The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 13, November, 1858

"Coward and selfish, that will not instantly give up her life for his!"

A very dismal satisfaction, that the woman he loved best should so prove unworthy of him! The horror of that satisfaction, its humiliation and its pain, sufficiently attested to the poor girl who endured it that her soul's integrity remained secure. As if for a personal conflict with an enemy, she started to her feet.

"It must not be!" she exclaimed.

And, far from suspecting to whom the words were addressed, to what the speaker closed her eyes, rebuking her pure heart, the lady answered,—

"Then, unless he outlives this tyranny of power, he will die a prisoner, Elizabeth. I will go with you to him. I can die with him. God, certainly, does not require me to stay here longer, for He has sent you to me."

"He has sent me for him!" exclaimed Elizabeth. "I am here to make him free." She did not add, "If I were you, my life for his!" but again, in spite of her, she thought it, and a terrible strength of pride possessed her at that moment.

"Speak on," was the eager, tremulous response. "You are here to set him free, God knows; but at least I believe wholly in you. What will you do, Elizabeth?"

"Go to the officer tomorrow. Tell him everything that is to be told.

If he is human"—

"That is what I doubt. He knows what petitions I presented and caused to be presented to his predecessor."

"You?"

"I?—who but I? Do you think I have been idle, or that I have left anything undone that I could think to do? Child, the sun has never risen on me since I saw him last! They say I am dead to the world. But they who say it know not how terribly true their words are. Shall I tell you how many times, when the weary days have come to an end, I have said, in the morning I would make that loathsome bargain with General Saterges, and in the morning God's grace, as I believe, has alone prevented me? Do you think that it is because I love myself better than him, that I have not bought his freedom at this price? It is because I know him,—because I am sure that liberty at such price would be worthless to him. I cannot torture him with the belief that I am unfaithful, nor suffer him to look on me as a sacrifice. We can endure what God allows. Trust me. You have done so bravely, you are yourself so true, believe in me. I am really no coward. I am not a selfish woman."

"Forgive me," said Elizabeth, most humbly. Her pride had left her defenceless in its flight. If there was not now the true, brave, generous woman to lift and proclaim herself from the humiliation of her mistake, alas for her!

The woman was there,—ready and true,—was there. Humbled, yet resolute, she spoke,—and in her speaking was the triumph of a spirit that should never again surrender its stronghold of peace.

"You must direct me, Madam. Show me how I shall find this minister. I will speak then as God's servants spoke of old,—trusting in Him. If the man will not hear me, then I will conduct you to Foray. You shall see Mr. Manuel. You can live—with us. My mother's heart is kind, and my father is a soldier; we shall all love to serve you. Let us take courage! They cannot prevent us here. You could endure exile for him?"

"Exile? Ah, how do you shame me! All these years I might have"—

"No," said Elizabeth, hurriedly. "Never till now. You could not. The way was not open till this day. Love, too must have its servants. I am yours and his. I trust in God. In His time he has opened His own way."

By Mlle. Desperiers's management, Elizabeth without difficulty obtained audience, the next day, of the chief ministerial power of the realm.

I shall attempt no pictorial description of that interview. The men of authority know best how often women come into their presence, burdened with prayers for the pardon of those who have justly, or unjustly, fallen under the displeasure of the powers that be. From high station and low Love draws its noblest and most courageous witnesses, and the ears of the officials are not always deaf.

The case of Stephen Cordier was of sufficient importance to come under discussion before the governing power as often as that power underwent a change in person or policy. Twice petitions in his behalf had been presented,—once by the lady of Château Desperiers in person,—petitions that were in themselves the proudest praise of him, the greatest honor that could be conferred upon him. They had fallen powerless to the ground.

The old man, statesman and soldier, now holding office, had, before he came to this position, knowing the interest and the kind of interest taken by Madeline Desperiers in the petitions presented, volunteered his name to the last document, mentioning, though with due deference to the fashion of the world, the price at which it was to be procured,—her hand. His name had just the weight that would have made the other more honorable names successful in their pleading. What sort of success was to be expected, now that he occupied the passage to royalty? Elizabeth Montier crossed the threshold of the apartment where the old warrior and statesman sat amongst books and papers, without dismay ruling by pen and voice, as confident in himself, when he took up these weapons, as in the former time of sword and powder.

