything betokened care and
good tending, till all of a sudden, near the top of the hill they were
climbing, they came to a place where the good road suddenly ended, and
the path beyond was all bog and the wood utterly uncared for, so that
their walk evidently had to come to an end there, and they would have
to retrace their steps.
"Why, Sloane, how is this? This is not like your way of doing things.
Why did you stop short in your good work?" said the grand duke, as
they stood at the limit of the good road, looking out at the slough
beyond them.
"In truth, Your Highness, I was sorry that the good road should break
off here, but the circumstance is easily explained. Here ends the
property of your humble servant, and there begins the property of Your
Royal Highness," said Sloane with a low bow.
"Ha! Is it so? Well, then, I'll tell you what you shall do. You shall
_buy_ it, Sloane, and then you can finish your job," returned the
grand duke.
It is very doubtful whether the Tuscans would have approved of the
_liberality_ of the grand duke's expenditure if he had manifested it,
as his neighbor-sovereigns did, by expending his revenues on
multitudes of show-soldiers. The Tuscan forces of those days were not
exactly calculated for brilliant military display. They were about as
likely to be called on to fight as the scullions in the grand ducal
kitchen, and neither in number, appearance nor _tenue_ were they such
as would have obtained the approval of the lowest officer in the
service of a more military-minded sovereign. However, such as they
were, the grand duke used occasionally--generally on the recurrence of
some great Church festival--to review his troops. On such occasions he
was expected to say something to the men. Poor Ciuco's efforts in that
line often produced effects more amusing to bystanders than impressive
to the objects of his oratory. He was one day reviewing the troops who
occupied barracks in the well-known "Fortezza di S. Giovanni,"
popularly called by the Florentines "Fortezza da basso"--the same in
which the celebrated Filippo Strozzi, then the prisoner of the
vindictive Cosmo de' Medici, was found dead one morning, leaving to
the world the still unsolved historical problem whether he died by his
own hand or by that of his jailer hired to do the murder. The scene in
the gloomy old fortress with which we are at present concerned was of
a less tragic nature. His Serene Highness began by exhorting his
"brave army"--which, unlike that of Bombastes in the burlesque,
certainly never "kicked up a row" of any kind--to be attentive to
their religious duties. "It is particularly desirable that you should
show an example to the citizens by your regular observance of the
festivals of the Church; and--and--" (here His Highness shuffled his
feet, and, hanging his head down, chanced to cast his eyes on the line
of feet of the men drawn up before him) "and--and--always keep your
shoes clean." And with that doubtless much-needed exhortation His
Highness concluded his address.
The fact that Leopold was not regarded by his subjects with any
bitterness of hatred--nay, that there was _au fond_ a considerable
feeling of affection for him--is shown by the circumstances of his
deposition from the throne. A little timely concession would have
saved Charles I.: a still less amount of concession would have
preserved his throne to Leopold II. As regarded his own power, he had
no objection to agree to all that was asked of him, but he could not
make up his mind to go against the head of his house and the head of
his religion. The last proposal made to him was to abdicate in favor
of his son, whom, if allied with Piedmont, the Tuscans would have
consented to accept as their sovereign. But the grand duke felt that
this would in fact be doing in an indirect manner that which he had
fully determined not to do; and he refused. And then came the end, and
that memorable April morning (the 27th) when the present writer
witnessed a revolution such as the world had not seen before, and such
as, it may be feared, it is not likely soon to see again. Revolutions,
we have over and over again been told, "cannot be made with
rose-water." The Tuscan revolution may have "proved the rule by the
exception," but it assuredly proved it in no other way. The revolution
by which poor old Ciuco lost this throne was essentially a rose-water
revolution. The history of that day, of the negotiations respecting
the proposed abdication of the duke, of the conduct and bearing of the
people, has already been told by the present writer, when he was fresh
from witnessing the events, in a little volume published in 1859. He
will not therefore repeat them now, but will conclude this paper with
an account of the manner of the last grand duke's farewell to Florence
which is not given in the volume spoken of.
It was at six o'clock in the evening that the carriages containing the
grand duke and his family passed through the Porta San Gallo, from
which proceeds the road to Bologna, and thence to Vienna. The main
preoccupation of the people at that moment was to assure themselves by
the evidence of their own senses that the duke and dukelings were
really gone. An immense crowd of people assembled round the gate and
lined the road immediately outside it. Along the living line thus
formed the cortege of carriages proceeded at a slow pace. There was no
fear of violence. The Tuscan revolution had cost no drop of blood--not
so much as a bloody nose--to any human being thus far, and there was
no danger whatever that any violence would be shown to the departing
and totally unprotected prince. But there might have been danger that
the populace would tarnish their hitherto blameless conduct by some
manifestation of insult or exultation. There was not one word of the
sort spoken in all the crowd, or indeed a word of any sort. The
carriages, carrying away those who were never to see the banks of the
Arno and fair Florence again, passed on in perfect--one might almost
say in mournful--silence. Of course the masses of the crowd were soon
passed, and the grand ducal heart, if it had beat a little quickly
while his unguarded carriage was passing between the lines of those
who declined to be any longer his subjects, resumed that "serenity"
supposed to be the especial property of royal highnesses. But some
half dozen carriages, containing a score or so of those whose
positions had brought them into personal acquaintance with the
sovereign, accompanied the royal cortege as far as the Tuscan frontier
between the grand ducal state and the dominions of the Church. Arrived
at that spot--it is on the top of a high, bleak ridge among the
Apennines--there was a general alighting from the carriages for the
mutual saying of the last words of farewell. Of course an immense
amount of bowing, with backward steps according to true courtly
fashion, went to the due uttering of these adieux on that spot of the
high-road over the Apennines. Unfortunately, there chanced to be a
heap of broken stones for the mending of the road which encroached a
little on the roadway. And it so happened that His Imperial and Royal
Highness, never very dexterous in the use of his limbs or an adept in
the performance of such courtly gymnastics, backed in bowing on this
unlucky heap of stones, and was tripped by it in such sort that the
imperial and royal heels went into the air, and the grand duke made
his last exit from Tuscany in a manner more original than dignified.
