Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 5, November 1852

“And what is it all for, my lady?” I asked, when the breath returned to my body, and the courage to my heart. “Now that you are done with me, I’d like to go back to myself, if you plaze, for I never did join the mummers in my own country, and I don’t like it, my lady.”

“But you must like it!” she exclaimed, “you must like it – you are to be an Irish beggar-woman.”

“None of my breed was ever that ma’am.” I said, feeling as if a bolt of ice had run through my heart; but she never heeded me.

“And those are to be your children!”

“My children!” I repeated, “my children – oh, holy Father! – to even the like of that to me, and I came all over like a flash of fire. So with that she called me a fool, and repeated, it was all for the good of the country – to show the boundless nature of the ”Cranley Hurst Charity“ – that it took in even the Irish. Oh, how my blood boiled; and I up and told her, that it was true the English now and again did a great deal for Ireland, and very good it was of them, for no doubt the Irish were a mighty troublesome people; and indeed, it was hard to think how any people could sit down quiet and cheerful that had only potatoes to eat, and rags to cover them. But if the English were good to them, they were always telling them of it, and they never gave their gratitude time to grow; and as for me, I had seen too much real misery in rags ever to make a play of it;” and then the tears would come and choke me almost, and I hid my face in the child’s lap; I was so ashamed of them tears. Now, would you believe, that instead of being angry, she got out her pencil, and wrote it every word down – and clapt her hands in delight, and said it was as fine as Mrs. Keeley’s humor and pathos – and begged of me to say it again, that I might be sure to say it right —in public– and when she found I would not make a mummer of myself, in what she called a tablou, she said she would pay me to do it. And I made answer, that what I could not do for love, I would never do for money, which surprised her. The English think they can get every thing done through their money. And, aunt, she got into such a state, poor lady, she cried, she wrung her hands, she declared she was ruined, she upbraided me, she said I had promised to do it – and all this time the blue flags were flying, and the band playing on the lawn, and a great flat, open carriage of a thing, waiting to take me and the children for a show– for a show through the place! think of that! and while she was debating with me, some one came in, and told her she was guilty of bribery – and while the band played, “See the Conquering Hero comes,” she went off into little hysterics – upbraiding me all the time. And in the thick of it my mistress entered, leaning on Mr. Francis’ arm. “Oh, cousin, cousin!” she screamed, “that horrid Irish woman will lose me my little election!”

The Hon. Mr. Francis seemed not much to mind her, but I heard him whisper my lady —

“But I have gained mine!”

NOVEMBER

—BY MRS. JULIA C. R. DORR—  Fie upon thee, November! thou dost ape  The airs of thy young sisters; – thou hast stolen  The witching smile of May to grace thy lip,  And April’s rare, capricious loveliness  Thou ’rt trying to put on! Dost thou not know  Such freaks do not become thee? Thou shouldst be  A staid and sober matron, quietly  Laying aside the follies of thy youth,  And robing thee in that calm dignity  Meet for the handmaid of the dying year.  But ah! thou art a sad coquette, although  The frost of age is on thee! Thou dost sport  With every idle breeze that wooeth thee;  And toy and frolick with the aged leaves  That flutter round thee; and unto the low,  Soft murmur of the brooklet, thou dost lend  A willing ear; and crowning thy pale brow  With a bright coronet, that thou hast woven  Of the stray sunbeams summer left behind.  Thou dost bend o’er it lovingly, and strive  To answer in a cadence clear and sweet  As springs first whispers! In the valleys now  The flowers have faded, and the singing-birds  Greet thee no longer when thou wanderest forth  Through the dim forest; and yet thou dost smile,  And skip as lightly o’er the withered grass,  As if thou hadst not decked thee in the robes  That thy dead sister’s wore in festal hours!

SONNET. – MUTABILITY

—BY WM. ALEXANDER—  Things changing show no permanency here;    Writ on Earth’s face is Mutability;    The surface of old hills wears fast away,  And the mutations of this globe appear  Inscribed upon her rocks, which still record    That present must into the future pass;    That Man and his frail works shall like the grass  So perish and decay. Moves he vain lord  And monarch of a mighty throng, to-day;    Flit by a few short summers, hies he back    Unto his primal clod, leaving no track  Behind. His storms – tell, where now are they?  Search for them in the herbage fresh and green,  Or find them in the flowers in humble valley seen.

