Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 06
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Title: Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 06
Editor: Charles Dudley Warner
Hamilton Wright Mabie
Lucia Gilbert Runkle
George H. Warner
Release date: October 5, 2004 [eBook #13623]
Most recently updated: October 28, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIBRARY OF THE WORLD'S BEST LITERATURE, ANCIENT AND MODERN — VOLUME 06 ***
LIBRARY OF THE
WORLD'S BEST LITERATURE
ANCIENT AND MODERN
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
EDITOR
HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE
LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE
GEORGE HENRY WARNER
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
Connoisseur Edition
VOL. VI.
THE ADVISORY COUNCIL
* * * * *
CRAWFORD H. TOY, A.M., LL.D.,
Professor of Hebrew,
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Cambridge, Mass.
THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY, LL.D., L.H.D.,
Professor of English in the Sheffield Scientific School of
YALE UNIVERSITY, New Haven, Conn.
WILLIAM M. SLOANE, PH.D., L.H.D.,
Professor of History and Political Science,
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, Princeton, N.J.
BRANDER MATTHEWS, A.M., LL.B.,
Professor of Literature,
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, New York City.
JAMES B. ANGELL, LL.D.,
President of the UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, Ann Arbor, Mich.
WILLARD FISKE, A.M., PH.D.,
Late Professor of the Germanic and Scandinavian Languages
and Literatures, CORNELL UNIVERSITY, Ithaca, N.Y.
EDWARD S. HOLDEN, A.M., LL.D.,
Director of the Lick Observatory, and Astronomer,
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Berkeley, Cal.
ALCÉE FORTIER, LIT.D.,
Professor of the Romance Languages,
TULANE UNIVERSITY, New Orleans, La.
WILLIAM P. TRENT, M.A.,
Dean of the Department of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of
English and History, UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH, Sewanee, Tenn.
PAUL SHOREY, PH.D.,
Professor of Greek and Latin Literature,
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, Chicago, Ill.
WILLIAM T. HARRIS, LL.D.,
United States Commissioner of Education,
BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, D.C.
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN, A.M., LL.D.,
Professor of Literature in the
CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA, Washington, D.C.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
VOL. VI
LIVED PAGE
THE ABBÉ DE BRANTÔME (Pierre de Bourdeille) 1527-1614 2319
The Dancing of Royalty ('Lives of Notable Women')
The Shadow of a Tomb ('Lives of Courtly Women')
M. le Constable Anne de Montmorency ('Lives of Distinguished Men and
Great Captains')
Two Famous Entertainments ('Lives of Courtly Women')
FREDRIKA BREMER 1801-1865 2328
A Home-Coming ('The Neighbors')
The Landed Proprietor ('The Home')
A Family Picture (same)
CLEMENS BRENTANO 1778-1842 2343
The Nurse's Watch
The Castle in Austria
ELISABETH BRENTANO (Bettina von Arnim) 1785-1859 2348
Dedication: To Goethe ('Goethe's Correspondence with a Child')
Letter to Goethe
Bettina's Last Meeting with Goethe (Letter to Her Niece)
In Goethe's Garden
JOHN BRIGHT 1811-1889 2354
From Speech on the Corn Laws (1843)
From Speech on Incendiarism in Ireland (1844)
From Speech on Non-Recognition of the Southern Confederacy (1861)
From Speech on the State of Ireland (1866)
From Speech on the Irish Established Church (1868)
BRILLAT-SAVARIN 1755-1826 2365
From 'Physiology of Taste': The Privations; On the Love of Good
Living; On People Fond of Good Living
CHARLOTTE BRONTÉ AND HER SISTERS 1816-1855 2381
Jane Eyre's Wedding-Day ('Jane Eyre')
Madame Beck ('Villette')
A Yorkshire Landscape ('Shirley')
The End of Heathcliff (Emily Bronté's 'Wuthering Heights')
PHILLIPS BROOKS 1835-1893 2417
O Little Town of Bethlehem
Personal Character ('Essays and Addresses')
The Courage of Opinions (same)
Literature and Life (same)
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 1771-1810 2425
Wieland's Statement ('Wieland')
JOHN BROWN 1810-1882 2437
Marjorie Fleming ('Spare Hours')
Death of Thackeray (same)
CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE (Artemus Ward) 1834-1867 2461
BY CHARLES F. JOHNSON
Edwin Forrest as Othello
High-Handed Outrage at Utica
Affairs Round the Village Green
Mr. Pepper ('Artemus Ward: His Travels')
Horace Greeley's Ride to Placerville (same)
SIR THOMAS BROWNE 1605-1682 2473
BY FRANCIS BACON
From the 'Religio Medici'
From 'Christian Morals'
From 'Hydriotaphia, or Urn-Burial'
From 'A Fragment on Mummies'
From 'A Letter to a Friend'
Some Relations Whose Truth We Fear ('Pseudoxia Epidemica')
WILLIAM BROWNE 1591-1643 2511
Circe's Charm ('Inner Temple Masque')
The Hunted Squirrel ('Britannia's Pastorals')
As Careful Merchants Do Expecting Stand (same)
Song of the Sirens ('Inner Temple Masque')
An Epistle on Parting
Sonnets to Cælia
HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL 1820-1872 2519
Annus Memorabilis
Words for the 'Hallelujah Chorus'
Coming
Psychaura
Suspiria Noctis
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING 1809-1861 2523
A Musical Instrument
My Heart and I
From 'Catarina to Camoens'
The Sleep
The Cry of the Children
Mother and Poet
A Court Lady
The Prospect
De Profundis
The Cry of the Human
Romance of the Swan's Nest
The Best Thing in the World
Sonnets from the Portuguese
A False Step
A Child's Thought of God
Cheerfulness Taught by Reason
ROBERT BROWNING 1812-1889 2557
BY E. L. BURLINGAME
Andrea del Sarto
A Toccata of Galuppi's
Confessions
Love among the Ruins
A Grammarian's Funeral
My Last Duchess
Up at a Villa--Down in the City
In Three Days
In a Year
Evelyn Hope
Prospice
The Patriot
One Word More
ORESTES AUGUSTUS BROWNSON 1803-1876 2594
Saint-Simonism ('The Convert')
FERDINAND BRUNETIÈRE 1849- 2603
BY ADOLPHE COHN
Taine and Prince Napoleon
The Literatures of France, England, and Germany
GIORDANO BRUNO 1548-1600 2613
A Discourse of Poets ('The Heroic Enthusiasts')
Canticle of the Shining Ones: A Tribute to English Women ('The Nolan')
Song of the Nine Singers
Of Immensity
Life Well Lost
Parnassus Within
Compensation
Life for Song
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 1794-1878 2623
BY GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP
Thanatopsis
The Crowded Street
Death of the Flowers
The Conqueror's Grave
The Battle-Field
To a Water-fowl
Robert of Lincoln
June
To the Fringed Gentian
The Future Life
To the Past
JAMES BRYCE 1838- 2643
Position of Women in the United States ('The American Commonwealth')
Ascent of Ararat ('Trans-Caucasia and Ararat')
The Work of the Roman Empire ('The Holy Roman Empire')
FRANCIS TREVELYAN BUCKLAND 1826-1880 2661
A Hunt in a Horse-Pond ('Curiosities of Natural History')
On Rats (same)
Snakes and their Poison (same)
My Monkey Jacko (same)
HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE 1821-1862 2673
Moral versus Intellectual Principles in Human Progress ('History of
Civilization in England')
Mythical Origin of History (same)
GEORGE LOUIS LE CLERC BUFFON 1707-1788 2689
BY SPENCER TROTTER
Nature ('Natural History')
The Humming-Bird (same)
EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON 1803-1873 2697
BY JULIAN HAWTHORNE
The Amphitheatre ('The Last Days of Pompeii')
Kenelm and Lily ('Kenelm Chillingly')
FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME VI
PAGE
"Les Satyres" (Colored Plate) Frontispiece
Charlotte Bronté (Portrait) 2382
Phillips Brooks (Portrait) 2418
"The Holy Child of Bethlehem" (Photogravure) 2420
"Circe" (Photogravure) 2514
Robert Browning (Portrait) 2558
William Cullen Bryant (Portrait) 2624
Edward Bulwer-Lytton (Portrait) 2698
"In the Arena" (Photogravure) 2718
"Nydia" (Photogravure) 2720
VIGNETTE PORTRAITS
Abbé de Brantôme
Fredrika Bremer
Elisabeth Brentano
John Bright
Brillat-Savarin
Charles Brockden Brown
John Brown
Charles Farrar Browne
Sir Thomas Browne
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Orestes Augustus Brownson
Ferdinand Brunetière
James Bryce
George Louis le Clere Buffon
THE ABBÉ DE BRANTÔME
(PIERRE DE BOURDEILLE)
(1527-1614)
Every historian of the Valois period is indebted to Brantôme for
preserving the atmosphere and detail of the brilliant life in which he
moved as a dashing courtier, a military adventurer, and a gallant
gentleman of high degree. He was not a professional scribe, nor a
student; but he took notes unconsciously, and in the evening of his life
turned back the pages of his memory to record the scenes through which
he had passed and the characters which he had known. He has been termed
the "valet de chambre" of history; nevertheless the anecdotes scattered
through his works will ever be treasured by all students and historians
of that age of luxury and magnificence, art and beauty, beneath which
lay the fermentation of great religious and political movements,
culminating in the struggle between the Huguenots and Catholics.
[Illustration: ABBÉ DE BRANTÔME]
Brantôme was the third son of the Vicomte de Bourdeille, a Périgord
nobleman, whose family had lived long in Guienne, and whose aristocratic
lineage was lost in myth. Upon the estate stood the Abbey of Brantôme,
founded by Charlemagne, and this Henry II. gave to young Pierre de
Bourdeille in recognition of the military deeds of his brother, Jean de
Bourdeille, who lost his life in service. Thereafter the lad was to sign
his name as the Reverend Father in God, Messire Pierre de Bourdeille,
Abbé de Brantôme. Born in the old château in 1527, he was destined for
the church, but abandoned this career for arms. At an early age he was
sent to court as page to Marguerite, sister of Francis I. and Queen of
Navarre; after her death in 1549, he went to Paris to study at the
University. His title of Abbé being merely honorary, he served in the
army under François de Guise, Duke of Lorraine, and became Gentleman of
the Chamber to Charles IX. His career extended through the reigns of
Henry II., Francis II., Charles IX., Henry III., and Henry IV., to that
of Louis XIII. With the exception of diplomatic missions, service on
the battle-field, and voyages for pleasure, he spent his life at court.
About 1594 he retired to his estate, where until his death on July 15th,
1614, he passed his days in contentions with the monks of Brantôme, in
lawsuits with his neighbors, and in writing his books: 'Lives of the
Illustrious Men and Great Captains of France'; 'Lives of Illustrious
Ladies'; 'Lives of Women of Gallantry'; 'Memoirs, containing anecdotes
connected with the Court of France'; 'Spanish Rodomontades'; a 'Life' of
his father, François de Bourdeille; a 'Funeral Oration' on his sister
in-law; and a dialogue in verse, entitled 'The Tomb of Madame de
Bourdeille.' These were not published until long after his death, first
appearing in Leyden about 1665, at the Hague in 1740, and in Paris in
1787. The best editions are by Fourcault (7 vols., Paris, 1822); by
Lacour and Mérimée (3 vols., 1859); and Lalande (10 vols., 1865-'81).
What Brantôme thought of himself may be seen by glancing at that portion
of the "testament mystique" which relates to his writings:--
"I will and expressly charge my heirs that they cause to be
printed the books which I have composed by my talent and
invention. These books will be found covered with velvet,
either black, green or blue, and one larger volume, which is
that of the Rodomontades, covered with velvet, gilt outside
and curiously bound. All have been carefully corrected. There
will be found in these books excellent things, such as
stories, histories, discourses, and witty sayings, which I
flatter myself the world will not disdain to read when once
it has had a sight of them. I direct that a sum of money be
taken from my estate sufficient to pay for the printing
thereof, which certainly cannot be much; for I have known
many printers who would have given money rather than charged
any for the right of printing them. They print many things
without charge which are not at all equal to mine. I will
also that the said impression shall be in large type, in
order to make the better appearance, and that they should
appear with the Royal Privilege, which the King will readily
grant. Also care must be taken that the printers do not put
on the title-page any supposititious name instead of mine.
Otherwise, I should be defrauded of the glory which is my
due."
The old man delighted in complimenting himself and talking about his
"grandeur d'âme." This greatness of soul may be measured from the
command he gave his heirs to annoy a man who had refused to swear homage
to him, "it not being reasonable to leave at rest this little wretch,
who descends from a low family, and whose grandfather was nothing but a
notary." He also commands his nieces and nephews to take the same
vengeance upon his enemies "as I should have done in my green and
vigorous youth, during which I may boast, and I thank God for it, that I
never received an injury without being revenged on the author of it."
Brantôme writes like a "gentleman of the sword," with dash and _élan_,
and as one, to use his own words, who has been "toujours trottant,
traversant, et vagabondant le monde" (always trotting, traversing, and
tramping the world). Not in the habit of a vagabond, however, for the
balls, banquets, tournaments, masques, ballets, and wedding-feasts which
he describes so vividly were occasions for the display of sumptuous
costumes; and Messire Pierre de Bourdeille doubtless appeared as elegant
as any other gallant in silken hose, jeweled doublet, flowing cape, and
long rapier. What we value most are his paintings of these festive
scenes, and the vivid portraits which he has left of the Valois women,
who were largely responsible for the luxuries and the crimes of the
period: women who could step without a tremor from a court-masque to a
massacre; who could toy with a gallant's ribbons and direct the blow of
an assassin; and who could poison a rival with a delicately perfumed
gift. Such a court Brantôme calls the "true paradise of the world,
school of all honesty and virtue, ornament of France." We like to hear
about Catherine de' Medici riding with her famous "squadron of Venus":
"You should have seen forty or fifty dames and demoiselles following
her, mounted on beautifully accoutred hackneys, their hats adorned with
feathers which increased their charm, so well did the flying plumes
represent the demand for love or war. Virgil, who undertook to describe
the fine apparel of Queen Dido when she went out hunting, has by no
means equaled that of our Queen and her ladies."
Charming, too, are such descriptions as "the most beautiful ballet that
ever was, composed of sixteen of the fairest and best-trained dames and
demoiselles, who appeared in a silvered rock where they were seated in
niches, shut in on every side. The sixteen ladies represented the
sixteen provinces of France. After having made the round of the hall for
parade as in a camp, they all descended, and ranging themselves in the
form of a little oddly contrived battalion, some thirty violins began a
very pleasant warlike air, to which they danced their ballet." After an
hour the ladies presented the King, the Queen-Mother, and others with
golden plaques, on which were engraved "the fruits and singularities of
each province," the wheat of Champagne, the vines of Burgundy, the
lemons and oranges of Provence, etc. He shows us Catherine de' Medici,
the elegant, cunning Florentine; her beautiful daughters, Elizabeth of
Spain and Marguerite de Valois; Diana of Poitiers, the woman of eternal
youth and beauty; Jeanne d'Albret, the mother of Henry IV.; Louise de
Vaudemont; the Duchesse d'Étampes; Marie Touchet; and all their
satellites,--as they enjoyed their lives.
Very valuable are the data regarding Mary Stuart's departure from France
in 1561. Brantôme was one of her suite, and describes her grief when
the shores of France faded away, and her arrival in Scotland, where on
the first night she was serenaded by Psalm-tunes with a most villainous
accompaniment of Scotch music. "Hé! quelle musique!" he exclaims, "et
quel repos pour la nuit!"
But of all the gay ladies Brantôme loves to dwell upon, his favorites
are the two Marguerites: Marguerite of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre, the
sister of Francis I., and Marguerite, daughter of Catherine de' Medici
and wife of Henry IV. Of the latter, called familiarly "La Reine
Margot," he is always writing. "To speak of the beauty of this rare
princess," he says, "I think that all that are, or will be, or have ever
been near her are ugly."
Brantôme has been a puzzle to many critics, who cannot explain his
"contradictions." He had none. He extolled wicked and immoral characters
because he recognized only two merits,--aristocratic birth and hatred of
the Huguenots. He is well described by M. de Barante, who
says:--"Brantôme expresses the entire character of his country and of
his profession. Careless of the difference between good and evil; a
courtier who has no idea that anything can be blameworthy in the great,
but who sees and narrates their vices and their crimes all the more
frankly in that he is not very sure whether what he tells be good or
bad; as indifferent to the honor of women as he is to the morality of
men; relating scandalous things with no consciousness that they are
such, and almost leading his reader into accepting them as the simplest
things in the world, so little importance does he attach to them;
terming Louis XI., who poisoned his brother, the _good_ King Louis,
calling women whose adventures could hardly have been written by any pen
save his own, _honnêtes dames_."
Brantôme must therefore not be regarded as a chronicler who revels in
scandals, although his pages reek with them; but as the true mirror of
the Valois court and the Valois period.
* * * * *
THE DANCING OF ROYALTY
From 'Lives of Notable Women'
Ah! how the times have changed since I saw them together in the
ball-room, expressing the very spirit of the dance! The King always
opened the grand ball by leading out his sister, and each equaled the
other in majesty and grace. I have often seen them dancing the Pavane
d'Espagne, which must be performed with the utmost majesty and grace.
The eyes of the entire court were riveted upon them, ravished by this
lovely scene; for the measures were so well danced, the steps so
intelligently placed, the sudden pauses timed so accurately and making
so elegant an effect, that one did not know what to admire most,--the
beautiful manner of moving, or the majesty of the halts, now expressing
excessive gayety, now a beautiful and haughty disdain. Who could dance
with such elegance and grace as the royal brother and sister? None, I
believe; and I have watched the King dancing with the Queen of Spain and
the Queen of Scotland, each of whom was an excellent dancer.
I have seen them dance the 'Pazzemezzo d'Italie,' walking gravely
through the measures, and directing their steps with so graceful and
solemn a manner that no other prince nor lady could approach them in
dignity. This Queen took great pleasure in performing these grave
dances; for she preferred to exhibit dignified grace rather than to
express the gayety of the Branle, the Volta, and the Courante. Although
she acquired them quickly, she did not think them worthy of her majesty.
I always enjoyed seeing her dance the Branle de la Torche, or du
Flambeau. Once, returning from the nuptials of the daughter of the King
of Poland, I saw her dance this kind of a Branle at Lyons before the
assembled guests from Savoy, Piedmont, Italy, and other places; and
every one said he had never seen any sight more captivating than this
lovely lady moving with grace of motion and majestic mien, all agreeing
that she had no need of the flaming torch which she held in her hand;
for the flashing light from her brilliant eyes was sufficient to
illuminate the set, and to pierce the dark veil of Night.
* * * * *
THE SHADOW OF A TOMB
From 'Lives of Courtly Women'
Once I had an elder brother who was called Captain Bourdeille, one of
the bravest and most valiant soldiers of his time. Although he was my
brother, I must praise him, for the record he made in the wars brought
him fame. He was the _gentilhomme de France_ who stood first in the
science and gallantry of arms. He was killed during the last siege of
Hesdin. My brother's parents had destined him for the career of letters,
and accordingly sent him at the age of eighteen to study in Italy, where
he settled in Ferrara because of Madame Renée de France, Duchess of
Ferrara, who ardently loved my mother. He enjoyed life at her court,
and soon fell deeply in love with a young French widow,--Mademoiselle de
La Roche,--who was in the suite of Madame de Ferrara.
They remained there in the service of love, until my father, seeing that
his son was not following literature, ordered him home. She, who loved
him, begged him to take her with him to France and to the court of
Marguerite of Navarre, whom she had served, and who had given her to
Madame Renée when she went to Italy upon her marriage. My brother, who
was young, was greatly charmed to have her companionship, and conducted
her to Pau. The Queen was glad to welcome her, for the young widow was
handsome and accomplished, and indeed considered superior in _esprit_ to
the other ladies of the court.
After remaining a few days with my mother and grandmother, who were
there, my brother visited his father. In a short time he declared that
he was disgusted with letters, and joined the army, serving in the wars
of Piedmont and Parma, where he acquired much honor in the space of five
or six months; during which time he did not revisit his home. At the end
of this period he went to see his mother at Pau. He made his reverence
to the Queen of Navarre as she returned from vespers; and she, who was
the best princess in the world, received him cordially, and taking his
hand, led him about the church for an hour or two. She demanded news
regarding the wars of Piedmont and Italy, and many other particulars, to
which my brother replied so well that she was greatly pleased with him.
He was a very handsome young man of twenty-four years. After talking
gravely and engaging him in earnest conversation, walking up and down
the church, she directed her steps toward the tomb of Mademoiselle de La
Roche, who had been dead for three months. She stopped here, and again
took his hand, saying, "My cousin" (thus addressing him because a
daughter of D'Albret was married into our family of Bourdeille; but of
this I do not boast, for it has not helped me particularly), "do you not
feel something move below your feet?"