T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.
OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
OLD ENGLISH CHARITIES.
The local charities connected with the family history of great
landowners in England form one of the most interesting classes of
public relief. They date chiefly from ante-Reformation times, and
often embody a hidden symbolism into which none save the antiquary now
cares to inquire. It is a mistake to suppose that _all_ the dying
bequests of pious folk in the Middle Ages were devoted to the "Church"
proper: the larger part certainly were, although the spirit that
prompted even the making of such bequests was symbolical of the belief
in the dispensing (rather than the appropriating) powers of churchmen:
but many were also the sums left to be yearly spent in the relief of
the poor and starving. Thus originated the alms-(or bede-) houses so
frequently met with in the retired villages of England. _Bede_ (from
the German _beten_, to "pray") meant prayer, hinting at the pious duty
of those benefiting by the founder's legacy to pray for his eternal
welfare. When the Reformation, among many abuses, also obliterated
many beautiful and poetical customs, the meaning of these "houses of
prayer" was forgotten, and their chapels were often ruthlessly
whitewashed. The material part of the foundation, however, still
remained, and the bedesmen, twelve or thirteen (in commemoration of
the number of the apostles, or the apostles and their Master),
continued to be chosen by the clergyman of the parish and the lord of
the manor. In other places, instead of this more costly mode of
relief, a custom prevailed of distributing a "dole" at stated times
to a large number of poor people, the number corresponding to the age
of the giver: if alive, of course the number increased every year; if
dead, it was fixed at the age at which he or she had died. Many of
these local customs continue to this day: some have even been
instituted lately, since the revived taste for medievalism has
beautified and refined English homesteads and village churches. The
queen, a faithful upholder of ancient national manners, has given the
example by adhering to the time-honored custom called the Royal
Maundy. This word is from _mandatum_, or commandment, and refers to
the "new commandment" given by Christ to his apostles at the Last
Supper. In Catholic countries it is still the custom for the sovereign
to wash the feet of twelve poor men (his wife performing the same
office for twelve poor and aged women) in public on the Thursday
before Easter, and to serve them at table afterward: in Vienna this is
done in a very solemn and public manner. The chosen ones are brought
to the palace in court-coaches, and after the ceremony is over are
carried home in the same way, loaded with presents of clothing, money,
and all the dishes, spoons, forks, etc., used at their dinner. In
England the same charity, or its equivalent, is dispensed, not by the
sovereign in person, but by her chaplains and almoners, in the midst
of beautiful formalities. The dignity with which the ceremony is
performed is a striking evidence of the national character, and a
contrast to the sometimes slovenly manner in which great public
religious functions are got through abroad. The charities are
distributed in the chapel of Whitehall, the palace made tragically
famous by the disgrace of Wolsey and the death of King Charles I.
Fifty-five old men, and as many women, the number corresponding to the
age of the sovereign, were thus relieved last year. On an earlier
occasion witnessed by the writer a procession consisting of a
detachment of the yeomen of the guard, under the command of a
sergeant-major (one of the yeomen carrying the royal alms on a gold
salver of the reign of William and Mary), several chaplains, almoners,
secretaries and a few national schoolchildren (allowed to take part in
the ceremony as a signal reward for good behavior), left the Royal
Almonry Office for the chapel of Whitehall. It was met at the door by
the lord high almoner and the subdeans of the Chapel Royal, who joined
the ranks and passed up to the altar. The surpliced boys of the Chapel
Royal, and the clergy and gentlemen belonging officially to it, took
their appointed places right and left, and the gold salver was
deposited in front of the royal pew, generally tenanted by one or more
members of the royal family. Evening prayer, slightly varied and
adapted for the occasion, as custom has decreed for several centuries,
was then gone through; the forty-first Psalm was chanted; and after
the First Lesson an anthem by Goss was sung. Then followed the
distribution of L1 15s. to each woman, and a pair of shoes and
stockings to each man. The two next anthems were by Mendelssohn, and
in the intervals woolen and linen clothes were first distributed to
each man, and money-purses to each man and woman. The Second Lesson
was then read, and the fourth and concluding anthem, by Greene,
chanted, after which the usual Thanksgiving and Prayer of St.
Chrysostom were read. The musical part of the service, being
especially prominent, was correctly and artistically performed by
skillful musicians (some of them composers), styled officially
"gentlemen of the Chapel Royal:" the solo in the first anthem was sung
by one of the boys.
In addition to this special ceremony, other Easter bounties, styled
"Minor Bounty," "Discretionary Bounty," and the "Royal Gate Alms,"
were, according to old custom, distributed at the Almonry Office on
Good Friday and Saturday, while Easter Monday and Tuesday were devoted
to the distribution of other supplementary relief to old and infirm
people previously chosen by the clergy of the various London parishes.
The recipients included over a thousand persons. Among the private
local charities none is on so large a scale as the famous "Tichborne
Dole." The idea we now attach to the word _dole_ is ludicrously
inappropriate in this case, where the gift is in the proportion of one
gallon of the best wheaten flour to each adult and half a gallon to
each child, and where the number of the recipients is generally
between five and six hundred, including the inhabitants of two
parishes. This custom is seven hundred years old, and was first
instituted on the Tichborne estate by Dame Mabel, the wife of Sir
Roger de Tichborne, knight, in the beginning of the twelfth century.