AMBITION’S BURIAL-GROUND

—BY FRANCIS DE HAES JANVIER—

“A late letter from California states that the writer counted six hundred new graves, in the course of his journey across the Plains.”

  Far away, beyond the western mountains, lies a lovely land,  Where bright streamlets, gently gliding, murmur over golden sand,  Where in valleys fresh and verdant, open grottoes old and hoar,  In whose deep recesses treasured, glitter heaps of golden ore —  Lies a lovely land where Fortune long hath hidden priceless store.  But the path which leadeth thither, windeth o’er a dreary plain,  And the pilgrim must encounter weary hours of toil and pain,  Ere he reach those verdant vallies – ere he grasp the gold beneath;  Ay, the path is long and dreary, and disease, with poisonous breath,  Lurks around, and many a pilgrim finds it but the way to death.  Ay, the path is long and dreary – but thou canst not miss the way,  For, defiant of its dangers, thousands throng it night and day,  Pouring westward, as a river rolleth on in countless waves —  Old and young, alike impatient – all alike Ambition’s slaves —  Pressing, panting, pining, dying – strewing all the way with graves!  Thus, alas! Ambition ever leadeth men through burial plains —  Trooping on, in sad procession, melancholy funeral trains!  Hope stands smiling on the margin, but beyond are gloomy fears —  One by one, dark Disappointment wastes the castles Fancy rears —  All the air is filled with sighing – all the way with graves and tears!  Wouldst thou seek a wreath of glory on the ensanguined battle-field?  Know that to a single victor, thousands in subjection yield;  Thousands who with pulses beating high as his, the strife essayed —  Thousands who with arms as valiant, wielded each his shining blade —  Thousands who in heaps around him, vanquished, in the dust are laid!  Vanquished! while above the tumult, Victory’s trump, with swelling surge,  Sounds for him a song of triumph – sounds for them a funeral dirge!  E’en the laurel wreath he bindeth on his brow, their life-blood stains —  Sighs, and tears, and blood commingling, make the glory that he gains —  And unknown, sleeps many a hero, on Ambition’s burial plains!  Or, the purple field despising – deeming war’s red glory shame —  Wouldst thou, in seclusion, gather greener laurels, purer fame?  Stately halls Ambition reareth, all along her highway side —  Halls of learning, halls of science, temples where the arts abide —  Wilt thou here secure a garland woven by scholastic pride?  Ah! within those cloisters gloomy, dimly wastes the midnight oil —  Days of penury and sorrow alternate with nights of toil!  Countless crowds those portals enter, breathing aspirations high —  Youthful, ardent, self-reliant – each believing triumph nigh;  Countless crowds grow wan and weary, and within those portals die!  Ay, of all who enter thither, few obtain the proffered prize,  While unblest, unwept, unhonored, undeveloped genius dies!  Genius which had else its glory on remotest ages shown —  Beamed through History’s deathless pages, glowed on canvas, lived in stone —  Yet along Ambition’s way-side, fills it many a grave unknown!  But, perchance thou pinest only for those grottoes old and hoar,  In whose deep recesses hidden, Fortune heaps her glittering store:  Enter, then, the dreary pathway – but, above each lonely mound  Lightly tread, and pause to ponder – for, like those who slumber round,  Thou mayst also lie forgotten on Ambition’s burial ground!

REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS

The Upper Ten Thousand. By Charles Astor Bristed. Stringer & Townsend, Broadway.

A very clever book, by a rather clever man. We learn it is the most popular brochure of the season, nor do we wonder at it, for it has all the elements to procure it a fleeting popularity – pungency, personality, impudence, insolence, ill-nature, satire and slang, malignity and mendacity – every thing, in short, likely to tickle the palates of all classes, to pander to the worst tastes, please the worst passions, and gratify the self-adulation of all readers.

It is not to be denied that the descriptions are racy and pointed; that some caste-affectations are skillfully satirized; some local absurdities happily shown up; and that there are some points of humor, and even some sound criticisms, mixed up with much grossness, much ill taste, most disgusting egotism, and personality the most broad, brutal, and malign.