"No, Madame," he replied.
"But reflect again, my cousin," she insisted.
My brother answered, "Madame, I feel nothing move. I stand upon a solid
stone."
"Then I will explain," said the Queen, "without keeping you longer in
suspense, that you stand upon the tomb and over the body of your poor
dearly-loved Mademoiselle de La Roche, who is interred here; and that
our friends may have sentiment for us at our death, render a pious
homage here. You cannot doubt that the gentle creature, dying so
recently, must have been affected when you approached. In remembrance I
beg you to say a paternoster and an Ave Maria and a de profundis, and
sprinkle holy water. Thus you will win the name of a very faithful lover
and a good Christian."
* * * * *
M. LE CONSTABLE ANNE DE MONTMORENCY
From 'Lives of Distinguished Men and Great Captains'
He never failed to say and keep up his paternosters every morning,
whether he remained in the house, or mounted his horse and went out to
the field to join the army. It was a common saying among the soldiers
that one must "beware the paternosters of the Constable." For as
disorders were very frequent, he would say, while mumbling and muttering
his paternosters all the time, "Go and fetch that fellow and hang me him
up to this tree;" "Out with a file of harquebusiers here before me this
instant, for the execution of this man!" "Burn me this village
instantly!" "Cut me to pieces at once all these villain peasants, who
have dared to hold this church against the king!" All this without ever
ceasing from his paternosters till he had finished them--thinking that
he would have done very wrong to put them off to another time; so
conscientious was he!
* * * * *
TWO FAMOUS ENTERTAINMENTS
From 'Lives of Courtly Women'
I have read in a Spanish book called 'El Viaje del Principe' (The Voyage
of the Prince), made by the King of Spain in the Pays-Bas in the time of
the Emperor Charles, his father, about the wonderful entertainments
given in the rich cities. The most famous was that of the Queen of
Hungary in the lovely town of Bains, which passed into a proverb, "Mas
bravas que las festas de Bains" (more magnificent than the festivals of
Bains). Among the displays which were seen during the siege of a
counterfeit castle, she ordered for one day a fête in honor of the
Emperor her brother, Queen Eleanor her sister, and the gentlemen and
ladies of the court.
Toward the end of the feast a lady appeared with six Oread-nymphs,
dressed as huntresses in classic costumes of silver and green,
glittering with jewels to imitate the light of the moon. Each one
carried a bow and arrows in her hand and wore a quiver on her shoulder;
their buskins were of cloth of silver. They entered the hall, leading
their dogs after them, and placed on the table in front of the Emperor
all kinds of venison pasties, supposed to have been the spoils of the
chase. After them came the Goddess of Shepherds and her six nymphs,
dressed in cloth of silver, garnished with pearls. They wore
knee-breeches beneath their flowing robes, and white pumps, and brought
in various products of the dairy.
Then entered the third division--Pomona and her nymphs--bearing fruit of
all descriptions. This goddess was the daughter of Donna Beatrix
Pacheco, Countess d'Autremont, lady-in-waiting to Queen Eleanor, and was
but nine years old. She was now Madame l'Admirale de Chastillon, whom
the Admiral married for his second wife. Approaching with her
companions, she presented her gifts to the Emperor with an eloquent
speech, delivered so beautifully that she received the admiration of the
entire assembly, and all predicted that she would become a beautiful,
charming, graceful, and captivating lady. She was dressed in cloth of
silver and white, with white buskins, and a profusion of precious
stones--emeralds, colored like some of the fruit she bore. After making
these presentations, she gave the Emperor a Palm of Victory, made of
green enamel, the fronds tipped with pearls and jewels. This was very
rich and gorgeous. To Queen Eleanor she gave a fan containing a mirror
set with gems of great value. Indeed, the Queen of Hungary showed that
she was a very excellent lady, and the Emperor was proud of a sister
worthy of himself. All the young ladies who impersonated these mythical
characters were selected from the suites of France, Hungary, and Madame
de Lorraine; and were therefore French, Italian, Flemish, German, and of
Lorraine. None of them lacked beauty.
At the same time that these fêtes were taking place at Bains, Henry II.
made his entrée in Piedmont and at his garrisons in Lyons, where were
assembled the most brilliant of his courtiers and court ladies. If the
representation of Diana and her chase given by the Queen of Hungary was
found beautiful, the one at Lyons was more beautiful and complete. As
the king entered the city, he saw obelisks of antiquity to the right and
left, and a wall of six feet was constructed along the road to the
courtyard, which was filled with underbrush and planted thickly with
trees and shrubbery. In this miniature forest were hidden deer and
other animals.
As soon as his Majesty approached, to the sound of horns and trumpets
Diana issued forth with her companions, dressed in the fashion of a
classic nymph with her quiver at her side and her bow in her hand. Her
figure was draped in black and gold sprinkled with silver stars, the
sleeves were of crimson satin bordered with gold, and the garment,
looped up above the knee, revealed her buskins of crimson satin covered
with pearls and embroidery. Her hair was entwined with magnificent
strings of rich pearls and gems of much value, and above her brow was
placed a crescent of silver, surrounded by little diamonds. Gold could
never have suggested half so well as the shining silver the white light
of the real crescent. Her companions were attired in classic costumes
made of taffetas of various colors, shot with gold, and their ringlets
were adorned with all kinds of glittering gems....
Other nymphs carried darts of Brazil-wood tipped with black and white
tassels, and carried horns and trumpets suspended by ribbons of white
and black. When the King appeared, a lion, which had long been under
training, ran from the wood and lay at the feet of the Goddess, who
bound him with a leash of white and black and led him to the king,
accompanying her action with a poem of ten verses, which she delivered
most beautifully. Like the lion--so ran the lines--the city of Lyons lay
at his Majesty's feet, gentle, gracious, and obedient to his command.
This spoken, Diana and her nymphs made low bows and retired.
Note that Diana and her companions were married women, widows, and young
girls, taken from the best society in Lyons, and there was no fault to
be found with the way they performed their parts. The King, the princes,
and the ladies and gentlemen of the court were ravished. Madame de
Valentinois, called Diana of Poitiers,--whom the King served and in
whose name the mock chase was arranged,--was not less content.
FREDRIKA BREMER
(1801-1865)
Fredrika Bremer was born at Tuorla Manor-house, near Åbo, in Finland, on
the 17th of August, 1801. In 1804 the family removed to Stockholm, and
two years later to a large estate at Årsta, some twenty miles from the
capital, which was her subsequent home. At Årsta the father of Fredrika,
who had amassed a fortune in the iron industry in Finland, set up an
establishment in accord with his means. The manor-house, built two
centuries before, had become in some parts dilapidated, but it was
ultimately restored and improved beyond its original condition. From its
windows on one side the eye stretched over nearly five miles of meadows,
fields, and villages belonging to the estate.
[Illustration: FREDRIKA BREMER]
In spite of its surroundings, however, Fredrika's childhood was not a
happy one. Her mother was severe and impatient of petty faults, and the
child's mind became embittered. Her father was reserved and melancholy.
Fredrika herself was restless and passionate, although of an
affectionate nature. Among the other children she was the ugly duckling,
who was misunderstood, and whose natural development was continually
checked and frustrated. Her talents were early exhibited in a variety of
directions. Her first verses, in French, to the morn, were written at
the age of eight. Subsequently she wrote comedies for home production,
prose and verse of all sorts, and kept a journal, which has been
preserved. In 1821 the whole family went on a tour abroad, from which
they did not return until the following year, having visited in the
meantime Germany, Switzerland, and France, and spent the winter in
Paris. This year among new scenes and surroundings seems to have brought
home to Fredrika, upon the resumption of her old life in the country,
its narrowness and its isolation. She was entirely shut off from all
desired activity; her illusions vanished one by one. "I was conscious,"
she says in her short autobiography, "of being born with powerful wings,
but I was conscious of their being clipped;" and she fancied that they
would remain so.
Her attention, however, was fortunately attracted from herself to the
poor and sick in the country round about; and she presently became to
the whole region a nurse and a helper, denying herself all sorts of
comforts that she might give them to others, and braving storm and
hunger on her errands of mercy. In order to earn money for her charities
she painted miniature portraits of the Crown Princess and the King, and
secretly sold them. Her desire to increase the small sums she thus
gained induced her to seek a publisher for a number of sketches she had
written. Her brother readily disposed of the manuscript for a hundred
rix-dollars; and her first book, 'Teckningar ur Hvardagslifvet'
(Sketches of Every-day Life), appeared in 1828, but without the name of
the author, of whose identity the publisher himself was left in
ignorance. The book was received with such favor that the young author
was induced to try again; and what had originally been intended as a
second volume of the 'Sketches' appeared in 1830 as 'Familjen H.' (The
H. Family). Its success was immediate and unmistakable. It not only was
received with applause, but created a sensation, and Swedish literature
was congratulated on the acquisition of a new talent among its writers.
The secret of Fredrika's authorship--which had as yet not been confided
even to her parents--was presently revealed to the poet (and later
bishop) Franzén, an old friend of the family. Shortly afterward the
Swedish Academy, of which Franzén was secretary, awarded her its lesser
gold medal as a sign of appreciation. A third volume met with even
greater success than its predecessors, and seemed definitely to point
out the career which she subsequently followed; and from this time until
the close of her life she worked diligently in her chosen field. She
rapidly acquired an appreciative public in and out of Sweden. Many of
her novels and tales were translated into various languages, several of
them appearing simultaneously in Swedish and English. In 1844 the
Swedish Academy awarded her its great gold medal of merit.
Several long journeys abroad mark the succeeding years: to Denmark and
America from 1848 to 1857; to Switzerland, Belgium, France, Italy,
Palestine, and Greece, from 1856 to 1861; to Germany in 1862, returning
the same year. The summer months of 1864 she spent at Årsta, which since
1853 had passed out of the hands of the family. She removed there the
year after, and died there on the 31st of December.
Fredrika Bremer's most successful literary work was in the line of her
earliest writings, descriptive of the every-day life of the middle
classes. Her novels in this line have an unusual charm of expression,
whose definable elements are an unaffected simplicity and a certain
quiet humor which admirably fits the chosen _milieu_. Besides the ones
already mentioned, 'Presidentens Döttrar' (The President's Daughters),
'Grannarna' (The Neighbors), 'Hemmet' (The Home), 'Nina,' and others,
cultivated this field. Later she drifted into "tendency" fiction, making
her novels the vehicles for her opinions on important public questions,
such as religion, philanthropy, and above all the equal rights of women.
These later productions, of which 'Hertha' and 'Syskonlif' are the most
important, are far inferior to her earlier work. She had, however, the
satisfaction of seeing the realization of several of the movements which
she had so ardently espoused: the law that unmarried women in Sweden
should attain their majority at twenty-five years of age; the
organization at Stockholm of a seminary for the education of woman
teachers; and certain parliamentary reforms.
In addition to her novels and short stories, she wrote some verse,
mostly unimportant, and several books of travel, among them 'Hemmen i ny
Verlden' (Homes in the New World), containing her experiences of
America; 'Life in the Old World'; and 'Greece and the Greeks.'
* * * * *
A HOME-COMING
From 'The Neighbors'
LETTER I.--FRANCISCA W. TO MARIA M.
ROSENVIK, 1st June, 18.
Here I am now, dear Maria, in my own house and home, at my own
writing-table, and with my own Bear. And who then is Bear? no doubt you
ask. Who else should he be but my own husband? I call him _Bear_
because--it so happens. I am seated at the window. The sun is setting.
Two swans are swimming in the lake, and furrow its clear mirror. Three
cows--_my cows_--are standing on the verdant margin, quiet, fat, and
pensive, and certainly think of nothing. What excellent cows they are!
Now the maid is coming up with the milk-pail. Delicious milk in the
country! But what is not good in the country? Air and people, food and
feelings, earth and sky, everything there is fresh and cheering.
Now I must introduce you to my place of abode--no! I must begin farther
off. Upon yonder hill, from which I first beheld the valley in which
Rosenvik lies (the hill is some miles in the interior of Smaaland) do
you descry a carriage covered with dust? In it are seated Bear and his
wedded wife. The wife is looking out with curiosity, for before her lies
a valley so beautiful in the tranquillity of evening! Below are green
groves which fringe mirror-clear lakes, fields of standing corn bend in
silken undulations round gray mountains, and white buildings glance amid
the trees. Round about, pillars of smoke are shooting up vertically from
the wood-covered hills to the serene evening sky. This seems to indicate
the presence of volcanoes, but in point of fact it is merely the
peaceful labor of the husbandmen burning the vegetation, in order to
fertilize the soil. At all events, it is an excellent thing, and I am
delighted, bend forward, and am just thinking about a happy family in
nature,--Paradise, and Adam and Eve,--when suddenly Bear puts his great
paws around me, and presses me so that I am near giving up the ghost,
while, kissing me, he entreats me to "be comfortable here." I was a
little provoked; but when I perceived the heartfelt intention of the
embrace, I could not but be satisfied.
In this valley, then, was my permanent home: here my new family was
living; here lay Rosenvik; here I was to live with my Bear. We descended
the hill, and the carriage rolled rapidly along the level way. Bear told
me the names of every estate, both in the neighborhood and at a
distance. I listened as if I were dreaming, but was roused from my
reverie when he said with a certain stress, "_Here_ is the residence of
_ma chère mère_," and the carriage drove into a courtyard, and stopped
before a large and fine stone house.
"What, are we going to alight here?" "Yes, my love." This was by no
means an agreeable surprise to me. I would gladly have first driven to
my own home, there to prepare myself a little for meeting my husband's
stepmother, of whom I was a little afraid, from the accounts I had heard
of that lady, and the respect Bear entertained for her. This visit
appeared entirely _mal àpropos_ to me, but Bear has his own ideas, and I
perceived from his manner that it was not expedient then to offer any
resistance.
It was Sunday, and on the carriage drawing up, the tones of a violin
became audible to me. "Aha!" said Bear, "so much the better;" made a
ponderous leap from the carriage, and lifted me out. Of hat-cases and
packages, no manner of account was to be taken. Bear took my hand,
ushered me up the steps into the magnificent hall, and dragged me toward
the door from whence the sounds of music and dancing were heard. "See,"
thought I, "now I am to dance in this costume forsooth!" I wished to go
into some place where I could shake the dust from my nose and my bonnet;
where I could at least view myself in a mirror. Impossible! Bear,
leading me by the arm, assured me that I looked "most charming," and
entreated me to mirror myself in his eyes. I then needs must be so
discourteous as to reply that they were "too small." He protested that
they were only the clearer, and opened the door to the ball-room. "Well,
since you lead me to the ball, you shall also dance with me, you Bear!"
I exclaimed in the gayety of despair, so to speak. "With delight!" cried
Bear, and at the same moment we found ourselves in the salon.
My alarm diminished considerably when I perceived in the spacious room
only a crowd of cleanly attired maids and serving-men, who were sweeping
merrily about with one another. They were so busied with dancing as
scarcely to observe us. Bear then conducted me to the upper end of the
apartment; and there, on a high seat, I saw a tall and strong lady of
about fifty, who was playing on a violin with zealous earnestness, and
beating time with her foot, which she stamped with energy. On her head
she wore a remarkable and high-projecting cap of black velvet, which I
will call a helmet, because that word occurred to my mind at the very
first view I had of her, and I know no one more appropriate. She looked
well, but singular. It was the lady of General Mansfelt, my husband's
stepmother, _ma chère mère!_
She speedily cast her large dark-brown eyes on me, instantly ceased
playing, laid aside the violin, and drew herself up with a proud
bearing, but an air of gladness and frankness. Bear led me towards her.
I trembled a little, bowed profoundly, and kissed _ma chère mère's_
hand. She kissed my forehead, and for a while regarded me with such a
keen glance, that I was compelled to abase my eyes, on which she again
kissed me most cordially on lips and forehead, and embraced me almost as
lustily as Bear had. Now it was Bear's turn; he kissed the hand of _ma
chère mère_ right respectfully; she however offered him her cheek, and
they appeared very friendly. "Be welcome, my dear friends!" said _ma
chère mère_, with a loud, masculine voice. "It was handsome in you to
come to me before driving to your own home. I thank you for it. I would
indeed have given you a better reception had I been prepared; at all
events, I know that 'Welcome is the best cheer.' I hope, my friends, you
stay the evening here?" Bear excused us, said that we desired to get
home soon, that I was fatigued from the journey, but that we would not
drive by Carlsfors without paying our respects to _ma chère mère_.
"Well, very good, well, very good!" said _ma chère mère_, with
satisfaction; "we will shortly talk further about that in the chamber
there; but first I must say a few words to the people here. Hark ye,
good friends!" and _ma chère mère_ knocked with the bow on the back of
the violin, till a general silence ensued in the salon. "My children,"
she pursued in a solemn manner, "I have to tell you--a plague upon you!
will you not be still there, at the lower end?--I have to inform you
that my dear son, Lars Anders Werner, has now led home, as his wedded
wife, this Francisca Burén whom you see at his side. Marriages are made
in heaven, my children, and we will supplicate heaven to complete its
work in blessing this conjugal pair. We will this evening together drink
a bumper to their prosperity. That will do! Now you can continue your
dancing, my children. Olof, come you here, and do your best in playing."
While a murmur of exultation and congratulations went through the
assembly, _ma chère mère_ took me by the hand, and led me, together with
Bear, into another room. Here she ordered punch and glasses to be
brought in. In the interim she thrust her two elbows on the table,
placed her clenched hands under her chin, and gazed steadfastly at me,
but with a look which was rather gloomy than friendly. Bear, perceiving
that _ma chère mère's_ review embarrassed me, broached the subject of
the harvest or rural affairs. _Ma chère mère_ vented a few sighs, so
deep that they rather resembled groans, appeared to make a violent
effort to command herself, answered Bear's questions, and on the arrival
of the punch, drank to us, saying, with a serious look and voice, "Son
and son's wife, your health!" On this she grew more friendly, and said
in a tone of pleasantry, which beseemed her very well, "Lars Anders, I
don't think people can say you have bought the calf in the sack. Your
wife does not by any means look in bad case, and has a pair of eyes to
buy fish with. Little she is, it is true; but 'Little and bold is often
more than a match for the great.'"
I laughed, so did _ma chère mère_ also; I began to understand her
character and manner. We gossiped a little while together in a lively
manner, and I recounted some little adventures of travel, which amused
her exceedingly. After the lapse of an hour, we arose to take leave, and
_ma chère mère_ said, with a really charming smile, "I will not detain
you this evening, delighted as I am to see you. I can well imagine that
home is attractive. Stay at home to-morrow, if you will; but the day
after to-morrow come and dine with me. As to the rest, you know well
that you are at all times welcome. Fill now your glasses, and come and
drink the folks' health. Sorrow we should keep to ourselves, but share
joy in common."
We went into the dancing-room with full glasses, _ma chère mère_ leading
the way as herald. They were awaiting us with bumpers, and _ma chère
mère_ addressed the people something in this strain:--"We must not
indeed laugh until we get over the brook; but when we set out on the
voyage of matrimony with piety and good sense, then may be applied the
adage that 'Well begun is half won'; and on that, my friends, we will
drink a skoal to this wedded pair you see before you, and wish that both
they and their posterity may ever 'sit in the vineyard of our
Lord.' Skoal!"
"Skoal! skoal!" resounded from every side. Bear and I emptied our
glasses, and went about and shook a multitude of people by the hand,
till my head was all confusion. When this was over, and we were
preparing to prosecute our journey, _ma chère mère_ came after us on the
steps with a packet or bundle in her hand, and said in a friendly
manner, "Take this cold roast veal with you, children, for breakfast
to-morrow morning. After that, you must fatten and consume your own
calves. But forget not, daughter-in-law, that I get back my napkin. No,
you shan't carry it, dear child, you have enough to do with your bag and
mantle. Lars Anders shall carry the roast veal." And as if Lars Anders
had been still a little boy, she charged him with the bundle, showed him
how he was to carry it, and Bear did as she said. Her last words were,
"Forget not that I get my napkin again!" I looked with some degree of
wonder at Bear; but he smiled, and lifted me into the carriage.
THE LANDED PROPRIETOR
From 'The Home'
Louise possessed the quality of being a good listener in a higher degree
than any one else in the family, and therefore she heard more than any
one else of his Excellency; but not of him only, for Jacobi had always
something to tell her, always something to consult her about; and in
case she were not too much occupied with her thoughts about the weaving,
he could always depend upon the most intense sympathy, and the best
advice both with regard to moral questions and economical arrangements,
dress, plans for the future, and so forth. He also gave her good
advice--which however was very seldom followed--when she was playing
Postilion; he also drew patterns for her tapestry work, and was very
fond of reading aloud to her--but novels rather than sermons.
