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Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 02

by Elbert Hubbard · English · Gutenberg #13778 · 381,628 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 02

Author: Elbert Hubbard

Author of introduction, etc.: Bert Hubbard


        
Release date: October 18, 2004 [eBook #13778]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF THE GREAT - VOLUME 02 ***

Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great

Elbert Hubbard

Memorial Edition

Printed and made into a Book by The Roycrofters,
who are in East Aurora, Erie County, New York

Wm. H. Wise & Co.

New York

1916


Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women




CONTENTS

ELBERT HUBBARD II              vii
ELIZABETH B. BROWNING           15
MADAME GUYON                    41
HARRIET MARTINEAU               67
CHARLOTTE BRONTE                93
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI             113
ROSA BONHEUR                   133
MADAME DE STAEL                161
ELIZABETH FRY                  187
MARY LAMB                      213
JANE AUSTEN                    235
EMPRESS JOSEPHINE              257
MARY W. SHELLEY                283




ELBERT HUBBARD II

BERT HUBBARD

    We are not sent into this world to do anything into which we can
    not put our hearts. We have certain work to do for our bread and
    that is to be done strenuously, other work to do for our delight
    and that is to be done heartily; neither is to be done by halves
    or shifts, but with a will; and what is not worth this effort is
    not to be done at all.
    --_John Ruskin_


I am Elbert Hubbard's son, and I am entirely familiar with the proposition
that "Genius never reproduces."

Heretofore, it has always been necessary to sign my name, "Elbert Hubbard
II"--but now there is an embarrassment in that signature, an assumption
that I do not feel.

There is no Second Elbert Hubbard. To five hundred Roycrofters, to the
Village of East Aurora, and to a few dozen personal friends scattered over
the face of the earth, I am Bert Hubbard, plain Bert Hubbard--and as Bert
Hubbard I want to be known to you.

I lay no claim to having inherited Elbert Hubbard's Genius, his
Personality, his Insight into the Human Heart. I am another and totally
different sort of man.

I know my limitations.

Also, I am acquainted with such ability as I possess, and I believe that
it can be directed to serve you.

I got my schooling in East Aurora.

I have never been to College. But I have traveled across this Country
several times with my Father.

I have traveled abroad with him. One time we walked from Edinburgh to
London to prove that we could do it.

My Father has been my teacher--and I do not at all envy the College Man.

For the last twenty years I have been working in the Roycroft Shops.

I believe I am well grounded in Business--also, in Work.

When I was twelve years old my father transferred Ali Baba to the
garden--and I did the chores around the house and barn for a dollar a
week. From that day forward I earned every dollar that ever came to me.

I fed the printing-press at four dollars a week. Then, when we purchased a
gas-engine, I was promoted to be engineer, and given a pair of long
overalls.

Two or three years later I was moved into the General Office, where I
opened mail and filled in orders.

Again, I was promoted into the Private Office and permitted to sign my
name under my Father's, on checks.

Then the responsibility of purchasing materials was given me.

One time or another I have worked in every Department of the Roycroft
Shops.

My association with Elbert Hubbard has been friendly, brotherly. I have
enjoyed his complete confidence--and I have tried to deserve it.

He believed in me, loved me, hoped for me. Whether I disappointed him at
times is not important. I know my average must have pleased him, because
the night he said Farewell to the Roycrofters he spoke well of me, very
well of me, and he left the Roycroft Institution in my charge.

He sailed away on the "Lusitania" intending to be gone several weeks. His
Little Journey has been prolonged into Eternity.

But the work of Elbert and Alice Hubbard is not done. With them one task
was scarcely under way when another was launched. Whether complete or
incomplete, there had to be an end to their effort sometime, and this is
the end.

Often Elbert Hubbard would tell the story of Tolstoy, who stopped at the
fence to question the worker in the field, "My Man, if you knew you were
to die tomorrow, what would you do today?" And the worker begrimed with
sweat would answer, "I would plow!"

That's the way Elbert Hubbard lived and died, and yet he did more--he
planned for the future. He planned the future of the Roycroft Shop. Death
did not meet him as a stranger. He came as a sometime-expected friend.
Father was not unprepared.

The plan that would have sustained us the seven weeks he was in Europe
will sustain us seven years--and another seven years.

Elbert Hubbard's work will go on.

I know of no Memorial that would please Elbert Hubbard half so well as to
broaden out the Roycroft Idea.

So we will continue to make handmade Furniture, hand-hammered Copper,
Modeled Leather. We shall still triumph in the arts of Printing and
Bookmaking.

The Roycroft Inn will continue to swing wide its welcoming door, and the
kind greeting is always here for you.

"The Fra" will not miss an issue, and you who have enjoyed it in the past
will continue to enjoy it!

"The Philistine" belonged to Elbert Hubbard. He wrote it himself for just
twenty years and one month. No one else could have done it as he did. No
one else can now do it as he did.

So, for very sentimental reasons--which overbalance the strong temptation
to continue "The Philistine"--I consider it a duty to pay him the tribute
of discontinuing the little Magazine of Protest.

The Roycrofters, Incorporated, is a band of skilled men and women. For
years they have accomplished the work that has invited your admiration.
You may expect much of them now. The support they have given me, the
confidence they have in me, is as a great mass of power and courage
pushing me on to success.

This thought I would impress upon you: It will not be the policy of The
Roycrofters to imitate or copy. This place from now on is what we make it.
The past is past, the future spreads a golden red against the eastern sky.

I have the determination to make a Roycroft Shop--that Elbert Hubbard,
leaning out over the balcony, will look down and say, "Good boy,
Bert--good boy!"

I have Youth and Strength.

I have Courage.

My Head is up.

Forward--all of us--March!




ELIZABETH B. BROWNING

    I have been in the meadows all the day,
    And gathered there the nosegay that you see;
    Singing within myself as bird or bee
    When such do fieldwork on a morn of May.
                             _Irreparableness_

[Illustration: ELIZABETH B. BROWNING]


Writers of biography usually begin their preachments with the rather
startling statement, "The subject of this memoir was born"----Here follows
a date, the name of the place and a cheerful little Mrs. Gamp anecdote:
this as preliminary to "launching forth."

It was the merry Andrew Lang, I believe, who filed a general protest
against these machine-made biographies, pleading that it was perfectly
safe to assume the man was born; and as for the time and place it mattered
little. But the merry man was wrong, for Time and Place are often masters
of Fate.

For myself, I rather like the good old-fashioned way of beginning at the
beginning. But I will not tell where and when Elizabeth was born, for I do
not know. And I am quite sure that her husband did not know. The
encyclopedias waver between London and Herefordshire, just according as
the writers felt in their hearts that genius should be produced in town or
country. One man, with opinions pretty well ossified on this subject,
having been challenged for his statement that Mrs. Browning was born at
Hope End, rushed into print in a letter to the "Gazette" with the
countercheck quarrelsome to the effect, "You might as well expect
throstles to build nests on Fleet Street 'buses, as for folks of genius
to be born in a big city." As apology for the man's ardor I will explain
that he was a believer in the Religion of the East and held that spirits
choose their own time and place for materialization.

Mrs. Ritchie, authorized by Mr. Browning, declared Burn Hill, Durham, the
place, and March Sixth, Eighteen Hundred Nine, the time. In reply, John H.
Ingram brings forth a copy of the Tyne "Mercury," for March Fourteenth,
Eighteen Hundred Nine, and points to this:

"In London, the wife of Edward M. Barrett, of a daughter."

Mr. Browning then comes forward with a fact that derricks can not budge,
that is, "Newspapers have ever had small regard for truth." Then he adds,
"My wife was born March Sixth, Eighteen Hundred Six, at Carlton Hall,
Durham, the residence of her father's brother." One might ha' thought that
this would be the end on't, but it wasn't, for Mr. Ingram came out with
this sharp rejoinder: "Carlton Hall was not in Durham, but in Yorkshire.
And I am authoritatively informed that it did not become the residence of
S. Moulton Barrett until some time after Eighteen Hundred Ten. Mr.
Browning's latest suggestions in this matter can not be accepted. In
Eighteen Hundred Six, Edward Barrett, not yet twenty years of age, is
scarcely likely to have already been the father of the two children
assigned to him." And there the matter rests. Having told this much I
shall proceed to launch forth.

The earlier years of Elizabeth Barrett's life were spent at Hope End, near
Ledbury, Herefordshire. I visited the place and thereby added not only one
day, but several to my life, for Ali counts not the days spent in the
chase. There is a description of Hope End written by an eminent clergyman,
to whom I was at once attracted by his literary style. This gentleman's
diction contains so much clearness, force and elegance that I can not
resist quoting him verbatim: "The residentiary buildings lie on the ascent
of the contiguous eminences, whose projecting parts and bending
declivities, modeled by Nature, display astonishing harmoniousness. It
contains an elegant profusion of wood, disposed in the most careless yet
pleasing order; much of the park and its scenery is in view of the
residence, from which vantage-point it presents a most agreeable
appearance to the enraptured beholder." So there you have it!

Here Elizabeth Barrett lived until she was twenty. She never had a
childhood--'t was dropped out of her life in some way, and a Greek grammar
inlaid instead. Of her mother we know little. She is never quoted; never
referred to; her wishes were so whisperingly expressed that they have not
reached us. She glides, a pale shadow, across the diary pages. Her
husband's will was to her supreme; his whim her conscience. We know that
she was sad, often ill, that she bore eight children. She passed out
seemingly unwept, unhonored and unsung, after a married existence of
sixteen years.

Elizabeth Barrett had the same number of brothers and sisters that
Shakespeare had; and we know no more of the seven Barretts who were
swallowed by oblivion than we do of the seven Shakespeares that went not
astray.

Edward Moulton Barrett had a sort of fierce, passionate, jealous affection
for his daughter Elizabeth. He set himself the task of educating her from
her very babyhood. He was her constant companion, her tutor, adviser,
friend. When six years old she studied Greek, and when nine made
translations in verse. Mr. Barrett looked on this sort of thing with much
favor, and tightened his discipline, reducing the little girl's hours for
study to a system as severe as the laws of Draco. Of course, the child's
health broke. From her thirteenth year she appears to us like a beautiful
spirit with an astral form; or she would, did we not perceive that this
beautiful form is being racked with pain. No wonder some one has asked,
"Where then was the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children?"

But this brave spirit did not much complain. She had a will as strong as
her father's, and felt a Spartan pride in doing all that he asked and a
little more. She studied, wrote, translated, read and thought.

And to spur her on and to stimulate her, Mr. Barrett published several
volumes of her poems. It was immature, pedantic work, but still it had a
certain glow and gave promise of the things yet to come.

One marked event in the life of Elizabeth Barrett occurred when Hugh
Stuart Boyd arrived at Hope End. He was a fine, sensitive, soul--a poet by
nature and a Greek scholar of repute. He came on Mr. Barrett's invitation
to take Mr. Barrett's place as tutor. The young girl was confined to her
bed through the advice of physicians; Boyd was blind.

Here at once was a bond of sympathy. No doubt this break in the monotony
of her life gave fresh courage to the fair young woman. The gentle,
sightless poet relaxed the severe hours of study. Instead of grim digging
in musty tomes they talked: he sat by her bedside holding the thin hands
(for the blind see by the sense of touch), and they talked for hours--or
were silent, which served as well. Then she would read to the blind man
and he would recite to her, for he had the blind Homer's memory. She grew
better, and the doctors said that if she had taken her medicine regularly,
and not insisted on getting up and walking about as guide for the blind
man, she might have gotten entirely well.

In that fine poem, "Wine of Cyprus," addressed to Boyd, we see how she
acknowledges his goodness. There is no wine equal to the wine of
friendship; and love is only friendship--plus something else. There is
nothing so hygienic as friendship.

Hell is a separation, and Heaven is only a going home to our friends.

Mr. Barrett's fortune was invested in sugar-plantations in Jamaica.
Through the emancipation of the blacks his fortune took to itself wings.
He had to give up his splendid country home--to break the old ties. It was
decided that the family should move to London. Elizabeth had again taken
to her bed. The mattress on which she lay was borne down the steps by four
men; one man might have carried her alone, for she weighed only
eighty-five pounds, so they say.

       *       *       *       *       *

Crabb Robinson, who knew everything and everybody, being very much such a
man as John Kenyon, has left on record the fact that Mr. Kenyon had a face
like a Benedictine monk, a wit that never lagged, a generous heart, and a
tongue that ran like an Alpine cascade.

A razor with which you can not shave may have better metal in it than one
with a perfect edge. One has been sharpened and the other not. And I am
very sure that the men who write best do not necessarily know the most;
Fate has put an edge on them--that's all. A good kick may start a stone
rolling, when otherwise it rests on the mountain-side for a generation.

Kenyon was one type of the men who rest on the mountain-side. He dabbled
in poetry, wrote book-reviews, collected rare editions, attended first
nights, spoke mysteriously of "stuff" he was working on; and sometimes
confidentially told his lady friends of his intention to bring it out when
he had gotten it into shape, asking their advice as to bindings, etc. Men
of this type rarely bring out their stuff, for the reason that they never
get it into shape. When they refer to the novel they have on the stocks,
they refer to a novel they intend to write. It is yet in the ink-bottle.
And there it remains--all for the want of one good kick--but perhaps it's
just as well.

Yet these friendly beings are very useful members of society. They are
brighter companions and better talkers than the men who exhaust
themselves in creative work and at odd times favor their friends with
choice samples of literary irritability. John Kenyon wrote a few bright
little things, but his best work was in the encouragement he gave others.
He sought out all literary lions and tamed them with his steady glance.
They liked his prattle and good-cheer, and he liked them for many
reasons--one of which was because he could go away and tell how he advised
them about this, that and the other. Then he fed them, too.

And so unrivaled was Kenyon in this line that he won for himself the title
of "The Feeder of Lions." Now, John Kenyon--rich, idle, bookish and
generous--saw in the magazines certain fine little poems by one Elizabeth
Barrett. He also ascertained that she had published several books. Mr.
Kenyon bought one of these volumes and sent it by a messenger with a
little note to Miss Barrett telling how much he had enjoyed it, and craved
that she would inscribe her name and his on the fly-leaf and return by
bearer. Of course she complied with such a modest request so gracefully
expressed; these things are balm to poets' souls. Next, Mr. Kenyon called
to thank Miss Barrett for the autograph. Soon after, he wrote to inform
her of a startling fact that he had just discovered: they were kinsmen,
cousins or something--a little removed, but cousins still. In a few weeks
they wrote letters back and forth beginning thus: Dear Cousin.

And I am glad of this cousinly arrangement between lonely young people.
They grasp at it; and it gives an excuse for a bit of closer relationship
than could otherwise exist with propriety. Goodness me! is he not my
cousin? Of course he may call as often as he chooses. It is his right.

But let me explain here that at this time Mr. Kenyon was not so very
young--that is, he was not absurdly young: he was fifty. But men who
really love books always have young hearts. Kenyon's father left him a
fortune, no troubles had ever come his way, and his was not the
temperament that searches them out. He dressed young, looked young, acted
young, felt young.

No doubt John Kenyon sincerely admired Elizabeth Barrett, and prized her
work. And while she read his mind a deal more understandingly than he did
her poems, she was grateful for his kindly attention and well-meant
praise. He set about to get her poems into better magazines and to find
better publishers for her work. He was not a gifted poet himself, but to
dance attendance on one afforded a gratification to his artistic impulse.
He could not write sublime verse himself, but he could tell others how. So
Miss Barrett showed her poems to Mr. Kenyon, and Mr. Kenyon advised that
the P's be made bolder and the tails to the Q's be lengthened. He also
bought her a new kind of manuscript paper, over which a quill pen would
glide with glee: it was the kind Byron used. But best of all, Mr. Kenyon
brought his friends to call on Miss Barrett; and many of these friends
were men with good literary instincts. The meeting with these strong minds
was no doubt a great help to the little lady, shut up in a big house and
living largely in dreams.

Mary Russell Mitford was in London about this time on a little visit, and
of course was sought out by John Kenyon, who took her sightseeing. She was
fifty years old, too; she spoke of herself as an old maid, but didn't
allow others to do so. Friends always spoke of her as "Little Miss
Mitford," not because she was little, but because she acted so. Among
other beautiful sights that Mr. Kenyon wished to show gushing little Mary
Mitford was a Miss Barrett who wrote things. So together they called on
Miss Barrett.

Little Miss Mitford looked at the pale face in its frame of dark curls,
lying back among the pillows. Little Miss Mitford bowed and said it was a
fine day; then she went right over and kissed Miss Barrett, and these two
women held each other's hands and talked until Mr. Kenyon twisted
nervously and hinted that it was time to go.

Miss Barrett had not been out for two months, but now these two insisted
that she should go with them. The carriage was at the door, they would
support her very tenderly, Mr. Kenyon himself would drive--so there could
be no accidents and they would bring her back the moment she was tired.
So they went, did these three, and as Mr. Kenyon himself drove there were
no accidents.

I can imagine that James the coachman gave up the reins that day with only
an inward protest, and after looking down and smiling reassurance Mr.
Kenyon drove slowly towards the Park; little Miss Mitford forgot her
promise not to talk incessantly; and the "dainty, white-porcelain lady"
brushed back the raven curls from time to time and nodded indulgently.

Not long ago I called at Number Seventy-four Gloucester Place, where the
Barretts lived. It is a plain, solid brick house, built just like the ten
thousand other brick houses in London where well-to-do tradesmen live. The
people who now occupy the house never heard of the Barretts, and surely do
not belong to a Browning Club. I was told that if I wanted to know
anything about the place I should apply to the "Agent," whose name is
'Opkins and whose office is in Clifford Court, off Fleet Street. The house
probably has not changed in any degree in these fifty years, since little
Miss Mitford on one side and Mr. Kenyon on the other, tenderly helped Miss
Barrett down the steps and into the carriage.

I lingered about Gloucester Place for an hour, but finding that I was
being furtively shadowed by various servants, and discovering further that
a policeman had been summoned to look after my case, I moved on.

That night after the ride, Miss Mitford wrote a letter home and among
other things she said: "I called today at a Mr. Barrett's. The eldest
daughter is about twenty-five. She has some spinal affection, but she is a
charming, sweet young woman who reads Greek as I do French. She has
published some translations from Æschylus and some striking poems. She is
a delightful creature, shy, timid and modest."

The next day Mr. Kenyon gave a little dinner in honor of Miss Mitford, who
was the author of a great book called, "Our Village." That night when Miss
Mitford wrote her usual letter to the folks down in the country, telling
how she was getting along, she described this dinner-party. She says:
"Wordsworth was there--an adorable old man. Then there was Walter Savage
Landor, too, as splendid a person as Mr. Kenyon himself, but not so full
of sweetness and sympathy. But best of all, the charming Miss Barrett, who
translated the most difficult of the Greek plays, 'Prometheus Bound.' She
has written most exquisite poems, too, in almost every modern style. She
is so sweet and gentle, and so pretty that one looks at her as if she were
some bright flower." Then in another letter Miss Mitford adds: "She is of
a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on either
side of a most expressive face; large tender eyes, richly fringed by dark
lashes; a smile like a sunbeam, and such a look of youthfulness that I had
some difficulty in persuading a friend that she was really the translator
of Æschylus and the author of the 'Essay on Mind.'"

When Miss Mitford went back home, she wrote Miss Barrett a letter 'most
every day. She addresses her as "My Sweet Love," "My Dearest Sweet," and
"My Sweetest Dear." She declares her to be the gentlest, strongest,
sanest, noblest and most spiritual of all living persons. And moreover she
wrote these things to others and published them in reviews. She gave
Elizabeth Barrett much good advice and some not so good. Among other
things she says: "Your one fault, my dear, is obscurity. You must be
simple and plain. Think of the stupidest person of your acquaintance, and
when you have made your words so clear that you are sure he will
understand, you may venture to hope it will be understood by others."

I hardly think that this advice caused Miss Barrett to bring her lines
down to the level of the stupidest person she knew. She continued to write
just as she chose. Yet she was grateful for Miss Mitford's glowing
friendship, and all the pretty gush was accepted, although perhaps with
good large pinches of the Syracuse product.

Of course there are foolish people who assume that gushing women are
shallow, but this is jumping at conclusions. A recent novel gives us a
picture of "a tall soldier," who, in camp, was very full of brag and
bluster. We are quite sure that when the fight comes on this man with the
lubricated tongue will prove an arrant coward; we assume that he will run
at the first smell of smoke. But we are wrong--he stuck; and when the flag
was carried down in the rush, he rescued it and bore it bravely so far to
the front that when he came back he brought another--the tawdry, red flag
of the enemy!