As to Mr. Charles Astor Bristed’s denial of the applicability of Harry Benson, alias Harry Masters, in this edition, to himself, and of all personality or individual satire throughout the pages of the work – he may say what he will, but no one will believe him. An author who, in depicting a fictitious hero, chooses to identify that hero with himself, to the extent of accurately describing the houses of his own grandfather and father-in-law, with their respective bearings, distances and situations in the city, as those of the same kinsmen of his hero – of attributing to him well-known incidents of his own life, such as lending money to a dissipated and debauched young ex-lieutenant of the English army, and then dunning his half heartbroken father for the paltry amount, with rowdy letters, which he subsequently published in the newspapers – buying a negro slave, in order to liberate him and gain Buncombe, as it is called, by making capital of his philanthropy in the public journals – and, lastly, ascribing to his fictitious personage his own domestic grievances, and his own quarrels at a watering-place – all matters of actual notoriety – has no earthly right to complain if the public say he has made himself his own hero.

Nor when he describes invidiously, and most ill-naturedly depicts well-known persons of “our set,” as he chooses to denominate it – though we greatly doubt his belonging even to it, trifling, ridiculous and contemptible as it is – so accurately that neither the persons caricatured, nor any who know them, can avoid at a glance recognizing their identity, has he any reason to wonder if his wit be rewarded with the cowhide. When we compare Mr. Charles Astor Bristed’s positive denial of any personality, with his broad and brutal delineation of the Hon. Pompey Whitey, editor of a New York Socialist, Anti-Rent, Abolition, and Ghost-believing journal, ex-member of Congress – we say brutal, because in it he lifts the veil of domestic life, and touches upon matters which, whether true or false, the public has no right to hear of – we know not which most to wonder at, the audacity, or the shortsightedness, of the falsehood.

The attempt at disguise is so feeble that we doubt not the prototype, either of Pompey Whitey or of the Catholic Archbishop Feegrave, could readily obtain exemplary damages from any jury, if he should think it worth the while to break a butterfly upon the wheel.

To show the perfect identity of the persons Henry Masters and Charles Astor Bristed, we shall proceed to quote two or three passages, which are, by the way, singularly good specimens both of the style of the book, with its flippancy and smartness, its insolence and egotism, its blended capability of amusing and disgusting – the revolting effect it must have on every high judgment and right thinking mind, and the power of entertaining the fashionable mob, who delight in scandalizing and abusing their dearest friends, and the vulgar mob, who are always dying to hear something about the fashionables, be it right or wrong.

Mr. Charles Astor Bristed’s money concerns with ex-Lieutenant Law of the British army!

“At that moment Clara appeared, in a dressing-gown also; but hers was a tricolor pattern, lined with blue silk.

“‘A very handsome young couple, certainly,’ thought the Englishman, ‘but how theatrically got up? I wonder if they always go about in the country dressed this way!’ And he thought of the sensation, the mouvemens divers that such a costume would excite among the guests of the paternal mansion at Alderstave.

“Masters, with a rapid alteration of style and manner, and a vast elaboration of politeness, introduced his wife and guest. Ashburner fidgeted a little, and looked as if he did not exactly know what to do with his arms and legs. Mrs. Masters was as completely at her ease as if she had known him all her life, and, by way of putting him at his ease too, began to abuse England and the English to him, and retail the old grievance of her husband’s plunder by Ensign Lawless, and the ungentlemanly behavior of Lawless père on the occasion, and the voluminous correspondence that took place between him and Harry, which the Blunder and Bluster afterward published in full, under the heading ‘American Hospitality and English Repudiation,’ in extra caps; and so she went on to the intense mystification of Ashburner, who couldn’t precisely make out whether she was in jest or earnest, till Masters came to the rescue.”

Mr. Charles Astor Bristed’s purchase of the negro, and his opinion of Southern gentlemen in general. Of which said Southern gentlemen will doubtless die broken-hearted!

“‘I got these a bargain for 800 dollars from a friend,’ quoth Masters, anent his horses, ‘who was just married and going abroad. Probably a jockey would have charged me four figures for them. That was a year ago last month. I had twenty-six hundred then to spend in luxuries, and invested it in three nearly equal portions. It may amuse to know now. These horses I bought for myself, as I said, for 800 dollars; a grand Pleyel for Mrs. Masters for 900 dollars; and a man for myself for the same sum.’

“‘A man?’

“‘Yes, a coachman. You look mystified. Come, now, candidly, is New York a slave State? Do you know, or what do you think?’