But he was not long allowed to sit by her side alone; for very soon a
person seated himself at her other side whom we will call the _Landed
Proprietor_, as he was chiefly remarkable for the possession of a large
estate in the vicinity of the town.
The Landed Proprietor seemed to be disposed to dispute with the
Candidate--let us continue to call him so, as we are all, in one way or
the other, Candidates in this world--the place which he possessed. The
Landed Proprietor had, besides his estate, a very portly body; round,
healthy-looking cheeks; a pair of large gray eyes, remarkable for their
want of expression; and a little rosy mouth, which preferred mastication
to speaking, which laughed without meaning, and which now began to
direct to "Cousin Louise"--for he considered himself related to the
Lagman--several short speeches, which we will recapitulate in the
following chapter, headed
STRANGE QUESTIONS
"Cousin Louise, are you fond of fish--bream for instance?" asked the
Landed Proprietor one evening, as he seated himself by the side of
Louise, who was busy working a landscape in tapestry.
"Oh, yes! bream is a very good fish," answered she, phlegmatically,
without looking up.
"Oh, with red-wine sauce, delicious! I have splendid fishing on my
estate, Oestanvik. Big fellows of bream! I fish for them myself."
"Who is the large fish there?" inquired Jacobi of Henrik, with an
impatient sneer; "and what is it to him if your sister Louise is fond of
bream or not?"
"Because then she might like him too, _mon cher_! A very fine and solid
fellow is my cousin Thure of Oestanvik. I advise you to cultivate his
acquaintance. What now, Gabrielle dear, what now, your Highness?"
"What is that which--"
"Yes, what is it? I shall lose my head over that riddle. Mamma dear,
come and help your stupid son!"
"No, no! Mamma knows it already. She must not say it!" exclaimed
Gabrielle with fear.
"What king do you place above all other kings, Magister?" asked Petrea
for the second time,--having this evening her "raptus" of questioning.
"Charles the Thirteenth," answered the Candidate, and listened for what
Louise was going to reply to the Landed Proprietor.
"Do you like birds, Cousin Louise?" asked the Landed Proprietor.
"Oh yes, particularly the throstle," answered Louise.
"Well,--I am glad of that!" said the Landed Proprietor. "On my estate,
Oestanvik, there is an immense quantity of throstles. I often go out
with my gun, and shoot them for my dinner. Piff, paff! with two shots I
have directly a whole dishful."
Petrea, who was asked by no one "Do you like birds, cousin?" and who
wished to occupy the Candidate, did not let herself be deterred by his
evident confusion, but for the second time put the following
question:--"Do you think, Magister, that people before the Flood were
really worse than they are nowadays?"
"Oh, much, much better," answered the Candidate.
"Are you fond of roasted hare, Cousin Louise?" asked the Landed
Proprietor.
"Are you fond of roasted hare, Magister?" whispered Petrea waggishly to
Jacobi.
"Brava, Petrea!" whispered her brother to her.
"Are you fond of cold meat, Cousin Louise?" asked the Landed
Proprietor, as he was handing Louise to the supper-table.
"Are you fond of Landed Proprietor?" whispered Henrik to her as she left
it.
Louise answered just as a cathedral would have answered: she looked very
solemn and was silent.
After supper Petrea was quite excited, and left nobody alone who by any
possibility could answer her. "Is reason sufficient for mankind? What is
the ground of morals? What is properly the meaning of 'revelation'? Why
is everything so badly arranged in the State? Why must there be rich and
poor?" etc., etc.
"Dear Petrea!" said Louise, "what use can there be in asking those
questions?"
It was an evening for questions; they did not end even when the company
had broken up.
"Don't you think, Elise," said the Lagman to his wife when they were
alone, "that our little Petrea begins to be disagreeable with her
continual questioning and disputing? She leaves no one in peace, and is
stirred up herself the whole time. She will make herself ridiculous if
she keeps on in this way."
"Yes, if she does keep on so. But I have a feeling that she will change.
I have observed her very particularly for some time, and do you know, I
think there is really something very uncommon in that girl."
"Yes, yes, there is certainly something uncommon in her. Her liveliness
and the many games and schemes which she invents--"
"Yes, don't you think they indicate a decided talent for the fine arts?
And then her extraordinary thirst for learning: every morning, between
three and four o'clock, she gets up in order to read or write, or to
work at her compositions. That is not at all a common thing. And may not
her uneasiness, her eagerness to question and dispute, arise from a sort
of intellectual hunger? Ah, from such hunger, which many women must
suffer throughout their lives, from want of literary food,--from such an
emptiness of the soul arise disquiet, discontent, nay, innumerable
faults."
"I believe you are right, Elise," said the Lagman, "and no condition in
life is sadder, particularly in more advanced years. But this shall not
be the lot of our Petrea--that I will promise. What do you think now
would benefit her most?"
"My opinion is that a serious and continued plan of study would assist
in regulating her mind. She is too much left to herself with her
confused tendencies, with her zeal and her inquiry. I am too ignorant
myself to lead and instruct her, you have too little time, and she has
no one here who can properly direct her young and unregulated mind.
Sometimes I almost pity her, for her sisters don't understand at all
what is going on within her, and I confess it is often painful to
myself; I wish I were more able to assist her. Petrea needs some ground
on which to take her stand. Her thoughts require more firmness; from the
want of this comes her uneasiness. She is like a flower without roots,
which is moved about by wind and waves."
"She shall take root, she shall find ground as sure as it is to be found
in the world," said the Lagman, with a serious and beaming eye, at the
same time striking his hand on the book containing the law of West
Gotha, so that it fell to the ground. "We will consider more of this,
Elise," continued he: "Petrea is still too young for us to judge with
certainty of her talents and tendencies. But if they turn out to be what
they appear, then she shall never feel any hunger as long as I live and
can procure bread for my family. You know my friend, the excellent
Bishop B----: perhaps we can at first confide our Petrea to his
guidance. After a few years we shall see; she is still only a child.
Don't you think that we ought to speak to Jacobi, in order to get him to
read and converse with her? Apropos, how is it with Jacobi? I imagine
that he begins to be too attentive to Louise."
"Well, well! you are not so far wrong; and even our cousin Thure of
Oestanvik,--have you perceived anything there?"
"Yes, I did perceive something yesterday evening; what the deuce was his
meaning with those stupid questions he put to her? 'Does cousin like
this?' or 'Is cousin fond of that?' I don't like that at all myself.
Louise is not yet full-grown, and already people come and ask her, 'Does
cousin like--?' Well, it may signify very little after all, which would
perhaps please me best. What a pity, however, that our cousin is not a
little more manly; for he has certainly got a most beautiful estate, and
so near us."
"Yes, a pity; because, as he is at present, I am almost sure Louise
would find it impossible to give him her hand."
"You do not believe that her inclination is toward Jacobi?"
"To tell the truth, I fancy that this is the case."
"Nay, that would be very unpleasant and very unwise: I am very fond of
Jacobi, but he has nothing and is nothing."
"But, my dear, he may get something and become something; I confess,
dear Ernst, that I believe he would suit Louise better for a husband
than any one else we know, and I would with pleasure call him my son."
"Would you, Elise? then I must also prepare myself to do the same. You
have had most trouble and most labor with the children, it is therefore
right that you should decide in their affairs."
"Ernst, you are so kind!"
"Say just, Elise; not more than just. Besides, it is my opinion that our
thoughts and inclinations will not differ much. I confess that Louise
appears to me to be a great treasure, and I know of nobody I could give
her to with all my heart; but if Jacobi obtains her affections, I feel
that I could not oppose their union, although it would be painful to me
on account of his uncertain prospects. He is really dear to me, and we
are under great obligations to him on account of Henrik; his excellent
heart, his honesty, and his good qualities, will make him as good a
citizen as a husband and father, and I consider him to be one of the
most agreeable men to associate with daily. But, God bless me! I speak
as if I wished the union, but that is far from my desire: I would much
rather keep my daughters at home, so long as they find themselves happy
with me; but when girls grow up, there is never any peace to depend on.
I wish all lovers and questioners a long way off. Here we could live
altogether as in a kingdom of heaven, now that we have got everything in
such order. Some small improvements may still be wanted, but this will
be all right if we are only left in peace. I have been thinking that we
could so easily make a wardrobe here: do you see on this side of the
wall--don't you think if we were to open--What! are you asleep
already, my dear?"
* * * * *
Louise was often teased about Cousin Thure; Cousin Thure was often
teased about Cousin Louise. He liked very much to be teased about his
Cousin Louise, and it gave him great pleasure to be told that Oestanvik
wanted a mistress, that he himself wanted a good wife, and that Louise
Frank was decidedly one of the wisest and most amiable girls in the
whole neighborhood, and of the most respectable family. The Landed
Proprietor was half ready to receive congratulations on his betrothal.
What the supposed bride thought about the matter, however, is difficult
to divine. Louise was certainly always polite to her "Cousin Thure," but
more indifference than attachment seemed to be expressed in this
politeness; and she declined, with a decision astonishing to many a
person, his constantly repeated invitations to make a tour to Oestanvik
in his new landau drawn by "my chestnut horses," four-in-hand. It was
said by many that the agreeable and friendly Jacobi was much nearer to
Louise's heart than the rich Landed Proprietor. But even towards Jacobi
her behavior was so uniform, so quiet, and so unconstrained that nobody
knew what to think. Very few knew so well as we do that Louise
considered it in accordance with the dignity of a woman to show perfect
indifference to the attentions or _doux propos_ of men, until they had
openly and fully explained themselves. She despised coquetry to that
degree that she feared everything which had the least appearance of it.
Her young friends used to joke with her upon her strong notions in this
respect, and often told her that she would remain unmarried.
"That may be!" answered Louise calmly.
One day she was told that a gentleman had said, "I will not stand up for
any girl who is not a little coquettish!"
"Then he may remain sitting!" answered Louise, with a great deal of
dignity.
Louise's views with regard to the dignity of woman, her serious and
decided principles, and her manner of expressing them, amused her young
friends, at the same time that they inspired them with great regard for
her, and caused many little contentions and discussions in which Louise
fearlessly, though not without some excess, defended what was right.
These contentions, which began in merriment, sometimes ended quite
differently.
A young and somewhat coquettish married lady felt herself one day
wounded by the severity with which Louise judged the coquetry of her
sex, particularly of married ladies, and in revenge she made use of some
words which awakened Louise's astonishment and anger at the same time.
An explanation followed between the two, the consequence of which was a
complete rupture between Louise and the young lady, together with an
altered disposition of mind in the former, which she in vain attempted
to conceal. She had been unusually joyous and lively during the first
days of her stay at Axelholm; but she now became silent and thoughtful,
often absent; and some people thought that she seemed less friendly than
formerly towards the Candidate, but somewhat more attentive to the
Landed Proprietor, although she constantly declined his invitation "to
take a tour to Oestanvik."
The evening after this explanation took place, Elise was engaged with
Jacobi in a lively conversation in the balcony.
"And if," said Jacobi, "if I endeavor to win her affections, oh, tell
me! would her parents, would her mother see it without displeasure? Ah,
speak openly with me; the happiness of my life depends upon it!"
"You have my approval and my good wishes," answered Elise; "I tell you
now what I have often told my husband, that I should very much like to
call you my son!"
"Oh!" exclaimed Jacobi, deeply affected, falling on his knees and
pressing Elise's hand to his lips: "oh, that every act in my life might
prove my gratitude, my love--!"
At this moment Louise, who had been looking for her mother, approached
the balcony; she saw Jacobi's action and heard his words. She withdrew
quickly, as if she had been stung by a serpent.
From this time a great change was more and more perceptible in her.
Silent, shy, and very pale, she moved about like a dreaming person in
the merry circle at Axelholm, and willingly agreed to her mother's
proposal to shorten her stay at this place.
Jacobi, who was as much astonished as sorry at Louise's sudden
unfriendliness towards him, began to think the place was somehow
bewitched, and wished more than once to leave it.
* * * * *
A FAMILY PICTURE
From 'The Home'
The family is assembled in the library; tea is just finished. Louise, at
the pressing request of Gabrielle and Petrea, lays out the cards in
order to tell the sisters their fortune. The Candidate seats himself
beside her, and seems to have made up his mind to be a little more
cheerful. But then "the object" looks more like a cathedral than ever.
The Landed Proprietor enters, bows, blows his nose, and kisses the hand
of his "gracious aunt."
_Landed Proprietor_--Very cold this evening; I think we shall have
frost.
_Elise_--It is a miserable spring; we have just read a melancholy
account of the famine in the northern provinces; these years of dearth
are truly unfortunate.
_Landed Proprietor_--Oh yes, the famine up there. No, let us talk of
something else; that is too gloomy. I have had my peas covered with
straw. Cousin Louise, are you fond of playing Patience? I am very fond
of it myself; it is so composing. At Oestanvik I have got very small
cards for Patience; I am quite sure you would like them, Cousin Louise.
The Landed Proprietor seats himself on the other side of Louise. The
Candidate is seized with a fit of curious shrugs.
_Louise_--This is not Patience, but a little conjuring by means of which
I can tell future things. Shall I tell your fortune, Cousin Thure?
_Landed Proprietor_--Oh yes! do tell my fortune; but don't tell me
anything disagreeable. If I hear anything disagreeable in the evening, I
always dream of it at night. Tell me now from the cards that I shall
have a pretty little wife;--a wife beautiful and amiable as
Cousin Louise.
_The Candidate (with an expression in his eyes as if he would send the
Landed Proprietor head-over-heels to Oestanvik)_--I don't know whether
Miss Louise likes flattery.
_Landed Proprietor (who takes no notice of his rival)_--Cousin Louise,
are you fond of blue?
_Louise_--Blue? It is a pretty color; but I almost like green better.
_Landed Proprietor_--Well, that's very droll; it suits exceedingly well.
At Oestanvik my drawing-room furniture is blue; beautiful light-blue
satin. But in my bedroom I have green moreen. Cousin Louise, I
believe really--
The Candidate coughs as though he were going to be suffocated, and
rushes out of the room. Louise looks after him and sighs, and afterwards
sees in the cards so many misfortunes for Cousin Thure that he is
quite frightened. "The peas frosted!"--"conflagration in the
drawing-room"--and at last "a basket" ["the mitten"]. The Landed
Proprietor declares still laughingly that he will not receive "a
basket." The sisters smile and make their remarks.
CLEMENS BRENTANO
(1778-1842)
The intellectual upheaval in Germany at the beginning of this century
brought a host of remarkable characters upon the literary stage, and
none more gifted, more whimsical, more winning than Clemens Brentano,
the erratic son of a brilliant family. Born September 8th, 1778, at
Ehrenbreitstein, Brentano spent his youth among the stimulating
influences which accompanied the renaissance of German culture. His
grandmother, Sophie de la Roche, had been the close friend of Wieland,
and his mother the youthful companion of Goethe. Clemens, after a vain
attempt to follow in the mercantile footsteps of his father, went to
Jena, where he met the Schlegels; and here his brilliant but unsteady
literary career began.
In 1803 he married the talented Sophie Mareau, but three years later his
happiness was terminated by her death. His next matrimonial venture was,
however, a failure: an elopement in 1808 with the daughter of a
Frankfort banker was quickly followed by a divorce, and he thereafter
led the uncontrolled life of an errant poet. Among his early writings,
published under the pseudonym of 'Marie,' were several satires and
dramas and a novel entitled 'Godwi,' which he himself called "a romance
gone mad." The meeting with Achim von Arnim, who subsequently married
his sister Bettina, decided his fate: he embarked in literature once and
for all in close association with Von Arnim. Together they compiled a
collection of several hundred folk-songs of the sixteenth, seventeenth,
and eighteenth centuries, under the name of 'Des Knaben Wunderhorn' (The
Boy's Wonderhorn), 1806-1808. That so musical a people as the Germans
should be masters of lyric poetry is but natural,--every longing, every
impression, every impulse gushes into song; and in 'Des Knaben
Wunderhorn' we hear the tuneful voices of a naïve race, singing what
they have seen or dreamed or felt during three hundred years. The work
is dedicated to Goethe, who wrote an almost enthusiastic review of it
for the Literary Gazette of Jena. "Every lover or master of musical
art," he says, "should have this volume upon his piano."
The 'Wunderhorn' was greeted by the German public with extraordinary
cordiality. It was in fact an epoch-making work, the pioneer in the new
field of German folk poetry. It carried out in a purely national spirit
the efforts which Herder had made in behalf of the folk-songs of all
peoples. It revealed the spirit of the time. 1806 was the year of the
battle of Jena, and Germany in her hour of deepest humiliation gave ear
to the encouraging voices from out her own past. "The editors of the
'Wunderhorn,'" said their friend Görres, "have deserved of their
countrymen a civic crown, for having saved from destruction what yet
remained to be saved;" and on this civic crown the poets' laurels are
still green.
Brentano's contagious laughter may even now be heard re-echoing through
the pages of his book on 'The Philistine' (1811). His dramatic power is
evinced in the broadly conceived play 'Die Gründung Prags' (The Founding
of Prague: 1815); but it is upon two stories, told in the simple style
of the folk-tale, that his widest popularity is founded. 'Die Geschichte
vom braven Casperl und der schönen Annerl' (The Story of Good Casper and
Pretty Annie) and his fable of 'Gockel, Hinkel, und Gackeleia,' both of
the year 1838, are still an indispensable part of the reading of every
German boy and girl.
Like his brilliant sister, Brentano is a fascinating figure in
literature. He was amiable and winning, full of quips and cranks, and
with an inexhaustible fund of stories. Astonishing tales of adventure,
related with great circumstantiality of detail, and of which he himself
was the hero, played an important part in his conversation. Tieck once
said he had never known a better improvisatore than Brentano, nor one
who could "lie more gracefully."
When Brentano was forty years of age a total change came over his life.
The witty and fascinating man of the world was transformed into a pious
and gloomy ascetic. The visions of the stigmatized nun of Dülmen,
Katharina Emmerich, attracted him, and he remained under her influence
until her death in 1824. These visions he subsequently published as the
'Life of the Virgin Mary.' The eccentricities of his later years
bordered upon insanity. He died in the Catholic faith in the year 1842.
THE NURSE'S WATCH
From 'The Boy's Wonderhorn'
The moon it shines,
My darling whines;
The clock strikes twelve:--God cheer
The sick both far and near.
God knoweth all;
Mousy nibbles in the wall;
The clock strikes one:--like day,
Dreams o'er thy pillow play.
The matin-bell
Wakes the nun in convent cell;
The clock strikes two:--they go
To choir in a row.
The wind it blows,
The cock he crows;
The clock strikes three:--the wagoner
In his straw bed begins to stir.
The steed he paws the floor,
Creaks the stable door;
The clock strikes four:--'tis plain
The coachman sifts his grain.
The swallow's laugh the still air shakes,
The sun awakes;
The clock strikes five:--the traveler must be gone,
He puts his stockings on.
The hen is clacking,
The ducks are quacking;
The clock strikes six:--awake, arise,
Thou lazy hag; come, ope thy eyes.
Quick to the baker's run;
The rolls are done;
The clock strikes seven:--
'Tis time the milk were in the oven.
Put in some butter, do,
And some fine sugar, too;
The clock strikes eight:--
Now bring my baby's porridge straight.
Englished by Charles T. Brooks.
THE CASTLE IN AUSTRIA
From 'The Boy's Wonderhorn'
There lies a castle in Austria,
Right goodly to behold,
Walled tip with marble stones so fair,
With silver and with red gold.
Therein lies captive a young boy,
For life and death he lies bound,
Full forty fathoms under the earth,
'Midst vipers and snakes around.
His father came from Rosenberg,
Before the tower he went:--
"My son, my dearest son, how hard
Is thy imprisonment!"
"O father, dearest father mine,
So hardly I am bound,
Full forty fathoms under the earth,
'Midst vipers and snakes around!"
His father went before the lord:--
"Let loose thy captive to me!
I have at home three casks of gold,
And these for the boy I'll gi'e."
"Three casks of gold, they help you not:
That boy, and he must die!
He wears round his neck a golden chain;
Therein doth his ruin lie."
"And if he thus wear a golden chain,
He hath not stolen it; nay!
A maiden good gave it to him
For true love, did she say."
They led the boy forth from the tower,
And the sacrament took he:--
"Help thou, rich Christ, from heaven high,
It's come to an end with me!"
They led him to the scaffold place,
Up the ladder he must go:--
"O headsman, dearest headsman, do
But a short respite allow!"
"A short respite I must not grant;
Thou wouldst escape and fly:
Reach me a silken handkerchief
Around his eyes to tie."
"Oh, do not, do not bind mine eyes!