I slip this in here just to warn hasty folk against the assumption that
talkative people are necessarily vacant-minded. Man has a many-sided
nature, and like the moon reveals only certain phases at certain times.
And as there is one side of the moon that is never revealed at all to
dwellers on the planet Earth, so mortals may unconsciously conceal certain
phases of soul-stuff from each other.

Miss Barrett seems to have written more letters and longer ones to Miss
Mitford than to any of her other correspondents, save one. Yet she was
aware of this rather indiscreet woman's limitations and wrote down to her
understanding.

To Richard H. Horne she wrote freely and at her intellectual best. With
this all-round, gifted man she kept up a correspondence for many years;
and her letters now published in two stout volumes afford a literary
history of the time. At the risk of being accused of lack of taste, I wish
to say that these letters of Miss Barrett's are a deal more interesting to
me than any of her longer poems. They reveal the many-sided qualities of
the writer, and show the workings of her mind in various moods. Poetry is
such an exacting form that it never allows the author to appear in
dressing-gown and slippers; neither can he call over the back fence to his
neighbor without loss of dignity.

Horne was author, editor and publisher. His middle name was Henry, but
following that peculiar penchant of the ink-stained fraternity to play
flimflam with their names, he changed the Henry to Hengist; so we now see
it writ thus: R. Hengist Horne.

He found a market for Miss Barrett's wares. More properly, he insisted
that she should write certain things to fit certain publications in which
he was interested. They collaborated in writing several books. They met
very seldom, and their correspondence has a fine friendly flavor about it,
tempered with a disinterestedness that is unique. They encourage each
other, criticize each other. They rail at each other in witty quips and
quirks, and at times the air is so full of gibes that it looks as if a
quarrel were appearing on the horizon--no bigger than a man's hand--but
the storm always passes in a gentle shower of refreshing compliments.

Meantime, dodging in and out, we see the handsome, gracious and kindly
John Kenyon.

Much of the time Miss Barrett lived in a darkened room, seeing no one but
her nurse, the physician and her father. Fortune had smiled again on
Edward Barrett--a legacy had come his way, and although he no longer owned
the black men in Jamaica, yet they were again working for him. Sugar-cane
mills ground slow, but small.

The brilliant daughter had blossomed in intellect until she was beyond her
teacher. She was so far ahead that he called to her to wait for him. He
could read Greek; she could compose in it. But she preferred her native
tongue, as every scholar should. Now, Mr. Barrett was jealous of the fame
of his daughter. The passion of father for daughter, of mother for
son--there is often something very loverlike in it--a deal of whimsy! Miss
Barrett's darkened room had been illumined by a light that the gruff and
goodly merchant wist not of. Loneliness and solitude and physical pain and
heart-hunger had taught her things that no book recorded nor tutor knew.
Her father could not follow her; her allusions were obscure, he said,
wilfully obscure; she was growing perverse.

Love is a pain at times. To ease the hurt the lover would hurt the
beloved. He badgers her, pinches her, provokes her. One step more and he
may kill her.

Edward Barrett's daughter, she of the raven curls and gentle ways, was
reaching a point where her father's love was not her life. A good way to
drive love away is to be jealous. He had seen it coming years before; he
brooded over it; the calamity was upon him. Her fame was growing: some one
called her the Shakespeare of women. First, her books had been published
at her father's expense; next, editors were willing to run their own
risks, and now messengers with bank-notes waited at the door and begged to
exchange the bank-notes for manuscript. John Kenyon said, "I told you so,"
but Edward Barrett scowled. He accused her foolishly; he attempted to
dictate to her--she must use this ink or that. Why? Because he said so. He
quarreled with her to ease the love-hurt that was smarting in his heart.

Poor, little, pale-faced poet! Earthly success has nothing left for thee!
Thy thoughts, too great for speech, fall on dull ears. Even thy father,
for whom thou first took up pen, doth not understand thee! and a mother's
love thou hast never known. And fame without love--how barren! Heaven is
thy home. Let slip thy thin, white hands on the thread of life and glide
gently out at ebb of tide--out into the unknown. It can not but be better
than this--God understands! Compose thy troubled spirit, give up thy vain
hopes. See! thy youth is past, little woman; look closely! there are gray
hairs in thy locks, thy face is marked with lines of care, and have I not
seen signs of winter in thy veins? Earth holds naught for thee. Come, take
thy pen and write, just a last good-by, a tender farewell, such as thou
alone canst say. Then fold thy thin hands, and make peace with all by
passing out and away, out and away--God understands!

       *       *       *       *       *

Elizabeth Barrett was thirty-seven, and Miss Mitford, up to London from
the country for a couple of days, wrote home that she had lost her winsome
beauty.

John Kenyon had turned well into sixty, but he carried his years in a
jaunty way. He wore a moss-rose bud in the lapel of his well-fitting coat.
His linen was immaculate, and the only change people saw in him was that
he wore spectacles in place of a monocle.

The physicians allowed Mr. Kenyon to visit the darkened room whenever he
chose, for he never stayed so very long, neither was he ever the bearer of
bad news.

Did the greatest poetess of the age (temporarily slightly indisposed) know
one Browning--Robert Browning, a writer of verse? Why, no; she had never
met him, but of course she knew of him, and had read everything he had
written. He had sent her one of his books once. He was surely a man of
brilliant parts--so strong and farseeing! He lives in Italy, with the
monks, they say. What a pity the English people do not better appreciate
him!

"But he may succeed yet," said Mr. Kenyon. "He is not old."

"Oh, of course, such genius must some day be recognized. But he may be
gone then--how old did you say he was?"

Mr. Kenyon had not said; but he now explained that Mr. Browning was
thirty-four, that is to say, just the age of himself, ahem! Furthermore,
Mr. Browning did not live in Italy--that is, not now, for at that present
moment he was in London. In fact, Mr. Kenyon had lunched with him an hour
before. They had talked of Miss Barrett (for who else was there among
women worth talking of!) and Mr. Browning had expressed a wish to see her.
Mr. Kenyon had expressed a wish that Mr. Browning should see her, and now
if Miss Barrett would express a wish that Mr. Browning should call and see
her, why, Mr. Kenyon would fetch him--doctors or no doctors.

And he fetched him.

And I'm glad, aren't you?

Now Robert Browning was not at all of the typical poet type. In stature,
he was rather short; his frame was compact and muscular. In his youth, he
had been a wrestler--carrying away laurels of a different sort from those
which he was to wear later. His features were inclined to be heavy; in
repose his face was dull, and there was no fire in his glance. He wore
loose-fitting, plain, gray clothes, a slouch-hat and thick-soled shoes. At
first look you would have said he was a well-fed, well-to-do country
squire. On closer acquaintance you would have been impressed with his
dignity, his perfect poise and his fine reserve. And did you come to know
him well enough you would have seen that beneath that seemingly phlegmatic
outside there was a spiritual nature so sensitive and tender that it
responded to all the finer thrills that play across the souls of men. Yet
if there ever was a man who did not wear his heart upon his sleeve for
daws to peck at, it was Robert Browning. He was clean, wholesome, manly,
healthy, inside and out. He was master of self.

Of course, the gentle reader is sure that the next act will show a tender
love-scene. And were I dealing with the lives of Peter Smith and Martha
the milkmaid, the gentle reader might be right.

But the love of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett is an instance of
the Divine Passion. Take off thy shoes, for the place whereon thou
standest is holy ground! This man and woman had gotten well beyond the
first flush of youth; there was a joining of intellect and soul which
approaches the ideal. I can not imagine anything so preposterous as a
"proposal" passing between them; I can not conceive a condition of
hesitancy and timidity leading up to a dam-bursting "avowal." They met,
looked into each other's eyes, and each there read his fate: no coyness,
no affectation, no fencing--they loved. Each at once felt a heart-rest in
the other. Each had at last found the other self.

That exquisite series of poems, "Sonnets From the Portuguese," written by
Elizabeth Barrett before her marriage and presented to her husband
afterward, was all told to him over and over by the look from her eyes,
the pressure of her hands, and in gentle words (or silence) that knew
neither shame nor embarrassment.

And now it seems to me that somewhere in these pages I said that
friendship was essentially hygienic. I wish to make that remark again, and
to put it in italics. The Divine Passion implies the most exalted form of
friendship that man can imagine.

Elizabeth Barrett ran up the shades and flung open the shutters. The
sunlight came dancing through the apartment, flooding each dark corner and
driving out all the shadows that lurked therein. It was no longer a
darkened room.

The doctor was indignant; the nurse resigned.

Miss Mitford wrote back to the country that Miss Barrett was "really
looking better than she had for years."

As for poor Edward Moulton Barrett--he raved. He tried to quarrel with
Robert Browning, and had there been only a callow youth with whom to deal,
Browning would simply have been kicked down the steps, and that would have
been an end of it. But Browning had an even pulse, a calm eye and a temper
that was imperturbable. His will was quite as strong as Mr. Barrett's.

And so it was just a plain runaway match--the ideal thing after all. One
day when the father was out of the way they took a cab to Marylebone
Parish Church and were married. The bride went home alone, and it was a
week before her husband saw her; because he would not be a hypocrite and
go ask for her by her maiden name. And had he gone, rung the bell and
asked to see Elizabeth Barrett Browning, no one would have known whom he
wanted. At the end of the week, the bride stole down the steps alone,
leading her dog Flush by a string, and met her lover-husband on the
corner. Next day, they wrote back from Calais, asking forgiveness and
craving blessings, after the good old custom of Gretna Green. But Edward
Moulton Barrett did not forgive--still, who cares!

Yet we do care, too, for we regret that this man, so strong and manly in
many ways, could not be reconciled to this exalted love. Old men who nurse
wrath are pitiable sights. Why could not Mr. Barrett have followed the
example of John Kenyon?

Kenyon commands both our sympathy and admiration. When the news came to
him that Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett were gone, it is said that
he sobbed like a youth to whom has come a great, strange sorrow. For
months he was not known to smile, yet after a year he visited the happy
home in Florence. When John Kenyon died he left by his will fifty thousand
dollars "to my beloved and loving friends, Robert Browning and Elizabeth
Barrett, his wife."

The old-time novelists always left their couples at the church-door. It
was not safe to follow further--they wished to make a pleasant story. It
seems meet to take our leave of the bride and groom at the church: life
often ends there. However, it sometimes is the place where life really
begins. It was so with Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning--they had
merely existed before; now, they began to live.

Much, very much has been written concerning this ideal mating, and of the
life of Mr. and Mrs. Browning in Italy. But why should I write of the
things of which George William Curtis, Kate Field, Anthony Trollope and
James T. Fields have written? No, we will leave the happy pair at the
altar, in Marylebone Parish Church, and while the organ peals the
wedding-march we will tiptoe softly out.




MADAME GUYON

    To me remains nor place nor time;
    My country is in every clime;
    I can be calm and free from care,
    On any shore, since God is there.

    While place we seek or place we shun,
    The soul finds happiness in none;
    But with a God to guide our way,
    'Tis equal joy to go or stay.

    Could I be cast where Thou art not,
    That were indeed a dreadful lot;
    But regions none remote I call,
    Secure of finding God in all.
                         _God Is Everywhere_

[Illustration: MADAME GUYON]


Jeanne Marie Bouvier sat one day writing at her little oaken desk, when
her father approached and, kissing her very gently on the forehead, told
her that he had arranged for her marriage, and that her future husband was
soon to arrive. Jeanne's fingers lost their cunning, the pen dropped; she
arose to her feet, but her tongue was dumb.

Jeanne Marie was only sixteen, but you would have thought her twenty, for
she was tall and dignified--she was as tall as her father: she was five
feet nine. She had a splendid length of limb, hips that gave only a
suggestion of curve line, a slender waist, a shapely, well-poised neck,
and a head that might have made a Juno envious. The face and brow were not
those of Venus--rather they belonged to Minerva; for the nose was large,
the chin full, and the mouth no pea's blossom. The hair was light brown,
but when the sun shone on it people said it was red. It was as generous in
quantity and unruly in habits as the westerly wind. Her eyes were all
colors, changing according to her mood. Withal, she had freckles, and no
one was ever so rash as to call her pretty.

Now, Jeanne's father had not kissed her for two years, for he was a very
busy man: he had not time for soft demonstration. He was rich, he was
religious, and he was looked upon as a model citizen in every way.

The daughter had grown like a sunflower, and her intellect had unfolded as
a moss-rose turns from bud to blossom. This splendid girl had thought and
studied and dreamed dreams. She had imagined she heard a voice speaking to
her: "Arise, maiden, and prepare thee, for I have a work for thee to do!"

Her wish and prayer was to enter a convent, and after consecrating herself
to God in a way that would allow of no turning back, to go forth and give
to men and women the messages that had come to her. And these things
filled the heart of the worthy bourgeois with alarm; so he said to his
wife one day: "That girl will be a foot taller than I am in a year, and
even now when I give her advice, she opens her big eyes and looks at me in
a way that thins my words to whey. She will get us into trouble yet! She
may disgrace us! I think--I think I'll find her a husband."

Yet that would not have been a difficult task. She was loved by a score of
youths, but had never spoken to any of them. They stood at corners and
sighed as she walked by; and others, with religious bent, timed her hours
for mass and took positions in church from whence they could see her
kneel. Still others patroled the narrow street that led to her home, with
hopes that she might pass that way, so that they might touch the hem of
her garment.

These things were as naught to Jeanne Marie. She had never yet seen a man
for whose intellect she did not have both a pity and a contempt.

But Claude Bouvier did not pick a husband for his daughter from among the
simple youths of the town. He wrote to a bachelor friend, Jacques Guyon by
name, and told him he could have the girl if he wanted her--that is, after
certain little preliminaries had been arranged.

Now, Jacques Guyon had been at the Bouvier residence on a visit three
months before, and had looked the lass over stealthily with peculiar
interest, and had intimated that if Monsieur Bouvier wished to get rid of
her it could be brought about. So, after some weeks had passed, Monsieur
bethought him of the offer of Jacques Guyon, and he concluded that
inasmuch as Guyon was rich and respectable it would be a good match.

So he wrote to Guyon, and Guyon replied that he would come, probably
within a fortnight--just as soon as his rheumatism got better.

Monsieur Claude Bouvier read the letter, and walking into the next room,
surprised Jeanne Marie by kissing her tenderly on her forehead--all as
herein truthfully recorded.

       *       *       *       *       *

So Jacques Guyon came, came in his carriage, with two servants riding on
horseback in front and another riding on horseback behind. Jeanne Marie
sat on the floor, tailor fashion, up in her little room of the old stone
house, and peeked out of the diamond-paned gable-window very cautiously;
and she was sorely disappointed.

In some of her dreams (and these dreams she thought were very bad), she
had pictured a lover coming alone on a foam-flecked charger; and as the
steed paused, the rider leaped lightly from saddle to ground, kissing his
hand to her as she peeked through the curtains. For he discovered her when
she hoped he would not, but she did not care much if he did.

But Monsieur Guyon's eyes did not search the windows. He got out of the
carriage with difficulty, and his breath came wheezy and short as he
mounted the steps. His complexion was dusty blue, his nose tinged with
carmine, his eyes watery, and his girth aldermanic. He was growing old,
and, saddest of all, he was growing old rebelliously and therefore
ungracefully--dyeing his whiskers purple.

That evening when Jeanne Marie was introduced to Monsieur Guyon at dinner
she found him very polite and very gracious. His breeches were real black
velvet and his stockings were silk, and the buckles on his shoes were
polished silver and the frill of his shirt was finest lace. His
conversation was directed mostly to Jeanne's father, so Jeanne did not
feel nearly so uncomfortable as she had expected.

The next day a notary came, and long papers were written out, and red and
green seals placed on them, and then everybody held up his right hand as
the notary mumbled something, and then all signed their names. The room
seemed to be teetering up and down, and it looked quite like rain.
Monsieur Bouvier stood on his tiptoes and again kissed his daughter on the
forehead, and Monsieur Guyon, taking her hand, lifted the long, slender
fingers to his lips, and told her that she would soon be a great lady and
the mistress of a splendid mansion, and have everything that one needed to
make one happy.

And so they were married by a bishop, with two priests and three curates
to assist. The ceremony was held at the great stone church; and as the
procession came out, the verger had a hard time to keep the crowd back, so
that the little girls in white could go before and strew flowers in their
pathway. The organ pealed, and the chimes clanged and rang as if the tune
and the times were out of joint; then other bells from other parts of the
old town answered, and across the valley rang mellow and soft the
chapel-bell of Montargis Castle.

Jeanne was seated in a carriage--how she got there she never knew; by her
side sat Jacques Guyon. The post-boys were lashing their horses into a
savage run, like devils running away with the souls of innocents, and
behind clattered the mounted, liveried servant. People on the sidewalks
waved good-bys and called God-bless-yous. Soon the sleepy old town was
left behind and the horses slowed down to a lazy trot. Jeanne looked back,
like Lot's wife: only a church-spire could be seen. She hoped that she
might be turned into a pillar of salt--but she wasn't. She crouched into
the corner of the seat and cried a good honest cry.

And Monsieur Jacques Guyon smiled and muttered to himself, "Her father
said she was a bit stubborn, but I'll see that she gets over it!"

And this was over three hundred years ago. It doesn't seem like it, but it
was.

       *       *       *       *       *

Read the lives of great men and you will come to the conclusion that it is
harder to find a gentleman than a genius. While the clock ticks off the
seconds, count on your fingers--within five minutes, if you can--five such
gentlemen as Sir Philip Sidney! Of course, I know before you speak that
Fenelon will be the first on your tongue. Fenelon, the low-voiced, the
mild, the sympathetic, the courtly, the gracious! Fenelon, favored by the
gods with beauty and far-reaching intellect! Fenelon, who knew the gold of
silence. Fenelon, on whose lips dwelt grace, and who by the magic of his
words had but to speak to be believed and to be beloved.

When Louis the Little made that most audacious blunder which cost France
millions in treasure and untold loss in men and women, Fenelon wrote to
the Prime Minister: "These Huguenots have many virtues that must be
acknowledged and conserved. We must hold them by mildness. We can not
produce conformity by force. Converts made in this manner are hypocrites.
No power is great enough to bind the mind--thought forever escapes. Give
civil liberty to all, not by approving all religions, but by permitting in
patience what God allows."

"You shall go as missionary to these renegades!" was the
answer--half-ironical, half-earnest.

"I will go only on one condition."

"And that is?"

"That from my province you withdraw all armed men--all sign of compulsion
of every sort!"

Fenelon was of noble blood, but his sympathies were ever with the people.
The lowly, the weak, the oppressed, the persecuted--these were ever the
objects of his solicitude--these were first in his mind.

It was in prison that Fenelon first met Madame Guyon. Fenelon was
thirty-seven, she was forty. He occasionally preached at Montargis, and
while there had heard of her goodness, her piety, her fervor, her
resignation. He had small sympathy for many of her peculiar views, but now
she was sick and in prison and he went to her and admonished her to hold
fast and to be of good-cheer.

Twelve years before this Madame Guyon had been left a widow. She was the
mother of five children--two were dead. The others were placed under the
care of kind kinsmen; and Madame Guyon went forth to give her days to
study and to teaching. This action of placing her children partly in the
care of others has been harshly criticized. But there is one phase of the
subject that I have never seen commented upon--and that is that a mother's
love for her offspring bears a certain ratio to the love she bore their
father. Had Madame Guyon ever carried in her arms a love-child, I can not
conceive of her allowing this child to be cared for by others--no matter
how competent.

The favor that had greeted Madame Guyon wherever she went was very great.
Her animation and devout enthusiasm won her entrance into the homes of
the great and noble everywhere. She organized societies of women that met
for prayer and conversation on exalted themes. The burden of her
philosophy was "Quietism"--the absolute submission of the human soul to
the will of God. Give up all, lay aside all striving, all reaching
out, all unrest, cease penance and lie low in the Lord's hand.
He doeth all things well. Make life one continual prayer for
holiness--wholeness--harmony; and thus all good will come to us--we
attract the good; we attract God--He is our friend--His spirit dwells with
us. She taught of power through repose, and told that you can never gain
peace by striving for it like fury.

This philosophy, stretching out in limitless ramifications, bearing on
every phase and condition of life, touched everywhere with mysticism,
afforded endless opportunity for thought.

It is the same philosophy that is being expressed by thousands of
prominent men and women today. It embraced all that is vital and best in
our so-called "advanced thought"; for in good sooth none of our new
"liberal sects" has anything that has not been taught before in olden
time.