The foundress was renowned for her piety and charity, and by her own
people was looked upon as a saint. The family record says that she was
so charitable to the poor that, not content to exercise that virtue
all her lifetime, she instituted the "dole" as a perpetual memorial of
her goodness, and entailed it to her posterity. It is distributed
yearly on the 25th of March. A large oil-painting, now hanging in the
dining-room of Tichborne House, and representing the distribution of
the "dole," was painted in 1670, and is considered as one of the most
valuable family relics. The costumes of the period are faithfully
represented, most of the prominent figures are portraits, and the
scene is laid within the courtyard of the old manor, with its
sculptured gables and picturesque mullioned windows. The present
house, roomy and comfortable as it is, is a plain, unpretending
building, with no architectural features to recommend it, but the park
and grounds are very beautiful, the old trees disposed in deep glades
and avenues, and the situation altogether very picturesque. Since the
famous trial has made everything bearing the name of Tichborne a
target for curiosity, the occupants have been sadly annoyed, and
access to the house was at last, in self-defence, denied to strangers
who came simply as gaping sight-seers. The "dole" distribution, as we
have said, takes place every year. Last spring it was attended with
less show than usual, owing to the illness of the little boy who now
represents the old name (the nephew of the lost Roger Tichborne), in
consequence of which none of the ladies of the family were present.
But despite the absence of the festal arrangements by which it is
usually accompanied, the main business was the same as it has always
been since Dame Mabel's time. About nine o'clock the fine old park
became thronged with men, women and children, all carrying bags and
baskets in which to stow away the "bounty." The distribution was made
at the back of the house. The people gathered in groups, dressed in
all sorts of plain, dilapidated country garments--old men in worn-out
smock-frocks (a sight seldom seen even in conservative England),
gaiters such as they wear at work in the fields, and slouched,
unrecognizable hats that had evidently seen better times; others stood
in their "Sunday clothes," stiff and uncomfortable as a laborer looks
in that unusual and unartistic guise; some were old and toothless, yet
upright and almost martial-looking; while some, again, had that
pathetic look--sunken eyes, bent limbs and general air of having given
in to the attacks of time and sorrow--which invariably speaks the same
language and stirs the same sympathy all over the world. The women
were in the majority, most of them hale and hearty, the wives and
daughters of laborers who were too busy to come in person. Nine sacks,
each containing fifty gallons of flour, were emptied by two sturdy
miller's men into an immense tub. The family being an old Roman
Catholic one, a religious ceremony was the prelude of the
distribution. The domestic chaplain offered up a short prayer, and
after invoking the blessing of Heaven on the gift, sprinkled the flour
with holy water in the form of a cross. It was no uncommon thing for
one person to carry away three or four gallons of flour: the largest
award was in the case of a family consisting of man, wife and seven
children, the wife carrying away with her five and a half gallons.
Many of those whose names appeared as witnesses for the defence during
the memorable trial were present--John Etheridge, the blacksmith, and
Kennett, coachman to the dowager Lady Tichborne, among the number. The
latter lives in a small freehold cottage, his own property, at
Cheriton, the next parish to Tichborne. Persons of all denominations
were relieved--Church people, Dissenters and Roman Catholics
alike--without the slightest favoritism being shown to any.
The same kind of charity, though on a smaller scale, and by the custom
of living patrons instead of the will of deceased ones, is dispensed
at various times in the year through the whole country by both large
and small landed proprietors.
The 11th of November (St. Martin's Day) is the one generally chosen
for the distribution of winter clothing to the poor of the parish, and
this in commemoration of the mediaeval legend of the holy Bishop
Martin, who gave half his ample cloak to a shivering leper who begged
of him in the street. Next night, says the legend, he saw in a dream
Christ himself clothed in that cloak, and remembered the promise that
"inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of these, ye have done it unto
Me." The writer has often assisted at such distribution of warm
clothing, both made and unmade. In every county squire's house there
is a bi-or tri-weekly distribution of soup to the village poor, and in
most two or three sets of fine bed-linen and soft baby-clothes, to be
lent out on occasions requiring greater comforts than the poor and too
often thriftless women of agricultural villages can afford. Private
charity is all-reaching: the "hall" is the dispensary and the general
ark of refuge for all county ills, moral, physical and pecuniary, and
its help is never thought degrading, like that of the "parish." Most
families pay a doctor and a nurse by the year to attend the poor free
of expense, and an order from the doctor for jellies, soup or wine, as
well as for the ordinary sorts of medicine, is always sure of being
filled from the ample stores of the "housekeeper's room." If the city
poor were half as well provided for as are the agricultural poor by
their "lords of the manor," there would be far less destitution. Some
affect to sneer at a system which savors of what they call
"feudalism," and which, they wisely suggest, encourages pauperism, but
warm-hearted and charitable people will probably disagree with these
searchers after new methods, and will be glad to find in the ready
sympathy of English landowners for their poor neighbors a ray of the
old-fashioned unquestioning charity which distinguished biblical
times.
B.M.
* * * * *
LANDORIANA.
I wish to supplement the "Recollections of Landor," published in a
former number of the Magazine, by an anecdote and two or three
characteristic letters which by accident escaped me when I was writing
on the subject before. Here is the story: Schlegel and Niebuhr had
been for some time on unpleasant terms. The historical skepticism of
the latter was altogether distasteful to Schlegel; and he was wont to
deny Niebuhr's claim to the title of historian. Well, Landor was
dining at Bonn, and among the company immediately opposite to him at
table was Schlegel. Hardly had the soup been despatched before Landor,
with that stentorian voice of his which always filled every corner of
every room he spoke in, began: "Are not you the man, Mr. Schlegel, who
has recently discovered, at the end of two hundred and fifty years,
that Shakespeare is a poet? Well, perhaps if you live two hundred and
fifty years longer, you may discover that Niebuhr is an historian."
"Schlegel did not like it," added Landor when telling the story
himself--very much as who should say, "I knocked him down with an
unexpected blow of my fist, and he did not _like_ it!"