I must look on the world so fine;
I see it to-day, then never more,
With these weeping eyes of mine."
His father near the scaffold stood,
And his heart, it almost rends:--
"O son, O thou my dearest son,
Thy death I will avenge!"
"O father, dearest father mine!
My death thou shalt not avenge:
'Twould bring to my soul but heavy pains;
Let me die in innocence.
"It is not for this life of mine,
Nor for my body proud;
'Tis but for my dear mother's sake:
At home she weeps aloud."
Not yet three days had passed away,
When an angel from heaven came down:
"Take ye the boy from the scaffold away;
Else the city shall sink under ground!"
And not six months had passed away,
Ere his death was avenged amain;
And upwards of three hundred men
For the boy's life were slain.
Who is it that hath made this lay,
Hath sung it, and so on?
That, in Vienna in Austria,
Three maidens fair have done.
ELISABETH BRENTANO (BETTINA VON ARNIM)
(1785-1859)
No picture of German life at the beginning of this century would be
complete which did not include the distinguished women who left their
mark upon the time. Among these Bettina von Arnim stands easily
foremost. There was something triumphant in her nature, which in her
youth manifested itself in her splendid enthusiasm for the two great
geniuses who dominated her life,--Goethe and Beethoven,--and which, in
the lean years when Germany was overclouded, maintained itself by an
inexhaustible optimism. Her merry willfulness and wit covered a warm
heart and a vigorous mind; and both of her great idols understood her
and took her seriously.
[Illustration: ELISABETH BRENTANO]
Elisabeth Brentano was the daughter of Goethe's friend, Maximiliane de
la Roche. She was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1785, and was brought
up after the death of her mother under the somewhat peculiar influence
of the highly-strung Caroline von Günderode. Through her filial intimacy
with Goethe's mother, she came to know the poet; and out of their
friendship grew the correspondence which formed the basis of Bettina's
famous book, 'Goethe's Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde' (Goethe's
Correspondence with a Child). She attached herself with unbounded
enthusiasm to Goethe, and he responded with affectionate tact. To him
Bettina was the embodiment of the loving grace and willfulness
of 'Mignon.'
In 1811 these relations were interrupted, owing to Bettina's attitude
toward Goethe's wife. In the same year she married Achim von Arnim, one
of the most refined poets and noblest characters of that brilliant
circle. The marriage was an ideal one; each cherished and delighted in
the genius of the other, but in 1831 the death of Von Arnim brought this
happiness to an end. Goethe died in the following year, and Germany went
into mourning. Then in 1835 Bettina appeared before the world for the
first time as an authoress, in 'Goethe's Correspondence with a Child.'
The dithyrambic exaltation, the unrestrained but beautiful enthusiasm of
the book came like an electric shock. Into an atmosphere of spiritual
stagnation, these letters brought a fresh access of vitality and hope.
Bettina's old friendly relations with Goethe had been resumed later in
life, and in a letter written to her niece she gives a charming account
of the visit to the poet in 1824, which proved to be her last. This
letter first saw the light in 1896, and an extract from it has been
included below.
The inspiration which went out from Bettina's magnetic nature was
profound. She had her part in every great movement of her time, from the
liberation of Greece to the fight with cholera in Berlin. During the
latter, her devotion to the cause of the suffering poor in Berlin opened
her eyes to the miseries of the common people; and she wrote a work full
of indignant fervor, 'Dies Buch gehört dem König' (This Book belongs to
the King), in consequence of which her welcome at the court of Frederick
William IV. grew cool. A subsequent book, written in a similar vein, was
suppressed. But Bettina's love of the people, as of every cause in which
she was interested, was genuine and not to be quenched; she acted upon
the maxim once expressed by Emerson, "Every brave heart must treat
society as a child, and never allow it to dictate." Emerson greatly
admired Bettina, and Louisa M. Alcott relates that she first made
acquaintance with the famous 'Correspondence' when in her girlhood she
was left to browse in Emerson's library. Bettina's influence was most
keenly felt by the young, and she had the youth of Germany at her feet.
She died in 1859.
There is in Weimar a picture in which are represented the literary men
of the period, grouped as in Raphael's School of Athens, with Goethe and
Schiller occupying the centre. Upon the broad steps which lead to the
elevation where they are standing, is the girlish figure of Bettina
bending forward and holding a laurel wreath in her hand. This is the
position which she occupies in the history of German literature.
* * * * *
DEDICATION: TO GOETHE
From 'Goethe's Correspondence with a Child'
Thou, who knowest love, and the refinement of sentiment, oh how
beautiful is everything in thee! How the streams of life rush through
thy sensitive heart, and plunge with force into the cold waves of thy
time, then boil and bubble up till mountain and vale flush with the glow
of life, and the forests stand with glistening boughs upon the shore of
thy being, and all upon which rests thy glance is filled with happiness
and life! O God, how happy were I with thee! And were I winging my
flight far over all times, and far over thee, I would fold my pinions
and yield myself wholly to the domination of thine eyes.
Men will never understand thee, and those nearest to thee will most
thoroughly disown and betray thee; I look into the future, and I hear
them cry, "Stone him!" Now, when thine own inspiration, like a lion,
stands beside thee and guards thee, vulgarity ventures not to approach
thee. Thy mother said recently, "The men to-day are all like Gerning,
who always says, 'We, the superfluous learned';" and she speaks truly,
for he is superfluous. Rather be dead than superfluous! But I am not so,
for I am thine, because I recognize thee in all things. I know that when
the clouds lift themselves up before the sun-god, they will soon be
depressed by his fiery hand; I know that he endures no shadow except
that which his own fame seeks; the rest of consciousness will overshadow
thee. I know, when he descends in the evening, that he will again appear
in the morning with golden front. Thou art eternal, therefore it is good
for me to be with thee.
When, in the evening, I am alone in my dark room, and the neighbors'
lights are thrown upon my wall, they sometimes light up thy bust; or
when all is silent in the city, here and there a dog barks or a cock
crows: I know not why, but it seems something beyond human to me; I know
what I shall do to still my pain.
I would fain speak with thee otherwise than with words; I would fain
press myself to thy heart. I feel that my soul is aflame. How fearfully
still is the air before the storm! So stand now my thoughts, cold and
silent, and my heart surges like the sea. Dear, dear Goethe! A
reminiscence of thee breaks the spell; the signs of fire and warfare
sink slowly down in my sky, and thou art like the in-streaming
moonlight. Thou art great and glorious, and better than all that I have
ever known and experienced up to this time. Thy whole life is so good!
TO GOETHE
CASSEL, August 13th, 1807.
Who can interpret and measure what is passing within me? I am happy now
in remembrance of the past, which I scarcely was when that past was the
present. To my sensitive heart the surprise of being with thee, the
coming and going and returning in a few blessed days--this was all like
clouds flitting across my heaven; through my too near presence I feared
it might be darkened by my shadow, as it is ever darker when it nears
the earth; now, in the distance, it is mild and lofty and ever clear.
I would fain press thy dear hand with both of mine to my bosom, and say
to thee, "How peace and content have come to me since I have
known thee!"
I know that the evening has not come when life's twilight gathers in my
heart: oh, would it were so! Would that I had lived out my days, that my
wishes and joys were fulfilled, and that they could all be heaped upon
thee, that thou mightst be therewith decked and crowned as with
evergreen bays.
When I was alone with thee on that evening I could not comprehend thee:
thou didst smile at me because I was moved, and laughed at me because I
wept; but why? And yet it was thy laughter, the _tone_ of thy laughter,
which moved me to tears; and I am content, and see, under the cloak of
this riddle, roses burst forth which spring alike from sadness and joy.
Yes, thou art right, prophet: I shall yet with light heart struggle up
through jest and mirth; I shall weary myself with struggling as I did in
my childhood (ah, it seems as if it were but yesterday!) when with the
exuberance of joy I wandered through the blossoming fields, pulling up
the flowers by the roots and throwing them into the water. But I wish to
seek rest in a warm, firm earnestness, and there at hand standest thou,
smiling prophet!
I say to thee yet once more: Whoever in this wide world understands what
is passing within me, who, am so restful in thee, so silent, so
unwavering in my feeling? I could, like the mountains, bear nights and
days in the past without disturbing thee in thy reflections! And yet
when at times the wind bears the fragrance and the germs together from
the blossoming world up to the mountain heights, they will be
intoxicated with delight as I was yesterday. Then I loved the world,
then I was as glad as a gushing, murmuring spring in which the sun for
the first time shines.
Farewell, sublime one who blindest and intimidatest me! From this steep
rock upon which my love has in life-danger ventured, I cannot clamber
down. I cannot think of descending, for I should break my neck in
the attempt.
BETTINA'S LAST MEETING WITH GOETHE
From a Letter to her Niece in 1824, first published in 1896
IN THE evening I was alone again with Goethe. Had any one observed us,
he would have had something to tell to posterity. Goethe's peculiarities
were exhibited to the full: first he would growl at me, then to make it
all up again he would caress me, with the most flattering words. His
bottle of wine he kept in the adjoining room, because I had reproached
him for his drinking the night before: on some pretext or other he
disappeared from the scene half a dozen times in order to drink a glass.
I pretended to notice nothing; but at parting I told him that twelve
glasses of wine wouldn't hurt him, and that he had had only six. "How do
you know that so positively?" he said. "I heard the gurgle of the bottle
in the next room, and I heard you drinking, and then you have betrayed
yourself to me, as Solomon in the Song of Songs betrayed himself to his
beloved, by your breath." "You are an arrant rogue," he said; "now take
yourself off," and he brought the candle to light me out. But I sprang
in front of him and knelt upon the threshold of the room. "Now I shall
see if I can shut you in, and whether you are a good spirit or an evil
one, like the rat in Faust; I kiss this threshold and bless it, for over
it daily passes the most glorious human spirit and my best friend."
"Over you and your love I shall never pass," he answered, "it is too
dear to me; and around your spirit I creep so" (and he carefully paced
around the spot where I was kneeling), "for you are too artful, and it
is better to keep on good terms with you." And so he dismissed me with
tears in his eyes. I remained standing in the dark before his door, to
gulp down my emotion. I was thinking that this door, which I had closed
with my own hand, had separated me from him in all probability forever.
Whoever comes near him must confess that his genius has partly passed
into goodness; the fiery sun of his spirit is transformed at its setting
into a soft purple light.
IN GOETHE'S GARDEN
I from this hillock all my world survey!
Yon vale, bedecked by nature's fairy fingers,
Where the still by-road picturesquely lingers,
The cottage white whose quaint charms grace the way--
These are the scenes that o'er my heart hold sway.
I from this hillock all my world survey!
Though I ascend to heights fair lands dividing,
Where stately ships I see the ocean riding,
While cities gird the view in proud array,
Naught prompts my heart's impulses to obey.
I from this hillock all my world survey!
And could I stand while Paradise descrying,
Still for these verdant meads should I be sighing,
Where thy dear roof-peaks skirt the verdant way:
Beyond these bounds my heart longs not to stray.
JOHN BRIGHT
(1811-1889)
John Bright was the modern representative of the ancient Tribunes of the
people or Demagogues (in the original and perfectly honorable sense);
and a full comparison of his work and position with those of the Cleons
or the Gracchi would almost be an outline of the respective peoples,
polities, and problems. He was a higher type of man and politician than
Cleon,--largely because the English aristocracy is not an unpatriotic
and unprincipled clique like the Athenian, ready to use any weapon from
murder down or to make their country a province of a foreign empire
rather than give up their class monopoly of power; but like his
prototype he was a democrat by nature as well as profession, the welfare
of the common people at once his passion and his political livelihood,
full of faith that popular instincts are both morally right and
intellectually sound, and all his own instincts and most of his labors
antagonistic to those of the aristocracy. It is a phase of the same fact
to say that he also represented the active force of religious feeling in
politics, as opposed to pure secular statesmanship.
[Illustration: JOHN BRIGHT]
The son of a Quaker manufacturer of Rochdale, England, and born near
that place November 16th, 1811, he began his public career when a mere
boy as a stirring and effective temperance orator, his ready eloquence
and intense earnestness prevailing over an ungraceful manner and a bad
delivery; he wrought all his life for popular education and for the
widest extension of the franchise; and being a Quaker and a member of
the Peace Society, he opposed all war on principle, fighting the Crimean
War bitterly, and leaving the Gladstone Cabinet in 1882 on account of
the bombardment of Alexandria. He was retired from the service of the
public for some time on account of his opposition to the Crimean War;
but Mr. Gladstone, who differed from him on this point, calls it the
action of his life most worthy of honor. He was perhaps the most warlike
opponent of war ever high in public life; the pugnacious and aggressive
agitator, pouring out floods of fiery oratory to the effect that nobody
ought to fight anybody, was a curious paradox.
He was by far the most influential English friend of the North in the
Civil War, and the magic of his eloquence and his name was a force of
perhaps decisive potency in keeping the working classes on the same
side; so that mass meetings of unemployed laborers with half-starving
families resolved that they would rather starve altogether than help to
perpetuate slavery in America. He shares with Richard Cobden the credit
of having obtained free trade for England: Bright's thrilling oratory
was second only to Cobden's organizing power in winning the victory, and
both had the immense weight of manufacturers opposing their own class.
That he opposed the game laws and favored electoral reform is a matter
of course.
Mr. Bright entered on an active political career in 1839, when he joined
the Anti-Corn-Law League. He first became a member of Parliament in
1843, and illustrates a most valuable feature of English political
practice. When a change of feeling in one place prevented his
re-election, he selected another which was glad to honor itself by
having a great man represent it, so that the country was not robbed of a
statesman by a village faction; and there being no spoils system, he did
not have to waste his time in office-jobbing to keep his seat. He sat
first for Durham, then for Manchester, and finally for Birmingham,
remaining in public life over forty years; and never had to make a
"deal" or get any one an office in all that period.
He was in Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet from 1868 to 1870, and again from 1873
to 1882. On the Home Rule question the two old friends and long
co-workers divided; Mr. Bright, with more than half the oldest and
sincerest friends of liberty and haters of oppression in England,
holding the step to be political suicide for the British Empire.
As an orator, Mr. Bright stood in a sense alone. He was direct and
logical; he carefully collected and massed his facts, and used strong,
homely Saxon English, and short crisp words; he was a master of telling
epigram whose force lay in its truth as much as in its humor. Several
volumes of his speeches have been published: 'On Public Affairs'; 'On
Parliamentary Reform'; 'On Questions of Public Policy'; 'On the American
Question,' etc. His life has been written by Gilchrist, Smith,
Robertson, and others. He died March 27th, 1889.
FROM THE SPEECH ON THE CORN LAWS (1843)
It must not be supposed, because I wish to represent the interest of the
many, that I am hostile to the interest of the few.
But is it not perfectly certain that if the foundation of the most
magnificent building be destroyed and undermined, the whole fabric
itself is in danger? Is it not certain, also, that the vast body of the
people who form the foundation of the social fabric, if they are
suffering, if they are trampled upon, if they are degraded, if they are
discontented, if "their hands are against every man, and every man's
hands are against them," if they do not flourish as well, reasonably
speaking, as the classes who are above them because they are richer and
more powerful,--then are those classes as much in danger as the working
classes themselves?
There never was a revolution in any country which destroyed the great
body of the people. There have been convulsions of a most dire character
which have overturned old-established monarchies and have hurled thrones
and sceptres to the dust. There have been revolutions which have brought
down most powerful aristocracies, and swept them from the face of the
earth forever, but never was there a revolution yet which destroyed the
people. And whatever may come as a consequence of the state of things in
this country, of this we may rest assured: that the common people, that
the great bulk of our countrymen will remain and survive the shock,
though it may be that the Crown and the aristocracy and the Church may
be leveled with the dust, and rise no more. In seeking to represent the
working classes, and in standing up for their rights and liberties, I
hold that I am also defending the rights and liberties of the middle and
richer classes of society. Doing justice to one class cannot inflict
injustice on any other class, and "justice and impartiality to all" is
what we all have a right to from government. And we have a right to
clamor; and so long as I have breath, so long will I clamor against the
oppression which I see to exist, and in favor of the rights of the great
body of the people....
What is the condition in which we are? I have already spoken of Ireland.
You know that hundreds of thousands meet there, week after week, in
various parts of the country, to proclaim to all the world the tyranny
under which they suffer. You know that in South Wales, at this moment,
there is an insurrection of the most extraordinary character going on,
and that the Government is sending, day after day, soldiers and
artillery amongst the innocent inhabitants of that mountainous country
for the purpose of putting down the insurrection thereby raised and
carried on. You know that in the Staffordshire ironworks almost all the
workmen are now out and in want of wages, from want of employment and
from attempting to resist the inevitable reduction of wages which must
follow restriction upon trade. You know that in August last, Lancashire
and Yorkshire rose in peaceful insurrection to proclaim to the world,
and in face of Heaven, the wrongs of an insulted and oppressed people. I
know that my own neighborhood is unsettled and uncomfortable. I know
that in your own city your families are suffering. Yes, I have been to
your cottages and seen their condition. Thanks to my canvass of Durham,
I have been able to see the condition of many honest and independent--or
ought-to-be-independent--and industrious artisans. I have seen even
freemen of your city sitting, looking disconsolate and sad. Their hands
were ready to labor; their skill was ready to produce all that their
trade demanded. They were as honest and industrious as any man in this
assembly, but no man hired them. They were in a state of involuntary
idleness, and were driving fast to the point of pauperism. I have seen
their wives, too, with three or four children about them--one in the
cradle, one at the breast. I have seen their countenances, and I have
seen the signs of their sufferings. I have seen the emblems and symbols
of affliction such as I did not expect to see in this city. Ay! and I
have seen those little children who at not a distant day will be the men
and women of this city of Durham; I have seen their poor little wan
faces and anxious looks, as if the furrows of old age were coming upon
them before they had escaped from the age of childhood. I have seen all
this in this city, and I have seen far more in the neighborhood from
which I have come. You have seen, in all probability, people from my
neighborhood walking your streets and begging for that bread which the
Corn Laws would not allow them to earn.
"Bread-taxed weaver, all can see
What the tax hath done for thee,
And thy children, vilely led,
Singing hymns for shameful bread,
Till the stones of every street
Know their little naked feet."
This is what the Corn Law does for the weavers of my neighborhood, and
for the weavers and artisans of yours....
FROM THE SPEECH ON INCENDIARISM IN IRELAND (1844)
The great and all-present evil of the rural districts is this--you have
too many people for the work to be done, and you, the landed
proprietors, are alone responsible for this state of things; and to
speak honestly, I believe many of you know it. I have been charged with
saying out-of-doors that this House is a club of land-owners legislating
for land-owners. If I had not said it, the public must long ago have
found out that fact. My honorable friend the member for Stockport on one
occasion proposed that before you passed a law to raise the price of
bread, you should consider how far you had the power to raise the rates
of wages. What did you say to that? You said that the laborers did not
understand political economy, or they would not apply to Parliament to
raise wages; that Parliament could not raise wages. And yet the very
next thing you did was to pass a law to raise the price of produce of
your own land, at the expense of the very class whose wages you
confessed your inability to increase.
What is the condition of the county of Suffolk? Is it not notorious that
the rents are as high as they were fifty years ago, and probably much
higher? But the return for the farmer's capital is much lower, and the
condition of the laborer is very much worse. The farmers are subject to
the law of competition, and rents are thereby raised from time to time
so as to keep their profits down to the lowest point, and the laborers
by the competition amongst them are reduced to the point below which
life cannot be maintained. Your tenants and laborers are being devoured
by this excessive competition, whilst you, their magnanimous landlords,
shelter yourselves from all competition by the Corn Law yourselves have
passed, and make the competition of all other classes serve still more
to swell your rentals. It was for this object the Corn Law was passed,
and yet in the face of your countrymen you dare to call it a law for the
protection of native industry....
Again, a rural police is kept up by the gentry; the farmers say for the
sole use of watching game and frightening poachers, for which formerly
they had to pay watchers. Is this true, or is it not? I say, then, you
care everything for the rights--and for something beyond the rights--of
your own property, but you are oblivious to its duties. How many lives
have been sacrificed during the past year to the childish infatuation of
preserving game? The noble lord, the member for North Lancashire, could
tell of a gamekeeper killed in an affray on his father's estate in that
county. For the offense one man was hanged, and four men are now on
their way to penal colonies. Six families are thus deprived of husband
and father, that this wretched system of game-preserving may be
continued in a country densely peopled as this is. The Marquis of
Normanby's gamekeeper has been murdered also, and the poacher who shot
him only escaped death by the intervention of the Home Secretary. At
Godalming, in Surrey, a gamekeeper has been murdered; and at Buckhill,
in Buckinghamshire, a person has recently been killed in a poaching
affray. This insane system is the cause of a fearful loss of life; it
tends to the ruin of your tenantry, and is the fruitful cause of the
demoralization of the peasantry. But you are caring for the rights of
property; for its most obvious duties you have no concern. With such a
policy, what can you expect but that which is now passing before you?