But Madame Guyon's success was too great. The guardians of a dogmatic
religion are ever on the scent for heresy. They are jealous, and fearful,
and full of alarm lest their "institution" shall topple. Quietism was
making head, and throughout France the name of Madame Guyon was becoming
known. She went from town to town, and from city to city, and gave courses
of lectures. Women flocked to hear her, they organized clubs. Preachers
sometimes appeared and argued with her, but by the high fervor of her
speech she quickly silenced them. Then they took revenge by thundering
sermons against her after she had gone. As she traveled she left in her
wake a pyrotechnic display of elocutionary denunciation. They dared her to
come back and fight it out. The air was full of challenges. One prelate
was good enough to say, "This woman may teach primitive Christianity--but
if people find God everywhere, what's to become of us!"

And although the theme is as great as Fate and as serious as Death, one
can not suppress a smile to think how the fear of losing their jobs has
ever caused men to run violently to and fro and up and down in the earth,
crying peace, peace, when there is no peace.

Now, it was the denunciation and wild demonstration of her fearing foes
that advertised the labors of Madame Guyon. For strong people are not so
much advertised by their loving friends as by their rabid enemies.

This happened quite a while ago; but as mankind moves in a circle (and not
always a spiral, either) it might have happened yesterday. Make the scene
Ohio: slip Bossuet out and Doctor Buckley in; condense the virtues of Miss
Frances E. Willard and Miss Susan B. Anthony into one, and let this one
stand for Madame Guyon; call it New Transcendentalism, dub the Madame a
New Woman, and there you have it!

But with this difference: petitions to the President of the United States
to arrest this female offender and shut her up in the Chicago jail,
indefinitely, after a mock trial, would avail not. Yet persecution has its
compensation, and the treatment that Madame Guyon received emphasized the
truths she taught and sent them ringing through the schools and salons and
wherever thinking people gathered themselves together. Yes, persecution
has its compensation. In its state of persecution a religion is pure, if
ever; its decline begins when its prosperity commences. Prosperous men are
never wise and seldom good. Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of
you!

Surely, persecution has its compensation! When Madame Guyon was sick and
in prison, was she not visited by Fenelon? Ah, 'twas worth the cost.
Sympathy is the first attribute of love as well as its last. And I am not
sure but that sympathy is love's own self, vitalized mayhap by some divine
actinic ray. Only a thorn-crowned, bleeding Christ could win the adoration
of the world. Only the souls who have suffered are well loved. Thus does
Golgotha find its recompense. Hark ye and take courage, ye who are in
bonds! Gracious spirits, seen or unseen, will minister to you now, where
otherwise they would have passed without a sign! But from the day Fenelon
met Madame Guyon his fortune began to decline. People looked at him
askance. By a grim chance he was made one of a committee of three to
investigate the charges brought against the woman. The court took a year
for its task. Fenelon read everything that Madame Guyon had published,
conversed much with her, inquired into her history and when asked for his
verdict said, "I find no fault in her."

He talked with Madame de Maintenon, and Madame de Maintenon talked with
the King, and the offender was released.

Soon Fenelon began to utter in his sermons the truths he had learned from
Madame Guyon. And he gave her due credit. He explained that she was a good
Catholic--that she loved the Church--that she lived up to all the Church
taught, and besides knowing all that Churchmen knew she knew many things
beside.

Have a care, Archbishop of Cambrai! Enemies are upon thy track. Defend not
defenseless womanhood: knowest thou not what they have said of her? Speak
what thou art taught and keep thy inmost thoughts for thyself alone. Have
a care, Fenelon! thy bishopric hangs by a spider's thread.

The years kept slipping past as the years will. Twelve summers had come,
and twelve times had autumn leaves known their time to fall. Madame Guyon
was again in prison. A stranger was Archbishop of Cambrai: Fenelon no
longer a counselor of kings--a tutor of royalty. His voice was silenced,
his pen chained. He was allowed to retire to a rural parish. There he
lived with the peasants--revered, beloved. The country where he dwelt was
battle-scarred and bleeding; the smoke of devastation still hung over it.
Not a family but had been robbed of its best. Death had stalked rampant.
Fenelon shared the poverty of the people, their lowliness, their sorrows.
All the tragedy of their life was his; he said to them, "I know, I know!"

Twelve years of Madame Guyon's life were spent in prison. Toward the last
she was allowed to live in nominal freedom. But despotism, with savage
leer and stealthy step, saw that Fenelon was kept far away. In those
declining days, when the shadows were lengthening toward the east, her
time and talents were given to teaching the simple rudiments of knowledge
to the peasantry, to alleviating their material wants and to ministering
to the sick. It was a forced retirement, and yet it was a retirement that
was in every way in accord with her desires. But in spite of the
persecution that followed her, and the obloquy heaped upon her name, and
the bribe of pardon if she would but recant, she never retracted nor
wavered in her inward or outward faith, even in the estimation of a hair.
The firm reticence as to the supreme secrets of her life, and her
steadfast loyalty to that which she honestly believed was truth, must ever
command the affectionate admiration of all those who prize integrity of
mind and purity of purpose, who hold fast to the divinity of love, and who
believe in the things unseen which are eternal.

       *       *       *       *       *

The town of Montargis is one day's bicycle journey from Paris. As for the
road, though one be a wayfaring man and from the States he could not err
therein. You simply follow the Seine as if you were intent on discovering
its source, keeping to the beautiful highway that follows the winding
stream. And what a beautiful, clear, clean bit of water it is! In Paris,
your washerwoman takes your linen to the river, just as they did in the
days of Pharaoh, and the bundle comes back sweet as the breath of June.
Imagine the result of such recklessness in Chicago!

But as I rode out of Paris that bright May day it seemed Monday all along
the way; for dames with baskets balanced on their heads were making their
way to the waterside, followed by troops of barefoot or sabot-shod
children. There was one fine young woman with a baby in her arms, and the
innocent firstborn was busily taking its breakfast as the mother walked
calmly along, bearing on her well-poised head the family wash. And a mile
farther on, as if she had seen her rival and gone her one better, was
another woman with a two-year-old cherub perched secure on top of the
gently swaying basket, proud as a cardinal about to be consecrated. It was
a study in balancing that I have never seen before nor since; and I only
ask those to believe it who know things so true that they dare not tell
them. As the day wore on, I saw that the wash was being completed, for the
garments were spread out on the greenest of green grass, or on the bushes
that lined the way. By ten o'clock I was nearing Fontainebleau, and the
clothes were nearly ready to take in--but not quite. For while waiting for
the warm sun and the gentle breeze to dry them, the thrifty dames, who
were French and make soup out of everything, put in the time by laundering
the children. It seemed like that economic stroke of good housewives who
use the soapy wash-water for scrubbing the kitchen-floor. There they were,
dozens of hopefuls on whom the fate of the nation rested--creepers to
ten-year-olds--being scrubbed and dipped, or playing parlez-vous tag in
lieu of towel, as innocent of clothes as Carlyle's imaginary House of
Lords.

And so I passed off from the road that traced the Seine to a road that
kept company with the canal. I followed the towpath, even in spite of
warnings that 't was 'gainst the law. It was a one-horse canal, for many
of the gaily painted boats were drawn only by a single, shaggy-limbed
Percheron. The boats were sharp-prowed and narrow; and on some were
bareheaded women knitting, and men carving curious things out of blocks of
wood, as they journeyed. And I said to myself, if "it is the pace that
kills," these people are making a strong bid for immortality. I hailed the
lazily moving craft, waving my hat, and the slow-going tourists called
back cheerily.

By and by I came to a great, wide plain that stretched away like a
tideless summer sea. The wheat and lentils and pulse were planted in long
strips. In one place I thought I could trace the good old American flag
(that you never really love unless you are on a foreign shore) made with
alternate strips of millet and peas, with a goodly patch of cabbages in
the corner for stars. But possibly this was imagination, for I had been
thinking that in a week it would be the Fourth of July and I was far from
home--in a land where firecrackers are unknown.

Coming to a little rise of ground, I could see, lying calm and quiet amid
the world of rich, growing grain, the town of Montargis. Across on the
blue hillside was Montargis Castle, framed in a mass of foliage. I stopped
to view the scene, and the echo of vesper-bells came pealing gently over
the miles, as the nodding poppies at my feet bowed reverently in the
breeze.

Villages in France viewed from a distance seem so restful and idyllic.
There is no sound of strife, no trace of rivalry, no vain pride; only
white houses--the homes of good men and gentle women, and cherub children;
and all the church-steeples truly point to God. Yet on closer view--but
what of that!

When I reached the town, the church whose spire I had seen from the
distance beckoned me first. I turned off from the wide thoroughfare,
intending just to get a glance at the outside of the building as I passed.
But the great iron gates thrown invitingly open, and a rusty, dusty dog
of Flanders lying in the entry waiting for his master, told me that there
was service within. So I entered, passing through the noiseless, swinging
door, and into the dim twilight of the house of prayer. A score of people
were there, and standing in the aisle was a white-robed priest. He was
speaking, and his voice came so gently, so sure withal, so exquisitely
modulated, that I paused and, leaning against a pillar, listened. I think
it was the first time I ever heard a preacher speaking in a large church
who did not speak so loud that an echo chased his sentences round and
round the vaulted dome and strangled the sense. The tone was
conversational and the manner so free from canting conventionality that I
moved up closer to get a view of the face.

It was too dark to see well, but I came under the spell of the man's
earnest eloquence. The sacred stillness, the falling night, the odor from
incense and banks of flowers piled about the feet of an image of the Holy
Virgin--evidently brought by the peasantry, having nothing else to
give--made a combination of melting conditions that would have subdued a
heart of stone.

The preacher ceased to speak, and as he raised his hands in benediction,
I, involuntarily, with the other worshipers, knelt on the stone floor and
bowed my head in silent reverie.

Suddenly, I was aroused by a crashing noise at my elbow, and glancing
round saw that an old man near me had merely dropped his cane. A heavy
cudgel it was that falling on the stone flagging sent a thundering
reverberation through the vaulted chambers.

The worshipers were slipping out, one by one, and soon no one was left but
the old man of the cudgel and myself. He wore wooden shoes, and was
holding the cordwood fast between his knees, rolling his hat nervously in
his big hands. "He's a stranger, too," I said to myself; "he is the man
who owns the rusty dog of Flanders, and he is waiting to give the priest
some message!"

I leaned over towards my neighbor and asked, "The priest--what is his
name?"

"Father Francis, Monsieur!" and the old man swayed back and forward in his
seat as if moved by some inward emotion, still fingering his hat.

Just then the priest came out from behind the altar, wearing a black robe
instead of the white one. He moved down with a sort of quiet majesty
straight towards us. We arose as one man; it was as though some one had
pressed a button.

Father Francis walked by me, bowing slightly, and shook hands with my old
neighbor. They stood talking in an undertone.

A last struggling ray of light from the dying sun came in over the chancel
and flooded the great room for an instant. It allowed me to get a good
look at the face of the priest. As I stood there staring at him I heard
him say to the old man as he bade him good-by, "Yes, tell her I'll be
there in the morning."

Then he turned to me, and I was still staring. And as I stared I was
repeating to myself the words the people said when Dante used to pass,
"There is the man who has been to Hell!"

"You are an Englishman?" said Father Francis to me pleasantly as he held
out his hand. "Yes," I said; "I am an Englishman--that is, no--an
American!"

I was wondering if he had really heard me make that Dante remark; and
anyway, I had been rudely staring at him and listening with both ears to
his conversation with the old man. I tried to roll my hat, and had I a
cudgel I would surely have dropped it; and with it all I wondered if the
dog of Flanders waiting outside was not getting impatient for me!

"Oh, an American! I'm glad--I have very dear friends in America!"

Then I saw that Father Francis did not look so much like the exiled
Florentine as I had thought, for his smile was winning as that of a woman,
the corners of his mouth did not turn down, and the nose had not the Roman
curve. Dante was an exile: this man was at home--and would have been,
anywhere.

He was tall, slender and straight; he must have been sixty years old, but
the face in spite of its furrows was singularly handsome. Grave, yet not
depressed, it showed such feminine delicacy of feeling, such grace, such
high intellect, that I stood and gazed as I might at a statue in bronze.
But plain to see, he was a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief. The
face spake of one to whom might have come a great tribulation, and who by
accepting it had purchased redemption for all time from all the petty
troubles of earth.

"You must stay here as long as you wish, and you will come to our old
church again, I hope!" said the Father. He smiled, nodded his head and
started to leave me alone.

"Yes, yes, I'll come again--I'll come in the morning, for I want to talk
with you about Madame Guyon--she was married in this church they told
me--is that true?" I clutched a little. Here was a man I could not afford
to lose--one of the elect!

"Oh, yes; that was a long time ago, though. Are you interested in Madame
Guyon? I am glad--not to know Fenelon seems a misfortune. He used to
preach from that very pulpit, and Madame was baptized at that font and
confirmed here. I have pictures of them both; and I have their books--one
of the books is a first edition. Do you care for such things?"

When I was broke in London, in the Fall of Eighty-nine! Do I care for such
things? I can not recall what I said, but I remembered that this
brown-skinned priest with his liquid, black eyes, and the look of sorrow
on his handsome face, stood out before me like the picture of a saint.

I made an engagement to meet him the next morning, when he bethought him
of his promise to the old man of the cudgel and wooden shoes.

"Come now, then--come with me now. My house is just next door!"

And so we walked up the main aisle of the old church, around the altar
where Madame Guyon used to kneel, and by a crooked, little passageway
entered a house fully as old as the church. A woman who might have been as
old as the house was setting the table in a little dining-room. She looked
up at me through brass-rimmed spectacles, and without orders or any one
saying a word she whisked off the tablecloth, replaced it with a snowy,
clean one, and put on two plates instead of one. Then she brought in
toasted brown bread and tea, and a steaming dish of lentils, and
fresh-picked berries in a basket all lined with green leaves.

It was not a very sumptuous repast, but 't was enough. Afterward I learned
that Father Francis was a vegetarian. He did not tell me so, neither did
he apologize for absence of fermented drink, nor for his failure to supply
tobacco and pipes.

Now, I have heard that there be priests who hold in their cowled heads
choice recipes for spiced wines, and who carry hidden away in their hearts
all the mysteries of the chafing-dish; but Father Francis was not one of
these. His form was thin, but the bronze of his face was the bronze that
comes from red corpuscles, and the strongly corded neck and calloused,
bony hands told of manly abstinence and exercise in the open air, and
sleep that follows peaceful thoughts, knowing no chloral.

After the meal, Father Francis led the way to his little study upstairs.
He showed me his books and read to me from his one solitary "First
Edition." Then he unlocked a little drawer in an old chiffonier and
brought out a package all wrapped in chamois. This parcel held two
miniature portraits, one of Fenelon and one of Madame Guyon.

"That picture of Fenelon belonged to Madame Guyon. He had it painted for
her and sent it to her while she was in prison at Vincennes. The other I
bought in Paris--I do not know its history."

The good priest had work to do, and let me know it very gently, thus: "You
have come a long way, brother, the road was rough--I know you must be
weary. Come, I'll show you to your room."

He lighted a candle and took me to a bedroom at the end of the hall. It
was a little room, very clean, but devoid of all ornament, save a picture
of the Madonna and her Babe, that hung over the head of the little iron
bedstead. It was a painting--not very good. I think Father Francis painted
it himself; the face of the Holy Mother was very human--divinely human--as
motherhood should be.

Father Francis was right: the way had been rough and I was tired.

The treetops sang a cooing lullaby and the nightwinds sighed solemnly as
they wandered through the hallway and open doors. It did not take me long
to go to sleep. Later, the wind blew up fresh and cool. I was too sleepy
to get up and hunt for more covering, and yet I was cold as I curled up in
a knot and dreamed I was first mate with Peary on an expedition in search
of the North Pole. And the last I remember was a vision of a gray-robed
priest tiptoeing across the stone floor; of his throwing over me a heavy
blanket and then hastily tiptoeing out again.

The matin-bells, or the birds, or both, awoke me early, but when I got
downstairs I found my host had preceded me. His fine face looked fresh and
strong, and yet I wondered when he had slept.

After breakfast, the old housekeeper hovered near.

"What is it, Margaret?" said the Father, gently.

"You haven't forgotten your engagement?" asked the woman, with just a
quaver of anxiety.

"Oh no, Margaret"; then turning to me, "Come, you shall go with me--we
will talk of Fenelon and Madame Guyon as we walk. It is eight miles and
back, but you will not mind the distance. Oh, didn't I tell you where I'm
going? You saw the old man at the church last night--it is his
daughter--she is dying--dying of consumption. She has not been a good
girl. She went away to Paris, three years ago, and her parents never heard
from her. We tried to find her, but could not; and now she has come home
of her own accord--come home to die. I baptized her twenty years ago--how
fast the time has flown!"

The priest took a stout staff from the corner, and handing me its mate we
started away. Down the white, dusty highway we went; out on the stony road
where yesterday, as the darkness gathered, trudged an old man in wooden
shoes and with a cordwood cudgel--at his heels a dog of Flanders.




HARRIET MARTINEAU

    You better live your best and act your best and think your best
    today; for today is the sure preparation for tomorrow and all the
    other tomorrows that follow.
    --_Life's Uses_

[Illustration: HARRIET MARTINEAU]


I believe it was Thackeray who once expressed a regret that Harriet
Martineau had not shown better judgment in choosing her parents.

She was born into one of those big families where there is not love enough
to go 'round. The mother was a robustious woman with a termagant temper;
she was what you call "practical." She arose each morning, like Solomon's
ideal wife, while it was yet dark, and proceeded to set her house in
order. She made the children go to bed when they were not sleepy and get
up when they were. There was no beauty-sleep in that household, not even
forty winks; and did any member prove recreant and require a douse of cold
water, not only did he get the douse but he also heard quoted for a year
and a day that remark concerning the sluggard, "A little sleep, a little
slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: so shall thy poverty come
as one that traveleth, and thy want as an armed man."

This big, bustling Amazon was never known to weep but once, and that was
when Lord Nelson died. To show any emotion would have been to reveal a
weakness, and a caress would have been proof positive of folly. Life was
a stern business and this earth-journey a warfare. She cooked, she swept,
she scrubbed, she sewed.

And although she withheld every loving word and kept back all
demonstration of affection, yet her children were always well cared for:
they were well clothed, they had plenty to eat, and a warm place to sleep.
And in times of sickness this mother would send all others to rest, and
herself would watch by the bedside until the shadows stole away and the
sunrise came again. I wonder where you have lived all your life if you
have never known a woman like that?

In the morning, as soon as the breakfast things were done and the men
folks had gone to the cloth-factory, Mrs. Martineau would marshal her
daughters in the sitting-room to sew. And there they sewed for four hours
every forenoon for more than four years; and as they sewed some one would
often read aloud to them, for Mrs. Martineau believed in
education--education gotten on the wing.

Sewing-machines and knitting-machines have done more to emancipate women
than all the preachers. Think of the days when every garment worn by men,
women and children was made by the never-resting hands of women!

And as the girls in that thrifty Norwich household sewed and listened to
the reader, they occasionally spoke in monotone of what was read---all
save Harriet: Harriet sewed. And the other girls thought Harriet very
dull, and her mother was sure of it, and called her stupid, and sometimes
shook her and railed at her, endeavoring to arouse her out of her
lethargy.

Harriet has herself left on record somewhat of her feelings in those days.
In her child-heart there was a great aching void. Her life was wrong--the
lives about her were wrong--she did not know how, and could not then trace
the subject far enough to tell why. She was a-hungered, she longed for
tenderness, for affection and the close confidence that knows no repulse.
She wanted them all to throw down their sewing for just five minutes, and
sit in the silence with folded hands. She longed for her mother to hold
her on her lap so, that she could pillow her head on her shoulder with her
arms about her neck, and have a real good cry. Then all her troubles and
pains would be gone.

But the slim little girl never voiced any of these foolish thoughts; she
knew better. She choked back her tears and leaning over her sewing tried
hard to be "good."

"She is so stupid that she never listens to what one reads to her," said
her mother one day.

One of that family still lives. I saw him not long ago and talked with him
face to face concerning some of the things here written--Doctor James
Martineau, ninety-two years old.

The others are all dead now--all are gone. In the cemetery at Norwich is
a plain, slate slab, "To the Memory of Elizabeth Martineau, Mother of
Harriet Martineau." * * * And so she sleeps, remembered for what? As the
mother of a stupid little girl who tried hard to be good, but didn't
succeed very well, and who did not listen when they read aloud.

       *       *       *       *       *

It seems sometimes that there is no such thing as a New Year--it is only
the old year come back. These folks about us--have they not lived before?
Surely they are the same creatures that have peopled earth in the days
agone; they are busy about the same things, they chase after the same
trifles, they commit the same mistakes, and blunder as men have always
blundered.