And now for my letters. Here is one dated "Florence, June, 1861,"
written to my wife when he was past eighty and within a year or two of
his death. The latter portion of the letter is especially interesting,
and will be none the less so to those who may be disposed to dispute
the correctness of the judgments expressed in it.
"Do not be alarmed," he writes, "at a letter which 'like a wounded
snake drags its slow length along.' Such, I suspect, mine will be,
though it ought to contain only thanks for the admirable ones you have
sent to me on the late affairs of Tuscany. Yesterday Mr. Trollope gave
them to me as your present. I then exprest a hope that he or you would
undertake a history of Italian affairs from the Treaty of Campo Formio
down to the present day. Indeed, I hope and trust that it may be
continued a year or two farther, until the recovery of Rome from the
most perfidious enemy she and Italy were ever opprest by. And this
under the title of deliverer! Lay your two heads together, and let me
have to boast that the best and truest of our historians were my
personal friends. Southey and Napier were most intimately so. Hallam
is a dull proser--no discovery or illustration, no profound thought,
no vivid description, not even a harmonious period. Macaulay is a
smart reviewer, indifferent to truth, a hanger-on of party. Lingard is
more honest, and writes better. He does not tag together loose
epigrams with a crooked pin. Now put the empty chairs of these people
against the wall, and sit down to your table with a long piece of work
before you. And now you must be tired, as I foretold you would be. So
hail the farewell of your affectionate old friend,
"W. LANDOR."
* * * * *
Here is another, undated, but shown by the Bath postmark to have been
written in 1857. The whole letter is strongly characteristic of the
writer, as indeed was everything that Landor wrote, said or did, so
thoroughly and in every sense of the word was he _original_; but, as
in the preceding letter, the most interesting portion is that toward
the end, where he gives some amusing indications of his peculiar
political opinions and feelings. This letter also was written to the
same correspondent:
"My dear friend: It is now three years since I have been in London,
except in passing through it to the Crystal Palace, without
dismounting." [How curiously the phrase indicates the habits of the
writer's youth, when gentlemen's journeys were for the most part
performed on horseback!] "At Sydenham I remained three weeks, almost;
but the air of London always disagreed with me, added to which, the
necessity of visiting was always intolerable to me, and I have lost
many friends by refusing to undergo it. If Mr. Trollope should find a
few days' leisure for Bath, I can promise him a hearty reception and a
comfortable bedroom. Is it not singular that on your letter being
brought to me I laid down for it _Town and Country_ [a novel by
Frances Trollope], which interests me as much on a second reading as
on the first? To-morrow I must run--imagine a man of eighty-one
running!--for the Athenaeum. I myself have not thrown away the pen,
which sadly wants mending. They have published _Scenes from the
Shades,_ and _Alfieri and Metastasio_, and _Codrus and Polio_. These
last three are in _Fraser_. If they bring a few pounds or shillings,
the money will be given to Capera, a laboring man who has written some
noble poetry." [The writer in question produced some very tolerable
verses, remarkable as coming from a man in his position, but in our
friend's enthusiastic language they become "noble poetry" directly he
makes the man his protege--a truly Landorian touch!] "I could have
collected three hundred pounds for Kossuth from friends who wrote to
me about it, and probably ten or a dozen times as much from others,
for no man ever had so few friends or acquaintances as I have. Nearly
all are dead, and I have no leisure or inclination for new ones. It
gave me much pleasure to hear that the fine and pleasant Lord Normanby
is in part recovered from his paralysis. I parted from him at Bath
with few hopes. Never have I spent a winter in England so free from
every kind of malady as this last. A disastrous war ends with a
disgraceful peace. We are to have an illumination and ringing of
bells. Sir Claude Scott and myself will not illuminate, but I have
promised the ringers twenty shillings if they will muffle the bells.
Rejoice! The best generals and best soldiers in the Crymea [sic] were
Italians.
"W.S.L."
Landor had many queer crotchets about spelling, and always absolutely
declined to follow any rule but his own. It seems to have been one of
these crotchets to spell Crimea as he spells it in the above-quoted
letter--on what grounds I do not pretend to be able to guess: With
regard to the seemingly unpatriotic sentiment contained in the last
lines, it must be remembered that the writer was addressing a person
long resident in Italy, and eagerly anxious for the well-doing of the
Italian troops in their struggle with the different despotisms which
oppressed the Peninsula. The bribing the ringers to _muffle_ the bells
is a highly characteristic trait.
Of a third letter I will print only a part, because the remainder
concerns the unfortunate affair which compelled the writer finally to
leave England--the result, as is well known, of a trial for libel in
which Landor was cast in heavy damages which were far beyond his
diminished means to pay. He acted very wrongly, and still more
imprudently, in attempting to expose what he honestly deemed
misconduct of a nature that outraged all the generous feelings of his
nature, by the publication of a very gross libel. The passages in the
letter in question which refer to this business, then in the stage
preceding his conviction, abundantly testify to the fact that the
sentiments which had impelled him to act as he did were wholly and
solely those of generous indignation at wrong done, in no-wise against
himself, but against another, whom he deemed to be oppressed and
unprotected. But I think, on the whole, that no good purpose would be
served by raking up the matter afresh. And (for Landor in his wrath
was at no time a Chrysostom) the letter bristles with assertions and
accusations couched in language which might, for aught I know, make
the publication of it a repetition of the offence for which he
suffered. The other matters touched on are not uninteresting
manifestations of opinion:
"My DEAR FRIEND," he writes: "Whether I am ill or well it is always
with equal pleasure that I see the trace of your hand. Surely, I must
have written to you since I sent the scenes of _Anthony and Octavius_.