His practice was to receive all petitioners,—all should have audience. But he made short work of business. Never were affairs dispatched with more celerity, seldom with less conscience. At a glance his keen eye read, to his own satisfaction, the state of every case,—and he came to his own conclusions. His requirement was, that the petitioner should be self-possessed and brief,—which requisition, hinted by the doorkeeper, and reiterated by the General himself, had not always precisely the effect intended.

The fault was not in Mlle. Desperiers that she had proved so unsuccessful in her petitions, as has been made sufficiently clear. General Saterges had found in Stephen Cordier a powerful antagonist in action. He had moved to power through the very paths which Stephen Cordier had attempted to lay waste. He upheld the faith against which Cordier had preached a crusade. The old warrior regarded the young thinker as a personal enemy. It was hardly probable that he would very energetically strive to procure the reversal of a hard sentence in behalf of such a man.

As Adolphus Montier's daughter came into his presence, she had not the bearing common to such as appeared there with intent to plead for the life or liberty of those they loved. A sense of the sacredness of her mission was upon her. She had cried to God, and she believed that He had heard her. Where do the possibilities of such faith end? "Time would fail me to tell of Gideon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthah, of David also, and of Samuel, and of the prophets; who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again; and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection; and others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment; they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword; they wandered about in sheep-skins and goat-skins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented. And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise."

She had considered well what she would do and say, and did not forget and was not confounded when she stood before the old man, knowing her time had come. Calm and strong, because so bent on accomplishing her purpose, and so conscious of her past secret weakness, of her suspicion and cruel judgment, as if she would here atone for it, she took stern vengeance of herself.

General Saterges recognized at one glance the evidences of a strong and determined spirit. When she had crossed the room and stood before him, he requested her to be seated,—and it was the first time that he had made such request of such visitor.

Declining the civility, Elizabeth stood, and told her errand. She had come across the ocean, she said, to plead the cause of a poor prisoner who was dying under sentence of the law. She paused a moment, having made this statement, and was answered by a nod. Prisoners often died without reprieve, he seemed to be aware. This cold civility warmed the petitioner's speech. Her mother would have been satisfied, Madeline Desperiers would have been overwhelmed with grief and horror, to have heard this young girl's testimony in regard to prison-life. The old man, as he listened, sighed unconsciously, —for not every nerve in him was strung to cruelty. To one of his restless career what image of life more dreadful could have been presented than was in this testimony? To be shut away from human society so many years, patient, resigned, receiving the few comforts yet allowed him!—to live on, pure in spirit, lofty in thought, hoping still in God and man! The old warrior in self-defence, because she brought the case too vividly, the life too forcibly before him, broke through the words she was speaking, interrupting her.

"Who is this person?" he asked.

"Stephen Cordier," was the answer. Without hesitation, even proudly, she spoke it. She had compelled him to ask the name!

"And who are you?" he asked; and if he felt displeasure, as if his sympathy, of which he was so chary, had been stolen from him, he did not allow it to appear.

"Elizabeth Montier," she replied.

"That is no answer. What is a name, if it conveys no meaning to my mind?"

"I am the daughter of Adolphus and Pauline Montier. My father is a drummer in the military band of Foray. He is also present keeper of the prison where Stephen Cordier is confined."

"Very well. Does he know your errand here?"

"He does not. He let me come to this country,—it is his native land, and my mother's,—he let me come because in his heart he has always loved his country, and he has never been able to return. We were to have come back together. But there was an opportunity for me. I dared not wait. So I am here,—and for nothing, Sir, but this man's liberty."

Those last words she spoke seemed to quicken the thought of General Saterges. He drew himself up still more erect in his chair. His eyes were on Elizabeth with the will to scan her heart of hearts. He spoke, —

"What is this man to you?"

She paused a moment. And she, too, had a thought. She could play a game for life. She looked at the old man, hesitated, answered,—

"He is everything."