It is the remark of a beautiful writer that "to have known nothing but
misery is the most portentous condition under which human nature can
start on its course." Has your agricultural laborer ever known anything
but misery? He is born in a miserable hovel, which in mockery is termed
a house or a home; he is reared in penury: he passes a life of hopeless
and unrequited toil, and the jail or the union house is before him as
the only asylum on this side of the pauper's grave. Is this the result
of your protection to native industry? Have you cared for the laborer
till, from a home of comfort, he has but a hovel for shelter? and have
you cherished him into starvation and rags? I tell you what your boasted
protection is--it is a protection of native idleness at the expense of
the impoverishment of native industry.
FROM THE SPEECH ON NON-RECOGNITION OF THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY (1861)
I advise you, and I advise the people of England, to abstain from
applying to the United States doctrines and principles which we never
apply to our own case. At any rate, they [the Americans] have never
fought "for the balance of power" in Europe. They have never fought to
keep up a decaying empire. They have never squandered the money of their
people in such a phantom expedition as we have been engaged in. And now,
at this moment, when you are told that they are going to be ruined by
their vast expenditure,--why, the sum that they are going to raise in
the great emergency of this grievous war is not greater than what we
raise every year during a time of peace.
They say they are not going to liberate slaves. No; the object of the
Washington government is to maintain their own Constitution and to act
legally, as it permits and requires. No man is more in favor of peace
than I am; no man has denounced war more than I have, probably, in this
country; few men in their public life have suffered more obloquy--I had
almost said, more indignity--in consequence of it. But I cannot for the
life of me see, upon any of those principles upon which States are
governed now,--I say nothing of the literal word of the New
Testament,--I cannot see how the state of affairs in America, with
regard to the United States government, could have been different from
what it is at this moment. We had a Heptarchy in this country, and it
was thought to be a good thing to get rid of it, and have a united
nation. If the thirty-three or thirty-four States of the American Union
can break off whenever they like, I can see nothing but disaster and
confusion throughout the whole of that continent. I say that the war, be
it successful or not, be it Christian or not, be it wise or not, is a
war to sustain the government and to sustain the authority of a great
nation; and that the people of England, if they are true to their own
sympathies, to their own history, and to their own great act of 1834, to
which reference has already been made, will have no sympathy with those
who wish to build up a great empire on the perpetual bondage of millions
of their fellow-men.
FROM THE SPEECH ON THE STATE OF IRELAND (1866)
I think I was told in 1849, as I stood in the burial ground at
Skibbereen, that at least four hundred people who had died of famine
were buried within the quarter of an acre of ground on which I was then
looking. It is a country, too, from which there has been a greater
emigration by sea within a given time than has been known at any time
from any other country in the world. It is a country where there has
been, for generations past, a general sense of wrong, out of which has
grown a chronic state of insurrection; and at this very moment when I
speak, the general safeguard of constitutional liberty is withdrawn, and
we meet in this hall, and I speak here to-night, rather by the
forbearance and permission of the Irish executive than under the
protection of the common safeguards of the rights and liberties of the
people of the United Kingdom.
I venture to say that this is a miserable and a humiliating picture to
draw of this country. Bear in mind that I am not speaking of Poland
suffering under the conquest of Russia. There is a gentleman, now a
candidate for an Irish county, who is very great upon the wrongs of
Poland; but I have found him always in the House of Commons taking sides
with that great party which has systematically supported the wrongs of
Ireland. I am not speaking of Hungary, or of Venice as she was under the
rule of Austria, or of the Greeks under the dominion of the Turk; but I
am speaking of Ireland--part of the United Kingdom--part of that which
boasts itself to be the most civilized and the most Christian nation in
the world. I took the liberty recently, at a meeting in Glasgow, to say
that I believed it was impossible for a class to govern a great nation
wisely and justly. Now, in Ireland there has been a field in which all
the principles of the Tory party have had their complete experiment and
development. You have had the country gentleman in all his power. You
have had any number of Acts of Parliament which the ancient Parliament
of Ireland or the Parliament of the United Kingdom could give him. You
have had the Established Church supported by the law, even to the
extent, not many years ago, of collecting its revenues by the aid of
military force. In point of fact, I believe it would be impossible to
imagine a state of things in which the Tory party should have a more
entire and complete opportunity for their trial than they have had
within the limits of this island. And yet what has happened? This,
surely: that the kingdom has been continually weakened, that the harmony
of the empire has been disturbed, and that the mischief has not been
confined to the United Kingdom, but has spread to the colonies....
I am told--you can answer it if I am wrong--that it is not common in
Ireland now to give leases to tenants, especially to Catholic tenants.
If that be so, then the security for the property rests only upon the
good feeling and favor of the owner of the land; for the laws, as we
know, have been made by the land-owners, and many propositions for the
advantage of the tenants have unfortunately been too little considered
by Parliament. The result is that you have bad farming, bad
dwelling-houses, bad temper, and everything bad connected with the
occupation and cultivation of land in Ireland. One of the results--a
result the most appalling--is this, that your population is fleeing your
country and seeking refuge in a distant land. On this point I wish to
refer to a letter which I received a few days ago from a most esteemed
citizen of Dublin. He told me that he believed that a very large portion
of what he called the poor, amongst Irishmen, sympathized with any
scheme or any proposition that was adverse to the Imperial Government.
He said further that the people here are rather in the country than of
it, and that they are looking more to America than they are looking to
England. I think there is a good deal in that. When we consider how many
Irishmen have found a refuge in America, I do not know how we can wonder
at that statement. You will recollect that when the ancient Hebrew
prophet prayed in his captivity, he prayed with his window open towards
Jerusalem. You know that the followers of Mohammed, when they pray, turn
their faces towards Mecca. When the Irish peasant asks for food and
freedom and blessing, his eye follows the setting sun, the aspirations
of his heart reach beyond the wide Atlantic, and in spirit he grasps
hands with the great Republic of the West. If this be so, I say then
that the disease is not only serious, but it is desperate; but desperate
as it is, I believe there is a certain remedy for it if the people and
Parliament of the United Kingdom are willing to apply it....
I believe that at the root of a general discontent there is in all
countries a general grievance and general suffering. The surface of
society is not incessantly disturbed without a cause. I recollect in the
poem of the greatest of Italian poets, he tells us that as he saw in
vision the Stygian lake, and stood upon its banks, he observed the
constant commotion upon the surface of the pool, and his good instructor
and guide explained to him the cause of it:--
"This, too, for certain know, that underneath
The water dwells a multitude, whose sighs
Into these bubbles make the surface heave,
As thine eye tells thee wheresoe'er it turn."
And I say that in Ireland, for generations back, the misery and the
wrongs of the people have made their sign, and have found a voice in
constant insurrection and disorder. I have said that Ireland is a
country of many wrongs and of many sorrows. Her past lies almost in
shadow. Her present is full of anxiety and peril. Her future depends on
the power of her people to substitute equality and justice for
supremacy, and a generous patriotism for the spirit of faction. In the
effort now making in Great Britain to create a free representation of
the people you have the deepest interest. The people never wish to
suffer, and they never wish to inflict injustice. They have no sympathy
with the wrong-doer, whether in Great Britain or in Ireland; and when
they are fairly represented in the Imperial Parliament, as I hope they
will one day be, they will speedily give an effective and final answer
to that old question of the Parliament of Kilkenny--"How comes it to
pass that the King has never been the richer for Ireland?"
FROM THE SPEECH ON THE IRISH ESTABLISHED CHURCH
(1868)
I am one of those who do not believe that the Established Church of
Ireland--of which I am not a member--would go to absolute ruin, in the
manner of which many of its friends are now so fearful. There was a
paper sent to me this morning, called 'An Address from the Protestants
of Ireland to their Protestant Brethren of Great Britain.' It is dated
"5, Dawson Street," and is signed by "John Trant Hamilton, T.A. Lefroy,
and R.W. Gamble." The paper is written in a fair and mild, and I would
even say,--for persons who have these opinions,--in a kindly and just
spirit. But they have been alarmed, and I would wish, if I can, to offer
them consolation. They say they have no interest in protecting any
abuses of the Established Church, but they protest against their being
now deprived of the Church of their fathers. Now, I am quite of opinion
that it would be a most monstrous thing to deprive the Protestants of
the Church of their fathers; and there is no man in the world who would
more strenuously resist even any step in that direction than I would,
unless it were Mr. Gladstone, the author of the famous resolutions. The
next sentence goes on to say, "We ask for no ascendancy." Having read
that sentence, I think that we must come to the conclusion that these
gentlemen are in a better frame of mind than we thought them to be in. I
can understand easily that these gentlemen are very sorry and doubtful
as to the depths into which they are to be plunged; but I disagree with
them in this--that I think there would still be a Protestant Church in
Ireland when all is done that Parliament has proposed to do. The only
difference will be, that it will not then be an establishment--that it
will have no special favor or grant from the State--that it will stand
in relation to the State just as your Church does, and just as the
churches of the majority of the people of Great Britain at this moment
stand. There will then be no Protestant bishops from Ireland to sit in
the House of Lords; but he must be the most enthusiastic Protestant and
Churchman who believes that there can be any advantage to his Church and
to Protestantism generally in Ireland from such a phenomenon.
BRILLAT-SAVARIN
(1755-1826)
Brillat-Savarin was a French magistrate and legislator, whose reputation
as man of letters rests mainly upon a single volume, his inimitable
'Physiologie du Goût'. Although writing in the present century, he was
essentially a Frenchman of the old régime, having been born in 1755 at
Belley, almost on the border-line of Savoy, where he afterwards gained
distinction as an advocate. In later life he regretted his native
province chiefly for its figpeckers, superior in his opinion to ortolans
or robins, and for the cuisine of the innkeeper Genin, where "the
old-timers of Belley used to gather to eat chestnuts and drink the new
white wine known as _vin bourru_"
[Illustration: Brillat-Savarin]
After holding various minor offices in his department, Savarin became
mayor of Belley in 1793; but the Reign of Terror soon forced him to flee
to Switzerland and join the colony of French refugees at Lausanne.
Souvenirs of this period are frequent in his 'Physiologie du Goût', all
eminently gastronomic, as befits his subject-matter, but full of
interest, as showing his unfailing cheerfulness amidst the vicissitudes
and privations of exile. He fled first to Dôle, to "obtain from the
Representative Prôt a safe-conduct, which was to save me from going to
prison and thence probably to the scaffold," and which he ultimately
owed to Madame Prôt, with whom he spent the evening playing duets, and
who declared, "Citizen, any one who cultivates the fine arts as you do
cannot betray his country!" It was not the safe-conduct, however, but an
unexpected dinner which he enjoyed on his route, that made this a
red-letter day to Savarin:--"What a good dinner!--I will not give the
details, but an honorable mention is due to a _fricassée_ of chicken, of
the first order, such as cannot be found except in the provinces, and so
richly dowered with truffles that there were enough to put new life into
old Tithonus himself."
The whole episode is told in Savarin's happiest vein, and well-nigh
justifies his somewhat complacent conclusion that "any one who, with a
revolutionary committee at his heels, could so conduct himself,
assuredly has the head and the heart of a Frenchman!"
Natural scenery did not appeal to Savarin; to him Switzerland meant the
restaurant of the Lion d'Argent, at Lausanne, where "for only 15 _batz_
we passed in review three complete courses;" the _table d'hôte_ of the
Rue de Rosny; and the little village of Moudon, where the cheese
_fondue_ was so good. Circumstances, however, soon necessitated his
departure for the United States, which he always gratefully remembered
as having afforded him "an asylum, employment, and tranquillity." For
three years he supported himself in New York, giving French lessons and
at night playing in a theatre orchestra. "I was so comfortable there,"
he writes, "that in the moment of emotion which preceded departure, all
that I asked of Heaven (a prayer which it has granted) was never to know
greater sorrow in the Old World than I had known in the New." Returning
to France in 1796, Savarin settled in Paris, and after holding several
offices under the Directory, became a Judge in the Cour de Cassation,
the French court of last resort, where he remained until his death
in 1826.
Although an able and conscientious magistrate, Savarin was better
adapted to play the kindly friend and cordial host than the stern and
impartial judge. He was a convivial soul, a lover of good cheer and
free-handed hospitality; and to-day, while almost forgotten as a jurist,
his name has become immortalized as the representative of gastronomic
excellence. His 'Physiologic du Goût'--"that _olla podrida_ which defies
analysis," as Balzac calls it--belongs, like Walton's 'Compleat Angler',
or White's 'Selborne', among those unique gems of literature, too rare
in any age, which owe their subtle and imperishable charm primarily to
the author's own delightful personality. Savarin spent many years of
loving care in polishing his manuscript, often carrying it to court with
him, where it was one day mislaid, but--luckily for future generations
of epicures--was afterward recovered. The book is a charming badinage, a
bizarre ragoût of gastronomic precepts and spicy anecdote, doubly
piquant for its prevailing tone of mock seriousness and intentional
grandiloquence.
In emulation of the poet Lamartine, Savarin divided his subject into
'Meditations', of which the seventh is consecrated to the 'Theory of
Frying', and the twenty-first to 'Corpulence'. In the familiar aphorism,
"Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are", he strikes his
key-note; man's true superiority lies in his palate! "The pleasure of
eating we have in common with the animals; the pleasure of the table is
peculiar to the human species." Gastronomy he proclaims the chief of all
sciences: "It rules life in its entirety; for the tears of the new-born
infant summon the breast of its nurse, and the dying man still receives
with some pleasure the final potion, which, alas, he is not destined to
digest." Occasionally he affects an epic strain, invoking Gasteria,
"the tenth muse, who presides over the pleasures of taste." "It is the
fairest of the Muses who inspires me: I will be clearer than an oracle,
and my precepts will traverse the centuries." Beneath his pen, soup,
"the first consolation of the needy stomach," assumes fresh dignity; and
even the humble fowl becomes to the cook "what the canvas is to the
painter, or the cap of Fortunatus to the charlatan." But like the worthy
epicure that he was, Savarin reserved his highest flights of eloquence
for such rare and toothsome viands as the _Poularde fine de Bresse_, the
pheasant, "an enigma of which the key-word is known only to the adepts,"
a _sauté_ of truffles, "the diamonds of the kitchen," or, best of all,
truffled turkeys, "whose reputation and price are ever on the increase!
Benign stars, whose apparition renders the gourmands of every category
sparkling, radiant, and quivering!" But the true charm of the book lies
in Savarin's endless fund of piquant anecdotes, reminiscences of bygone
feasts, over which the reader's mouth waters. Who can read without a
covetous pang his account of 'The Day at Home with the Bernadins,' or of
his entertainment of the Dubois brothers, of the _Rue du Bac_, "a bonbon
which I have put into the reader's mouth to recompense him for his
kindness in having read me with pleasure"?
'Physiologic du Goût' was not published until 1825, and then
anonymously, presumably because he thought its tone inconsistent with
his dignity as magistrate. It would almost seem that he had a
presentiment of impending death, for in the midst of his brightest
'Variétés' he has incongruously inserted a dolorous little poem, the
burden of each verse being "Je vais mourir." The 'Physiologic du Goût'
is now accessible to English readers in the versions of R.E. Anderson
(London, 1877), and in a later one published in New York; but there is a
subtle flavor to the original which defies translation.
FROM THE 'PHYSIOLOGY OF TASTE'
THE PRIVATIONS
First parents of the human species, whose gormandizing is historic, you
who fell for the sake of an apple, what would you not have done for a
turkey with truffles? But there were in the terrestrial Paradise neither
cooks nor confectioners.
How I pity you!
Mighty kings, who laid proud Troy in ruins, your valor will be handed
down from age to age; but your table was poor. Reduced to a rump of beef
and a chine of pork, you were ever ignorant of the charms of the
_matelote_ and the delights of a fricassée of chicken.
How I pity you!
Aspasia, Chloe, and all of you whose forms the chisel of the Greeks
immortalized, to the despair of the belles of to-day, never did your
charming mouths enjoy the smoothness of a meringue _à la vanille_ or _à
la rose_; hardly did you rise to the height of a spice-cake.
How I pity you!
Gentle priestesses of Vesta, at one and the same time burdened with so
many honors and menaced with such horrible punishments, would that you
might at least have tasted those agreeable syrups which refresh the
soul, those candied fruits which brave the seasons, those perfumed
creams, the marvel of our day!
How I pity you!
Roman financiers, who made the whole known universe pay tribute, never
did your far-famed banquet-halls witness the appearance of those
succulent jellies, the delight of the indolent, nor those varied ices
whose cold would brave the torrid zone.
How I pity you!
Invincible paladins, celebrated by flattering minstrels, when you had
cleft in twain the giants, set free the ladies, and exterminated armies,
never, alas! never did a dark-eyed captive offer you the sparkling
champagne, the malmsey of Madeira, the liqueurs, creation of this great
century: you were reduced to ale or to some cheap herb-flavored wine.
How I pity you!
Crosiered and mitred abbots, dispensers of the favors of heaven; and
you, terrible Templars, who donned your armor for the extermination of
the Saracens,--you knew not the sweetness of chocolate which restores,
nor the Arabian bean which promotes thought.
How I pity you!
Superb châtelaines, who during the loneliness of the Crusades raised
into highest favor your chaplains and your pages, you never could share
with them the charms of the biscuit and the delights of the macaroon.
How I pity you!
And lastly you, gastronomers of 1825, who already find satiety in the
lap of abundance, and dream of new preparations, you will not enjoy
those discoveries which the sciences have in store for the year 1900,
such as esculent minerals and liqueurs resulting from a pressure of a
hundred atmospheres; you will not behold the importations which
travelers yet unborn shall cause to arrive from that half of the globe
which still remains to be discovered or explored.
How I pity you!
ON THE LOVE OF GOOD LIVING
I have consulted the dictionaries under the word _gourmandise_, and am
by no means satisfied with what I find. The love of good living seems to
be constantly confounded with gluttony and voracity; whence I infer that
our lexicographers, however otherwise estimable, are not to be classed
with those good fellows amongst learned men who can put away gracefully
a wing of partridge, and then, by raising the little finger, wash it
down with a glass of Lafitte or Clos-Vougeot.
They have utterly forgot that social love of good eating which combines
in one, Athenian elegance, Roman luxury, and Parisian refinement. It
implies discretion to arrange, skill to prepare; it appreciates
energetically, and judges profoundly. It is a precious quality, almost
deserving to rank as a virtue, and is very certainly the source of much
unqualified enjoyment.
_Gourmandise_, or the love of good living, is an impassioned, rational,
and habitual preference for whatever flatters the sense of taste. It is
opposed to excess; therefore every man who eats to indigestion, or makes
himself drunk, runs the risk of being erased from the list of its
votaries. _Gourmandise_ also comprises a love for dainties or tit-bits;
which is merely an analogous preference, limited to light, delicate, or
small dishes, to pastry, and so forth. It is a modification allowed in
favor of the women, or men of feminine tastes.
Regarded from any point of view, the love of good living deserves
nothing but praise and encouragement. Physically, it is the result and
proof of the digestive organs being healthy and perfect. Morally, it
shows implicit resignation to the commands of Nature, who, in ordering
man to eat that he may live, gives him appetite to invite, flavor to
encourage, and pleasure to reward.
From the political economist's point of view, the love of good living is
a tie between nations, uniting them by the interchange of various
articles of food which are in constant use. Hence the voyage from Pole
to Pole of wines, sugars, fruits, and so forth. What else sustains the
hope and emulation of that crowd of fishermen, huntsmen, gardeners, and
others who daily stock the most sumptuous larders with the results of
their skill and labor? What else supports the industrious army of cooks,
pastry-cooks, confectioners, and many other food-preparers, with all
their various assistants? These various branches of industry derive
their support in a great measure from the largest incomes, but they also
rely upon the daily wants of all classes.
As society is at present constituted, it is almost impossible to
conceive of a race living solely on bread and vegetables. Such a nation
would infallibly be conquered by the armies of some flesh-eating race
(like the Hindoos, who have been the prey of all those, one after
another, who cared to attack them), or else it would be converted by the
cooking of the neighboring nations, as ancient history records of the
Boeotians, who acquired a love for good living after the battle
of Leuctra.
Good living opens out great resources for replenishing the public purse:
it brings contributions to town-dues, to the custom-house, and other
indirect contributions. Everything we eat is taxed, and there is no
exchequer that is not substantially supported by lovers of good living.
Shall we speak of that swarm of cooks who have for ages been annually
leaving France, to improve foreign nations in the art of good living?