But I am too apt to believe that what I _ought_ to have done I _have_
done. You ask me what I think of the Neapolitan abominations." [The
allusion is to some one or other of the many acts of grievous tyranny
which were at that time perpetrated by the Neapolitan Bourbon
government in its terrified attempts to protect itself against the
rising indignation of the people.] "We countenance them. The despots
are in _Holy Alliance_ against constitutions." [Surely, Landor's old
antagonism to former English governments led him into error and
injustice when he accuses England of "countenancing" the tyrannies of
the Neapolitan government. How much Gladstone's celebrated letter and
English sentiment in all quarters contributed toward the overthrow of
that tyranny was not then known as well as it is now.] "On the other
side of this," he continues, "you will find a few verses I wrote on
Agesiloa Milano, the finest and bravest patriot on record." [Agesilao
Milano, whose name was just then in every mouth in Italy, was one of
the numerous victims of Austrian severity, who had met his fate with
admirable courage, and who willingly gave his life for his country.
But there was nothing to distinguish him specially from hundreds of
other Italians who in those evil days did as much, and nothing save
chance to distinguish him from the tens of hundreds who were ready to
do as much had the lot fallen to them. But the mention of this poor
fellow in the letter is very specially Landorian. No superlatives were
with him strong enough to express his sentiments on aught that
immediately moved his feelings either of admiration or indignation.]
"The concessions in Lombardy," he goes on, "are fabulous. Thieves and
assassins are turned out of prison with quiet literary men and brave
patriots.... With kindest regards to your circle, ever your affec.
"W. LANDOR."
The verses on Agesilao Milano announced as being "on the
other side" are there preceded by two epigrams on the object of his
indignation above alluded to, which I suppress for the same reason
that I have suppressed that portion of the letter referring to the
same subject. The verses on the young Italian patriot and martyr run
as follows:
Sometimes the brave have bent the head
To lick the dust that despots tread.
Not so Milano; he alone
Would bow to Justice on the throne.
To win a crown of thorns he trod
A flinty path, and rests with God.
T.A.T.
* * * * *
THE DEATH OF DOCTORS' COMMONS.
On the 20th of last October a venerable London institution changed its
quarters. Doctors' Commons may almost be said to be no more. Its heart
is gone. The Principal Registry of the Court of Probate--the successor
to the Prerogative Court of Canterbury--is no longer to be found
there, and those who seek their fortunes in wills have now to
prosecute their researches in that hub of British departmental
records, Somerset House. The knell of "the Commons" was rung about
twenty years ago, when a campaign against the abuses prevailing in the
ecclesiastical courts was begun in the London _Times_. It
unquestionably had been the home _par excellence_ of sinecures and
monopolies, which culminated in the office of registrar of the
Prerogative Court of the archbishop of Canterbury. This office was in
the gift of the archbishop, and was at the time these attacks began
held by the Rev. Mr. Moore. Mr. Moore was a member of a family which
had certainly good cause to stand steadfast in the faith of the Church
of England, and not to waver one inch in attachment thereto. It may be
doubted whether since its foundation any family--we except, of course,
those to whom grants were made from abbey-lands--during the whole
history of the Church has drawn such vast sums from it. His father, a
singularly fortunate man, set the ball rolling. Having gone up to
Christ Church, Oxford, as a sizar, or poor scholar, he happened about
the time of taking his degree to cross the quadrangle at the moment
when a nobleman of great position was asking the dean to recommend a
tutor for his son. Young Moore at that moment caught the very reverend
functionary's eye. There is the very man, thought he. He called him
up, presented him to the peer, and an engagement was made. In those
days the patronage of a powerful peer was a ready road to preferment.
Young Moore gave satisfaction to his noble patron, and was pushed up
the ecclesiastical tree until he reached its topmost branch, being
created in 1783 archbishop of Canterbury. In 1770 he formed a very
judicious marriage with Miss Eden. This lady was sister of Sir Robert
Eden, governor of Maryland in 1776 (who married the sister and co-heir
of the last Lord Baltimore), and of the first Lord Auckland, whom
George III. very justly stigmatized as "that eternal intriguer." To
the "eternal intriguer" the elevation of Moore to the archbishopric
was probably mainly due. Lord Auckland was for many years as intimate
a friend as Pitt ever had, and his daughter (afterward countess of
Buckinghamshire) is the great minister's only recorded love. For
twenty-three years Dr. Moore filled the archbishopric, and in those
days it was a far better thing pecuniarily than it is now. He made hay
whilst the sun shone, and then and for long after did his relatives
bask in the sun. Registrarships, canonries and livings fell upon them
in rich profusion, and the great prize of all, the registrarship of
the Prerogative Court of the archbishop of Canterbury, fell to the
luckiest of the lot.
Of course the registrar never came near his registry: his duties were
discharged by three deputies. Not one penny, moreover, beyond what was
absolutely necessary did he expend on the registry itself. Such a hole
as it was! Cribbed, cabined and confined were the clerks who ran the
reverend sinecurist's business in one of the most extraordinary
rabbit-warrens, to use the epithet Bethell, Lord (Chancellor)
Westbury, applied to it in the writer's hearing. In Great Knight Rider
street--a name derived from the days of the Knights Templar--was a
dingy passage-way leading into a yet dingier little court. Passing up
a short flight of steps, you found yourself in a large room, with deep
alcoves furnished with shelves, on which, above and on all sides, were
ranged huge volumes with massive clasps. "What are all these books?"
inquired a youthful visitor--"old Bibles?" "No, sir; they're
testaments," was a waggish official's reply. They are, in fact, copies
of wills. The originals are deemed too precious for exhibition except
on special application, and the stranger who pays his shilling only
sees a copy. Formerly, unless a searcher knew exactly when a will was
proved, the process of finding it was very troublesome, because he had
to search down indexes in Old English character arranged in order of
date only; but now the registers have been put into alphabetical form.