Only last week, a teacher in one of the primary schools of Chicago
reported to her principal that a certain little boy in her room was so
hopelessly dull and perverse that she despaired of teaching him anything.
The child would sit with open mouth and look at her as she would talk to
the class, and five minutes afterward he could not or would not repeat
three words of what had been said. She had scolded him, made him stand on
the floor, kept him in after school, and even whipped him--but all in
vain. The principal looked into the case, scratched his head, stroked his
whiskers, coughed, and decided that the public-school funds should not be
wasted in trying to "teach imbeciles," and so reported to the parents. He
advised them to send the boy to a Home for the Feeble-Minded, sending the
message by an older brother. So the parents took the child to the Home and
asked that he be admitted. The Matron took the little boy on her lap,
talked to him, read to him, showed him pictures and said to the astonished
parents, "This child has fully as much intelligence as any of your other
children, perhaps more--but he is deaf!"

Harriet Martineau from her twelfth year was very deaf, and she was also
devoid of the senses of taste and smell.

"Oh, these are terrible tribulations to befall a mortal!" we exclaim with
uplifted hands. But on sober second thought I am not sure that I know what
is a tribulation and what a blessing. I'm not positive that I would know a
blessing should I see it coming up the street. For as I write it comes to
me that the Great Big Black Things that have loomed against the horizon of
my life, threatening to devour me, simply loomed and nothing more. They
harmed me not. The things that have really made me miss my train have
always been sweet, soft, pretty, pleasant things of which I was not in
the, least afraid.

Mother Nature is kind, and if she deprives us of one thing she gives us
another, and happiness seems to be meted out to each and all in equal
portions. Harriet's afflictions caused her to turn her mind to other
things than those which filled the hearts of girls of her own age. Society
chatter held nothing for her, she could not hear it if she would; and she
ate the food that agreed with her, not that which was merely pleasant to
the taste. She began to live in a world of thought and ideas. The silence
meant much.

"The first requisite is that man should be a good animal." I used to
think that Herbert Spencer in voicing this aphorism struck twelve. But I
am no longer enthusiastic about the remark. The senses of most dumb
animals are far better developed than those of man. Hounds can trace
footsteps over flat rocks, even though a shower has fallen in the
interval; cats can see in the dark; rabbits hear sounds that men never
hear; horses detect an impurity in water that a chemical analysis does not
reveal, and homing pigeons would gain nothing by carrying a compass. And
so I feel safe in saying that if any man were so good and perfect an
animal that he had the hound's sense of smell, the cat's eyesight, the
rabbit's sense of hearing, the horse's sense of taste, and the homing
pigeon's "locality," he would not be one whit better prepared to
appreciate Kipling's "Dipsy Chanty," and not a hair's breadth nearer a
point where he could write a poem equal to it.

No college professor can see so far as a Sioux Indian, neither can he hear
so well as a native African. There are rays of light that no unaided human
eye can trace, and there are sounds subtler than human ear can detect.
These five bodily faculties that we are pleased to call the senses were
developed by savage man. He holds them in common with the brute. And now
that man is becoming partly civilized he is in danger of losing them.
Faculties not used are taken away. Dame Nature seems to consider that
anything you do not utilize is not needed; and as she is averse to
carrying dead freight she drops it out.

But man can think, and the more he thinks and the further he projects his
thought, the less need he has for his physical senses. Homer's matchless
vision was the rich possession of a blind man; Milton never saw Paradise
until he was sightless, and Helen Keller knows a world of things that were
neither told to her in lectures nor read from books. The far-reaching
intellect often goes with a singularly imperfect body, and these things
seem to point to the truth that the body is one thing and the soul
another.

I make no argument for impoverished vitality, nor do I plead the cause of
those who enjoy poor health. Yet how often do we find that the
confessional of a family or a neighborhood is the bedside of one who sees
the green fields only as did the Lady of Shalott, by holding a
looking-glass so that it reflects the out-of-doors. Let me carry that
simile one step further, and say that the mirror of the soul when kept
free from fleck and stain, reveals the beauties of the universe. And I am
not sure but that the soul, freed from the distractions of sense and the
trammels of flesh, glides away to a height where things are observed for
the first time in their true proportions.

"The soul knows all things," says Emerson, "and knowledge is only a
remembering."

       *       *       *       *       *

The Martineaus were Huguenots, a stern, sturdy stock that suffered exile
rather than forego the right of free-thought and free speech. These are
the people who are the salt of the earth. And yet as I read history I see
that they are the people who have been hunted by dogs, and followed by
armed men carrying fagots. The driving of the Huguenots from France came
near bankrupting the land, and the flight of Jews and Huguenots into
England helped largely to make that country the counting-house of the
world. Take the Quakers, Puritans, Huguenots and other refugees from
America and it is no longer the land of the free or the home of the brave.

Of the seven Presidents who presided over the deliberations of that first
Continental Congress in Philadelphia, three were Huguenots: Henry Laurens,
John Jay and Elias Boudinot, and in the seats there were Puritans not a
few.

"By God, Sir, we can not afford to persecute the Quakers," said a certain
American a long while ago. "Their religion may be wrong, but the people
who cling to an idea are the only people we need. If we must persecute,
let us persecute the complacent."

Harriet Martineau had all the restless independence of will that marked
her ancestry. She set herself to acquire knowledge, and she did. When she
was twenty she spoke three languages and could read in four. She knew
history, astronomy, physical science, and it crowded her teacher in
mathematics very hard to keep one lesson in advance of her. Besides, she
could sew and cook and "keep house." Yet it was all gathered by labor and
toil and lift. By taking thought she had added cubits to her stature.

But at twenty, a great light suddenly shone around her. Love came and
revealed the wonders of Earth and Heaven. She had ever been of a religious
nature, but now her religion was vitalized and spiritualized. Deity was no
longer a Being who dwelt at a great distance among the stars, but the
Divine Life was hers. It flowed through her, nourished her and gave her
strength.

Renan suggests that one reason why religion remains on such a material
plane for many is because they have never known a great and vitalizing
love--a love where intellect, spirit and sex find their perfect mate. Love
is the great enlightener. And in my own mind I am fully persuaded that
comparatively few mortals ever experience this rebirth that a great love
gives. We grope our way through life. Nature's first thought is for
reproduction of the species; she has so overloaded physical passion that
men and women marry when the blood is warm and intellect callow. Girls
marry for life the first man that offers, and forever put behind them the
possibilities of a love that would enable them to lift up their eyes to
the hills from whence cometh their help. Very, very seldom do the years
that bring a calmer pulse reveal a mating of mind and spirit.

When love came to Harriet, she began to write, her first book being a
little volume called "Devotional Exercises." These daily musings on Divine
things and these sweetly limpid prayers were all written out first for
herself and her lover. But it came to her that what was a help to them
might be a help to others. A publisher was found, and the little work had
a large sale and found appreciative readers for many years.

Today, out under the trees, I read this first book written by Miss
Martineau. How gently sweet and perfect are these prayers asking for a
clean heart and a right spirit! And yet at this time Harriet Martineau had
gotten well beyond the idea that God was a great, big man who could be
beseeched and moved to alter His plans because some creature on the planet
Earth asked it. Her religion was pure Theism, with no confounding dogmas
about who was to be saved and who damned. The state of infants who died
unbaptized and of the heathen who passed away without ever having heard of
Jesus did not trouble her at all. She already accepted the truth of
necessity, believing that every act of life was the result of a cause. We
do what we do, and are what we are, on account of impulses given us by
previous training, previous acts or conditions under which we live and
have lived.

If then, everything in this world happens because something else happened
a thousand years ago or yesterday, and the result could not possibly be
different from what it is, why besiege Heaven with prayers?

The answer is simple. Prayer is an emotional exercise; an endeavor to
bring the will into a state of harmony with the Divine Will; a rest and a
composure that gives strength by putting us in position to partake of the
strength of the Universal. The man who prays today is as a result stronger
tomorrow, and thus is prayer answered. By right thinking does the race
grow. An act is only a crystallized thought; and this young girl's little
book was designed as a help to right thinking. The things it taught are so
simple that no man need go to a theological seminary to learn them: the
Silence will tell him all if he will but listen and incline his heart.
Love had indeed made Harriet's spirit free. And to no woman can love mean
so much as to one who is aware that she is physically deficient. Homely
women are apt to make the better wives, and in all my earth-pilgrimage I
never saw a more devoted love--a diviner tenderness--than that which
exists between a man of my acquaintance, sound in every sense and splendid
in physique, and his wife, who has been blind from her birth. For weeks
after I first met this couple there rang in my ears that expression of
Victor Hugo's, "To be blind and to be loved--what happier fate!"

But Harriet's lover was poor in purse and his family was likewise poor,
and the thrifty Martineaus vigorously opposed the mating. In fact,
Harriet's mother hooted at it and spoke of it with scorn; and Harriet
answered not back, but hid her love away in her heart--biding the time
when her lover should make for himself a name and a place, and have money
withal to command the respect of even mill-owners.

So the days passed, and the months went by, and three years counted
themselves with the eternity that lies behind. Harriet's lover had indeed
proved himself worthy. He had worked his way through college, had been
graduated at the Divinity School, and his high reputation for character
and his ability as a speaker won for him at once a position to which many
older than he aspired. He became the pastor of the Unitarian Church at
Manchester--and this was no small matter!

Now Norwich, where the Martineaus lived, is a long way from Manchester,
where Harriet's lover preached, or it was then, in stagecoach times. It
cost money, too, to send letters.

And there was quite an interval once when Harriet sent several letters,
and anxiously looked for one; but none arrived.

Then word came that the brilliant young preacher was ill; he wished to see
his betrothed. She started to go to him, but her parents opposed such an
unprecedented thing. She hesitated, deferred her visit--intending soon to
go at all hazards--hoping all the while to hear better news.

Word came that Harriet's lover was dead. Soon after this the Martineau
mills, through various foolish speculations, got into a bad way.
Harriet's father found himself with more debts than he could pay; his
endeavors to buffet the storm broke his health--he gave up hope,
languished and died.

Mrs. Martineau and the family were thus suddenly deprived of all means of
support. The boys were sent to work in the mills, and the two older girls,
having five sound senses each, found places where they could do housework
and put money in their purses. Harriet Martineau stayed at home and kept
house. She also studied, read and wrote a little--there was no other way!


       *       *       *       *       *

Six years passed, and the name of Harriet Martineau was recognized as a
power in the land. Her "Illustrations of Political Economy" had sold well
up into the hundred thousands. The little stories were read by old and
young, rich and poor, learned and unlearned. Sir Robert Peel had written
Harriet a personal letter of encouragement; Lord Brougham had paid for and
given away a thousand copies of the booklets; Richard Cobden had publicly
endorsed them; Coleridge had courted the author; Florence Nightingale had
sung her praises, and the Czar of Russia had ordered that "all the books
of Harriet Martineau's found in Russia shall be destroyed." Besides, she
had incurred the wrath of King Philippe of France, who after first
lavishly praising her and ordering the "Illustrations" translated into
French, to be used in the public schools, suddenly discovered a hot
chapter entitled, "The Error Called the Divine Right of Kings," and
although Philippe was only a "citizen-king" he made haste to recall his
kind words.

And I wish here to remark in parentheses that the author who has not made
warm friends and then lost them in an hour by writing things that did not
agree with the preconceived idea of these friends, has either not written
well or not been read. Every preacher who preaches ably has two doors to
his church--one where the people come in and another through which he
preaches them out. And I do not see how any man, even though he be
divine, could expect or hope to have as many as twelve disciples and hold
them for three years without being doubted, denied and betrayed. If you
have thoughts, and honestly speak your mind, Golgotha for you is not far
away.

Harriet Martineau was essentially an agitator. She entered into life in
its fullest sense, and no phase of existence escaped her keen and
penetrating investigation. From writing books giving minute directions to
housemaids, to lengthy advice to prime ministers, her work never lagged.
She was widely read, beloved, respected, feared and well hated.

When her political-economy tales were selling their best, the Government
sent her word that on application she could have a pension of two hundred
pounds a year for life. A pension of this kind comes nominally as a reward
for excellent work or heroic service. But a pension may mean something
else: it often implies that the receiver shall not offend nor affront the
one that bestows it. Could we trace the true inner history of pensions
granted by monarchies, we would find that they are usually diplomatic
moves.

Harriet made no response to the generous offer of a lifelong maintenance
from the State, but continued to work away after her own methods. Yet the
offer of a pension did her good in one way: it suggested the wisdom of
setting aside a sum that would support her when her earning powers were
diminished. From her two books written concerning her trip to America she
received the sum of seven thousand five hundred dollars. With this she
purchased an insurance policy in the form of a deferred annuity, providing
that from her fiftieth year to her death she should receive the annual sum
of five hundred dollars. Nowhere in all the realm of Grub Street do we
find a man who set such an example of cool wisdom for this crippled woman.
At this time she was supporting her mother, who had become blind, and also
a brother, who was a slave to drink.

Twenty-five years after the first offer of pension, the Government renewed
the proposition. But Harriet said that her needs were few and her wants
simple; that she had enough anyway, and besides, she could not consent to
the policy of pensioning one class of persons for well-doing and
forgetting all the toilers who have worked just as conscientiously, but
along lowly lines; if she ever did need aid, she would do as other old
women were obliged to do, that is, apply to the parish.

Miss Martineau wrote for the "Daily London News" alone, sixteen hundred
forty-two editorials. She also wrote more than two hundred magazine
articles, and published upwards of fifty books. Her work was not classic,
for it was written for the times. That her influence for good on the
thought of the times was wide and far-reaching, all thoughtful men agree.
And he who influences the thought of his times influences all the times
that follow. He has made his impress on eternity.

       *       *       *       *       *

Opinions may differ as to what constitutes Harriet Martineau's best work,
but my view is that her translation and condensation of Auguste Comte's
six volumes into two will live when all her other work is forgotten.
Comte's own writings were filled with many repetitions and rhetorical
flounderings. He was more of a philosopher than a writer. He had an idea
too big for him to express, but he expressed at it right bravely. Miss
Martineau, trained writer and thinker, did not translate verbally: she
caught the idea, and translated the thought rather than the language. And
so it has come about that her work has been literally translated back into
French and is accepted as a textbook of Positivism, while the original
books of the philosopher are merely collected by museums and bibliophiles
as curiosities.

Comte taught that man passes through three distinct mental stages in his
development: First, man attributes all phenomena to a "Personal God," and
to this God he servilely prays. Second, he believes in a "Supreme
Essence," a "Universal Principle" or a "First Cause," and seeks to
discover its hiding-place. Third, he ceases to hunt out the unknowable,
and is content to live and work for a positive present good, fully
believing that what is best today can not fail to bring the best results
tomorrow.

Harriet had long considered that one reason for the very slow advancement
of civilization was that men had ever busied themselves with supernatural
concerns; and in fearsome endeavors to make themselves secure for another
world had neglected this. Man had tried to make peace with the skies
instead of peace with his neighbor. She also thought she saw clearly that
right living was one thing, and a belief in theological dogma another.
That these things sometimes go together, she of course admitted, but a
belief in a "vicarious atonement" and a "miraculous conception" she did
not believe made a man a gentler husband, a better neighbor or a more
patriotic citizen. Man does what he does because he thinks at the moment
it is the best thing to do. And if you could make men believe that peace,
truth, honesty and industry were the best standards to adopt--bringing the
best results--all men would adopt them.

There are no such things as reward and punishment, as these terms are
ordinarily used: there are only good results and bad results. We sow, and
reap what we have sown.

Miss Martineau had long believed these things, but Comte proved
them--proved them in six ponderous tomes--and she set herself the task to
simplify his philosophy.

There is one point of attraction that Comte's thought had for Harriet
Martineau that I have never seen mentioned in print--that is, his mental
attitude on the value of love in a well-ordered life.

In the springtime of his manhood, Auguste Comte, sensitive, confiding,
generous, loved a beautiful girl. She did not share his intellectual
ambitions, his divine aspiration: she was only a beautiful animal. Man
proposes, but is not always accepted. She married another, and Comte was
disconsolate--for a day.

He pondered the subject, read the lives of various great men, talked with
monks and sundry friars gray, and after five years wrote out at length the
reasons why a man, in order to accomplish a far-reaching and splendid
work, must live the life of a celibate. "To achieve," said Comte, "you
must be married to your work."

Comte lived for some time content in this philosophy, constantly
strengthening it and buttressing it against attack; for we believe a thing
first and skirmish for our proof afterward. But when past forty, and his
hair was turning to silver, and crow's-feet were showing themselves in his
fine face, and when there was a halt in his step and his laughter had died
away into a weary smile, he met a woman whose nature was as finely
sensitive and as silkenly strong as his own. She had intellect,
aspiration, power. She was gentle, and a womanly woman withal; his best
mood was matched by hers, she sympathized with his highest ideal.

They loved and they married.

The crow's-feet disappeared from Comte's face, the halt in his step was
gone, the laugh returned, and people said that the silver in his hair was
becoming.

Shortly after, Comte set himself to work overhauling all the foolish
things he had said about the necessity of celibacy. He declared that a man
without his mate only stumbled his way through life. There was the male
man and the female man, and only by working together could these two souls
hope to progress. It requires two to generate thought. Comte felt sure
that he was writing the final word. He avowed that there was no more to
say. He declared that should his wife go hence the fountains of his soul
would dry up, his mind would famish, and the light of his life would go
out in darkness.

The gods were envious of such love as this.

Comte's mate passed away.

He was stricken dumb; the calamity was too great for speech or tears.

But five years after, he got down his books and went over his manuscripts
and again revised his philosophy of what constitutes the true condition
for the highest and purest thought. To have known a great and exalted love
and have it fade from your grasp and flee as shadow, living only in
memory, is the highest good, he wrote. A great sorrow at one stroke
purchases a redemption from all petty troubles; it sinks all trivial
annoyances into nothingness, and grants the man lifelong freedom from all
petty, corroding cares. His feelings have been sounded to their
depths--the plummet has touched bottom. Fate has done her worst: she has
brought him face to face with the Supreme Calamity, and thereafter there
is nothing that can inspire terror.

The memory of a great love can never die from out the heart. It affords a
ballast 'gainst all the storms that blow. And although it lends an
unutterable sadness, it imparts an unspeakable peace.

A great love, even when fully possessed, affords no complete
gratification. There is an essence in it that eludes all ownership. Its
highest use seems to be a purifying impulse for nobler endeavor. It says
at the last, "Arise, and get thee hence, for this is not thy rest."

Where there is this haunting memory of a great love lost there is always
forgiveness, charity, and a sympathy that makes the man brother to all who
endure and suffer. The individual himself is nothing; he has nothing to
hope for, nothing to gain, nothing to win, nothing to lose; for the first
time and the last he has a selflessness that is wide as the world, and
wherein there is no room for the recollection of a wrong. In this memory
of a great love, there is a nourishing source of strength by which the
possessor lives and works; he is in communication with elemental
conditions.

Harriet Martineau was a lifelong widow of the heart. That first great
passion of her early womanhood, the love that was lost, remained with her
all the days of her life: springing fresh every morning, her last thought
as she closed her eyes at night. Other loves came to her, attachments
varying in nature and degree, but in this supreme love all was fused and
absorbed. In this love, you get the secret of power.

A great love is a pain, yet it is a benison and a benediction. If we carry
any possession from this world to another it is the memory of a great
love. For even in the last hour, when the coldness of death shall creep
into the stiffening limbs, and the brain shall be stunned and the thoughts
stifled, there shall come to the tongue a name, a name not mentioned aloud
for years--there shall come a name; and as the last flickering rays of
life flare up to go out on earth forever, the tongue will speak this name
that was long, long ago burned into the soul by the passion of a love that
fadeth not away.




CHARLOTTE BRONTE

    I was not surprised, when I went down into the hall, to see that
    a brilliant June morning had succeeded to the tempest of the
    night, and to feel through the open glass door the breathing of a
    fresh and fragrant breeze. Nature must be gladsome when I was so
    happy. A beggar woman and her little boy, pale, ragged objects
    both, were coming up the walk, and I ran down and gave them all
    the money I happened to have in my purse--some three or four
    shillings: good or bad they must partake of my jubilee. The rooks
    cawed and blither birds sung, but nothing was so merry or so
    musical as my own rejoicing heart.
    --_Jane Eyre_

[Illustration: CHARLOTTE BRONTE]


Rumor has it that there be Americans who are never happy unless passing
for Englishmen. And I think I have discovered a like anomaly on the part
of the sons of Ireland--a wish to pass for Frenchmen. On Continental
hotel-registers the good, honest name of O'Brian often turns queer
somersaults, and more than once in "The States" does the kingly prefix of
O evolve itself into Van or De, which perhaps is quite proper, seeing they
all mean the same thing. One cause of this tendency may lie in the fact
that Saint Patrick was a native of France; although Saint Patrick may or
may not have been chosen patron saint on account of his nationality. But
the patron saint of Ireland being a Frenchman, what more natural, and
therefore what more proper, than that the whole Emerald Isle should slant
toward the people who love art and rabbit-stew! Anyway, from the proud
patronymic of Patricius to plain Pat is quite a drop, and my heart is with
Paddy in his efforts to get back.