Most of them succeed; and in obedience to an instinct which never dies
in a Frenchman's heart, bring back to their country the fruits of their
economy. The sum thus imported is greater than might be supposed, and
therefore they, like the others, will be honored by posterity.
But if nations were grateful, then Frenchmen, above all other races,
ought to raise a temple and altars to "Gourmandise." By the treaty of
November, 1815, the allies imposed upon France the condition of paying
thirty millions sterling in three years, besides claims for compensation
and various requisitions, amounting to nearly as much more. The
apprehension, or rather certainty, became general that a national
bankruptcy must ensue, more especially as the money was to be paid
in specie.
"Alas!" said all who had anything to lose, as they saw the fatal
tumbril pass to be filled in the Rue Vivienne, "there is our money
emigrating in a lump; next year we shall fall on our knees before a
crown-piece; we are about to fall into the condition of a ruined man;
speculations of every kind will fail; it will be impossible to borrow;
there will be nothing but weakness, exhaustion, civil death."
These terrors were proved false by the result; and to the great
astonishment of all engaged in financial matters, the payments were made
without difficulty, credit rose, loans were eagerly caught at, and
during all the time this "superpurgation" lasted, the balance of
exchange was in favor of France. In other words, more money came into
the country than went out of it.
What is the power that came to our assistance? Who is the divinity that
worked this miracle? The love of good living.
When the Britons, Germans, Teutons, Cimmerians, and Scythians made their
irruption into France, they brought a rare voracity, and stomachs of no
ordinary capacity. They did not long remain satisfied with the official
cheer which a forced hospitality had to supply them with. They aspired
to enjoyments of greater refinement; and soon the Queen City was nothing
but a huge refectory. Everywhere they were seen eating, those
intruders--in the restaurants, the eating-houses, the inns, the taverns,
the stalls, and even in the streets. They gorged themselves with flesh,
fish, game, truffles, pastry, and especially with fruit. They drank with
an avidity equal to their appetite, and always ordered the most
expensive wines, in the hope of finding in them some enjoyment hitherto
unknown, and seemed quite astonished when they were disappointed.
Superficial observers did not know what to think of this menagerie
without bounds or limits; but your genuine Parisian laughed and rubbed
his hands. "We have them now!" said he; "and to-night they'll have paid
us back more than was counted out to them this morning from the public
treasury!"
That was a lucky time for those who provide for the enjoyments of the
sense of taste. Véry made his fortune; Achard laid the foundation of
his; Beauvilliers made a third; and Madame Sullot, whose shop in the
Palais Royal was a mere box of a place, sold as many as twelve thousand
tarts a day.
The effect still lasts. Foreigners flow in from all quarters of Europe
to renew during peace the delightful habits which they contracted
during the war. They must come to Paris, and when they are there, they
must be regaled at any price. If our funds are in favor, it is due not
so much to the higher interest they pay, as to the instinctive
confidence which foreigners cannot help placing in a people amongst whom
every lover of good living finds so much happiness.
Love of good living is by no means unbecoming in women. It agrees with
the delicacy of their organization, and serves as a compensation for
some pleasures which they are obliged to abstain from, and for some
hardships to which nature seems to have condemned them. There is no more
pleasant sight than a pretty _gourmande_ under arms. Her napkin is
nicely adjusted; one of her hands rests on the table, the other carries
to her mouth little morsels artistically carved, or the wing of a
partridge which must be picked. Her eyes sparkle, her lips are glossy,
her talk is cheerful, all her movements graceful; nor is there lacking
some spice of the coquetry which accompanies all that women do. With so
many advantages, she is irresistible, and Cato the Censor himself could
not help yielding to the influence.
The love of good living is in some sort instinctive in women, because it
is favorable to beauty. It has been proved, by a series of rigorously
exact observations, that by a succulent, delicate, and choice regimen,
the external appearances of age are kept away for a long time. It gives
more brilliancy to the eye, more freshness to the skin, more support to
the muscles; and as it is certain in physiology that wrinkles, those
formidable enemies of beauty, are caused by the depression of muscle, it
is equally true that, other things being equal, those who understand
eating are comparatively four years younger than those ignorant of that
science. Painters and sculptors are deeply impenetrated with this truth;
for in representing those who practice abstinence by choice or duty as
misers or anchorites, they always give them the pallor of disease, the
leanness of misery, and the wrinkles of decrepitude.
Good living is one of the main links of society, by gradually extending
that spirit of conviviality by which different classes are daily brought
closer together and welded into one whole; by animating the
conversation, and rounding off the angles of conventional inequality. To
the same cause we can also ascribe all the efforts a host makes to
receive his guests properly, as well as their gratitude for his pains so
well bestowed. What disgrace should ever be heaped upon those senseless
feeders who, with unpardonable indifference, swallow down morsels of
the rarest quality, or gulp with unrighteous carelessness some
fine-flavored and sparkling wine.
As a general maxim: Whoever shows a desire to please will be certain of
having a delicate compliment paid him by every well-bred man.
Again, when shared, the love of good living has the most marked
influence on the happiness of the conjugal state. A wedded pair with
this taste in common have once a day at least a pleasant opportunity of
meeting. For even when they sleep apart (and a great many do so), they
at least eat at the same table, they have a subject of conversation
which is ever new, they speak not only of what they are eating, but also
of what they have eaten or will eat, of dishes which are in vogue, of
novelties, etc. Everybody knows that a familiar chat is delightful.
Music, no doubt, has powerful attractions for those who are fond of it,
but one must set about it--it is an exertion. Besides, one sometimes has
a cold, the music is mislaid, the instruments are out of tune, one has a
fit of the blues, or it is a forbidden day. Whereas, in the other case,
a common want summons the spouses to table, the same inclination keeps
them there; they naturally show each other these little attentions as a
proof of their wish to oblige, and the mode of conducting their meals
has a great share in the happiness of their lives.
This observation, though new in France, has not escaped the notice of
Richardson, the English moralist. He has worked out the idea in his
novel 'Pamela,' by painting the different manner in which two married
couples finish their day. The first husband is a lord, an eldest son,
and therefore heir to all the family property; the second is his younger
brother, the husband of Pamela, who has been disinherited on account of
his marriage, and lives on half-pay in a state but little removed from
abject poverty.
The lord and lady enter their dining-room by different doors, and salute
each other coldly, though they have not met the whole day before.
Sitting down at a table which is magnificently covered, surrounded by
lackeys in brilliant liveries, they help themselves in silence, and eat
without pleasure. As soon, however, as the servants have withdrawn, a
sort of conversation is begun between the pair, which quickly shows a
bitter tone, passing into a regular fight, and they rise from the table
in a fury of anger, and go off to their separate apartments to reflect
upon the pleasures of a single life.
The younger brother, on the contrary, is, on reaching his unpretentious
home, received with a gentle, loving heartiness and the fondest
caresses. He sits down to a frugal meal, but everything he eats is
excellent; and how could it be otherwise? It is Pamela herself who has
prepared it all. They eat with enjoyment, talking of their affairs,
their plans, their love for each other. A half-bottle of Madeira serves
to prolong their repast and conversation, and soon after they retire
together, to forget in sleep their present hardships, and to dream of a
better future.
All honor to the love of good living, such as it is the purpose of this
book to describe, so long as it does not come between men and their
occupations or duties! For, as all the debaucheries of a Sardanapalus
cannot bring disrespect upon womankind in general, so the excesses of a
Vitellius need not make us turn our backs upon a well-appointed banquet.
Should the love of good living pass into gluttony, voracity,
intemperance, it then loses its name and advantages, escapes from our
jurisdiction, and falls within that of the moralist to ply it with good
counsel, or of the physician who will cure it by his remedies.
ON PEOPLE FOND OF GOOD LIVING
There are individuals to whom nature has denied a refinement of organs,
or a continuity of attention, without which the most succulent dishes
pass unobserved. Physiology has already recognized the first of these
varieties, by showing us the tongue of these unhappy ones, badly
furnished with nerves for inhaling and appreciating flavors. These
excite in them but an obtuse sentiment; such persons are, with regard to
objects of taste, what the blind are with regard to light. The second
class are the absent-minded, chatterboxes, persons engrossed in business
or ambition, and others who seek to occupy themselves with two things at
once, and eat only to be filled. Such, for example, was Napoleon; he was
irregular in his meals, and ate fast and badly. But there again was to
be traced that absolute will which he carried into everything he did.
The moment appetite was felt, it was necessary that it should be
satisfied; and his establishment was so arranged that, in any place and
at any hour, chicken, cutlets, and coffee might be forthcoming at
a word.
There is a privileged class of persons who are summoned to the
enjoyments of taste by a physical and organic predisposition. I have
always believed in physiognomy and phrenology. Men have inborn
tendencies; and since there are some who come into the world seeing,
hearing, and walking badly, because they are short-sighted, deaf, or
crippled, why should there not be others who are specially predisposed
to experience a certain series of sensations? Moreover, even an
ordinary observer will constantly discover faces which bear the
unmistakable imprint of a ruling passion--such as superciliousness,
self-satisfaction, misanthropy, sensuality, and many others. Sometimes,
no doubt, we meet with a face that expresses nothing; but when the
physiognomy has a marked stamp it is almost always a true index. The
passions act upon the muscles, and frequently, although a man says
nothing, the various feelings by which he is moved can be read in his
face. By this tension, if in the slightest degree habitual, perceptible
traces are at last left, and the physiognomy thus assumes its permanent
and recognizable characteristics.
Those predisposed to epicurism are for the most part of middling height.
They are broad-faced, and have bright eyes, small forehead, short nose,
fleshy lips, and rounded chin. The women are plump, chubby, pretty
rather than beautiful, with a slight tendency to fullness of figure. It
is under such an exterior that we must look for agreeable guests. They
accept all that is offered them, eat without hurry, and taste with
discrimination. They never make any haste to get away from houses where
they have been well treated, but stay for the evening, because they know
all the games and other after-dinner amusements.
Those, on the contrary, to whom nature has denied an aptitude for the
enjoyments of taste, are long-faced, long-nosed, and long-eyed: whatever
their stature, they have something lanky about them. They have dark,
lanky hair, and are never in good condition. It was one of them who
invented trousers. The women whom nature has afflicted with the same
misfortune are angular, feel themselves bored at table, and live on
cards and scandal.
This theory of mine can be verified by each reader from his own personal
observation. I shall give an instance from my own personal experience:--
Sitting one day at a grand banquet, I had opposite me a very pretty
neighbor, whose face showed the predisposition I have described.
Leaning to the guest beside me, I said quietly that from her
physiognomy, the young lady on the other side of the table must be fond
of good eating. "You must be mad!" he answered; "she is but fifteen at
most, which is certainly not the age for such a thing. However, let
us watch."
At first, things were by no means in my favor, and I was somewhat afraid
of having compromised myself, for during the first two courses the young
lady quite astonished me by her discretion, and I suspected we had
stumbled upon an exception, remembering that there are some for every
rule. But at last the dessert came,--a dessert both magnificent and
abundant,--and my hopes were again revived. Nor did I hope in vain: not
only did she eat of all that was offered her, but she even got dishes
brought to her from the farthest parts of the table. In a word, she
tasted everything, and my neighbor at last expressed his astonishment
that the little stomach could hold so many things. Thus was my diagnosis
verified, and once again science triumphed.
Whilst I was writing the above, on a fine winter's evening, M. Cartier,
formerly the first violinist at the Opera, paid me a visit, and sat down
at the fireside. Being full of my subject, I said, after looking at him
attentively for some time, "How does it happen, my dear professor, that
you are no epicure, when you have all the features of one?" "I was one,"
he replied, "and among the foremost; but now I refrain." "On principle,
I suppose?" said I; but all the answer I had was a sigh, like one of Sir
Walter Scott's--that is to say, almost a groan.
As some are gourmands by predestination, so others become so by their
state in society or their calling. There are four classes which I should
signalize by way of eminence: the moneyed class, the doctors, men of
letters, and the devout.
Inequality of condition implies inequality of wealth, but inequality of
wealth does not imply inequality of wants; and he who can afford every
day a dinner sufficient for a hundred persons is often satisfied by
eating the thigh of a chicken. Hence the necessity for the many devices
of art to reanimate that ghost of an appetite by dishes which maintain
it without injury, and caress without stifling it.
The causes which act upon doctors are very different, though not less
powerful. They become epicures in spite of themselves, and must be made
of bronze to resist the seductive power of circumstances. The "dear
doctor" is all the more kindly welcomed that health is the most precious
of boons; and thus they are always waited for with impatience and
received with eagerness. Some are kind to them from hope, others from
gratitude. They are fed like pet pigeons. They let things take their
course, and in six months the habit is confirmed, and they are gourmands
past redemption.
I ventured one day to express this opinion at a banquet in which, with
eight others, I took a part, with Dr. Corvisart at the head of the
table. It was about the year 1806.
"You!" cried I, with the inspired tone of a Puritan preacher; "you are
the last remnant of a body which formerly covered the whole of France.
Alas! its members are annihilated or widely scattered. No more
_fermiers-généraux_, no abbés nor knights nor white-coated friars. The
members of your profession constitute the whole gastronomic body.
Sustain with firmness that great responsibility, even if you must share
the fate of the three hundred Spartans at the Pass of Thermopylae."
At the same dinner I observed the following noteworthy fact. The doctor,
who, when in the mood, was a most agreeable companion, drank nothing but
iced champagne; and therefore in the earlier part of the dinner, whilst
others were engaged in eating, he kept talking loudly and telling
stories. But at dessert, on the contrary, and when the general
conversation began to be lively, he became serious, silent, and
sometimes low-spirited.
From this observation, confirmed by many others, I have deduced the
following theorem:--"Champagne, though at first exhilarating, ultimately
produces stupefying effects;" a result, moreover, which is a well-known
characteristic of the carbonic acid which it contains.
Whilst I have the university doctors under my grasp, I must, before I
die, reproach them with the extreme severity which they use towards
their patients. As soon as one has the misfortune to fall into their
hands, he must undergo a whole litany of prohibitions, and give up
everything that he is accustomed to think agreeable. I rise up to oppose
such interdictions, as being for the most part useless. I say useless,
because the patient never longs for what is hurtful. A doctor of
judgment will never lose sight of the instinctive tendency of our
inclinations, or forget that if painful sensations are naturally fraught
with danger, those which are pleasant have a healthy tendency. We have
seen a drop of wine, a cup of coffee, or a thimbleful of liqueur, call
up a smile to the most Hippocratic face.
Those severe prescribers must, moreover, know very well that their
prescriptions remain almost always without result. The patient tries to
evade the duty of taking them; those about him easily find a good excuse
for humoring him, and thus his death is neither hastened nor retarded.
In 1815 the medical allowance of a sick Russian would have made a
drayman drunk, and that of an Englishman was enough for a Limousin. Nor
was any diminution possible, for there were military inspectors
constantly going round our hospitals to examine the supply and the
consumption.
I am the more confident in announcing my opinion because it is based
upon numerous facts, and the most successful practitioners have used a
system closely resembling it.
Canon Rollet, who died some fifty years ago, was a hard drinker,
according to the custom of those days. He fell ill, and the doctor's
first words were a prohibition of wine in any form. On his very next
visit, however, our physician found beside the bed of his patient the
_corpus delicti_ itself, to wit, a table covered with a snow-white
cloth, a crystal cup, a handsome-looking bottle, and a napkin to wipe
the lips. At this sight he flew into a violent passion and spoke of
leaving the house, when the wretched canon cried to him in tones of
lamentation, "Ah, doctor, remember that in forbidding me to drink, you
have not forbidden me the pleasure of looking at the bottle!"
The physician who treated Montlusin of Pont de Veyle was still more
severe, for not only did he forbid the use of wine to his patient, but
also prescribed large doses of water. Shortly after the doctor's
departure, Madame Montlusin, anxious to give full effect to the medical
orders and assist in the recovery of her husband's health, offered him a
large glass of the finest and clearest water. The patient took it with
docility, and began to drink it with resignation; but stopping short at
the first mouthful, he handed back the glass to his wife. "Take it, my
dear," said he, "and keep it for another time; I have always heard it
said that we should not trifle with remedies."
In the domain of gastronomy the men of letters are near neighbors to the
doctors. A hundred years ago literary men were all hard drinkers. They
followed the fashion, and the memoirs of the period are quite edifying
on that subject. At the present day they are gastronomes, and it is a
step in the right direction. I by no means agree with the cynical
Geoffroy, who used to say that if our modern writings are weak, it is
because literary men now drink nothing stronger than lemonade. The
present age is rich in talents, and the very number of books probably
interferes with their proper appreciation; but posterity, being more
calm and judicial, will see amongst them much to admire, just as we
ourselves have done justice to the masterpieces of Racine and Molière,
which were received by their contemporaries with coldness.
Never has the social position of men of letters been more pleasant than
at present. They no longer live in wretched garrets; the fields of
literature are become more fertile, and even the study of the Muses has
become productive. Received on an equality in any rank of life, they no
longer wait for patronage; and to fill up their cup of happiness, good
living bestows upon them its dearest favors. Men of letters are invited
because of the good opinion men have of their talents; because their
conversation has, generally speaking, something piquant in it, and also
because now every dinner-party must as a matter of course have its
literary man.
Those gentlemen always arrive a little late, but are welcomed, because
expected. They are treated as favorites so that they may come again, and
regaled that they may shine; and as they find all this very natural, by
being accustomed to it they become, are, and remain gastronomes.
Finally, amongst the most faithful in the ranks of gastronomy we must
reckon many of the devout--i.e., those spoken of by Louis XIV. and
Molière, whose religion consists in outward show;--nothing to do with
those who are really pious and charitable.
Let us consider how this comes about. Of those who wish to secure their
salvation, the greater number try to find the most pleasant road. Men
who flee from society, sleep on the ground, and wear hair-cloth next the
skin, have always been, and must ever be, exceptions. Now there are
certain things unquestionably to be condemned, and on no account to be
indulged in--as balls, theatres, gambling, and other similar amusements;
and whilst they and all that practice them are to be hated, good living
presents itself insinuatingly in a thoroughly orthodox guise.
By right divine, man is king of nature, and all that the earth produces
was created for him. It is for him that the quail is fattened, for him
that Mocha possesses so agreeable an aroma, for him that sugar has such
wholesome properties. How then neglect to use, within reasonable limits,
the good things which Providence presents to us; especially if we
continue to regard them as things that perish with the using, especially
if they raise our thankfulness towards the Author of all!
Other equally strong reasons come to strengthen these. Can we be too
hospitable in receiving those who have charge of our souls, and keep us
in the way of safety? Should those meetings with so excellent an object
not be made pleasant, and therefore frequent?
Sometimes, also, the gifts of Comus arrive unsought--perhaps a souvenir
of college days, a present from an old friend, a peace-offering from a
penitent or a college chum recalling himself to one's memory. How refuse
to accept such offerings, or to make systematic use of them? It is
simply a necessity.
The monasteries were real magazines of charming dainties, which is one
reason why certain connoisseurs so bitterly regret them. Several of the
monastic orders, especially that of St. Bernard, made a profession of
good cheer. The limits of gastronomic art have been extended by the
cooks of the clergy, and when M. de Pressigni (afterwards Archbishop of
Besançon) returned from the Conclave at the election of Pius VI., he
said that the best dinner he had had in Rome was at the table of the
head of the Capuchins.
We cannot conclude this article better than by honorably mentioning two
classes of men whom we have seen in all their glory, and whom the
Revolution has eclipsed--the chevaliers and the abbés. How they enjoyed
good living, those dear old fellows! That could be told at a glance by
their nervous nostrils, their clear eyes, their moist lips and mobile
tongues. Each class had at the same time its own special manner of
eating: the chevalier having something military and dignified in his air
and attitude; while the abbé gathered himself together, as it were, to
be nearer his plate, with his right hand curved inward like the paw of a
cat drawing chestnuts from the fire, whilst in every feature was shown
enjoyment and an indefinable look of close attention.
So far from good living being hurtful to health, it has been
arithmetically proved by Dr. Villermé in an able paper read before the
Académie des Sciences, that other things being equal, the gourmands live
longer than ordinary men.
CHARLOTTE BRONTÉ AND HER SISTERS
(1816-1855)
The least that can be said of Charlotte Bronté is that she is a unique
figure in literature. Nowhere else do we find another personality
combining such extraordinary qualities of mind and heart,--qualities
strangely contrasted, but still more strangely harmonized. At times they
are baffling, but always fascinating. Nowhere else do we find so
intimate an association of the personality of the author with the work,
so thorough an identification with it of the author's life, even to the
smaller details. So true is this in the case of Charlotte Bronté that
the four novels 'Jane Eyre,' 'Shirley,' 'Villette,' and 'The Professor'
might with some justice be termed 'Charlotte Bronté; her life and her
friends.' Her works were in large part an expression of herself; at
times the best expression of herself--of her actual self in experience
and of her spiritual self in travail and in aspiration. It is manifestly
impossible therefore to consider the works of Charlotte Bronté with
justice apart from herself. A correct understanding of her books can be
obtained only from a study of her remarkable personality and of the sad
circumstances of her life.