"Just let me understand you," and he looked upon her as if he might touch her secret. "Do you love Cordier?"

"I love him," she answered, with exceeding dignity, evident truthfulness.

"Do I understand you?" he said again,—"what are you to him?"

"Everything," she again replied, with perfect confidence and faith. Was she not liberty and the joy of life to him? If liberty and joy were ever to be his portion, they must come through her. So she believed, and thus answered.

"Does he love you?"

"Yes."

"You speak with great assurance. I know the man better, I'm afraid." Then his voice and manner changed. "He is sentenced. Justice passed that sentence;—to reverse it were the work of imbecility. Speak no more. It is not in man to grant what you ask."

He was trying her in her last stronghold,—proving her in her last depth.

"Is this your answer?" she asked. And indeed, after what had just passed between them, it did seem incredible.

The old man bowed. He seemed now impassible. He was stern, and hard as rock. He believed that he had wellnigh been deceived,—and deception practised successfully on him would have disgraced him in his own eyes forever. He believed, what he would not trust his lips to utter, that this applicant was Madeline Desperiers's agent. When he bowed and did not answer, a fear came down upon Elizabeth that almost took away her power of speech; that it did not quite deprive her of that power rendered it so much the more terrible for the anguish of its emphasis.

"Do women kneel to you when they ask the pardon of those they love?" said she, with a paling face. "What shall I do to move you? What have I not done? I trusted, that, having come so far, on such an errand, it must be that God was my leader. Am I mistaken? Or dare you withstand God? Tell me,—you are an old man,—have you no pity? Have you never had a sorrow? Can you not see that I never could have come here to plead for a bad man's life? Must I go back to see him die?"

"Madam, you are standing where I cannot come to argue with you. Pity and justice have their respective duties to perform. Oftentimes pity may be exercised, and the claims of justice waived; in the case of the man you plead for, it is simply impossible."

He had risen in displeasure to pronounce these final words. When that word "impossible" smote her as a sword, he touched a spring in the table, a bell sounded, Elizabeth went forth,—the audience was over.

She went not with tears, but self-possessed, imperious in mien, strong in despair. Coming into the presence of Madeline Desperiers, it was not needful that she should speak to make known the result of her audience.

"Have you learned when the vessel sails?" was her first question. It was her reply to the lady's glance,—a glance for which there were no attendant words in all the language.

"Tomorrow, Elizabeth."

"Are you ready?"

"I will be."

"Then I will give you to him. I promised that, too. I can fulfill that, at least. You must not think the prison-walls too dreary. My mother"—

"I understand, Elizabeth."

And they sailed on the morrow. No delay for wandering among the meadows of the pleasant town, for gossip with the men and women who were in childhood playmates of her father and her mother; no strolling along lovely river-banks. Chalons had nothing for Elizabeth; only one green nook of all the world had anything for her,—an island in the sea,—a prison on that island,—and there work to do worthy of Gabriel.

But—wonder of wonders!

Paul and Silas sang songs in their prison, and the jailer heard them; then there came an earthquake.

Who was he that found his cell-doors opened suddenly, and a messenger from out the courts of heaven there to guide his steps?

History is full of marvellous records; I add this to those. The eleventh hour goes always freighted with the weightiest events.

On board the vessel that carried Elizabeth and her charge back to Foray went a messenger commissioned of the king. He took from court to prison the partial pardon of Cordier. Liberty, but banishment henceforth. Stephen Cordier should be constrained to faithfulness towards his new love. Doomed to perpetual exile, he should be tempted by no late loyalty to Madeline Desperiers. The new acts of his drama should have nought to do with her. Justice forever!

Rascal that he was, according to the word of General Saterges, it was rascality which the General could pardon. He had gained many a victory in desperate strife,—now one other, the last and most complete: the kingdom's fairest star to shine among his honors! The proclamation of Stephen Cordier's pardon would instantly make broad the way to Château Desperiers. She came of a proud race, and he reckoned on her pride.