When Patrick Prunty of County Down, Ireland, shook off the shackles of
environment, and the mud of the peat-bog, and went across to England,
presenting himself at the gates of Saint John's College, Cambridge,
asking for admittance, I am glad he handed in his name as Mr. P. Bronte,
accent on the last syllable.

There is a gentle myth abroad that preachers are "called," while other men
adopt a profession or get a job, but no Protestant Episcopal clergyman I
have ever known, and I have known many, ever made any such claim. They
take up the profession because it supplies honors and a "living." Then
they can do good, too, and all men want to do good. So they hie them to a
divinity school and are taught the mysteries of theological tierce and
thrust; and interviewing a clerical tailor they are ready to accept the
honors and partake of the living. After a careful study of the life of
Patrick Bronte I can not find that his ambition extended beyond the
desirable things I have named--that is to say, inclusively, honors and a
living.

He was tall, athletic, dark, and surely a fellow of force and ambition to
set his back on the old and boldly rap for admittance at the gates of
Cambridge. He was a pretty good student, too, although a bit quarrelsome
and sometimes mischievous--throwing his force into quite unnecessary ways,
as Irishmen are apt to do. He fell in love, of course, and has not an
Irishman in love been likened to Vesuvius in state of eruption? We know of
at least one charming girl who refused to marry him, because he declined,
unlike Othello, to tell the story of his life. And it was assumed that any
man who would not tell who "his folks" were, was a rogue and a varlet and
a vagrom at heart. And all the while Monsieur Bronte had nothing worse to
conceal than that he was from County Down and his name Prunty. He wouldn't
give in and tell the story of his life to slow music, and so the girl wept
and then stormed, and finally Bronte stormed and went away, and the girl
and her parents were sure that the Frenchman was a murderer escaping
justice. Fortunate, aye, thrice fortunate is it for the world that neither
Bronte nor the girl wavered even in the estimation of a hair.

Bronte got through school and came out with tuppence worth of honors. When
thirty, we find him established as curate at the shabby little town of
Hartshead, in Yorkshire. Little Miss Branwell, from Penzance, came up
there on a visit to her uncle, and the Reverend Mr. Bronte at once fell
violently in love with her dainty form and gentle ways. I say "violently,"
for that's the kind of man Bronte was. Darwin says, "The faculty of
amativeness is not aroused except by the unfamiliar." Girls who go away
visiting, wearing their best bib and tucker, find lovers without fail.
One-third of all marriages in the United States occur in just this way:
the bib and tucker being sprung on the young man as a surprise, dazzles
and hypnotizes him into an avowal and an engagement.

And so they were married--were the Reverend Patrick Bronte and Miss Maria
Branwell. He was big, bold and dictatorial; she was little, shy and
sensitive. The babies came--one in less than a year, then a year apart.
The dainty little woman had her troubles, we are sure of that. Her voice
comes to us only as a plaintive echo. When she asked to have the bread
passed, she always apologized. Once her aunt sent her a present of a
pretty silk dress, for country clergymen's wives do not have many
luxuries--don't you know that?--and Patrick Bronte cut the dress into
strips before her eyes and then threw the pieces, and the little slippers
to match, into the fireplace, to teach his wife humility. He used to
practise with a pistol and shoot in the house to steady the lady's nerves,
and occasionally he got plain drunk. A man like Bronte in a little town
with a tired little wife, and with inferior people, is a despot. He busies
himself with trifles, looks after foolish details, and the neighbors let
him have his own way and his wife has to, and the result is that he
becomes convinced in his own mind that he is the people and that wisdom
will die with him.

And yet Bronte wrote some pretty good poetry, and had faculties that
rightly developed might have made him an excellent man. He should have
gone down to London (or up, because it is south) and there come into
competition with men as strong as himself. Fate should have seized him by
the hair and bumped his head against stone walls and cuffed him
thoroughly, and kicked him into line, teaching him humility, then out of
the scrimmage we might have gotten a really superior product.

Mrs. Bronte became a confirmed invalid. A man can not always badger a
woman; God is good--she dies. Little Maria Branwell had been married eight
years; when she passed out she left six children, "all of a size," a
neighbor woman has written. Over her grave is a tablet erected by her
husband informing the wayfarer that "she has gone to meet her Savior." At
the bottom is this warning to all women: "Be ye also ready; for in such an
hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh."

Five of these motherless children were girls and one a boy.

As you stand there in that stone church at Haworth reading the inscription
above Maria Branwell's grave, you can also read the death record of the
babes she left. The mother died on September Fifteenth, Eighteen Hundred
Twenty-one; her oldest daughter, Maria, on May Sixth, Eighteen Hundred
Twenty-five; Elizabeth, June Fifteenth, Eighteen Hundred Twenty-five;
Patrick Branwell, on September Twenty-fourth, Eighteen Hundred
Forty-eight; Emily, December Nineteenth, Eighteen Hundred Forty-eight;
Anne, May Twenty-eighth, Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine; and Charlotte, on
March Thirty-first, Eighteen Hundred Fifty-five. Those whom the gods love
die young: the Reverend Patrick Bronte lived to be eighty-five years old.

       *       *       *       *       *

I got out of the train at Keighley, which you must pronounce "Keethley,"
and leaving my valise with the station-master started on foot for Haworth,
four miles away.

Keighley is a manufacturing town where various old mansions have been
turned into factories, and new factories have sprung up, square,
spick-span, trimmed-stone buildings, with fire-escapes and red tanks on
top.

One of these old mansions I saw had a fine copper roof that shone in the
sun like a monster Lake Superior agate. It stands a bit back from the
road, and on one great gatepost is a brass plate reading "Cardigan Hall,"
and on the other a sign, "No Admittance--Apply at the Office." So I
applied at the office, which is evidently the ancient lodge, and asked if
Mr. Cardigan was in. Four clerks perched on high stools, crouching over
big ledgers, dropped their pens and turning on their spiral seats looked
at me with staring eyes, and with mouths wide open. I repeated the
question and one of the quartette, a wheezy little old man in spectacles
and with whiskers on his neck, clambered down from his elevated position
and ambled over near, walking around me, eying me curiously.

"Go wan wi' yer wurruk, ye idlers!" he suddenly commanded the others. And
then he explained to me that Mr. Cardigan was not in, neither was Mr.
Jackson. In fact, Mr. Cardigan had not been in for a hundred years--being
dead. But if I wanted to look at goods I could be accommodated with
bargains fully five per cent below Lunnon market. The little old man was
in such serious earnest that I felt it would be a sin to continue a joke.
I explained that I was only a tourist in search of the picturesque, and
thereby did I drop ten points in the old man's estimation. But this did I
learn, that Lord Cardigan has won deathless fame by attaching his name to
a knit jacket, just as the name Jaeger will go clattering down the
corridors of time attached to a "combination suit."

This splendid old mansion was once the ancestral home of a branch of the
noble family of Cardigan. But things got somewhat shuffled, through too
many hot suppers up to London (being south), and stacks of reds and stacks
of blues were drawn in towards the dealer, and so the old mansion fell
under the hammer of the auctioneer. What an all-powerful thing is an
auctioneer's hammer! And now from the great parlors, and the library, and
the "hall," and the guest-chambers echo the rattle of spinning-jennies and
the dull booming of whirling pulleys. And above the song of whirring
wheels came the songs of girls at their work--voices that alone might have
been harsh and discordant, but blending with the monotone of the factory's
roar were really melodious.

"We cawn't keep the nasty things from singin'," said the old man
apologetically.

"Why should you?" I asked.

"Huh, mon! but they sing sacred songs, and chaunts, and a' that, and say
all together from twenty rooms, a hundred times a day, 'Aws ut wuz in th'
beginnin,' uz now awn ever shawl be, worl' wi'out end, Aamen.' It's not
right. I've told Mr. Jackson. Listen now, didn't I tell ye?"

"Then you are a Churchman?"

And the old man wiped his glasses and told me that he was a Churchman,
although an unworthy one, and had been for fifty-four years, come
Michaelmas. Yes, he had always lived here, was born only across the beck
away--his father was gamekeeper for Lord Cardigan, and afterwards agent.
He had been to Haworth many times, although not for ten years. He knew the
Reverend Patrick Bronte well, for the Incumbent from Haworth used to
preach at Keighley once a year, and sometimes twice. Bronte was a fine
man, with a splendid voice for intoning, and very strict about keeping out
all heresies and such. He had a lot of trouble, had Bronte: his wife died
and left him with eight or ten children, all smart, but rather wild. They
gave him a lot of bother, especially the boy. One of the girls married Mr.
Bronte's curate, Mr. Nicholls, a very decent kind of man who comes to
Keighley once a year, and always comes to the factory to ask how things
are going.

Yes, Mr. Nicholls' first wife died years and years ago. She used to write
things--novels; but no one should read novels; novels are stories that are
not so--things that never happened; they tell of folks that never was.

Having no argument to present in way of rebuttal, I shook hands with the
old man and started away. He walked with me to the road to put me on the
right way to Haworth.

Looking back as I reached the corner, I saw four "clarks" watching me
intently from the office windows, and above the roar and jangle of
machinery was borne on the summer breeze the sound of sacred song--shrill
feminine voices:

"Aws ut wuz in th' beginnin', uz now awn ever shawl be, worl' wi'out
end--Aamen!"

       *       *       *       *       *

As one moves out of Keighley the country becomes stony; the trees are left
behind, and there rises on all sides billow on billow of purple heather.
The way is rough as the Pilgrim's Progress road to Paradise. These
hillside moors are filled with springs that high up form rills, then
brooks, then cascades or "becks," and along the Haworth road, wherever one
of these hurrying, scurrying, dancing becks crosses the highway, there is
a factory devoted to keeping alive the name of Cardigan. Next to the
factory is a "pub.," and publics and factories checker themselves all
along the route. Mixed in with these are long rows of tenement-houses well
built of stone, with slate roofs, but with a grimy air of desolation about
them that surely drives their occupants to drink. To have a home a man
must build it himself. Forty houses in a row, all alike, are not homes at
all.

I believe an observant man once wrote of the hand being subdued to what it
works in. The man who wrote that surely never tramped along the Haworth
road as the bell rang for twelve o'clock. From out the factories poured a
motley mob of men, women and children, not only with hands dyed, but with
clothing, faces and heads as well. Girls with bright-green hair, and
lemon-colored faces, leered and jeered at me as they hastened pellmell
with hats askew, and stockings down, and dragging shawls, for home or
public-house. Red and maroon children ran, and bright-scarlet men smoked
stolidly, taking their time with genuine grim Yorkshire sullen sourness.

"How far is it to Haworth?" I asked one such specimen.

"Ef ye pay th' siller for a double pot a' 'arf and 'arf. Hi might tell
ye"; and he jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward a ginshop near by.

"Very well," said I; "I'll buy you a double pot of 'arf and 'arf, this
time."

The man seemed a bit surprised, but no smile came over his spattered
rainbow face as he led the way into the drink-shop. The place was crowded
with men and women scrambling for penny sandwiches and drinks fermented
and spirituous. Some of these women had babies at their breasts, the
babies being brought by appointment by older children who stayed at home
while the mothers worked. And as the mothers gulped their Triple XXX, and
swallowed hunks of black bread, the little innocents dined. The mothers
were rather kindly disposed, though, and occasionally allowed the
youngsters to take sips out of their foaming glasses, or at least to drain
them. Suddenly a woman with purple hair spied me and called in falsetto:

"Ah, Sawndy McClure has caught a gen'l'mon. Why didn't I see 'im fust an'
'arve 'im fer a pet?"

There was a guffaw at my expense and 'arf and 'arf as well, for all the
party, or else quarrel. As it was, my stout stick probably saved me from
the "personal touch." I stayed until the factory-bells rang, and out my
new-found friends scurried for fear of being the fatal five minutes late
and getting locked out. Some of them shook my hand as they went, and
others pounded me on the back for luck, and several of the girls got my
tag and shouted, "You're it!"

I used to think that Yorkshire folks were hopelessly dull and sublimely
stupid, quarrelsome withal and pigheaded to the thirty-second degree; but
I have partially come to the conclusion that their glum ways often conceal
a peculiar kind of grim humor, and beneath the tough husk is considerable
good nature.

The absence of large trees makes it possible to see the village of Haworth
several miles away. It seems to cling to the stony hillside as if it
feared being blown into space. There is a hurrying, rushing rill here,
too, that turns a little woolen-mill. Then there is a "Black Bull" tavern,
with a stable-yard at the side and rows of houses on the one street, all
very straight up and down. One misses the climbing roses of the ideal
merry England, and the soft turf and spreading yews and the flowering
hedgerows where throstles and linnets play hide-and-seek the livelong day.
It is all cold gray stone, lichen-covered, and the houses do not invite
you to enter, and the gardens bid no welcome, and only the great purple
wastes of moorland greet you as a friend and brother.

Outside the Black Bull sits a solitary hostler, who feels it would be a
weakness to show any good humor. So he bottles his curiosity and scowls
from under red, bushy eyebrows.

Turning off the main street is a narrow road leading to the church--square
and gray and cold. Next to it is the parsonage, built of the same
material, and beyond is the crowded city of the dead.

I plied the knocker at the parsonage door and asked for the rector. He was
away at Kendal to attend a funeral, but his wife was at home--a pleasant,
matronly woman of near sixty, with smooth, white hair. She came to the
door knitting furiously, but from her regulation smile I saw that visitors
were not uncommon.

"You want to see the home of the Brontes? That's right, come right in.
This was the study of the Reverend Patrick Bronte, Incumbent of this
Parish for fifty years."

She sang her little song and knitted and shifted the needles and measured
the foot, for the stocking was nearly done. It was a blue stocking
(although she wasn't) with a white toe; and all the time she led me from
room to room telling me about the Brontes--how there were the father,
mother and six children. They all came together. The mother died shortly,
and then two of the little girls died. That left three girls and Branwell
the boy. He was petted and made too much of by his father and everybody.
He was the one that always was going to do great things. He made the girls
wait on him and cuffed them if they didn't, and if they did, and all the
time told of the things he was going to do. But he never did them, for he
spent most of his time at the taverns. After a while he died--died of the
tremens.

The three Bronte girls, Emily, Charlotte and Annie, wrote a novel apiece,
and never showed them to their father or to any one. They called 'emselves
Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, and their novels were the greatest ever
written--they wrote them 'emselves with no man to help. Their father was
awful mad about it, but when the money began to come in he felt better.
Emily died when she was twenty-seven. She was the brightest of them all;
then Annie died, and only Charlotte and the old man were left. Charlotte
married her father's curate, but old Mr. Bronte wouldn't go to the
wedding: he went to the Black Bull instead. Miss Wooler gave the bride
away--some one had to give her away, you know. The bride was thirty-eight.
She died in less them a year, and old Mr. Bronte and Charlotte's husband
lived here alone together.

This was Charlotte's room; this is the desk where she wrote "Jane
Eyre"--leastwise they say it is. This is the chair she sat in, and under
that framed glass are several sheets of her manuscript. The writing is
almost too small to read; and so fine and yet so perfect and neat! She was
a wonderful tidy body, very small and delicate and gentle, yet with a good
deal of her father's energy.

Here are letters she wrote: you can look at them if you choose. This
footstool she made and covered herself. It is filled with
heather-blossoms--just as she left it. Those books were hers, too--many of
them given to her by great authors. See, there is Thackeray's name written
by himself, and a letter from him pasted inside the front cover. He was a
big man they say, but he wrote very small, and Charlotte wrote just like
him, only better, and now there are hundreds of folks write like 'em both.
Then here's a book with Miss Martineau's name, and another from Robert
Browning--do you know who he was?

Yes, the church is always open. Go in and stay as long as you choose; at
the door is a poorbox and if you wish to put something in you can do so--a
sixpence most visitors put in, or a shilling if you insist upon it. You
know we are not a rich parish--the wool all goes to Manchester now, and
the factory-hands are on half-pay and times are scarce. You will come
again some time, come when the heather is in bloom, won't you? That's
right. Oh, stay! the boxwood there in the garden was planted by
Charlotte's own hands--perhaps you would like a sprig of it--there, I
thought you would!

       *       *       *       *       *

All who write concerning the Brontes dwell on the sadness and the tragedy
of their lives. They picture Charlotte's earth-journey as one devoid of
happiness, lacking all that sweetens and makes for satisfaction. They
forget that she wrote "Jane Eyre," and that no person utterly miserable
ever did a great work; and I assume that they know not of the wild,
splendid, intoxicating joy that follows a performance well done. To be
sure, "Jane Eyre" is a tragedy, but the author of a tragedy must be
greater than the plot--greater than his puppets. He is their creator, and
his life runs through and pervades theirs, just as the life of our Creator
flows through us. In Him we live and move and have our being. And I submit
that the writer of a tragedy is not cast down or undone at the time he
pictures his heroic situations and conjures forth his strutting spirits.
When the play ends and the curtain falls on the fifth act, there is still
one man alive, and that is the author. He may be gorged with crime and
surfeited with blood, but there is a surging exultation in his veins as he
views the ruin that his brain has wrought.

Charlotte loved the great stretch of purple moors, hill on hill fading
away into eternal mist. And the wild winds that sighed and moaned at
casements or raged in sullen wrath, tugging at the roof, were her friends.
She loved them all, and thought of them as visiting spirits. They were her
properties, and no writer who ever lived has made such splendid use of
winds and storm-clouds and driving rain as did Charlotte Bronte. People
who point to the chasing, angry clouds and the swish of dripping
rosebushes blown against the cottage-windows as proof of Charlotte
Bronte's chronic depression know not the eager joy of a storm walk. And I
am sure they never did as one I know did last night: saddle a horse at ten
o'clock and gallop away into the darkness; splash, splash in the sighing,
moaning, bellowing, driving November rain. There's joy for you! ye who
toast your feet on the fender and cultivate sick headache around the
base-burner--there's a life that ye never guess!

But Charlotte knew the clouds by night and the swift-sailing moon that
gave just one peep out and disappeared. She knew the rifts where the stars
shone through, and out alone in the breeze that blew away her cares she
lifted her voice in thankfulness for the joy of mixing with the elements,
and that her spirit was one with the boisterous winds of heaven.

People who live in beautiful, quiet valleys, where roses bloom all the
year through, are not necessarily happy.

Southern California--the Garden of Eden of the world--evolves just as many
cases per capita of melancholia as bleak, barren Maine. Wild, rocky,
forbidding Scotland has produced more genius to the acre than beautiful
England: and I have found that sailor Jack, facing the North Atlantic
winter storms, year after year, is a deal jollier companion than the
Florida cracker whose chief adversary is the mosquito.

Charlotte Bronte wrote three great books: "Jane Eyre," "Shirley" and
"Villette." From the lonely, bleak parsonage on that stony hillside she
sent forth her swaying filament of thought and lassoed the world. She
lived to know that she had won. Money came to her, all she needed, honors,
friends and lavish praise. She was the foremost woman author of her day.
Her name was on every tongue. She had met the world in fair fight; without
patrons, paid advocates, or influential friends she made her way to the
very front. Her genius was acknowledged. She accomplished all that she set
out to do and more--far more. The great, the learned, the titled, the
proud--all those who reverence the tender heart and far-reaching
mind--acknowledged her as queen.

So why prate of her sorrows! Did she not work them up into art? Why weep
over her troubles when these were the weapons with which she won? Why sit
in sackcloth on account of her early death, when it is appointed unto all
men once to die, and with her the grave was swallowed up in victory?




CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

    My life is but a working-day,
      Whose tasks are set aright:
    A while to work, a while to pray,
      And then a quiet night.
    And then, please God, a quiet night
    Where Saints and Angels walk in white.
    One dreamless sleep from work and sorrow,
    But reawakening on the morrow.
                         --_In Patience_

[Illustration: CHRISTINA ROSSETTI]


As a study in heredity, the Rossetti family is most interesting. Genius
seems so sporadic a stuff that when we find an outcrop along the line of a
whole family we are wont to mark it on memory's chart in red. We talk of
the Herschels, of Renan and his sister, of the Beechers, and the Fields,
in a sort of awe, mindful that Nature is parsimonious in giving out
transcendent talent, and may never do the like again. So who can forget
the Rossettis--two brothers, Dante Gabriel and William Michael, and two
sisters, Maria and Christina--each of whom stands forth as far above the
ordinary, yet all strangely dependent upon one another?