Public interest in Charlotte Bronté was first roused in 1847. In October
of that year there appeared in London a novel that created a sensation,
the like of which had not been known since the publication of
'Waverley.' Its stern and paradoxical disregard for the conventional,
its masculine energy, and its intense realism, startled the public, and
proclaimed to all in accents unmistakable that a new, strange, and
splendid power had come into literature, "but yet a woman."
And with the success of 'Jane Eyre' came a lively curiosity to know
something of the personality of the author. This was not gratified for
some time. There were many conjectures, all of them far amiss. The
majority of readers asserted confidently that the work must be that of a
man; the touch was unmistakably masculine. In some quarters it met with
hearty abuse. The Quarterly Review, in an article still notorious for
its brutality, condemned the book as coarse, and stated that if 'Jane
Eyre' were really written by a woman, she must be an improper woman, who
had forfeited the society of her sex. This was said in December, 1848,
of one of the noblest and purest of womankind. It is not a matter of
surprise that the identity of this audacious speculator was not
revealed. The recent examination into the topic by Mr. Clement Shorter
seems, however, to fix the authorship of the notice on Lady Eastlake, at
that time Miss Driggs.
But hostile criticism of the book and its mysterious author could not
injure its popularity. The story swept all before it--press and public.
Whatever might be the source, the work stood there and spoke for itself
in commanding terms. At length the mystery was cleared. A shrewd
Yorkshireman guessed and published the truth, and the curious world knew
that the author of 'Jane Eyre' was the daughter of a clergyman in the
little village of Haworth, and that the literary sensation of the day
found its source in a nervous, shrinking, awkward, plain, delicate young
creature of thirty-one years of age, whose life, with the exception of
two years, had been spent on the bleak and dreary moorlands of
Yorkshire, and for the most part in the narrow confines of a grim gray
stone parsonage. There she had lived a pinched and meagre little life,
full of sadness and self-denial, with two sisters more delicate than
herself, a dissolute brother, and a father her only parent,--a stern and
forbidding father. This was no genial environment for an author, even if
helpful to her vivid imagination. Nor was it a temporary condition; it
was a permanent one. Nearly all the influences in Charlotte Bronté's
life were such as these, which would seem to cramp if not to stifle
sensitive talent. Her brother Branwell (physically weaker than herself,
though unquestionably talented, and for a time the idol and hope of the
family) became dissipated, irresponsible, untruthful, and a
ne'er-do-weel, and finally yielding to circumstances, ended miserably a
life of failure.
But Charlotte Bronté's nature was one of indomitable courage, that
circumstances might shadow but could not obscure. Out of the meagre
elements of her narrow life she evolved works that stand among the
imperishable things of English literature. It is a paradox that finds
its explanation only in a statement of natural sources, primitive,
bardic, the sources of the early epics, the sources of such epics as
Cædmon and Beowulf bore. She wrote from a sort of necessity; it was in
obedience to the commanding authority of an extraordinary genius,--a
creative power that struggled for expression,--and much of her work
deserves in the best and fullest sense the term "inspired."
[Illustration: Charlotte Bronté]
The facts of her life are few in number, but they have a direct and
significant bearing on her work. She was born at Thornton, in the parish
of Bradford, in 1816. Four years later her father moved to Haworth, to
the parsonage now indissolubly associated with her name, and there Mr.
Bronté entered upon a long period of pastorate service, that only
ended with his death. Charlotte's mother was dead. In 1824 Charlotte and
two older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, went to a school at Cowan's
Bridge. It was an institution for clergymen's children, a vivid picture
of which appears in 'Jane Eyre.' It was so badly managed and the food
was so poor that many of the children fell sick, among them Maria
Bronté, who died in 1825. Elizabeth followed her a few months later, and
Charlotte returned to Haworth, where she remained for six years, then
went to school at Roe Head for a period of three years. She was offered
the position of teacher by Miss Wooler, the principal at Roe Head, but
considering herself unfit to teach, she resolved to go to Brussels to
study French. She spent two years there, and it was there that her
intimate and misconstrued friendship for M. Heger developed. The
incidents of that period formed the material of a greater portion of her
novel 'Villette,' filled twenty-two volumes of from sixty to one hundred
pages of fine writing, and consisted of some forty complete novelettes
or other stories and childish "magazines."
On returning to Haworth, she endeavored, together with her sister Emily,
to establish a school at their home. But pupils were not to be had, and
the outlook was discouraging. Two periods of service as governess, and
the ill health that had followed, had taught Charlotte the danger that
threatened her. Her experiences as a governess in the Sedgwick family
were pictured by-and-by in 'Jane Eyre.' In a letter to Miss Ellen
Nussey, written at this time, she gives a dark vignette of her
situation.
With her two sisters Emily and Anne she lived a quiet and retired life.
The harsh realities about them, the rough natures of the Yorkshire
people, impelled the three sisters to construct in their home an ideal
world of their own, and in this their pent-up natures found expression.
Their home was lonely and gloomy. Mr. Clement K. Shorter, in his recent
study of the novelist and her family, says that the house is much the
same to-day, though its immediate surroundings are brightened.
He writes:
"One day Emily confided to Charlotte that she had written some verses.
Charlotte answered with a similar confidence, and then Anne acknowledged
that she too had been secretly writing. This mutual confession brought
about a complete understanding and sympathy, and from that time on the
sisters worked together--reading their literary productions to one
another and submitting to each other's criticism."
This was however by no means Charlotte's first literary work. She has
left a catalogue of books written by her between 1829 and 1830. Her
first printed work however appeared in a volume of 'Poems' by Acton,
Ellis, and Currer Bell, published in 1846 at the expense of the authors.
Under these names the little book of the Bronté sisters went forth to
the world, was reviewed with mild favor in some few periodicals, and was
lost to sight.
Then came a period of novel-writing. As a result, Emily Bronté's
'Wuthering Heights,' Anne Bronté's 'Agnes Grey,' and Charlotte Bronté's
'The Professor' set out together to find a publisher. The last-named was
unsuccessful; but on the day it was returned to her, Charlotte Bronté
began writing 'Jane Eyre.' That first masterpiece was shaped during a
period of sorrow and discouragement. Her father was ill and in danger of
losing his eyesight. Her brother Bran well was sinking into the slough
of disgrace. No wonder 'Jane Eyre' is not a story of sunshine and roses.
She finished the story in 1847, and it was accepted by the publishers
promptly upon examination.
After its publication and the sensation produced, Charlotte Bronté
continued her literary work quietly, and unaffected by the furore she
had aroused. A few brief visits to London, where attempts were made to
lionize her,--very much to her distaste,--a few literary friendships,
notably those with Thackeray, George Henry Lewes, Mrs. Gaskell, and
Harriet Martineau, were the only features that distinguished her
literary life from the simple life she had always led and continued to
lead at Haworth. She was ever busy, if not ever at her desk. Success had
come; she was sane in the midst of it. She wrote slowly and only as she
felt the impulse, and when she knew she had found the proper impression.
In 1849 'Shirley' was published. In 1853 appeared 'Villette,' her last
finished work, and the one considered by herself the best.
In 1854 she married her father's curate, Mr. A.B. Nicholls. She had lost
her brother Branwell and her two sisters Emily and Anne. Sorrow upon
sorrow had closed like deepening shadows about her. All happiness in
life for her had apparently ended, when this marriage brought a brief
ray of sunshine. It was a happy union, and seemed to assure a period of
peace and rest for the sorely tried soul. Only a few short months,
however, and fate, as if grudging her even the bit of happiness, snapped
the slender threads of her life and the whole sad episode of her
existence was ended. She died March 31st, 1855, leaving her husband and
father to mourn together in the lonely parsonage. She left a literary
fragment--the story entitled 'Emma,' which was published with an
introduction by Thackeray.
Such are the main facts of this reserved life of Charlotte Bronté. Are
they dull and commonplace? Some of them are indeed inexpressibly sad.
Tragedy is beneath all the bitter chronicle. The sadness of her days can
be appreciated by all who read her books. Through all her stories there
is an intense note, especially in treating the pathos of existence, that
is unmistakably subjective. There is a keen perception of the darker
depths of human nature that could have been revealed to a human heart
only by suffering and sorrow.
She did not allow sadness, however, to crush her spirit. She was neither
morbid nor melancholy, but on the contrary Charlotte was cheerful and
pleasant in disposition and manner. She was a loving sister and devoted
daughter, patient and obedient to a parent who afterwards made obedience
a severe hardship. There were other sides to her character. She was not
always calm. She was not ever tender and a maker of allowances. But who
is such? And she had good reason to be impatient with the world as
she found it.
Her character and disposition are partially reflected in 'Jane Eyre.'
The calm, clear mind, the brave, independent spirit are there. But a
fuller and more accurate picture of her character may be found in Lucy
Snowe, the heroine of 'Villette.' Here we find especially that note of
hopelessness that predominated in Charlotte's character. Mrs. Gaskell,
in her admirable biography of Charlotte Bronté, has called attention to
this absence of hope in her nature. Charlotte indeed never allowed
herself to look forward to happy issues. She had no confidence in the
future. The pressure of grief apparently crushed all buoyancy of
expectation. It was in this attitude that when literary success greeted
her, she made little of it, scarcely allowing herself to believe that
the world really set a high value on her work. Throughout all the
excitement that her books produced, she was almost indifferent. Brought
up as she had been to regard literary work as something beyond the
proper limits of her sex, she never could quite rid herself of the
belief that in writing successfully, she had made of herself not so much
a literary figure as a sort of social curiosity. Nor was that idea
wholly foreign to her time.
Personally Charlotte Bronté was not unattractive. Though somewhat too
slender and pale, and plain of feature, she had a pleasant expression,
and her homelier features were redeemed by a strong massive forehead,
luxuriant glossy hair, and handsome eyes. Though she had little faith in
her powers of inspiring affection, she attracted people strongly and was
well beloved by her friends. That she could stir romantic sentiment too
was attested by the fact that she received and rejected three proposals
of marriage from as many suitors, before her acceptance of Mr. Nicholls.
Allusion has been made to the work of Charlotte's two sisters, Emily and
Anne. Of the two Emily is by far the more remarkable, revealing in the
single novel we have from her pen a genius as distinct and individual as
that of her more celebrated sister. Had she lived, it is more than
likely that her literary achievements would have rivaled Charlotte's.
Emily Bronté has always been something of a puzzle to biographers. She
was eccentric, an odd mixture of bashful reserve and unexpected spells
of frankness, sweet, gentle, and retiring in disposition, but possessed
of great courage. She was two years younger than Charlotte, but taller.
She was slender, though well formed, and was pale in complexion, with
great gray eyes of remarkable beauty. Emily's literary work is to be
found in the volume of "Poems" of her sisters, her share in that work
being considered superior in imaginative quality and in finish to that
of the others; and in the novel "Wuthering Heights," a weird, horrid
story of astonishing power, written when she was twenty-eight years of
age. Considered purely as an imaginative work, "Wuthering Heights" is
one of the most remarkable stories in English literature, and is worthy
to be ranked with the works of Edgar A. Poe. Many will say that it might
better not have been written, so utterly repulsive is it, but others
will value it as a striking, though distorted, expression of
unmistakable genius. It is a ghastly and gruesome creation. Not one
bright ray redeems it. It deals with the most evil characters and the
most evil phases of human experience. But it fascinates. Heathcliff, the
chief figure in the book, is one of the greatest villains in
fiction,--an abhorrent creature,--strange, monstrous, Frankensteinesque.
Anne Bronté is known by her share in the book of "Poems" and by two
novels, "Agnes Gray" and "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall," both of which
are disappointing. The former is based on the author's experiences as a
governess, and is written in the usual placid style of romances of the
time. "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" found its suggestion in the wretched
career of Branwell Bronté, and presents a sad and depressing picture of
a life of degradation. The book was not a success, and would no doubt
have sunk long ago into oblivion but for its association with the novels
of Emily and Charlotte.
In studying the work of Charlotte Bronté, the gifted older sister of the
group, one of the first of the qualities that impress the reader is her
actual creative power. To one of her imaginative power, the simplest
life was sufficient, the smallest details a fund of material. Mr.
Swinburne has called attention to the fact that Charlotte Bronté's
characters are individual creations, not types constructed out of
elements gathered from a wide observation of human nature, and that they
are _real_ creations; that they compel our interest and command our
assent because they are true, inevitably true. Perhaps no better example
of this individualism could be cited than Rochester. The character is
unique. It is not a type, nor has it even a prototype, like so many of
Charlotte Bronté's characters. Gossip insisted at one time that the
author intended to picture Thackeray in Rochester, but this is
groundless. Rochester is an original creation. The character of Jane
Eyre, too, while reflecting something of the author's nature, was
distinctly individual; and it is interesting to note here that with Jane
Eyre came a new heroine into fiction, a woman of calm, clear reason, of
firm positive character, and what was most novel, a plain woman, a
homely heroine.
"Why is it," Charlotte had once said, "that heroines must always be
beautiful?" The hero of romance was always noble and handsome, the
heroine lovely and often insipid, and the scenes set in an atmosphere of
exaggerated idealism. Against this idealism Charlotte Bronté revolted.
Her effort was always toward realism.
In her realism she reveals a second characteristic scarcely less marked
than her creative powers,--an extraordinary faculty of observation. She
saw the essence, the spirit of things, and the simplest details of life
revealed to her the secrets of human nature. What she had herself seen
and felt--the plain rugged types of Yorkshire character, the wild
scenery of the moorlands--she reflected with living truth. She got the
real fact out of every bit of material in humanity and nature that her
simple life afforded her. And where her experience could not afford her
the necessary material, she drew upon some mysterious resources in her
nature, which were apparently not less reliable than actual experience.
On being asked once how she could describe so accurately the effects of
opium as she does in 'Villette,' she replied that she knew nothing of
opium, but that she had followed the process she always adopted in cases
of this kind. She had thought intently on the matter for many a night
before falling asleep; till at length, after some time, she waked in the
morning with all clear before her, just as if she had actually gone
through the experience, and then could describe it word for word as
it happened.
Her sensitiveness to impressions of nature was exceedingly keen. She had
what Swinburne calls "an instinct for the tragic use of landscape." By
constant and close observation during her walks she had established a
fellowship with nature in all her phases; learning her secrets from the
voices of the night, from the whisper of the trees, and from the eerie
moaning of the moorland blasts. She studied the cold sky, and had
watched the "coming night-clouds trailing low like banners drooping."
Other qualities that distinguish her work are purity, depth and ardor of
passion, and spiritual force and fervor. Her genius was lofty and noble,
and an exalted moral quality predominates in her stories. She was
ethical as sincerely as she was emotional.
We have only to consider her technique, in which she is
characteristically original. This originality is noticeable especially
in her use of words. There is a sense of fitness that often surprises
the reader. Words at times in her hands reveal a new power and
significance. In the choice of words Charlotte Bronté was scrupulous.
She believed that there was just one word fit to express the idea or
shade of meaning she wished to convey, and she never admitted a
substitute, sometimes waiting days until the right word came. Her
expressions are therefore well fitted and forcible. Though the
predominant key is a serious one, there is nevertheless considerable
humor in Charlotte Bronté's work. In 'Shirley' especially we find many
happy scenes, and much wit in repartee. And yet, with all these merits,
one will find at times her style to be lame, stiff, and crude, and even
when strongest, occasionally coarse. Not infrequently she is
melodramatic and sensational. But through it all there is that pervading
sense of reality and it redeems these defects.
Of the unusual, the improbable, the highly colored in Charlotte Bronté's
books we shall say little. In criticizing works so true to life and
nature as these, one should not be hasty. We feel the presence of a
seer. Some one once made an objection in Charlotte Bronté's presence to
that part of 'Jane Eyre' in which she hears Rochester's voice calling to
her at a great crisis in her life, he being many miles distant from her
at the time. Charlotte caught her breath and replied in a low
voice:--"But it is a true thing; it really happened." And so it might be
said of Charlotte Bronté's work as a whole:--"It is a true thing; it
really happened."
JANE EYRE'S WEDDING DAY
From 'Jane Eyre'
Sophie came at seven to dress me. She was very long indeed in
accomplishing her task; so long that Mr. Rochester--grown, I suppose,
impatient of my delay--sent up to ask why I did not come. She was just
fastening my veil (the plain square of blonde, after all) to my hair
with a brooch; I hurried from under her hands as soon as I could.
"Stop!" she cried in French, "Look at yourself in the mirror; you have
not taken one peep."
So I turned at the door. I saw a robed and veiled figure, so unlike my
usual self that it seemed almost the image of a stranger.
"Jane!" called a voice, and I hastened down. I was received at the foot
of the stairs by Mr. Rochester. "Lingerer," he said, "my brain is on
fire with impatience; and you tarry so long!"
He took me into the dining-room, surveyed me keenly all over, pronounced
me "fair as a lily, and not only the pride of his life, but the desire
of his eyes"; and then, telling me he would give me but ten minutes to
eat some breakfast, he rang the bell. One of his lately hired servants,
a footman, answered it.
"Is John getting the carriage ready?"
"Yes, sir."
"Is the luggage brought down?"
"They are bringing it down, sir."
"Go you to the church; see if Mr. Wood" (the clergyman) "and the clerk
are there; return and tell me."
The church, as the reader knows, was but just beyond the gates; the
footman soon returned.
"Mr. Wood is in the vestry, sir, putting on his surplice."
"And the carriage?"
"The horses are harnessing."
"We shall not want it to go to church; but it must be ready the moment
we return--all the boxes and luggage arranged and strapped on, and the
coachman in his seat."
"Yes, sir."
"Jane, are you ready?"
I rose. There were no groomsmen, no bridesmaids, no relatives to wait
for or marshal; none but Mr. Rochester and I. Mrs. Fairfax stood in the
hall as we passed. I would fain have spoken to her, but my hand was held
by a grasp of iron; I was hurried along by a stride I could hardly
follow; and to look at Mr. Rochester's face was to feel that not a
second of delay would be tolerated for any purpose. I wondered what
other bridegroom ever looked as he did--so bent up to a purpose, so
grimly resolute; or who, under such steadfast brows, ever revealed such
flaming and flashing eyes.
I know not whether the day was fair or foul; in descending the drive I
gazed neither on sky nor earth; my heart was with my eyes, and both
seemed migrated into Mr. Rochester's frame. I wanted to see the
invisible thing on which, as we went along, he appeared to fasten a
glance fierce and fell. I wanted to feel the thoughts whose force he
seemed breasting and resisting.
At the churchyard wicket he stopped; he discovered I was quite out of
breath.
"Am I cruel in my love?" he said. "Delay an instant; lean on me, Jane."
And now I can recall the picture of the gray old house of God rising
calm before me, of a rook wheeling around the steeple, of a ruddy
morning sky beyond. I remember something, too, of the green
grave-mounds; and I have not forgotten, either, two figures of
strangers, straying among the low hillocks, and reading the mementos
graven on the few mossy headstones. I noticed them because as they saw
us they passed around to the back of the church; and I doubted not they
were going to enter by the side aisle door and witness the ceremony. By
Mr. Rochester they were not observed; he was earnestly looking at my
face, from which the blood had, I dare say, momentarily fled; for I felt
my forehead dewy and my cheeks and lips cold. When I rallied, which I
soon did, he walked gently with me up the path to the porch.
We entered the quiet and humble temple; the priest waited in his white
surplice at the lowly altar, the clerk beside him. All was still; two
shadows only moved in a remote corner. My conjecture had been correct;
the strangers had slipped in before us, and they now stood by the vault
of the Rochesters, their backs toward us, viewing through the rails the
old time-stained marble tomb, where a kneeling angel guarded the remains
of Damer de Rochester, slain at Marston Moor in the time of the civil
wars, and of Elizabeth his wife.
Our place was taken at the communion-rails. Hearing a cautious step
behind me, I glanced over my shoulder; one of the strangers--a
gentleman, evidently--was advancing up the chancel. The service began.
The explanation of the intent of matrimony was gone through: and then
the clergyman came a step farther forward, and bending slightly toward
Mr. Rochester, went on:--
"I require and charge you both (as ye will answer at the dreadful day of
judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed) that if
either of you know any impediment why ye may not lawfully be joined
together in matrimony, ye do now confess it; for be ye well assured that
so many as are coupled together otherwise than God's word doth allow are
not joined together by God, neither is their matrimony lawful."