The great change in Doctors' Commons took place in 1858, when the
Probate Act came into operation. This was a very sweeping measure,
which at a blow superseded the whole system of ecclesiastical courts,
so far at least as wills were concerned. For them it substituted a
Court of Probate, with jurisdiction over the whole of England.
Attached to this court are about forty registries for wills. That in
London is called the Principal Registry. A will must either be proved
in the district in which a man dies or in the Principal Registry. The
Principal Registry is a very large office, at the head of which are
four registrars, who are also registrars of the Divorce Court, over
which the judge of the Court of Probate presides, being styled "judge
ordinary" of this latter. There are about forty registries scattered
about the country, in most cases in places where formerly
ecclesiastical courts existed for the proving of wills. The value of
these registrarships ranges from three hundred to fifteen hundred
pounds. They are all in the gift of the judge of the court, whose
patronage is worth about sixty thousand pounds a year, and may be
reckoned the best in England, inasmuch as he holds it continuously,
whilst the lord chancellor and other political officers merely hold
their patronage for the few years they may chance to continue in
office. Moreover, the judge of the Court of Probate, not being a
political officer, has no political pressure brought to bear upon him
in the distribution of his patronage, and can dispense it precisely as
he pleases. The registrars must, by the terms of the act of
Parliament, be barristers, solicitors, or clerks who have served five
years in the Principal Registry.
Doctors' Commons twenty years ago was a unique corner of the world. It
lay so hid away that you might live for years in London, and be within
a stone's throw of it, and yet never have its existence brought to
your mind; and it had a life all its own. The ecclesiastical lawyers
were called doctors and proctors, instead of barristers and attorneys;
and although the former did not arrogate to themselves a higher rank
socially and professionally than that of barrister, a proctor
considered himself a great many cuts above an attorney, and indeed
was, for the most part, the equal of the best class of attorneys.
Proctors, it will be borne in mind, are sketched by Charles Dickens in
the opening pages of _David Copperfield_, for Dora's papa, Mr.
Spenlow, was in proctorial partnership with the reputably inexorable
Jawkins. When the Probate Act came into force it was a frightful blow
to the tribe of Spenlows. Not so much on account of the pecuniary
loss. In that respect the blow was considerably tempered to the shorn
lambs by a compensation all too liberal--for John Bull is unsurpassed
as a respecter of vested interests--and the proctors were compensated
on the basis of their incomes for the last five years, their returns
proving in some instances curiously at variance with the amounts on
which they had paid income-tax. But they regarded themselves as
terrible losers in prestige and position by this rude invasion of the
classic and aristocratic ground of the Doctores Commensales, and above
all by being leveled down to the rank of attorneys. The clerks in the
Prerogative Court--of which the registrars and head-clerks were all
proctors, who, taking the cue from Chief Registrar Moore, executed
their work by deputy, the deputies being clerks working long hours for
small salaries--had kotooed to them with the most servile
subserviency; but the Probate Office clerk was a government official,
who could not be removed, even by the judge of the court, without the
consent of the lord chancellor. What cared he, then, for Spenlow and
Jawkins? "I am astonished, Mr. Spenlow," said a young clerk of the new
_regime_, "that you should have made such a mistake!" Mr. Spenlow, in
turn, was too much astonished to utter a word. Speechless with
amazement and indignation, he left the "seat," as the different
departments were called, to weep bitter tears in regret for the past
in the solitude of his dingy sanctum in Bell Yard, leaving an
emancipated clerk, who had served under the thraldom of the old
_regime_, exclaiming, "Good Heavens! Only imagine any of us daring to
use such language to a proctor two years ago!"
R.W.
* * * * *
THE LAY OF THE LEVELER.
Among the less known writings of Francis Quarles, author of the once
famous _Emblems_, is a volume, now become very scarce, entitled _The
Shepheards Oracles, delivered in certain Eglogues_. The copy of it to
which I have access was published in 1646, or two years after
Quarles's death. This spirited poem must have been perused with
intense interest by Quarles's contemporaries. But history is
constantly repeating itself with more or less of modification, and
_The Shepheards Oracles_, at least here and there, and with reference
to England, reads, but for its quaintness of manner and idiom, like a
production of the nineteenth century. In the course of it there occur
some verses, put into the mouth of Anarchus, which are well worth
resuscitating. These verses, to which I have supplied a title as
above, are, in a sufficiently exact transcription, as follows:
Know, then, my brethren, heav'n is cleare,
And all the Clouds are gone;
The Righteous now shall flourish, and
Good dais are coming on.
Come, then, my Brethren, and be glad,
And eke rejoyce with me:
Lawn Sleeves and Rochets shall goe down:
And, hey! then up goe we.
Wee'l break the windows which the Whore
Of Babylon hath painted;
And, when the Popish Saints are down,
Then Barow shall be Sainted.
There's neither Crosse nor Crucifixe
Shall stand for man to see:
Romes trash and trump'ries shall goe downe;
And, hey! then up goe we.
What ere [sic] the Popish hands have built,
Our Hammers shall undoe;
Wee'l breake their Pipes, and burn their Copes,
And pull downe Churches, too:
Wee'l exercise within the Groves,
And teach beneath a Tree;
Wee'l make a Pulpit of a Cart;
And, hey! then up goe we.
Wee'l down with all the Varsities,
Where Learning is profest,
Because they practise and maintain
The language of the Beast:
Wee'l drive the Doctors out of doores,
And Arts, what ere [sic] they be;
Wee'l cry both Arts and Learning down;
And, hey! then up goe we.
Wee'l down with Deans and Prebends, too;
But I rejoyce to tell ye
How then we will eat Pig our fill,
And Capon by the belly:
Wee'l burn the Fathers witty Tomes,
And make the Schoolmen flee;
Wee'l down with all that smels of wit;
And, hey! then up goe we.