The girls sing songs to the brothers, and to each other, inscribing poems
to "my loving sister"; when Dante Gabriel, budding forth as artist, wishes
a model for a Madonna, he chooses his sister Christina, and in his sketch
mantles the plain features with a divine gentleness and heavenly splendor
such as only the loving heart can conjure forth. In the last illness of
Maria, Christina watches away the long, lagging hours of night, almost
striving with her brothers for the right of serving; and at
Birchington-on-the-Sea, Dante Gabriel waits for death, wearing out his
friends by insane suspicions, and only the sister seems equal to
ministering to this mind diseased, plucking from memory its rooted sorrow.

In a few years Christina passes out, and of the four, only William is
left; and the task of his remaining years is to put properly before the
world the deathless lives of his brother and sisters gone.

Gabriel Rossetti, father of the illustrious four, was an Italian poet who
wrote patriotic hymns, and wrote them so well that he was asked to sing
them elsewhere than in Italy. This edict of banishment was followed by an
order that the poet be arrested and executed.

The orders of banishment and execution appear quite Milesian viewed across
the years, but to Rossetti it was no joke. To keep his head in its proper
place and to preserve his soul alive, he departed one dark night for
England. He arrived penniless, with no luggage save his lyre, but with
muse intact. Yet it was an Italian lyre, and therefore of small avail for
amusing Britons. Very naturally, Rossetti made the acquaintance of other
refugees, and exile makes fast friends. It is only in prosperity that we
throw our friends overboard.

He came to know the Polidori family--Tuscan refugees--proud, intellectual
and rich. He loved one of the daughters of Seignior Polidori, and she
loved him. He was forty and she was twenty-three--but what of that! A
position as Professor of Languages was secured for him in King's College.
He rented the house at Thirty-eight Charlotte Street, off Portland Place,
and there, on February Seventeenth, Eighteen Hundred Twenty-seven, was
born their first child, Maria Francesca; on May Twelfth, Eighteen Hundred
Twenty-eight, was born Dante Gabriel; on September Twenty-fifth, Eighteen
Hundred Twenty-nine, William Michael; on December Fifth, Eighteen Hundred
Thirty, Christina Georgiana. The mother of this quartette was a sturdy
little woman with sparkling wit and rare good sense. She used to remark
that her children were all of a size, and that it was no more trouble to
bring up four than one, a suggestion thrown in here gratis for the benefit
of young married folks, in the hope that they will mark and inwardly
digest. In point of well-ballasted, all-round character, fit for Earth or
Heaven, none of the four Rossetti children was equal to his parents. They
all seem to have had nerves outside of their clothes. Perhaps this was
because they were brought up in London. A city is no place for
children--nor grown people either, I often think. Birds and children
belong in the country. Paved streets, stone sidewalks, smoke-begrimed
houses, signs reading, "Keep Off the Grass", prying policemen, and zealous
ash-box inspectors are insulting things to greet the gaze of the little
immigrants fresh from God. Small wonder is it, as they grow up, that they
take to drink and drugs, seeking in these a respite from the rattle of
wheels and the never-ending cramp of unkind condition. But Nature
understands herself: the second generation, city-bred, is impotent.

No pilgrim from "the States" should visit the city of London without
carrying two books: a Baedeker's "London" and Hutton's "Literary
Landmarks." The chief advantage of the former is that it is bound in
flaming red, and carried in the hand, advertises the owner as an American,
thus saving all formal introductions. In the rustle, bustle and tussle of
Fleet Street, I have held up my book to a party of Americans on the
opposite sidewalk, as a ship runs up her colors, and they, seeing the
sign, in turn held up theirs in merry greeting; and we passed on our way
without a word, ships that pass in the afternoon and greet each other in
passing. Now, I have no desire to rival the flamboyant Baedeker, nor to
eclipse my good friend Laurence Hutton. But as I can not find that either
mentions the name "Rossetti," I am going to set down (not in malice) the
places in London that are closely connected with the Rossetti family,
nothing extenuating.

London is the finest city in the world for the tourist who desires liberty
as wide as the wind, and who wishes to live cheaply and live well. In New
York, if you want lodgings at a moderate price, you must throttle your
pride and forsake respectability; but they do things different in Lunnon,
you know. From Gray's Inn Road to Portland Place, and from Oxford Street
to Euston Road, there is just about a square mile--a section, as they say
out West--of lodging-houses. Once this part of London was given up to the
homes of the great and purse-proud and all that. It is respectable yet,
and if you are going to be in London a week you can get a good room in one
of these old-time mansions, and pay no more for it than you would pay for
a room in an American hotel for one day. And as for meals, your landlady
will get you anything you want and serve it for you in the daintiest
style, and you will also find that a shilling and a little courtesy will
go a very long way in securing creature comforts. American women in London
can live in this way just as well as men. If you are a schoolma'am from
Peoria, taking your vacation, follow my advice and make your home in the
"Bedford District," within easy reach of Stopford Brooke's chapel, and
your London visit will stand out forever as a bright oasis in memory's
desert waste. All of which I put in here because Larry Hutton forgot to
mention it and Mein Herr Baedeker didn't think it worth while.

When in London I usually get a room near the British Museum for ten
shillings a week; and when I want to go anywhere I walk up to the Gower
Street Station, past the house where the mother of Charles Dickens had her
Young Ladies' Establishment, and buying a ticket at the "Booking-Office"
am duly set down near the desired objective point. You can go anywhere by
the "Metropolitan," or if you prefer to take Mr. Gladstone's advice, you
climb to the top of an Oxford Street bus, and if you sit next the driver
you have a directory, guide and familiar friend all at your service.

Charlotte Street is a narrow little passage running just two squares,
parallel with Portland Place. The houses are built in blocks of five (or
more), of the plainest of plain bricks. The location is not far from the
Gower Street Station of the Metropolitan Railway, and only a few minutes'
walk from the British Museum. Number Thirty-eight is the last but one on
the east side of the street. When I first saw it, there was a sign in the
window, "Apartments," and back of this fresh cambric curtains. Then the
window had been cleaned, too, for a single day of neglect in London tells
its tale, as does the record of crime on a rogue's face. I paused and
looked the place over with interest. I noted that the brass plate with the
"No. 38" on it had been polished until it had been nearly polished out of
sight, like a machine-made sonnet too much gone over. The steps had been
freshly sanded, and a little lemon-tree nodding in one of the windows made
the rusty old house look quite inviting. A stout little woman with a big
market-basket, bumped into me and apologized, for I had stepped backwards
to get a better look at the upstairs windows. The stout little woman set
down her basket on the steps, took a bunch of keys from a pocket under her
big, white, starched apron, selected one, turned to me, smiled, and asked,
"Mebbe, Sir, you wasn't looking for apartments, I dunno?" Then she
explained that the house was hers, and that if I would step in she would
show me the rooms. There were two of 'em she could spare. The first floor
front was already let, and so was the front parlor--to a young barrister.
Her husband was a ticket-taker at Euston Station, and didn't get much
since last cutdown. Would I care to pay as much as ten shillings, and
would I want breakfast? It would only be ninepence, and I could have
either a chop or ham and eggs. She looked after her boarders herself, just
as if they were her own folks, and only took respectable single gentlemen
who came well recommended. She knew I would like the room, and if ten
shillings was too much I could have the back room for seven and six.

I thought the back room would answer; but explained that I was an American
and was going to remain in London only a short time. Of course the lady
knew I was an American: she knew it from my hat and from my foreign accent
and--from the red book I had in my hand. And did I know the McIntyres that
lived in Michigan?

I evaded the question by asking if she knew the Rossettis who once lived
in this house. "Oh, yes; I know Mr. William and Miss Christina. They came
here together a year ago, and told me they were born here and that their
brother Dante and their sister, too, were born here. I think they were all
writin' folks, weren't they? Miss Rossetti anyway writes poetry, I know
that. One of my boarders gave me one of her books for Christmas. I'll show
it to you. You don't think seven and six is too much for a room like this,
do you?"

I inwardly noted that the ceilings were much lower than those of my room
in Russell Square and that the furniture was old and worn and that the
room looked out on an army of sooty chimney-pots, but I explained that
seven and six seemed a very reasonable price, and that ninepence for
breakfast with ham and eggs was cheap enough, provided the eggs were
strictly fresh.

So I paid one week's rent in advance on the spot, and going back to
Russell Square told my landlady that I had found friends in another part
of the city and would not return for two days. My sojourn at Number
Thirty-eight Charlotte Street developed nothing further than the meager
satisfaction of sleeping for two nights in the room in which Dante Gabriel
Rossetti was born, and making the acquaintance of the worthy ticket-taker,
who knew all four of the Rossettis, as they had often passed through his
gate.

Professor Rossetti lived for twelve years at Thirty-eight Charlotte
Street; he then moved to Number Fifty in the next block, which is a
somewhat larger house. It was here that Mazzini used to come. The house
had been made over somewhat, and is now used as an office by the Registrar
of Vital Statistics. This is the place where Dante Gabriel and a young man
named Holman Hunt had a studio, and where another young artist by the
name of William Morris came to visit them; and here was born "The Germ,"
that queer little chipmunk magazine in which first appeared "Hand and
Soul" and "The Blessed Damozel," written by Dante Gabriel when eighteen,
the same age at which Bryant wrote "Thanatopsis." William Bell Scott used
to come here, too. Scott was a great man in his day. He had no hair on his
head or face, not even eyebrows. Every follicle had grown aweary and quit.
But Mr. Scott was quite vain of the shape of his head, for well he might
be, since several choice sonnets had been combed out of it. Sometimes when
the wine went round and things grew merry, then sentimental, then
confidential, Scott would snatch off his wig to display to the company his
fine phrenological development, and tell a story about Nelson, who, too,
used to wear a wig just like his, and after every battle would take it off
and hand it over to his valet to have the bullets combed out of it.

The elder Rossetti died in this house, and was carried to Christ Church in
Woburn Square, and thence to Highgate. His excellent wife waited to see
the genius of her children blossom and be acknowledged. She followed
thirty years later, and was buried in the same grave with her husband,
where, later, Christina was to join them.

Frances Mary Polidori was born at Forty-two Broad Street, Golden Square,
the same street in which William Blake was born. I found the street and
Golden Square, but could not locate the house. The policeman on the beat
declared that no one by the name of Rossetti or Blake was in business
thereabouts; and further he never heard of Polly Dory. William Michael
Rossetti's home is one in a row of houses called Saint Edmund's Terrace.
It is near the Saint John's Road Station, just a step from Regent's Park,
and faces the Middlesex Waterworks. It is a fine old house, built of stone
I should judge, stuccoed on the outside. With a well-known critic I called
there, and found the master wearing a long dressing-gown that came to his
heels, a pair of new carpet slippers and a black plush cap, all so dusty
that we guessed the owner had been sifting ashes in the cellar. He was
most courteous and polite. He worships at the shrine of Whitman, Emerson
and Thoreau, and regards America as the spot from whence must come the
world's intellectual hope. "Great thoughts, like beautiful flowers, are
produced by transplantation and the commingling of many elements." These
are his words, and the fact that the Rossetti genius is the result of
transplanting need not weigh in the scale as 'gainst the truth of the
remark. Shortly after this call, at an Art Exhibition, I again met William
Michael Rossetti. I talked with him some moments--long enough to discover
that he was not aware we had ever met. This caused me to be rather less
in love with the Rossetti genius than I was before.

The wife of Dante Gabriel Rossetti died, aged twenty-nine, at Fourteen
Chatham Place, near Blackfriars Bridge. The region thereabouts has been
changed by the march of commerce, and if the original house where the
artist lived yet stands I could not find it. It was here that the
Preraphaelites made history: Madox Brown, Burne-Jones, Ruskin, William
Morris and the MacDonalds. Burne-Jones married one of the MacDonald
daughters; Mr. Poynter, now Director of the National Gallery, another; Mr.
Kipling still another--with Rudyard Kipling as a result, followed in due
course by Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd, who are quite as immortal as the
rest.

At this time Professor Rossetti was dead, and William Michael, Maria,
Christina and the widowed mother were living at One Hundred Sixty-six
Albany Street, fighting off various hungry wolves that crouched around the
door. Albany Street is rather shabby now, and was then, I suppose. At One
Hundred Twelve Albany Street lives one Dixon, who takes marvelous
photographs of animals in the Zoological Gardens, with a pocket camera,
and then enlarges the pictures a hundred times. These pictures go the
round world over and command big prices. Mr. Dixon was taking for me, at
the National Gallery, the negatives from which I made photogravures for my
Ruskin-Turner book. Mr. Dixon knows more in an artistic and literary way
than any other man in London (I believe), but he is a modest gentleman and
only emits his facts under cross-examination or under the spell of
inspiration. Together we visited the house at One Hundred Sixty-six Albany
Street.

It was vacant at the time, and we rummaged through every room, with the
result that we concluded it makes very little difference where genius is
housed. On one of the windows of a little bedroom we found the word
"Christina" cut with a diamond. When and by whom it was done I do not
know. Surely the Rossettis had no diamonds when they lived here. But Mr.
Dixon had a diamond and with his ring he cut beneath the word just noted
the name, "Dante Gabriel Rossetti." I have recently heard that the
signature has been identified as authentic by a man who was familiar with
Rossetti's handwriting.

When the firm of Morris and Company, Dealers in Art Fabrics, was gotten
under way, and Dante Gabriel had ceased to argue details with that
pre-eminently sane man, William Morris, his finances began to prosper.
Morris directed and utilized the energies of his partners. He marshaled
their virtues into a solid phalanx and marched them on to victory. No
doubt that genius usually requires a keeper. But Morris was a genius
himself and a giant in more ways than one, for he ruled his own spirit,
thus proving himself greater than one who taketh a city.

In Eighteen Hundred Sixty-two, we find Dante Gabriel throwing out the fact
that his income was equal to about ten thousand dollars a year. He took
the beautiful house at Eighteen Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, near the little
street where lived a Scotchman by the name of Thomas Carlyle, and in the
same block where afterwards lived George Eliot, and where she died. He
wanted his brother and sisters and his mother to share his prosperity, and
so he planned that they should all come and live with him; and besides,
Mr. Swinburne and George Meredith were to come, too. It was to be one big
happy family. But the good old mother knew the human heart better than did
her brilliant son. She has left on record these words: "Yes, my children
all have talent, great talent; I only wish they had a little commonsense!"

So for the present she remained with William, her daughters, and her two
aged unmarried sisters in the plain old house in Albany Street. But Dante
Gabriel moved to Cheyne Walk, and began that craze for collecting blue
china that has swept like a blight over the civilized world. His
collection was sold for three thousand five hundred dollars some years
after--to pay his debts--less than one-half of what it had cost him. Yet
when he had money he generously divided it with the folks up in Albany
Street. But by and by William, too, got to making money, and the quarters
at Number One Hundred Sixty-six were abandoned for something better.

William was married and had taken a house of his own--I don't know where.
The rest of the household consisted of the widow, Mrs. Rossetti, Miss
Charlotte Lydia Polidori, Maria and Christina--and seven cats. And so we
find this family of five women living in peace and comfort, with their
books and pictures and cats, at Thirty Torrington Square, in a drowsy,
faded, ebb-tide mansion. Maria was never strong; she fell into a decline
and passed away. The management of the household then devolved on
Christina. Her burdens must have been heavy in those days, or did she make
them light by cheerful doing? She gave up society, refused the thought of
marriage, and joined that unorganized sisterhood of mercy--the women who
toil that others may live. But she sang at her work, as the womanly woman
ever does. For although a woman may hold no babe in her arms, the lullaby
leaps to her tongue, and at eventide she sings songs to the children of
her brain--sweet idealization of the principle of mother-love.

Christina Rossetti comes to us as one of those splendid stars that are so
far away they are seen only at rare intervals. She never posed as a
"literary person"--reading her productions at four-o'clocks, and winning
high praise from the unbonneted and the discerning society editor. She
never even sought a publisher. Her first volume of verses was issued by
her grandfather Polidori unknown to her--printed by his own labor when
she was seventeen and presented to her. What a surprise it must have been
to this gentle girl to have one of her own books placed in her hands!
There seems to have been an almost holy love in this proud man's heart for
his granddaughter. His love was blind, or near-sighted at least, as love
is apt to be (and I am glad!), for some of the poems in this little volume
are sorry stuff. Later, her brothers issued her work and found market for
it; and once we find Dante Gabriel almost quarreling with that worthy
Manxman, Hall Caine, because the Manxman was compiling a volume of the
best English sonnets and threatening to leave Christina Rossetti out.

Christina had the faculty of seizing beautiful moments, exalted feelings,
sublime emotions, and working them up into limpid song that comes echoing
to us as from across soft seas. In all her lines there is a half-sobbing
undertone--the sweet minor chord that is ever present in the songs of the
Choir Invisible, whose music is the gladness as well as the sadness of the
world.

I have a dear friend who is an amateur photographic artist, which be it
known is quite a different thing from a kodak fiend. The latter is
continually snapping a machine at incongruous things; he delights in
catching people in absurd postures; he pictures the foolish, the
irrelevant, the transient and the needless. But what does my friend
picture? I'll tell you. He catches pictures only of beautiful objects:
swaying stalks of goldenrod, flights of thistle-down, lichen on old stone
walls, barks of trees, oak-leaves, bunches of acorns, single sprays of
apple-blossoms. Last Spring he found two robins building a nest in a
cherry-tree: he placed his camera near them, and attaching a fine wire to
spring the shutter, took a picture of Mr. and Mrs. Robin Redbreast laying
down the first coarse straws for their nest. Then he took a picture every
day for thirty days of that nest--from the time four blue eggs are shown
until four, wide-open mouths are held hungrily for dainty grubs. This
series of photographs forms an Epic of Creation. So, if you ask me to
solve the question of whether photography is art, I'll answer: it all
depends upon what you picture, and how you present it.

Christina Rossetti focused her thought on the beautiful object and at the
best angle, so the picture she brings us is nobly ordered and richly
suggestive.

And so the days passed in study, writing, housework, and caring for old
ladies three. Dante Gabriel, talented, lovable, erratic, had gotten into
bad ways, as a man will who turns night into day and tries to get the
start of God Almighty, thinking he has found a substitute for exercise and
oxygen. Finally he was taken to Birchington, on the Isle of Thanet (where
Octave found her name). He was mentally ill, to a point where he had
through his delusions driven away all his old-time friends.

Christina, aged fifty-one, and the mother, aged eighty-two, went to take
care of him, and they did for him with all the loving tenderness what
they might have done for a sick baby; but with this difference--they had
to fight his strength. Yet still there were times when his mind was sweet
and gentle as in the days of old; and toward the last these periods of
restful peace increased, and there were hours when the brother, sister and
aged mother held sweet converse, almost as when children they were taught
at this mother's knee. Dante Gabriel Rossetti died April Ninth, Eighteen
Hundred Ninety-two. His grave is in the old country churchyard at
Birchington.

Two years afterward the mother passed out; in Eighteen Hundred Ninety,
Eliza Polidori died, aged eighty-seven; and in Eighteen Hundred
Ninety-three, her sister Charlotte joined her, aged eighty-four. In
Christ's Church, Woburn Square, you can see memorial tablets to these fine
souls, and if you get acquainted with the gentle old rector he will show
you a pendant star and crescent, set with diamonds, given by the Sultan
during the Crimean war, "To Miss Charlotte Lydia Polidori for
distinguished services as Nurse." And he will also show you a silver
communion set marked with the names of these three sisters, followed by
that of "Christina Georgiana Rossetti."

And so they all went to their soul's rest and left Christina alone in the
big house with its echoing halls--too big by half for its lonely,
simple-hearted mistress and her pets. She felt that her work was done, and
feeling so, the end soon came. She died December Twenty-ninth, Eighteen
Hundred Ninety-four--passing from a world that she had never much loved,
where she had lived a life of sacrifice, suffering many partings, enduring
many pains. Glad to go, rejoicing that the end was nigh, and soothed by
the thought that beyond lay a Future, she fell asleep.