Let us not glory in that old man's defeat,—for he died ere his enemy received, through Elizabeth Montier, life, and the joy of life. Let us not call him by an evil name to whom the nation gave so fine a funeral,—but rather pause to listen to the music that comes forth in royal glory from the harmonious world of Adolphus,—and turn to look with loving reverence, not with doubt or wonder, and surely not with pity, on the serene face of Her Grace, the Drummer's Daughter.

WORK AND REST

  What have I yet to do?    Day weareth on,—  Flowers, that, opening new,  Smiled through the morning's dew,    Droop in the sun.  'Neath the noon's scorching glare    Fainting I stand;  Still is the sultry air,  Silentness everywhere    Through the hot land.  Yet must I labor still,    All the day through,—  Striving with earnest will  Patient my place to fill,    My work to do.  Long though my task may be,    Cometh the end.  God 'tis that helpeth me,  His is the work, and He    New strength will lend.  He will direct my feet,    Strengthen my hand,  Give me my portion meet;—  Firm in his promise sweet    Trusting I'll stand.  Up, then, to work again!    God's word is given  That none shall sow in vain,  But find his ripened grain    Garnered in heaven.  Longer the shadows fall,—    Night cometh on;  Low voices softly call,  "Come, here is rest for all!    Labor is done!"

COLIN CLOUT AND THE FAËRY QUEEN

EDMUND SPENSER IN A DOMESTIC POINT OF VIEW. HIS MISTRESS AND HIS WIFE

PART I.—HIS MISTRESS

The "Faëry Queen" of Edmund Spenser is before us,—a vast and glittering mausoleum, in which the purpose of the constructor has long been entombed, we fear without hope of a happy resurrection. Nevertheless, into this splendid ruin, hieroglyphed with the most brilliant images the modern mind has yet conceived, we are about to dig,—not with the impious desire of dragging forth the intellectual tenant, now in the fourth century of its everlasting repose, but, haply, to discover in the outer chambers and passages of the pyramid some relics of the individual architect, his family and mode of life. In fact, we are anxious to make the acquaintance of Mistress Spenser and introduce her to the American public. A slight sketch of the poet's life, up to the period of his marriage, may afford us some clue to the quarter from which he selected his bride; we shall therefore give what is known of him in the fewest possible words.

Edmund Spenser, by family, was English, and by birth a cockney. In his "Prothalamion" he thus pleads guilty to the chime of Bow-bells in his infant ear:—

  "At length they all to merrie London came,  To merrie London, my most kindly nurse,  That to me gave this life's first native source;  Though from another place I take my name  And house of ancient fame."

At what time of his life he became connected with Ireland is very uncertain; it was probably early. At or about the time of Sir Henry Sidney's vice-royalty, or in the interval between that and the lieutenancy of Lord Grey De Wilton, there was a "Mr. Spenser" actively and confidentially employed by the Irish government; and that this may have been the poet is, from collateral circumstances, far from improbable. Spenser was the friend and protégé of Sir Philip Sidney, (son of the before-named Sir Henry,) and of his uncle, the Earl of Leicester. Lord Grey De Wilton was by marriage connected with both, and lived with them on terms of the closest intimacy, social, literary, and political. In choosing an officer, then, for so important a post as that of secretary, whom would the one select or the others more confidently recommend than a young man of genius, known to all the parties, and who already had some knowledge and experience of Irish affairs? Be this as it may, we know that in 1580, Spenser, then in his twenty-seventh year, accompanied Lord Grey De Wilton into Ireland as secretary; and that he had been there before, in some official capacity not undistinguished, is evidenced by the fact, that the Lord Justice, previously to his arrival, speaks of him as "having many ways deserved some consideration from her Majesty."

We do not care to inquire into the peculiar services for which he was so speedily favored with a large grant of lands forfeited by the Desmonds. Such official transactions, we fear, would reflect little credit on the poet; no doubt he was a good man—according to the morality of his age; and if he did suggest the poisoning of a few thousand human beings of all ages and both sexes, (some go so far as to allege that his fervid imagination contemplated the utter extermination of the race,) he merely acted up to the opinions prevalent in the time and polished court of "Good Queen Bess." The beings were "mere Irishry,"—a stumbling-block in the path of British civilization, and therefore to be removed, per fas et nefas.