“‘I had supposed it was not.’

“‘You supposed right, and know more about it than all your countrymen take the trouble to know. Nevertheless, it is literally true that I bought this man for the other 900 dollars; and it happened in this wise. One fine morning there was a great hue and cry in Washington. Nearly a hundred slaves of different ages, sexes, and colors, most of them house-servants in the best families, had made a stampedo, as the Western men say. They had procured a sloop through the aid of some white men, and sailed off up the Potomac – not a very brilliant proceeding on their part. The poor devils were all taken, and sentence of transportation passed upon them – for it amounts to that: They were condemned (by their masters) to be sold into the South-Western States. Some of the cases were peculiarly distressing – among others, a quadroon man, who had been coachman to one of our government secretaries. He had a wife and five children, all free in Washington; but two of his sisters were in bondage with him – very pretty and intelligent girls report said. The three were sold to a slave-trader, who kept them some time on speculation. The circumstance attracted a good deal of attention in New York; some of the papers were full of it. I saw the account one morning, and happening to have those 900 dollars on hand, I wrote straight off to one of our abolition members at Washington, (I never saw him in my life, but one doesn’t stand on ceremony in such matters, and the whole thing was done on the spur of the moment,) saying that if either of the girls could be bought for that sum I would give it. The gentleman who had the honor of my correspondence put upon him, wrote to another gentleman – standing counsel, I believe, for the Washington abolitionists – and he wrote to the slave-trader, one Bruin, (devilish good name that for his business!) who sent back a glorious answer, which I keep among my epistolary curiosities. ‘The girls are very fine ones,’ said this precious specimen; ‘I have been offered 1000 dollars for one of them by a Louisiana gentleman. They cannot be sold at a lower price than 1200 dollars and 1300 dollars respectively. If I could be sure that your friend’s motives were those of unmixed philanthropy, I would make a considerable reduction. The man, who is a very deserving person, and whom I should be glad to see at liberty, can be had for 900 dollars; but I suppose your correspondent takes less interest in him.’ The infernal scamp thought I wanted a mistress, and his virtuous mind revolted at the thought of parting with one of the girls for such a purpose – except for an extra consideration.’9

“‘It must have been a wet blanket upon your philanthropic intentions.’

“‘Really I hardly knew whether to be most angry or amused at the turn things had taken. As to Clara, she thought it a glorious joke, and did nothing for the next month but quiz me about the quadroon girls, and ask me when she might expect them. However, I thought, with the Ethiopian in the ballad, that ‘it would never do to give it up so,’ and accordingly wrote back to Washington that I should be very glad indeed to buy the man. Unfortunately, the man was half-way to Mississippi by that time – Now we are well up that hill and can take a good brush down to the next. G’l-lang, ponies! He-eh! Wake up, Firefly!’

“‘And then?’

“‘Oh, how he got off, after all! It was a special interference of Providence. (G’lang, Star!) The Hon. Secretary felt some compunctions about the fate of his coachman, and hearing that the money was all ready to pay for him, actually paid himself the additional 50 dollars required to bring him back to Washington; so he lives there now a free man with his family – at least, for all I know to the contrary, for I never heard any more about him since.’

“‘And what became of the girls?’

“‘There was a subscription raised for them here. My brother Carl gave something toward it – not that he cared particularly for the young ladies, but because he had a strong desire to sell the gentleman from Louisiana. They were ransomed, and brought here, and put to school somewhere, and a vast fuss made about them – quite enough to spoil them, I’m afraid. And so ends that story. What a joke, to think of a man being worth just as much as a grand piano, and a little more than a pair of ponies!’

“Ashburner thought that Masters treated the whole affair too much as a joke.

“‘Tell me,’ said he, ‘if these people came to New York, or you met them traveling, would you associate with them on familiar terms?’

“‘Not with Mr. Bruin, certainly,’ replied Harry. ‘To give the devil his due, such a man is considered to follow an infamous vocation, even in his part of the country.’

“‘But the Honorable Secretary and the other gentlemen, who sell their men to work on the cotton plantations and their women for something worse?’

“‘H-m! A-h! Did you ever meet a Russian? – in your own country, I mean.’

“‘Yes, I met one at dinner once. I wont pretend to pronounce his name.’

“‘Did you go out of the way to be uncivil to him, because he owned serfs?’