ROSA BONHEUR

    The boldness of her conceptions is sublime. As a Creative Artist
    I place her first among women, living or dead. And if you ask me
    why she thus towers above her fellows, by the majesty of her work
    silencing every detractor, I will say it is because she listens
    to God, and not to man. She is true to self.
    --_Victor Hugo_

[Illustration: ROSA BONHEUR]


When I arrive in Paris I always go first to the Y.M.C.A. headquarters in
the Rue de Treville--that fine building erected and presented to the
Association by Banker Stokes of New York. There's a good table-d'hote
dinner there every day for a franc; then there tare bathrooms and
writing-rooms and reading-rooms, and all are yours if you are a stranger.
The polite Secretary does not look like a Christian: he has a very tight
hair-cut, a Vandyke beard and lists of lodgings that can be had for
twenty, fifteen or ten francs a week. Or, should you be an American
Millionaire and be willing to pay thirty francs a week, the secretary
knows a nice Protestant lady who will rent you her front parlor on the
first floor and serve you coffee each morning without extra charge.

Not being a millionaire, I decided, the last time I was there, on a room
at fifteen francs a week on the fourth floor. A bright young fellow was
called up, duly introduced, and we started out to inspect the quarters.

The house we wanted was in a little side street that leads off the
Boulevard Montmartre. It was a very narrow and plain little street, and I
was somewhat disappointed. Yet it was not a shabby street, for there are
none such in Paris; all was neat and clean, and as I caught sight of a
birdcage hanging in one of the windows and a basket of ferns in another I
was reassured and rang the bell.

The landlady wore a white cap, a winning smile and a big white apron. A
bunch of keys dangling at her belt gave the necessary look of authority.
She was delighted to see me--everybody is glad to see you in Paris--and
she would feel especially honored if I would consent to remain under her
roof. She only rented her rooms to those who were sent to her by her
friends, and among her few dear friends none was so dear as Monsieur ze
Secretaire of ze Young Men Christians.

And so I was shown the room--away up and up and up a dark winding stairway
of stone steps with an iron balustrade. It was a room about the size of a
large Jordan-Marsh drygoods-box.

The only thing that tempted me to stay was the fact that the one window
was made up of little diamond panes set in a leaden sash, and that this
window looked out on a little courtway where a dozen palms and as many
ferns grew lush and green in green tubs and where in the center a fountain
spurted. So a bargain was struck and the landlady went downstairs to find
her husband to send him to the Gare Saint Lazare after my luggage.

What a relief it is to get settled in your own room! It is home and this
is your castle. You can do as you please here; can I not take mine ease in
mine inn?

I took off my coat and hung it on the corner of the high bedpost of the
narrow, little bed and hung my collar and cuffs on the floor; and then
leaned out of the window indulging in a drowsy dream of sweet content.
'Twas a long, dusty ride from Dieppe, but who cares--I was now settled,
with rent paid for a week!

All around the courtway were flower-boxes in the windows; down below, the
fountain cheerfully bubbled and gurgled, and from clear off in the unseen
rumbled the traffic of the great city. And coming from somewhere, as I sat
there, was the shrill warble of a canary. I looked down and around, but
could not see the feathered songster, as the novelists always call a bird.
Then I followed the advice of the Epworth League and looked up, not down,
out, not in, and there directly over my head hung the cage all tied up in
chiffon (I think it was chiffon). I was surprised, for I felt sure it
could not be possible there was a room higher than mine--when I had come
up nine stairways! Then I was more surprised; for just as I looked up, a
woman looked down and our eyes met. We both smiled a foolish smile of
surprise; she dodged in her head and I gazed at the houses opposite with
an interest quite unnecessary.

She was not a very young woman, nor very pretty--in fact, she was rather
plain--but when she leaned out to feed her pet and found a man looking up
at her she proved her divine femininity beyond cavil. Was there ever a
more womanly action? And I said to myself, "She is not handsome--but God
bless her, she is human!"

Details are tiresome--so suffice it to say that next day the birdcage was
lowered that I might divide my apple with Dickie (for he was very fond of
apple). The second day, when the cage was lowered I not only fed Dickie
but wrote a message on the cuttlefish. The third day, there was a note
twisted in the wires of the cage inviting me up to tea.

And I went.

       *       *       *       *       *

There were four girls living up there in one attic-room. Two of these
girls were Americans, one English and one French. One of the American
girls was round and pink and twenty; the other was older. It was the older
one that owned the bird, and invited me up to tea. She met me at the door,
and we shook hands like old-time friends. I was introduced to the trinity
in a dignified manner, and we were soon chatting in a way that made Dickie
envious, and he sang so loudly that one of the girls covered the cage with
a black apron.

With four girls I felt perfectly safe, and as for the girls there was not
a shadow of a doubt that they were safe, for I am a married man. I knew
they must be nice girls, for they had birds and flower-boxes. I knew they
had flower-boxes, for twice it so happened that they sprinkled the flowers
while I was leaning out of the window wrapped in reverie.

This attic was the most curious room I ever saw. It was large--running
clear across the house. It had four gable-windows, and the ceiling sloped
down on the sides, so there was danger of bumping your head if you played
pussy-wants-a-corner. Each girl had a window that she called her own, and
the chintz curtains, made of chiffon (I think it was chiffon), were tied
back with different-colored ribbons. This big room was divided in the
center by a curtain made of gunny-sack stuff, and this curtain was covered
with pictures such as were never seen on land or sea. The walls were
papered with brown wrapping-paper, tacked up with brass-headed nails, and
this paper was covered with pictures such as were never seen on sea or
land.

The girls were all art students, and when they had nothing else to do they
worked on the walls, I imagined, just as the Israelites did in Jerusalem
years ago. One half of the attic was studio, and this was where the table
was set. The other half of the attic had curious chairs and divans and
four little iron beds enameled in white and gold, and each bed was so
smoothly made up that I asked what they were for. White Pigeon said they
were bric-a-brac--that the Attic Philosophers rolled themselves up in the
rugs on the floor when they wished to sleep; but I have thought since that
White Pigeon was chaffing me.

White Pigeon was the one I saw that first afternoon when I looked up, not
down, out, not in. She was from White Pigeon, Michigan, and from the very
moment I told her I had a cousin living at Coldwater who was a conductor
on the Lake Shore, we were as brother and sister. White Pigeon was thirty
or thirty-five, mebbe; she had some gray hairs mixed in with the brown,
and at times there was a tinge of melancholy in her laugh and a sort of
half-minor key in her voice. I think she had had a Past, but I don't know
for sure.

Women under thirty seldom know much, unless Fate has been kind and cuffed
them thoroughly, so the little peachblow Americaine did not interest me.
The peachblow was all gone from White Pigeon's cheek, but she was fairly
wise and reasonably good--I'm certain of that. She called herself a
student and spoke of her pictures as "studies," but she had lived in Paris
ten years. Peachblow was her pupil--sent over from Bradford, Pennsylvania,
where her father was a "producer." White Pigeon told me this after I had
drunk five cups of tea and the Anglaise and the Soubrette were doing the
dishes. Peachblow the while was petulantly taking the color out of a
canvas that was a false alarm.

White Pigeon had copied a Correggio in the Louvre nine years before, and
sold the canvas to a rich wagon-maker from South Bend. Then orders came
from South Bend for six more Louvre masterpieces. It took a year to
complete the order and brought White Pigeon a thousand dollars. She kept
on copying and occasionally receiving orders from America; and when no
orders came, potboilers were duly done and sent to worthy Hebrews in Saint
Louis who hold annual Art Receptions and sell at auction paintings painted
by distinguished artists with unpronounceable names, who send a little of
their choice work to Saint Louis, because the people in Saint Louis
appreciate really choice things.

"And the mural decorations--which one of you did those?" I remarked, as a
long pause came stealing in.

"Did you hear what Mr. Littlejourneys asked?" called White Pigeon to the
others.

"No; what was it?"

"He wants to know which one of us decorated the walls!"

"Mr. Littlejourneys meant illumined the walls," jerked Peachblow, over her
shoulder.

Then Anglaise gravely brought a battered box of crayon and told me I must
make a picture somewhere on the wall or ceiling: all the pictures were
made by visitors--no visitor was ever exempt.

I took the crayons and made a picture such as was never seen on land or
sea. Having thus placed myself on record, I began to examine the other
decorations. There were heads and faces, and architectural scraps, trees
and animals, and bits of landscape and ships that pass in the night. Most
of the work was decidedly sketchy, but some of the faces were very good.

Suddenly my eye spied the form of a sleeping dog, a great shaggy Saint
Bernard with head outstretched on his paws, sound asleep. I stopped and
whistled.

The girls laughed.

"It is only the picture of a dog," said Soubrette.

"I know; but you should pay dog-tax on such a picture--did you draw it?" I
asked White Pigeon.

"Did I! If I could draw like that, would I copy pictures in the Louvre?"

"Well, who drew it?"

"Can't you guess?"

"Of course I can guess. I am a Yankee--I guess Rosa Bonheur."

"Well, you have guessed right."

"Stop joking and tell me who drew the Saint Bernard."

"Madame Rosalie, or Rosa Bonheur, as you call her."

"But she never came here!"

"Yes, she did--once. Soubrette is her great-grandniece, or something."

"Yes, and Madame Bonheur pays my way and keeps me in the Ecole des Beaux
Arts. I'm not ashamed for Monsieur Littlejourneys to know!" said Soubrette
with a pretty pout; "I'm from Lyons, and my mother and Madame Rosalie used
to know each other years ago."

"Will Madame Rosalie, as you call her, ever come here again?"

"Perhaps."

"Then I'll camp right here till she comes!"

"You might stay a year and then be disappointed."

"Then can't we go to see her?"

"Never; she does not see visitors."

"We might go visit her home," mused Soubrette, after a pause.

"Yes, if she is away," said Anglaise.

"She's away now," said Soubrette; "she went to Rouen yesterday."

"Well, when shall we go?"

"Tomorrow."

       *       *       *       *       *

And so Soubrette could not think of going when it looked so much like
rain, and Anglaise could not think of going without Soubrette, and
Peachblow was getting nervous about the coming examinations, and must
study, as she knew she would just die if she failed to pass.

"You will anyway--sometime!" said White Pigeon.

"Don't urge her; she may change her mind and go with you," dryly remarked
Anglaise with back towards us as she dusted the mantel.

Then I expressed my regret that the trinity could not go, and White Pigeon
expressed her regret because they had to stay at home. And as we went down
the stairs together we chanted the Kyrie eleison for our small sins,
easing conscience by the mutual confession that we were arrant hypocrites.

"But still," mused White Pigeon, not quite satisfied, "we really did not
tell an untruth--that is, we did not deceive them--they understood--I
wouldn't tell a real whopper, would you?"

"I don't know--I think I did once."

"Tell me about it," said White Pigeon.

But I was saved, for just as we reached the bottom stair there was a
slight jingling of keys, and the landlady came up through the floor with a
big lunch-basket. She pushed the basket into my hands and showering us
with Lombardy French pushed us out of the door, and away we went into the
morning gray, the basket carried between us. The basket had a hinged
cover, and out of one corner emerged the telltale neck of a bottle. It did
not look just right; suppose we should meet some one from Coldwater?

But we did not meet any one from Coldwater. And when we reached the
railway-station we were quite lost in the crowd, for there were dozens of
picnickers all carrying baskets, and from the cover of each basket emerged
the neck of a bottle. We felt quite at home packed away in a Classe Trois
carriage with a chattering party of six High-School botanizing youngsters.
When the guard came to the window, touched his cap, addressing me as Le
Professeur, and asked for the tickets for my family, they all laughed.

Fontainebleau was the fourth stop from Paris. My family scampered out and
away and we followed leisurely after. Fontainebleau is quite smug. There
is a fashionable hotel near the station, before which a fine tall fellow
in uniform parades. He looked at our basket with contempt, and we looked
at him in pity. Just beyond the hotel are smart shops with windows filled
with many-colored trifles to tempt the tourist. The shops gradually grew
smaller and less gay, and residences with high stone walls in front took
their places, and over these walls roses nodded. Then there came a wide
stretch of pasture, and the town of Fontainebleau was left behind.

The sun came out and came out and came out; birds chirruped in the
hedgerows and the daws in the high poplars called and scolded. The mist
still lingered on the distant hills, and we could hear the tinkle of
sheep-bells and the barking of a dog coming out of the nothingness.

White Pigeon wore flat-soled shoes and measured off the paces with an easy
swing. We walked in silence, filled with the rich quiet of country sounds
and country sights. What a relief to get away from noisy, bustling, busy
Paris! God made the country!

All at once the mists seemed to lift from the long range of hills on the
right and revealed the dark background of forest, broken here and there
with jutting rocks and beetling crags. We stopped and sat down on the
bank-side to view the scene. Close up under the shadow of the dark forest
nestled a little white village. Near it was the red-tile roof of an old
mansion, half-lost in the foliage. All around this old mansion I could
make out a string of small buildings or additions to the original chateau.

I looked at White Pigeon and she looked at me.

"Yes; that is the place!" she said.

The sun's rays were growing warmer. I took off my coat and tucked it
through the handle of the basket. White Pigeon took off her jacket to keep
it company, and toting the basket, slung on my cane between us, we moved
on up the gently winding way to the village of By. Everybody was asleep at
By, or else gone on a journey. Soon we came to the old, massive,
moss-covered gateposts that marked the entrance to the mansion. A chain
was stretched across the entrance and we crawled under. The driveway was
partly overgrown with grass, and the place seemed to be taking care of
itself. Half a dozen long-horned Bonnie Brier Bush cows were grazing on
the lawn, their calves with them; and evidently these cows and calves were
the only mowing-machines employed. On this wide-stretching meadow were
various old trees; one elm I saw had fallen split through the center--each
part prostrate, yet growing green.

Close up about the house there was an irregular stone wall and an
ornamental iron gate with a pull-out Brugglesmith bell at one side. We
pulled the bell and were answered by a big shaggy Saint Bernard that came
barking and bouncing around the corner. I thought at first our time had
come. But this giant of a dog only approached within about ten feet, then
lay down on the grass and rolled over three times to show his goodwill. He
got up with a fine, cheery smile shown in the wag of his tail, just as a
little maid unlocked the gate.

"Don't you know that dog?" asked White Pigeon.

"Certainement--he is on the wall of your room."

We were shown into a little reception-parlor, where we were welcomed by a
tall, handsome woman, about White Pigeon's age.

The woman kissed White Pigeon on one cheek, and I afterwards asked White
Pigeon why she didn't turn to me the other, and she said I was a fool.

Then the tall woman went to the door and called up the stairway:
"Antoine, Antoine, guess who it is? It's White Pigeon!"

A man came down the stairs three steps at a time, and took both of White
Pigeon's hands in his, after the hearty manner of a gentleman of France.
Then I was introduced.

Antoine looked at our lunch-basket with the funniest look I ever saw, and
asked what it was.

"Lunch," said White Pigeon; "I can not tell a lie!"

Antoine made wild gesticulations of displeasure, denouncing us in
pantomime.

But White Pigeon explained that we only came on a quiet picnic in search
of ozone and had dropped in to make a little call before we went on up to
the forest. But could we see the horses?

Antoine would be most delighted to show Monsieur Littlejourneys anything
that was within his power. In fact, everything hereabouts was the absolute
property of Monsieur Littlejourneys to do with as he pleased.

He disappeared up the stairway to exchange his slippers for shoes, and the
tall woman went in another direction for her hat. I whispered to White
Pigeon, "Can't we see the studio?"

"Are we from Chicago, that we should seek to prowl through a private
house, when the mistress is away? No; there are partly finished canvases
up there that are sacred."

"Come this way," said Antoine. He led us out through the library, then
the dining-room and through the kitchen.

It is a very comfortable old place, with no extra furniture--the French
know better than to burden themselves with things.

The long line of brick stables seemed made up of a beggarly array of empty
stalls. We stopped at a paddock, and Antoine opened the gate and said,
"There they are!"

"What?"

"The horses."

"But these are broncos."

"Yes; I believe that is what you call them. Monsieur Bill of Buffalo, New
York, sent them as a present to Madame Rosalie when he was in Paris."

There they were--two ewe-necked cayuses--one a pinto with a wall-eye; the
other a dun with a black line down the back.

I challenged Antoine to saddle them and we would ride. The tall lady took
it in dead earnest, and throwing her arms around Antoine's neck begged him
not to commit suicide.

"And the Percherons--where are they?"

"Goodness! we have no Perches."

"Those that served as models for the 'Horse Fair,' I mean."

White Pigeon took me gently by the sleeve, and turning to the others
apologized for my ignorance, explaining that I did not know the "Marche
aux Chevaux" was painted over forty years ago, and that the models were
all Paris cart-horses.

Antoine called up a little old man, who led out two shaggy little cobs,
and I was told that these were the horses that Madame drove. A roomy,
old-fashioned basket phaeton was backed out; White Pigeon and I stepped in
to try it, and Antoine drew us once around the stable-yard. This is the
only carriage Madame uses. There were doves, and chickens, and turkeys,
and rabbits; and these horses we had seen, with the cows on the lawn, make
up all the animals owned by the greatest of living animal-painters.

Years ago Rosa Bonheur had a stableful of horses and a kennel of dogs and
a park with deer. Many animals were sent as presents. One man forwarded a
lion, and another a brace of tigers, but Madame made haste to present them
to the Zoological Garden at Paris, because the folks at By would not
venture out of their houses--a report having been spread that the lions
were loose.

"An animal-painter no more wants to own the objects he paints than a
landscape-artist wishes a deed for the mountain he is sketching," said
Antoine.

"Or to marry his model," interposed White Pigeon.

"If you see your model too often, you will lose her," added the Tall Lady.

We bade our friends good-by and trudged on up the hillside to the storied
Forest of Fontainebleau. We sat down on a log and watched the winding
Seine stretching away like a monstrous serpent, away down across the
meadow; just at our feet was the white village of By; beyond was Thomeray,
and off to the left rose the spires of Fontainebleau.

"And who is this Antoine and who is the Tall Lady?" I asked, as White
Pigeon began to unpack the basket.

"It's quite a romance; are you sure you want to hear it?"

"I must hear it."

And so between bites White Pigeon told me the story.

The Tall Lady is a niece of Madame Rosalie's. She was married to an army
officer at Bordeaux when she was sixteen years old. Her husband treated
her shamefully; he beat her and forced her to write begging letters and to
borrow money of her relatives, and then he would take this money and waste
it gambling and in drink. In short, he was a Brute.

Madame Rosalie accidentally heard of all this, and one day went down to
Bordeaux and took the Tall Lady away from the Brute and told him she would
kill him if he followed.

"Did she paint a picture of the Brute?"

"Keep quiet, please!"

She told him she would kill him if he followed, and although she is
usually very gentle I believe she would have kept her word. Well, she
brought the Tall Lady with her to By, and this old woman and this young
woman loved each other very much.

Now, Madame Rosalie had a butler and combination man of business, by name
of Jules Carmonne. He was a painter of some ability and served Madame in
many ways right faithfully. Jules loved the Tall Lady, or said he did, but
she did not care for him. He was near fifty and asthmatic and had watery
eyes. He made things very uncomfortable for the Tall Lady.

One night Jules came to Madame Rosalie in great indignation and said he
could not consent to remain longer on account of the way things were going
on. What was the trouble? Trouble enough, when the Tall Lady was sneaking
out of the house after decent folks were in bed, to meet a strange man
down in the evergreens! Well I guess so!!

How did he know?

Ah, he had followed her. Moreover, he had concealed himself in the
evergreens and waited for them, to make sure.

Yes, and who was the man?

A young rogue of a painter from Fontainebleau named Antoine de
Channeville.

Madame Rosalie took Jules Carmonne at his word. She said she was sorry he
could not stay, but he might go if he wished to, of course. And she paid
him his salary on the spot--with two months more to the end of the year.

The next day Madame Rosalie drove her team of shaggy ponies down to
Fontainebleau and called on the young rogue of an artist. He came out
bareheaded and quaking to where she sat in the phaeton waiting. She
flecked the off pony twice and told him that as Carmonne had left her she
must have a man to help her. Would he come? And she named as salary a sum
about five times what he was then making.

Antoine de Channeville seized the wheel of the phaeton for support, gasped
several gasps, and said he would come.

He was getting barely enough to eat out of his work, anyway, although he
was a very worthy young fellow. And he came.

He and the Tall Lady were married about six months after.

"And about the Brute and--and the divorce!"

"Gracious goodness! How do I know? I guess the Brute died or something;
anyway, Antoine and the Tall Lady are man and wife, and are devoted lovers
besides. They have served Madame Rosalie most loyally for these fifteen
years. They say Madame Rosalie has made her will and has left them the
mansion and everything in it for their ownest own, with a tidy sum besides
to put on interest."

It was four o'clock when we got back to the railroad-station at
Fontainebleau. We missed the train we expected to take, and had an hour to
wait. White Pigeon said she did not care so very much, and I'm sure I
didn't. So we sat down in the bright little waiting-room, and White Pigeon
told me many things about Madame Rosalie and her early life that I had
never known before.