Spenser took up his residence on the forfeit lands in Cork; there married, and reared a family which inherited his estate; that he subsequently died in England was as mere a casualty as that by which Swift was born in Ireland. Certain it is that the greater and the better portion of his works in prose and verse was composed during his residence in the land of his adoption. Thus, in the sonnets appended to the "Faëry Queen," the poem on which his celebrity rests, he addresses this Earl of Ormond:—

  "Receive, most noble lord, a single taste  Of the wilde fruit which savage soyle hath bred;  Which, beeing through long wars left almost waste,  With brutish barbarisme is overspred."

Again, addressing himself to his patron, Lord Grey, he says,—

  "Rude rimes, the which a rustick nurse did weave  In savage soyle, far from Parnasso Mount."

Several other of the finest productions of his brain owe their birth to the "savage soyle" of Ireland; his descriptions of the country, his dialogue on Irish affairs, his "Amoretti" and "Colin Clout's come home again," belong confessedly to this category.

Having discovered thus much about the poet, we now strike out in a new direction in search of his better half. Upon this point, unfortunately, there hangs a mist,—not impenetrable, as we conceive, but yet impenetrated,—a secret to which the given clue has been neglected, and which remains to the present day the opprobrium of a careless biography. The fact and the date of his marriage in Ireland are obtained from his own writings; but, further than that her name was Elizabeth,—a fact recorded by himself,—the lady of his choice remains unknown, her maiden name and family. Mere trifles these, to be sure,—but interesting in an antiquarian point of view,—and valuable, perhaps, should the inquiry hereafter lead some more than usually acute bookworm into the real mystery and meaning, the main drift of that inexplicable "Faëry Queen."

One difficulty in the matter is, that Edmund appears to have been a "susceptible subject." He was twice attacked with the tender malady, and records, in glowing numbers, his passion for two mistresses. One he calls Rosalinde, and celebrates in the "Shepherd's Calendar"; the other, Elizabeth, to whom he was undoubtedly married, is the theme of admiration in his "Amoretti." Rosalinde was his early love; Elizabeth, the passion of his maturer years. When six-and-twenty, hopeless of Rosalinde, he wound up his philomel complainings of her cruelty by a formal commission to his friend Gabriel Harvey (Hobbinoll) to declare his suit at an end:—

  "Adieu, good Hobbinoll, that was so true;  Tell Rosalinde her Colin bids adieu."

It took him fourteen years—surely a sufficient time!—to recover from this disappointment; for he is in his forty-first year, when, in his Sixtieth Sonnet, he represents himself as having been then one year enamored of Elizabeth:—

  "So since the winged god his planet cleare  Began in me to move, one yeare is spent;  The which doth longer unto me appears  Than all those fourty which my life outwent."

That Rosalinde was not, as has been somewhat rashly conjectured, the poetic name of Elizabeth, is conclusively established by a poem written between 1591 and 1595, in which he speaks of some insurmountable barrier between them, why "her he might not love."4 The wife he loved, and the mistress between whose love and him there existed such a barrier, could not have been the same person, it is evident. But who this fair and false Rosalinde was, though known to many of his contemporaries, has become a mystery. That she was a real personage is placed beyond cavil by "E.K.," the ostensible editor of the "Shepherd's Calendar"; and he has given us a clue to her name, if we have but the wit to follow it. Now "E.K." we more than shrewdly suspect to have been either Spenser himself, or his friend Gabriel Harvey, or both together. Two more egregious self-laudators are not to be found in the range of English literature: Spenser loses no opportunity of puffing "Colin Clout"; and Harvey was openly charged by Thomas Nash with having forged commendatory epistles and sonnets in his own praise, under the name of Thorius etc. "E.K.," therefore, must be considered as pretty high authority; and what says "E.K."? Why, this: "Rosalinde is also a feigned name, which, being well ordered, will bewray the verie name of his love and mistresse." By "well ordering" the "feigned name" E.K. undoubtedly means disposing or arranging the letters of which it is composed in some form of anagram or metagram,—a species of wit much cultivated by the most celebrated poets of the time, Spenser included, and not deemed beneath the dignity of the learned Camden to expound.