He paused, as the custom is. When is the pause after that sentence ever
broken by reply? Not, perhaps, once in a hundred years. And the
clergyman, who had not lifted his eyes from his book, and had held his
breath but for a moment, was proceeding; his hand was already stretched
toward. Mr. Rochester, as his lips unclosed to ask, "Wilt thou have this
woman for thy wedded wife?"--when a distinct and near voice said, "The
marriage cannot go on: I declare the existence of an impediment."
The clergyman looked up at the speaker and stood mute: the clerk did the
same; Mr. Rochester moved slightly, as if an earthquake had rolled under
his feet; taking a firmer footing, and not turning his head or eyes, he
said, "Proceed!"
Profound silence fell when he had uttered that word, with deep but low
intonation. Presently Mr. Wood said, "I cannot proceed without some
investigation into what has been asserted, and evidence of its truth or
falsehood."
"The ceremony is quite broken off," subjoined the voice behind us. "I am
in a condition to prove my allegation; an insuperable impediment to this
marriage exists."
Mr. Rochester heard, but heeded not; he stood stubborn and rigid; making
no movement but to possess himself of my hand. What a hot and strong
grasp he had!--and how like quarried marble was his pale, firm, massive
front at this moment! How his eye shone, still, watchful, and yet
wild beneath!
Mr. Wood seemed at a loss. "What is the nature of the impediment?" he
asked. "Perhaps it may be got over--explained away?"
"Hardly," was the answer: "I have called it insuperable, and I speak
advisedly."
The speaker came forward and leaned on the rails. He continued, uttering
each word distinctly, calmly, steadily, but not loudly.
"It simply consists in the existence of a previous marriage. Mr.
Rochester has a wife now living."
My nerves vibrated to those low-spoken words as they had never vibrated
to thunder; my blood felt their subtle violence as it had never felt
frost or fire; but I was collected, and in no danger of swooning. I
looked at Mr. Rochester; I made him look at me. His whole face was
colorless rock; his eye was both spark and flint. He disavowed nothing;
he seemed as if he would defy all things. Without speaking, without
smiling, without seeming to recognize in me a human being, he only
twined my waist with his arm and riveted me to his side.
"Who are you?" he asked of the intruder.
"My name is Briggs, a solicitor of ---- Street, London."
"And you would thrust on me a wife?"
"I would remind you of your lady's existence, sir, which the law
recognizes if you do not."
"Favor me with an account of her--with her name, her parentage, her
place of abode."
"Certainly." Mr. Briggs calmly took a paper from his pocket, and read
out in a sort of official, nasal voice:--
"I affirm and can prove that on the 20th of October, A.D.--" (a date of
fifteen years back), "Edward Fairfax Rochester, of Thornfield Hall, in
the county of ----, and of Ferndean Manor, in ---- shire, England, was
married to my sister, Bertha Antoinetta Mason, daughter of Jonas Mason,
merchant, and of Antoinetta his wife, a Creole, at ---- church, Spanish
Town, Jamaica. The record of the marriage will be found in the register
of that church--a copy of it is now in my possession. Signed,
Richard Mason."
"That, if a genuine document, may prove I have been married, but it does
not prove that the woman mentioned therein as my wife is still living."
"She was living three months ago," returned the lawyer.
"How do you know?"
"I have a witness to the fact whose testimony even you, sir, will
scarcely controvert."
"Produce him--or go to hell!"
"I will produce him first--he is on the spot: Mr. Mason, have the
goodness to step forward."
Mr. Rochester, on hearing the name, set his teeth: he experienced, too,
a sort of strong convulsive quiver; near to him as I was, I felt the
spasmodic movement of fury or despair run through his frame.
The second stranger, who had hitherto lingered in the background, now
drew near; a pale face looked over the solicitor's shoulder--yes, it was
Mason himself. Mr. Rochester turned and glared at him. His eye, as I
have often said, was a black eye--it had now a tawny, nay, a bloody
light in its gloom; and his face flushed--olive cheek and hueless
forehead received a glow, as from spreading, ascending heart-fire; and
he stirred, lifted his strong arm; he could have struck Mason--dashed
him on the church floor--shocked by ruthless blow the breath from his
body; but Mason shrank away, and cried faintly, "Good God!" Contempt
fell cool on Mr. Rochester--his passion died as if a blight had
shriveled it up; he only asked, "What have _you_ to say?"
An inaudible reply escaped Mason's white lips.
"The devil is in it if you cannot answer distinctly. I again demand,
what have _you_ to say?"
"Sir--sir," interrupted the clergyman, "do not forget you are in a
sacred place." Then addressing Mason, he inquired gently, "Are you
aware, sir, whether or not this gentleman's wife is still living?"
"Courage," urged the lawyer; "speak out."
"She is now living at Thornfield Hall," said Mason, in more articulate
tones. "I saw her there last April. I am her brother."
"At Thornfield Hall!" ejaculated the clergyman. "Impossible! I am an old
resident in this neighborhood, sir, and I never heard of a Mrs.
Rochester at Thornfield Hall."
I saw a grim smile contort Mr. Rochester's lip, and he muttered, "No, by
God! I took care that none should hear of it, or of her under that
name." He mused; for ten minutes he held counsel with himself: he formed
his resolve, and announced it:--"Enough; all shall bolt out at once,
like a bullet from the barrel. Wood, close your book and take off your
surplice; John Green" (to the clerk) "leave the church: there will be no
wedding to-day." The man obeyed.
Mr. Rochester continued hardily and recklessly:--"Bigamy is an ugly
word! I meant, however, to be a bigamist; but fate has out-manoeuvred
me, or Providence has checked me--perhaps the last. I am little better
than a devil at this moment; and as my pastor there would tell me,
deserve no doubt the sternest judgments of God, even to the quenchless
fire and deathless worm.
"Gentlemen, my plan is broken up! what this lawyer and his client say is
true: I have been married, and the woman to whom I was married lives!
You say you never heard of a Mrs. Rochester at the house up yonder,
Wood; but I dare say you have many a time inclined your ear to gossip
about the mysterious lunatic kept there under watch and ward. Some have
whispered to you that she is my bastard half-sister; some, my cast-off
mistress: I now inform you that she is my wife, whom I married fifteen
years ago--Bertha Mason by name; sister of this resolute personage who
is now, with his quivering limbs and white cheeks, showing you what a
stout heart men may bear. Cheer up, Dick! never fear me! I'd almost as
soon strike a woman as you. Bertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad
family--idiots and maniacs through three generations! Her mother, the
Creole, was both a mad-woman and a drunkard!--as I found out after I had
wed the daughter; for they were silent on family secrets before. Bertha,
like a dutiful child, copied her parent in both points. I had a charming
partner--pure, wise, modest; you can fancy I was a happy man. I went
through rich scenes! Oh! my experience has been heavenly, if you only
knew it! But I owe you no further explanation. Briggs, Wood, Mason, I
invite you all to come up to the house and visit Mrs. Poole's patient,
and _my wife_! You shall see what sort of a being I was cheated into
espousing, and judge whether or not I had a right to break the compact,
and seek sympathy with something at least human. This girl," he
continued, looking at me, "knew no more than you, Wood, of the
disgusting secret: she thought all was fair and legal, and never dreamed
that she was going to be entrapped into a feigned union with a defrauded
wretch, already bound to a bad, mad, and imbruted partner! Come, all of
you, follow."
Still holding me fast, he left the church: the three gentlemen came
after. At the front door of the hall we found the carriage.
"Take it back to the coach-house, John," said Mr. Rochester, coolly: "it
will not be wanted to-day."
At our entrance, Mrs. Fairfax, Adèle, Sophie, Leah, advanced to meet and
greet us.
"To the right-about--every soul!" cried the master: "away with your
congratulations! Who wants them? Not I! they are fifteen years
too late!"
He passed on and ascended the stairs, still holding my hand, and still
beckoning the gentlemen to follow him; which they did. We mounted the
first staircase, passed up the gallery, proceeded to the third story:
the low black door, opened by Mr. Rochester's master-key, admitted us to
the tapestried room, with its great bed and its pictorial cabinet.
"You know this place, Mason," said our guide; "she bit and stabbed you
here."
He lifted the hangings from the wall, uncovering the second door; this
too he opened. In a room without a window there burned a fire, guarded
by a high and strong fender, and a lamp suspended from the ceiling by a
chain. Grace Poole bent over the fire, apparently cooking something in a
saucepan. In the deep shade, at the further end of the room, a figure
ran backward and forward. What it was, whether beast or human being, one
could not at first sight tell; it groveled, seemingly, on all fours; it
snatched and growled like some strange wild animal; but it was covered
with clothing; and a quantity of dark grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid
its head and face.
"Good morning, Mrs. Poole," said Mr. Rochester. "How are you? and how is
your charge to-day?"
"We're tolerable, sir, I thank you," replied Grace, lifting the boiling
mess carefully on to the hob: "rather snappish, but not 'rageous."
A fierce cry seemed to give the lie to her favorable report: the clothed
hyena rose up, and stood tall on its hind feet.
"Ah, sir, she sees you!" exclaimed Grace: "you'd better not stay."
"Only a few moments, Grace; you must allow me a few moments."
"Take care then, sir! for God's sake, take care!"
The maniac bellowed; she parted her shaggy locks from her visage, and
gazed wildly at her visitors. I recognized well that purple face--those
bloated features. Mrs. Poole advanced.
"Keep out of the way," said Mr. Rochester, thrusting her aside; "she has
no knife now, I suppose? and I'm on my guard."
"One never knows what she has, sir, she is so cunning; it is not in
mortal discretion to fathom her craft."
"We had better leave her," whispered Mason.
"Go to the devil!" was his brother-in-law's recommendation.
"'Ware!" cried Grace. The three gentlemen retreated simultaneously. Mr.
Rochester flung me behind him; the lunatic sprang and grappled his
throat viciously, and laid her teeth to his cheek; they struggled. She
was a big woman, in stature almost equaling her husband, and corpulent
besides; she showed virile force in the contest--more than once she
almost throttled him, athletic as he was. He could have settled her with
a well-planted blow; but he would not strike her; he would only wrestle.
At last he mastered her arms; Grace Poole gave him a cord, and he
pinioned them behind her; with more rope, which was at hand, he bound
her to a chair. The operation was performed amid the fiercest yells and
the most convulsive plunges. Mr. Rochester then turned to the
spectators; he looked at them with a smile both acrid and desolate.
"That is _my wife_," said he. "Such is the sole conjugal embrace I am
ever to know--such are the endearments which are to solace my leisure
hours! And _this_ is what I wished to have" (laying his hand on my
shoulder): "this young girl, who stands so grave and quiet at the mouth
of hell, looking collectedly at the gambols of a demon. I wanted her
just as a change, after that fierce ragoût. Wood and Briggs, look at the
difference. Compare these clear eyes with the red balls yonder--this
face with that mask--this form with that bulk; then judge me, priest of
the Gospel and man of the law, and remember, with what judgment ye judge
ye shall be judged! Off with you now: I must shut up my prize."
We all withdrew. Mr. Rochester stayed a moment behind us, to give some
further order to Grace Poole. The solicitor addressed me as he descended
the stair.
"You, madam," said he, "are cleared from all blame; your uncle will be
glad to hear it--if indeed he should be still living--when Mr. Mason
returns to Madeira."
"My uncle? What of him? Do you know him?"
"Mr. Mason does; Mr. Eyre has been the Funchal correspondent of his
house for some years. When your uncle received your letter intimating
the contemplated union between yourself and Mr. Rochester, Mr. Mason,
who was staying at Madeira to recruit his health, on his way back to
Jamaica happened to be with him. Mr. Eyre mentioned the intelligence;
for he knew that my client here was acquainted with a gentleman of the
name of Rochester. Mr. Mason, astonished and distressed, as you may
suppose, revealed the real state of matters. Your uncle, I am sorry to
say, is now on a sick-bed; from which, considering the nature of his
disease--decline--and the stage it has reached, it is unlikely he will
ever rise. He could not then hasten to England himself, to extricate you
from the snare into which you had fallen, but he implored Mr. Mason to
lose no time in taking steps to prevent the false marriage. He referred
him to me for assistance, I used all dispatch, and am thankful I was not
too late: as you, doubtless, must be also. Were I not morally certain
that your uncle will be dead ere you reach Madeira, I would advise you
to accompany Mr. Mason back; but as it is, I think you had better remain
in England till you can hear further, either from or of Mr. Eyre. Have
we anything else to stay for?" he inquired of Mr. Mason.
"No, no; let us be gone," was the anxious reply; and without waiting to
take leave of Mr. Rochester, they made their exit at the hall door. The
clergyman stayed to exchange a few sentences, either of admonition or
reproof, with his haughty parishioner: this duty done, he too departed.
I heard him go as I stood at the half-open door of my own room, to which
I had now withdrawn. The house cleared, I shut myself in, fastened the
bolt that none might intrude, and proceeded--not to weep, not to mourn,
I was yet too calm for that, but--mechanically to take off the
wedding-dress, and replace if by the stuff gown I had worn yesterday, as
I thought for the last time. I then sat down: I felt weak and tired. I
leaned my arms on a table, and my head dropped on them. And now I
thought: till now I had only heard, seen, moved--followed up and down
where I was led or dragged--watched event rush on event, disclosure open
beyond disclosure; but _now I thought_.
The morning had been a quiet morning enough--all except the brief scene
with the lunatic. The transaction in the church had not been noisy;
there was no explosion of passion, no loud altercation, no dispute, no
defiance or challenge, no tears, no sobs: a few words had been spoken, a
calmly pronounced objection to the marriage made; some stern, short
questions put by Mr. Rochester; answers, explanations given, evidence
adduced; an open admission of the truth had been uttered by my master:
then the living proof had been seen; the intruders were gone, and
all was over.
I was in my own room as usual--just myself, without obvious change;
nothing had smitten me, or scathed me, or maimed me. And yet where was
the Jane Eyre of yesterday? where was her life? where were her
prospects?
Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman--almost a bride--was
a cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were
desolate. A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December
storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples; drifts crushed
the blowing roses; on hay-field and corn-field lay a frozen shroud;
lanes which last night blushed full of flowers, to-day were pathless
with untrodden snow; and the woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy
and fragrant as groves between the tropics, now spread waste, wild, and
white as pine forests in wintry Norway.
My hopes were all dead--struck with a subtle doom, such as in one night
fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt. I looked on my
cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark,
chill, livid corpses that could never revive. I looked at my love, that
feeling which was my master's--which he had created: it shivered in my
heart, like a suffering child in a cold cradle; sickness and anguish had
seized it; it could not seek Mr. Rochester's arms--it could not derive
warmth from his breast. Oh, never more could it turn to him; for faith
was blighted--confidence destroyed! Mr. Rochester was not to me what he
had been; for he was not what I had thought him. I would not ascribe
vice to him; I would not say he had betrayed me: but the attribute of
stainless truth was gone from his idea; and from his presence I must go;
_that_ I perceived well. When--how--whither, I could not yet discern;
but he himself, I doubted not, would hurry me from Thornfield. Real
affection, it seemed, he could not have for me; it had been only fitful
passion; that was balked; he would want me no more. I should fear even
to cross his path now: my view must be hateful to him. Oh, how blind had
been my eyes! how weak my conduct!
MADAME BECK
(From 'Villette')
"You ayre Engliss?" said a voice at my elbow. I almost bounded, so
unexpected was the sound; so certain had I been of solitude.
No ghost stood beside me, nor anything of spectral aspect; merely a
motherly, dumpy little woman, in a large shawl, a wrapping-gown, and a
clean, trim, nightcap.
I said I was English, and immediately, without further prelude, we fell
to a most remarkable conversation. Madame Beck (for Madame Beck it was;
she had entered by a little door behind me, and being shod with the
shoes of silence, I had heard neither her entrance nor approach)--Madame
Beck had exhausted her command of insular speech when she said "You ayre
Engliss," and she now proceeded to work away volubly in her own tongue.
I answered in mine. She partly understood me, but as I did not at all
understand her--though we made together an awful clamor (anything like
madame's gift of utterance I had not hitherto heard or imagined)--we
achieved little progress. She rang, ere long, for aid; which arrived in
the shape of a "maîtresse," who had been partly educated in an Irish
convent, and was esteemed a perfect adept in the English language. A
bluff little personage this maîtresse was--Labasse-courienne from top to
toe: and how she did slaughter the speech of Albion! However, I told her
a plain tale, which she translated. I told her how I had left my own
country, intent on extending my knowledge and gaining my bread; how I
was ready to turn my hand to any useful thing, provided it was not wrong
or degrading: how I would be a child's nurse or a lady's-maid, and would
not refuse even housework adapted to my strength. Madame heard this; and
questioning her countenance, I almost thought the tale won her ear.
"Il n'y a que les Anglaises pour ces sortes d'entreprises," said she:
"sont-elles done intrépides, ces femmes-là!"
She asked my name, my age; she sat and looked at me--not pityingly, not
with interest: never a gleam of sympathy or a shade of compassion
crossed her countenance during the interview. I felt she was not one to
be led an inch by her feelings: grave and considerate, she gazed,
consulting her judgment and studying my narrative....
In the dead of night I suddenly awoke. All was hushed, but a white
figure stood in the room--Madame in her night-dress. Moving without
perceptible sound, she visited the three children in the three beds; she
approached me; I feigned sleep, and she studied me long. A small
pantomime ensued, curious enough. I dare say she sat a quarter of an
hour on the edge of my bed, gazing at my face. She then drew nearer,
bent close over me; slightly raised my cap, and turned back the border
so as to expose my hair; she looked at my hand lying on the bed-clothes.
This done, she turned to the chair where my clothes lay; it was at the
foot of the bed. Hearing her touch and lift them, I opened my eyes with
precaution, for I own I felt curious to see how far her taste for
research would lead her. It led her a good way: every article did she
inspect. I divined her motive for this proceeding; viz., the wish to
form from the garments a judgment respecting the wearer, her station,
means, neatness, etc. The end was not bad, but the means were hardly
fair or justifiable. In my dress was a pocket; she fairly turned it
inside out; she counted the money in my purse; she opened a little
memorandum-book, coolly perused its contents, and took from between the
leaves a small plaited lock of Miss Marchmont's gray hair. To a bunch of
three keys, being those of my trunk, desk, and work-box, she accorded
special attention: with these, indeed, she withdrew a moment to her own
room. I softly rose in my bed and followed her with my eye: these keys,
reader, were not brought back till they had left on the toilet of the
adjoining room the impress of their wards in wax. All being thus done
decently and in order, my property was returned to its place, my clothes
were carefully refolded. Of what nature were the conclusions deduced
from this scrutiny? Were they favorable or otherwise? Vain question.
Madame's face of stone (for of stone in its present night-aspect it
looked: it had been human, and as I said before, motherly, in the salon)
betrayed no response.
Her duty done--I felt that in her eyes this business was a duty--she
rose, noiseless as a shadow: she moved toward her own chamber; at the
door she turned, fixing her eyes on the heroine of the bottle, who still
slept and loudly snored. Mrs. Svini (I presume this was Mrs. Svini,
Anglicé or Hibernicé Sweeny)--Mrs. Sweeny's doom was in Madame Beck's
eye--an immutable purpose that eye spoke: madame's visitations for
shortcomings might be slow, but they were sure. All this was very
un-English: truly I was in a foreign land....
When attired, Madame Beck appeared a personage of a figure rather short
and stout, yet still graceful in its own peculiar way: that is, with the
grace resulting from proportion of parts. Her complexion was fresh and
sanguine, not too rubicund; her eye, blue and serene; her dark silk
dress fitted her as a French sempstress alone can make a dress fit; she
looked well, though a little bourgeoise, as bourgeoise indeed she was. I
know not what of harmony pervaded her whole person; and yet her face
offered contrast too: its features were by no means such as are usually
seen in conjunction with a complexion of such blended freshness and
repose: their outline was stern; her forehead was high but narrow; it
expressed capacity and some benevolence, but no expanse; nor did her
peaceful yet watchful eye ever know the fire which is kindled in the
heart or the softness which flows thence. Her mouth was hard: it could
be a little grim; her lips were thin. For sensibility and genius, with
all their tenderness and temerity, I felt somehow that madame would be
the right sort of Minos in petticoats.
In the long run, I found that she was something else in petticoats too.
Her name was Modeste Maria Beck, née Kint: it ought to have been
Ignacia. She was a charitable woman, and did a great deal of good. There
never was a mistress whose rule was milder. I was told that she never
once remonstrated with the intolerable Mrs. Sweeny [the heroine's
predecessor], despite her tipsiness, disorder, and general neglect; yet
Mrs. Sweeny had to go, the moment her departure became convenient. I was
told too that neither masters nor teachers were found fault with in that
establishment: yet both masters and teachers were often changed; they
vanished and others filled their places, none could well explain how.
The establishmen
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