“‘No, but I didn’t go out of my way to be particularly genial with him.’

“‘Exactly: the cases are precisely parallel. The Southerners are our Russians. They come up to the North to be civilized; they send their boys here to be educated; they spend a good deal of money here. We are civil to them, but not over genial – some of us, at least, are not.’

Mr. Charles Astor Bristed’s opinions of British officers in general, which will probably set him forward a good deal when he again visits England! Lieutenant Law again!

“Ashburner felt no disposition to deny the beauty and grandeur of the Hudson. At first the shore was lined with beetling ramparts of trap-rock. After many miles of this, the clear water spread out into a great lake with apparently no egress. But on turning a promontory, the river stretched away nearly as wide as before, under wooded cliffs not dissimilar to those of the Rhine. Then came the picturesque Catskill mountains; and near these Harry was to stop, but Ashburner did not stop with him. At West Point the boat had taken up, among other passengers, two young officers of his acquaintance, then quartered in Canada. They were going to take the tour of the lakes, including, of course, Niagara, and offered Ashburner, if he would accompany them on this excursion first, to show him the lions of Canada afterward. On consulting with Masters, he found that the trip would not occupy more than a month or five weeks, and that after that time the watering-place season would be at its height.

“‘And it will be an excuse for my staying with Carl till August,’ Harry continued, ‘The women are half crazy to be at Oldport already. I would rather stay at Ravenswood. We shall expect you there at the end of July. But,’ and here, for the first time since their acquaintance, Ashburner perceived a slight embarrassment in his manner, ‘don’t bring your friends.’

“‘Oh, dear, no!’ said Ashburner, not comprehending what could have put such a thing into the other’s head, or what was coming next.

“‘I don’t mean to Ravenswood, but to Oldport; that is, if you can help their coming. To tell you the truth, your university men, and literary men generally, are popular enough here, but your army is in very bad odor. The young fellows who come down among us from Canada behave shockingly. They don’t act like gentlemen or Christians.’

“Ashburner hastened to assure him that Captain Blank and Lieutenant Dash were both gentlemen and Christians, in the ordinary acceptation of the terms, and had never been known to misconduct themselves in any way.

“‘Doubtless, inasmuch as they are your friends, but the general principle remains the same. So many of your young officers have misconducted themselves, that the primâ facie evidence is always against one of them, and he stands a chance of being coolly treated.’

“Ashburner wanted to know what the young officers had done.

“‘Every thing they could do to go counter to the habits and prejudices of the people among whom they were, and to show their contempt of American society; to act, in short, as if they were among uncivilized people. For instance, it is a custom at these watering-place hotels to dress for the table-d’hôte. Now I do not think it altogether reasonable that a man should be expected to make his evening toilette by three in the afternoon, and, indeed, I do not strictly conform to the rule myself. But these men came in flannel shirts and dirty shoes, and altogether in a state unfit for ladies’ company. Perhaps, however, we were too fastidious in this. But what do you say to a youngster’s seating himself upon a piano in the public parlor, while a lady is playing on it?’

“Ashburner allowed that it was rather unceremonious.

“‘By various similar acts, trivial, perhaps, individually, but forming a very disagreeable aggregate, these young men made themselves so unpopular, that one season the ladies, by common consent, refused to dance with any of them. But there is worse behind. These gentlemen, so stupid in a drawing-room, are sharp enough in borrowing money, and altogether oblivious of repaying it.’

“Ashburner remembered the affair of Ensign Lawless, and made up his mind to undergo another repetition of it.

“‘I don’t speak of my individual case; the thing has happened fifty times. I could tell of a dozen friends who have been victimized in this way during the last three years. In fact, I believe that your jeunes militaires have formed a league to avenge the Mississippi bondholders, and recover their lost money under the form of these nominal loans. You may think it poetic justice, but we New-Yorkers have no fancy to pay the Mississippians’ debts in this way.’”

It must be a strangely constituted mind that will, for spite at a single loss of an amount trifling to one so wealthy as Mr. Bristed is reputed to be, stoop to slander a whole class of men who have always, till he thought fit to liebel them, borne a reputation the world over, for strict honor; and whose bills are readily cashed the world over, on no recommendation save that of their being proved to be British officers – Lieutenant Law was not one when he swindled Mr. Charles Astor Bristed – the price of their commissions being responsible for their bills if unpaid.