If once that Antichristian crew
Be crusht and overthrown,
Wee'l teach the Nobles how to crouch,
And keep the Gentry down:
Good manners have an evil report,
And turn to pride we see:
Wee'l, therefore, cry good manners down;
And, hey! then up goe we.
The name of Lord shall be abhor'd;
For every man's a brother:
No reason why, in Church or State,
One man should rule another.
But, when the change of Government
Shall set our fingers free,
Wee'l make the wanton Sisters stoop:
And, hey! then up goe we.
Our Coblers shall translate their soules
From Caves obscure and shady;
Wee' make Tom T---- as good as my Lord,
And Joan as good as my Lady.
Wee'l crush and fling the marriage Ring
Into the Romane See;
Wee'l ask no bans, but even clap hands;
And, hey! then up goe we.
By "Barow," named in the second stanza, is intended, no doubt, Henry
Barrow, the Nonconformist enthusiast who was executed at Tyburn in
1592. A follower of Robert Browne, founder of the Brownists, whence
sprang the sect of Independents, he brought upon himself, by his zeal
and imprudence, a vengeance which his wary leader contrived to evade.
Browne himself is alluded to punningly in _The Shepheards Oracles_,
where Philorthus, at sight of Anarchus approaching, asks whether he is
"in a Browne study." Anarchus replies:
"Man, if thou be'st a Babe of Grace,
And of an holy Seed,
I will reply incontinent,
And in my words proceed;
But, if thou art a child of wrath,
And lewd in conversation,
I will not, then, converse with thee,
Nor hold communication."
Philorthus rejoins, referring by his "we all three" to Philarchus,
with whom he had just been conversing:
"I trust, Anarchus, we all three inherit
The selfe same gifts, and share the selfe same Spirit."
Then follow the stanzas which I have first quoted. There is certainly
ground to surmise that Lord Macaulay had in mind what I have called
"The Lay of the Leveler" when in 1820 he wrote "A Radical War-song."
In support of this opinion, I subjoin, for comparison, its last stanza
but one:
Down with your sheriffs and your mayors,
Your registrars and proctors!
We'll live without the lawyer's cares,
And die without the doctor's.
No discontented fair shall pout
To see her spouse so stupid:
We'll tread the torch of Hymen out,
And live content with Cupid.
F.H.
* * * * *
THE PHILOSOPHER STRAUSS AS A POET.
The writer of a sketch in a late number of a Leipsic journal presents
the famous author of the _Life of Jesus_, David Friederich Strauss, in
a new character. He mentions, first, that in the _Unterhaltungen am
haeuslichen Heerde_ ("Conversations around the Homehearth"), published
by Strauss in 1856, the latter makes, in the introduction, the
following graceful reference to the deceased friend of his youth, E.F.
Kauffmann: "If I were a philosophical emperor and wrote
self-confessions, I would thank the gods for giving me, among other
blessings, a poet and musician for an early friend. He is dead now,
alas! the noble man whom alone I have to thank that my ear, though
still unskillful, has been opened to the world of harmony. He was not
a professional musician, but he had a thoroughly musical nature. The
laws of composition he had studied theoretically, and he followed them
practically. His position, in reality, was that of a professor of
mathematics. But music was his secret love. He not only knew the great
masters, but he lived in them. He thought little of playing on the
piano the whole of one of Mozart's operas, note for note, without any
written music before him. I have often seen him do this. How much I
have owed to those hours! How he could draw his hearers into the right
mood! How he could illuminate the groping mind with the lightning
flash of thought!"
To this friend Strauss sent from Munich in 1851 ten sonnets. They were
accompanied by a versified dedication to Kauffmann himself, and they
constitute his claim to be considered a poet as well as a philosophic
theologian. The sonnets are all on musical subjects, and may be taken
as the natural outgrowth of that cultivation of his musical taste
which he owed to his intimate association with Professor Kauffmann.
The metrical dedication and the first five sonnets are given in the
sketch before referred to. The writer of that article looks upon the
tendency, thus displayed by Strauss, to "drop into poetry," as Mr.
Wegg was accustomed to say, as another strong proof of the
affinity--elsewhere noticed--between the genius of Strauss and that of
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing; who, it will be remembered, sometimes
diverted himself with the composition of light poetical pieces, such
as his famous song, beginning "Gestern, Brueder, koennt ihr's glauben?"
The first sonnet is on Haendel, the second on Glueck, the third on
Haydn, the fourth on _Don Juan_, and the fifth on _Figaro_.
The following attempt at a translation of the fourth sonnet may serve
to give some idea of how far the world-renowned philosopher and
skeptic has succeeded in his effort to assume the anomalous _role_ of
a sonneteer:
DON JUAN.
How joyously life's fountains here are flowing!
In crystal cups the purple flood is foaming;
Through dusky myrtle-groves are lovers roaming,
The dance begins in halls all bright and glowing.
Be watchful, though! Here treachery is hiding.
Wild passion naught for truth or ruth is caring:
As hawks do doves, mild innocence 'tis tearing,
And human vengeance lightly is deriding.
But now, once more alive, the slain appear!
They speak, with awful voice, the words of doom:
Death his cold hand is silently extending.
Now sinks the daring mood in ghastly fear.
The golden dream of life dissolves in gloom;
The silent grave brings on the bright joy's ending.
It is very hard, if not impossible, to render into any other language
the true spirit of a German poem. But in the original this sonnet is
far above mediocrity. It idealizes the opera of _Don Juan_ very
artistically, and displays a combination of force with harmony and
grace which gives the impression, in connection with the other
sonnets, that if Strauss had devoted his mental energy to poetry
alone, he would not have taken a low rank among the poets of Germany.
W.W.C.
LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
The Life of Thomas Fuller, D.D., with Notices of his Books,
his Kinsmen and his Friends. By John Eglinton Bailey. London:
Pickering.
By no means to the credit of the nineteenth century, it is hardly
prudent, as yet, to speak to the general public about Thomas Fuller
without formally introducing him. Coleridge and Southey and Lamb were,
to be sure, familiar with his writings, and prized them extremely. But
they did the same by the writings of many another old worthy now
undeservedly slighted; and, for all their eulogies on him, the great
bulk of readers were still content to continue in ignorance of the
treasures he has bequeathed to us. The neglect of him which at present
prevails is, however, in large measure, a delinquency of long
standing. His chief work is undoubtedly his _Church History_; and
Heylin's elaborate impugnment of its accuracy appears to have had
great weight, as with Fuller's contemporaries, so with the generation
which immediately followed, and onward almost to our own time. To
Heylin succeeded Bishop Nicolson in exerting himself to discredit that
valuable work, and it is only within a few years that its character
has been substantially rehabilitated. Together with the reputation of
Fuller as an historian, his reputation in other respects for a long
while underwent eclipse; for, as it is reviving again, we may not say
that it passed away. His matter quite apart--and it is always
interesting--and abstractedly from his pervasive pleasantry, which is
always original, it is a wonder that he is not more esteemed than he
is in an age which professes to set store by style. Mr. John Nichols,
an editor of his _Worthies_, timidly hazarded the observation that, as
against the strictures of Bishop Nicolson, there might be much said in
"vindication of the language of Dr. Fuller"--a comment which excited
Coleridge to a high pitch of exasperation. "Fuller's language!" he
ejaculates. "Grant me patience, Heaven! A tithe of his beauties would
be sold cheap for a whole library of our classical writers, from
Addison to Johnson and Junius inclusive. And Bishop Nicolson!--a
painstaking old charwoman of the Antiquarian and Rubbish Concern! The
venerable rust and dust of the whole firm are not worth an ounce of
Fuller's earth."
Of Fuller's ancestry nothing is known, on the paternal side, beyond
his father, a college-bred clergyman, who died in 1632. His mother was
a Davenant, of an ancient and respectable family. Fuller was born in
June, 1608, at Aldwinkle, in Northamptonshire, at his father's
rectory. When only about twelve years of age he was entered at Queen's
College, Cambridge, his progress in his studies having been such as to
authorize this unusually early transfer from school to the university.
In 1628 he exchanged Queen's College for Sydney-Sussex College, and in
the following year he was presented by the master and fellows of
Corpus Christi College to the curacy of St. Benet's, Cambridge.
Within a twelvemonth after--namely, in 1631--HE made his first
appearance as an author. His _Davia's Heinous Sin, Hearty Repentance,
Heavy Punishment_, which came out in that year, was his sole adventure
of noteworthy compass as a versifier; and he certainly testified his
discretion in choosing thenceforward to be satisfied with writing
prose. A valuable prebend attached to the Salisbury Cathedral was
bestowed on him at this time, near about which he is supposed to have
delivered, in discourses, his so-called _Comment on Ruth_. Next we
hear of him as rector of Broadwindsor, where, probably, he composed
his _History of the Holy War_, published in 1639. His _Holy State_ was
given to the world in 1642. Having just before this removed to London
under circumstances which are involved in some obscurity, he was there
appointed lecturer to the Inns of Court and to the Savoy Chapel. But
trouble awaited him, as it then awaited all other loyalists whom it
had not overtaken already, and 1643 found him a refugee at Oxford.
There he was warmly welcomed by the king and his adherents, but on his
imprudently daring to urge lenient counsels, his moderation gave as
much dissatisfaction to the court party as it had previously given to
the Parliamentarians, and he fell into temporary disgrace.
Nevertheless, he suffered, at the hands of the anti-royalists, the
same spoliation which would have been visited on a malignant of the
extremest stamp. To fill up the measure of his misfortune--as if it
were not enough that he should be deprived of his stated means of
livelihood--he was despoiled of his library. For a while, also, his
loyalty was held, though without the slightest grounds, in
considerable suspicion. On coming to be better known, however, he was
restored to favor, and was enrolled among the royal chaplains. If the
doubts as to the sincerity of his adhesion to Charles were ever
actually thought to have good foundation, they must have been
dissipated by his voluntarily exposing himself to danger, as he did at
one of the sieges of Basing House. Like Isaac Barrow, he would at need
have done duty militant just as effectually with carnal weapons as
with spiritual. No longer required at Basing House, he repaired to
Oxford again, and then to Exeter, where he was nominated chaplain to
the princess Henrietta Anne. But he held his new post for only a short
period. Leaving Exeter, he once more sought Oxford, and thence went to
London. Forbidden to preach there, he retired to Northamptonshire, and
then reappeared at the metropolis, where he was sojourning in the
memorable year 1649. Becoming in that year curate of Waltham Abbey, he
enjoyed an interval of quietude while all around him was turbulence.
Yet he was soon in London afresh, lecturer at various churches from
1651 till near the end of his life. In 1658 he was appointed rector of
St. Dunstan's, Cranford, but we read of him as subsequently journeying
to The Hague and to Salisbury, and as preaching at the Savoy Chapel.
It must have solaced his latter days to reflect that he had survived
to welcome the Restoration. He died, from what is reasonably surmised
to have been typhus fever, on the 16th of August, 1661, and lies
buried in the chancel of the church to which he last ministered, at
Cranford, Surrey.
Considering the unsettled and wandering life which Fuller led for many
years, it may seem almost a marvel that in those very years he should
have accomplished such laborious--nay, all but gigantic--enterprises
as are to be referred to them; for it was then that he composed his
voluminous _Pisgah-sight of Palestine, Church History_ and _Worthies_,
not to speak of many minor writings. But the secret of his
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