       *       *       *       *       *

Early in the century there lived in Bordeaux a struggling artist (artists
always struggle, you know) by the name of Raymond Bonheur. He found life a
cruel thing, for bread was high in price and short in weight, and no one
seemed to appreciate art except the folks who had no money to buy. But the
poor can love as well as the rich, and Raymond married. In his nervous
desire for success, Raymond Bonheur said that if he could only have a son
he would teach him how to do it, and the son would achieve the honors that
the world withheld from the father.

So the days came and went, and a son was expected--a firstborn--an heir.
There wasn't anything to be heir to except genius, but there was plenty of
that. The heir was to bear the name of the father--Raymond Bonheur.

Prayers were offered and thanksgivings sung.

The days were fulfilled. The child was born.

The heir was a girl.

Raymond Bonheur cursed wildly and tousled his hair like a bouffe artist.
He swore he had been tricked, trapped, seduced, undone. He would have
bought strong drink, but he had no money, and credit, like hope, was gone.

The little mother cried.

But the baby grew, although it wasn't a very big baby. They named her
Rosa, because the initial was the same as Raymond, but they always called
her Rosalie.

Then in a year another baby came, and that was a boy. In two years
another, but Raymond never forgave his wife that first offense. He
continued to struggle, trying various styles of pictures and ever hoping
he would yet hit on what the public desired. Mr. Vanderbilt had not yet
made his famous remark about the public, and how could Raymond plagiarize
it in advance?

At last he got money enough to get to Paris--ah, yes, Paris, Paris, there
talent is appreciated!

In Paris another baby was born--it was looked upon as a calamity. The poor
little mother of the four little shivering Bonheurs ceased to struggle.
She lay quite still, and they covered her face with a white sheet and
talked in whispers, and walked on tiptoe, for she was dead.

When an artist can not succeed, he begins to teach art--that is, he shows
others how. Raymond Bonheur put his four children out among kinsmen in
four different places, and became drawing-master in a private school. Rosa
Bonheur was ten years old: a pug-nosed, square-faced little girl in a
linsey-woolsey dress, wooden shoon, with a yellow braid hanging down her
back tied with a shoestring. She could draw--all children can draw--and
the first things children draw are animals.

Her father had taught her a little and laughed at her foolish little lions
and tigers, all duly labeled.

When twelve years of age the good people with whom she lived said she must
learn dressmaking. She should be an artist of the needle. But after some
months she rebelled and, making her way across the city to where her
father was, demanded that he should teach her drawing. Raymond Bonheur
hadn't much will--this controversy proved that--the child mastered, and
the father, who really was an accomplished draftsman, began giving daily
lessons to the girl. Soon they worked together in the Louvre, copying
pictures.

It was a queer thing to teach a girl art--there were no women artists
then. People laughed to see a little girl with yellow braid mixing paints
and helping her father in the Louvre; others said it wasn't right.

"Let's cut off the braid, and I'll wear boy's clothes and be a boy," said
funny little Rosalie.

Next day, Raymond Bonheur had a close-cropped boy in loose trousers and
blue blouse to help him.

The pictures they copied began to sell. Buyers said the work was strong
and true. Prosperity came that way, and Raymond Bonheur got his four
children together and rented three rooms in a house at One Hundred
Fifty-seven Faubourg Saint Honore.

Rosalie saw that her father had always tried to please the public; she
would please no one but herself. He had tried many forms; she would stick
to one. She would paint animals and nothing else.

When eighteen years old, she painted a picture of rabbits, for the Salon.
The next year she tried again. She made the acquaintance of an honest old
farmer at Villiers and went to live in his household. She painted
pictures of all the livestock he possessed, from rabbits to a Norman
stallion. One of the pictures she then made was that of a favorite Holland
cow. A collector came down from Paris and offered three hundred francs for
the picture.

"Merciful Jesus!" said the pious farmer; "say nothing, but get the money
quick! The live cow herself isn't worth half that!"

The members of the Bonheur family married, one by one, including the
father. Rosa did not marry: she painted. She discarded all teachers, all
schools; she did not listen to the suggestions of patrons, and even
refused to make pictures to order.

And be it said to her credit, she never has allowed a buyer to dictate the
subject. She followed her own ideas in everything; she wore men's clothes,
and does even unto this day.

When she was twenty-five, the Salon awarded her a gold medal. The
Ministere des Beaux Arts paid her three thousand francs for her "Labourge
Nivernais."

Raymond Bonheur grew ill in Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine, but before he
passed out he realized that his daughter, then twenty-seven years old, was
on a level with the greatest masters, living or dead.

She began "The Horse Fair" when twenty-eight. It was the largest canvas
ever attempted by an animal-painter. It was exhibited at the Salon in
Eighteen Hundred Fifty-three, and all the gabble of jealous competitors
was lost in the glorious admiration it excited. It became the rage of
Paris. All the honors the Salon could bestow were heaped upon the young
woman, and by special decision all her work henceforth was declared exempt
from examination by the Jury of Admission. Rosa Bonheur, five feet four,
weighing one hundred twenty pounds, was bigger than the Salon.

But success did not cause her to swerve a hair's breadth from her manner
of work or life. She refused all social invitations, and worked away after
her own method as industriously as ever. When a picture was completed, she
set her price on it and it was sold.

In Eighteen Hundred Sixty she bought this fine old house at By, that she
might work in quiet. Society tried to follow her, and in Eighteen Hundred
Sixty-four the Emperor Napoleon and Empress Eugenie went to By, and the
Empress pinned to the blue blouse of Rosa Bonheur the Cross of the Legion
of Honor, the first time, I believe, that the distinction was ever
conferred on a woman.

And now at seventy-four she is still in love with life, and while taking a
woman's tender interest in all sweet and gentle things, has yet an
imagination that in its strength and boldness is splendidly masculine.

Rosa Bonheur has received all the honors that man can give. She is rich;
no words of praise that tongue can utter can add to her fame; and she is
loved by all who know her.




MADAME DE STAEL

    Far from gaining assurance in meeting Bonaparte oftener, he
    intimidated me daily more and more. I confusedly felt that no
    emotion of the heart could possibly take effect upon him. He
    looks upon a human being as a fact or as a thing, but not as a
    fellow-creature. He does not hate any more than he loves; there
    is nothing for him but himself; all other things are so many
    ciphers. The force of his will lies in the imperturbable
    calculation of his selfishness.
    --_Reflections_

[Illustration: MADAME DE STAEL]


Fate was very kind to Madame De Stael.

She ran the gamut of life from highest love to direst pain--from rosy dawn
to blackest night. Name if you can another woman who touched life at so
many points! Home, health, wealth, strength, honors, affection, applause,
motherhood, loss, danger, death, defeat, sacrifice, humiliation, illness,
banishment, imprisonment, escape. Again comes hope--returning strength,
wealth, recognition, fame tempered by opposition, home, a few friends, and
kindly death--cool, all-enfolding death.

If Harriet Martineau showed poor judgment in choosing her parents, we can
lay no such charge to the account of Madame De Stael.

They called her "The Daughter of Necker," and all through life she
delighted in the title. The courtier who addressed her thus received a
sunny smile and a gentle love-tap on his cheek for pay. A splendid woman
is usually the daughter of her father, just as strong men have noble
mothers.

Jacques Necker was born in Geneva, and went up to the city, like many
another country boy, to make his fortune. He carried with him to Paris
innocence, health, high hope, and twenty francs in silver. He found a
place as porter or "trotter" in a bank. Soon they made him clerk.

A letter came one day from a correspondent asking for a large loan, and
setting forth a complex financial scheme in which the bank was invited to
join. M. Vernet, the head of the establishment, was away, and young Necker
took the matter in hand. He made a detailed statement of the scheme,
computed probable losses, weighed the pros and cons, and when the employer
returned, the plan, all worked out, was on his desk, with young Necker's
advice that the loan be made.

"You seem to know all about banking!" was the sarcastic remark of M.
Vernet.

"I do," was the proud answer.

"You know too much; I'll just put you back as porter."

The Genevese accepted the reduction and went back as porter without
repining. A man of small sense would have resigned his situation at once,
just as men are ever forsaking Fortune when she is about to smile; witness
Cato committing suicide on the very eve of success.

There is always a demand for efficient men; the market is never glutted;
the cities are hungry for them--but the trouble is, few men are efficient.

"It was none of his business!" said M. Vernet to his partner, trying to
ease conscience with reasons.

"Yes; but see how he accepted the inevitable!"

"Ah! true, he has two qualities that are the property only of strong men:
confidence and resignation. I think--I think I was hasty!"

So young Necker was reinstated, and in six months was cashier, in three
years a partner.

Not long after, he married Susanna Curchod, a poor governess.

But Mademoiselle Curchod was rich in mental endowment: refined, gentle,
spiritual, she was a true mate to the high-minded Necker. She was a Swiss,
too, and if you know how a young man and a young woman, countryborn, in a
strange city are attracted to each other, you will better understand this
particular situation.

Some years before, Gibbon had loved and courted the beautiful Mademoiselle
Curchod in her quiet home in the Jura Mountains. They became engaged.
Gibbon wrote home, breaking the happy news to his parents.

"Has the beautiful Curchod of whom you sing, a large dowry?" inquired the
mother.

"She has no dowry! I can not tell a lie," was the meek answer. The mother
came on and extinguished the match in short order.

Gibbon never married. But he frankly tells us all about his love for
Susanna Curchod, and relates how he visited her, in her splendid Paris
home. "She greeted me without embarrassment," says Gibbon, resentfully;
"and in the evening Necker left us together in the parlor, bade me
good-night, and lighting a candle went off to bed!"

Gibbon, historian and philosopher, was made of common clay (for authors
are made of clay, like plain mortals), and he could not quite forgive
Madame Necker for not being embarrassed on meeting her former lover,
neither could he forgive Necker for not being jealous.

But that only daughter of the Neckers, Germaine, pleased Gibbon--pleased
him better than the mother, and Gibbon extended his stay in Paris and
called often.

"She was a splendid creature," Gibbon relates; "only seventeen, but a
woman grown, physically and mentally; not handsome, but dazzling,
brilliant, emotional, sensitive, daring!"

Gibbon was a bit of a romanticist, as all historians are, and he no doubt
thought it would be a fine denouement to life's play to capture the
daughter of his old sweetheart, and avenge himself on Fate and the
unembarrassed Madame Necker and the unpiqued husband, all at one fell
stroke--and she would not be dowerless either. Ha, ha!

But Gibbon forgot that he was past forty, short in stature, and short of
breath, and "miles around," as Talleyrand put it.

"I quite like you," said the daring daughter, as the eloquent Gibbon sat
by her side at a dinner.

"Why shouldn't you like me--I came near being your papa!"

"I know, and would I have looked like you?"

"Perhaps."

"What a calamity!"

Even then she possessed that same bubbling wit that was hers years later
when she sat at table with D'Alembert. On one side of the great author was
Madame Recamier, famous for beauty (and later for a certain
"Beauty-Cream"), on the other the daughter of Necker.

"How fortunate!" exclaimed D'Alembert with rapture; "how fortunate I sit
between Wit and Beauty!"

"Yes, and without possessing either," said Wit.

No mistake, the girl's intellect was too speedy even for Gibbon. She
fenced all 'round him and over him, and he soon discovered that she was
icily gracious to every one, save her father alone. For him she seemed to
outpour all the lavish love of her splendid womanhood. It was unlike the
usual calm affection of father and daughter. It was a great and absorbing
love, of which even the mother was jealous.

"I can't just exactly make 'em out," said Gibbon, and withdrew in good
order.

Before Necker was forty he had accumulated a fortune, and retired from
business to devote himself to literature and the polite arts.

"I have earned a rest," he said; "besides, I must have leisure to educate
my daughter."

Men are constantly "retiring" from business, but someway the expected
Elysium of leisure forever eludes us. Necker had written several good
pamphlets and showed the world that he had ability outside of
money-making. He was appointed Resident Minister of Geneva at the Court
of France. Soon after he became President of the French East India
Company, because there was no one else with mind broad enough to fill the
place. His house was the gathering-place of many eminent scholars and
statesmen. Necker was quiet and reserved; his wife coldly brilliant,
cultured, dignified, religious. The daughter made good every deficiency in
both.

She was tall, finely formed, but her features were rather heavy, and in
repose there was a languor in her manner and a blankness in her face. This
seeming dulness marks all great actors, but the heaviness is only on the
surface; it often covers a sleeping volcano. On recognizing an
acquaintance, Germaine Necker's face would be illumined, and her smile
would light a room. She could pronounce a man's name so he would be ready
to throw himself at her feet, or over a precipice for her. And she could
listen in a way that complimented; and by a sigh, a nod, an exclamation,
bring out the best--such thoughts as a man never knew he had. She made
people surprise themselves with their own genius; thus proving that to
make a good impression means to make the man pleased with himself. "Any
man can be brilliant with her," said a nettled competitor; "but if she
wishes, she can sink all women in a room into creeping things."

She knew how to compliment without flattering; her cordiality warmed like
wine, and her ready wit, repartee, and ability to thaw all social ice and
lead conversation along any line, were accomplishments which perhaps have
never been equaled. The women who "entertain" often only depress; they are
so glowing that everybody else feels himself punk. And these people who
are too clever are very numerous; they seem inwardly to fear rivals, and
are intent on working while it is called the day.

Over against these are the celebrities who sit in a corner and smile
knowingly when they are expected to scintillate. And the individual who
talks too much at one time is often painfully silent at another--as if he
had made New-Year resolves. But the daughter of Necker entered into
conversation with candor and abandon; she gave herself to others, and knew
whether they wished to talk or to listen. On occasion, she could
monopolize conversation until she seemed the only person in the room; but
all talent was brighter for the added luster of her own. This simplicity,
this utter frankness, this complete absence of self-consciousness, was
like the flight of a bird that never doubts its power, simply because it
never thinks of it. Yet continual power produces arrogance, and the soul
unchecked finally believes in its own omniscience.

Of course such a matrimonial prize as the daughter of Necker was sought
for, even fought for. But the women who can see clear through a man, like
a Roentgen ray, do not invite soft demonstration. They give passion a
chill. Love demands a little illusion; it must be clothed in mystery. And
although we find evidences that many youths stood in the hallways and
sighed, the daughter of Necker never saw fit by a nod to bring them to her
feet. She was after bigger game--she desired the admiration and
approbation of archbishops, cardinals, generals, statesmen, great authors.

Germaine Necker had no conception of what love is.

Many women never have. Had this fine young woman met a man with intellect
as clear, mind as vivid, and heart as warm as her own, and had he pierced
her through with a wit as strong and keen as she herself wielded, her
pride would have been broken and she might have paused. Then they might
have looked into each other's eyes and lost self there. And had she thus
known love it would have been a complete passion, for the woman seemed
capable of it.

A better pen than mine has written, "A woman's love is a dog's love." The
dog that craves naught else but the presence of his master, who is
faithful to the one and whines out his life on that master's grave,
waiting for the caress that never comes and the cheery voice that is never
heard--that's the way a woman loves! A woman may admire, respect, revere
and obey, but she does not love until a passion seizes upon her that has
in it the abandon of Niagara. Do you remember how Nancy Sikes crawls inch
by inch to reach the hand of Bill, and reaching it, tenderly caresses the
coarse fingers that a moment before clutched her throat, and dies
content? That's the love of woman! The prophet spoke of something
"passing the love of woman," but the prophet was wrong--there's nothing
does.

So Germaine Necker, the gracious, the kindly, the charming, did not love.
However, she married--married Baron De Stael, the Swedish Ambassador. He
was thirty-seven, she was twenty. De Stael was good-looking, polite,
educated. He always smiled at the right time, said bright things in the
right way, kept silence when he should, and made no enemies because he
agreed with everybody about everything. Stipulations were made; a long
agreement was drawn up; it was signed by the party of the first and duly
executed by the party of the second part; sealed, witnessed, sworn to, and
the priest was summoned.

It was a happy marriage. The first three years of married life were the
happiest Madame De Stael ever knew, she said long afterward.

Possibly there are hasty people who imagine they detect tincture of iron
somewhere in these pages: these good people will say, "Gracious me! why
not?"

And so I will at once admit that these respectable, well-arranged, and
carefully planned marriages are often happy and peaceful.

The couple may "raise" a large family and slide through life and out of it
without a splash. I will also admit that love does not necessarily imply
happiness--more often 't is a pain, a wild yearning, and a vague unrest; a
haunting sense of heart-hunger that drives a man into exile repeating
abstractedly the name "Beatrice! Beatrice!" And so all the moral I will
make now is simply this: the individual who has not known an all-absorbing
love has not the spiritual vision that is a passport to Paradise. He
forever yammers between the worlds, fit for neither Heaven nor Hell.

       *       *       *       *       *

Necker retired from business that he might enjoy peace; his daughter
married for the same reason. It was stipulated that she should never be
separated from her father. She who stipulates is lost, so far as love
goes--but no matter! Married women in France are greater lions in society
than maidens can possibly hope to be. The marriage-certificate serves at
once as a license for brilliancy, daring, splendor, and it is also a badge
of respectability. The marriage-certificate is a document that in all
countries is ever taken care of by the woman and never by the man.

And this document is especially useful in France, as French dames know.
Frenchmen are afraid of an unmarried woman--she means danger, damages, a
midnight marriage and other awful things. An unmarried woman in France can
not hope to be a social leader; and to be a social leader was the one
ambition of Madame De Stael.

It was called the salon of Madame De Stael now. Baron De Stael was known
as the husband of Madame De Stael. The salon of Madame Necker was only a
matter of reminiscence. The daughter of Necker was greater than her
father, and as for Madame Necker, she was a mere figure in towering
headdress, point lace and diamonds. Talleyrand summed up the case when he
said, "She is one of those dear old things that have to be tolerated."

Madame De Stael had a taste for literature from early womanhood. She
wrote beautiful little essays and read them aloud to her company, and her
manuscripts had a circulation like unto her father's bank-notes. She had
the faculty of absorbing beautiful thoughts and sentiments, and no woman
ever expressed them in a more graceful way. People said she was the
greatest woman author of her day. "You mean of all time," corrected
Diderot. They called her "the High Priestess of Letters," "the Minerva of
Poetry," "Sappho Returned," and all that. Her commendation meant success
and her indifference failure. She knew politics, too, and her hands were
on all wires. Did she wish to placate a minister, she invited him to call,
and once there he was as putty in her hands. She skimmed the surface of
all languages, all arts, all history, but best of all she knew the human
heart.

Of course there was a realm of knowledge she wist not of--the initiates of
which never ventured within her scope. She had nothing for them--they kept
away. But the proud, the vain, the ambitious, the ennui-ridden, the
people-who-wish-to-be, and who are ever looking for the strong man to give
them help--these thronged her parlors.

And when you have named these you have named all those who are foremost in
commerce, politics, art, education, philanthropy and religion. The world
is run by second-rate people. The best are speedily crucified, or else
never heard of until long after they are dead.

Madame De Stael, in Seventeen Hundred Eighty-eight, was queen of the
people who ran the world---at least the French part of it.

But intellectual power, like physical strength, endures but for a day.
Giants who have a giant's strength and use it like a giant must be put
down. If you have intellectual power, hide it!

Do thy daily work in thine own little way and be content. The personal
touch repels as well as attracts. Thy presence is a menace--thy existence
an affront--beware! They are weaving a net for thy feet, and hear you not
the echo of hammering, as of men building a scaffold?

Go read history! Thinkest thou that all men are mortal save thee alone,
and that what has befallen others can not happen to thee?

The Devil has no title to this property he now promises. Fool! thou hast
no more claim on Fate than they who have gone before, and what has come to
others in like conditions must come to thee. God himself can not stay it;
it is so written in the stars. Power to lead men! Pray that thy prayer
shall ne'er be granted--'t is to be carried to the topmost pinnacle of
Fame's temple tower, and there cast headlong upon the stones beneath.
Beware! beware!!

       *       *       *       *       *

Madame De Stael was of an intensely religious nature throughout her entire
life; such characters swing between license and asceticism. But the charge
of atheism told largely against her even among the so-called liberals, for
liberals are often very illiberal. Marie Antoinette gathered her skirts
close about her and looked at the "Minerva of Letters" with suspicion in
her big, open eyes; cabinet officers forgot her requests to call, and when
a famous wit once coolly asked, "Who was that Madame De Stael we used to
read about?" people roared with laughter.

Necker, as Minister of Finance, had saved the State from financial ruin;
then had been deposed and banished; then recalled. In September, Seventeen
Hundred Ninety, he was again compelled to flee. He escaped to Switzerland,
disguised as a pedler. The daughter wished to accompany him, but this was
impossible, for only a week before she had given 

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