The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 27, January, 1860

I am used to admiration now, certainly; it is my food; without it I should die of inanition; but do you suppose I care any more for those who give it to me than a Chinese idol does for—whoever swings incense before it? Are you devoted to your butcher and milkman? We desire only the unpossessed or unattainable, "something afar from the sphere of our sorrow." But, though unconsciously, I may have been piqued by this manner of his. It was new; not a word, not a glance; I believed it was carelessness, and resolved—merely for the sake of conquering, I fancied, too—to change all that. By-and-by the beads dropped out of the curl, as if they had been possessed of mischief and had held there of themselves. He caught them.

"Here, Circe," he said.

That was the time I was so angry; for, at the second, he meant all it comprehended. He saw, I suppose, for he added at once,—

"Or what was the name of the Witch of Atlas,

'The magic circle of whose voice and eyesAll savage natures did imparadise?'"

I wonder what made me think him mocking me. Frequently since then he has called me by that name.

"I don't know much about geography," I said. "Besides, these didn't come from there. Little Asian—the imp of my name, you remember—owned them."

"Ah?" with the utmost apathy; and turning to my father, "I saw the painting that enslaved you, Sir," he said.

"Yes, yes," said papa, gleefully. "And then why didn't you make me a copy?"

"Why?" Here he glanced round the room, as if he weren't thinking at all of the matter in hand. "The coloring is more than one can describe, though faded. But I don't think you would like it so much now. Moreover, Sir, I cannot make copies."

I stepped towards them, quite forgetful of my pride. "Can't?" I exclaimed. "Oh, how splendid! Because then no other man comes between you and Nature; your ideal hangs before you, and special glimpses open and shut on you, glimpses which copyists never obtain."

"I don't think you are right," he said, coldly, his hands loosely crossed behind him, leaning on the corner of the mantel, and looking unconcernedly out of the window.

Wasn't it provoking? I remembered myself,—and remembered, too, that I never had made a real exertion to procure anything, and it wasn't worth while to begin then, beside not being my forte; things must come to me. Just then Lu reentered, and one of the servants brought a tray, and we had lunch. Then our visitor rose to go.

"No, no," said papa. "Stay the day out with the girls. It's Mayday, and there are to be fireworks on the other bank to-night."

"Fireworks for Mayday?"

"Yes, to be sure. Wait and see."

"It would be so pleasant!" pleaded Lu.

"And a band, I forgot to mention. I have an engagement myself, so you'll excuse me; but the girls will do the honors, and I shall meet you at dinner."

So it was arranged. Papa went out. I curled up on a lounge,—for Lu wouldn't have liked to be left, if I had liked to leave her,—and soon, when he sat down by her quite across the room, I half shut my eyes and pretended to sleep. He began to turn over her work-basket, taking up her thimble, snipping at the thread with her scissors: I see now he wasn't thinking about it, and was trying to recover what he considered a proper state of feeling, but I fancied he was very gentle and tender, though I couldn't hear what they said, and I never took the trouble to listen in my life. In about five minutes I was tired of this playing 'possum, and took my observations.

What is your idea of a Louise? Mine is dark eyes, dark hair, decided features, pale, brown pale, with a mole on the left cheek,—and that's Louise. Nothing striking, but pure and clear, and growing always better.

For him,—he's not one of those cliff-like men against whom you are blown as a feather, I don't fancy that kind; I can stand of myself, rule myself. He isn't small, though; no, he's tall enough, but all his frame is delicate, held to earth by nothing but the cords of a strong will, —very little body, very much soul. He, too, is pale, and has dark eyes with violet darks in them. You don't call him beautiful in the least, but you don't know him. I call him beauty itself, and I know him thoroughly. A stranger might have thought, when I spoke of those copals Rose carved, that Rose was some girl. But though he has a feminine sensibility, like Correggio or Schubert, nobody could call him womanish. "Les races se féminisent." Don't you remember Matthew Roydon's Astrophill?

"A sweet, attractive kind of grace,A full assurance given by looks,Continual comfort in a face."

I always think of that flame in an alabaster vase, when I see him; "one sweet grace fed still with one sweet mind"; a countenance of another sphere: that's Vaughan Rose. It provokes me that I can't paint him myself, without other folk's words; but you see there's no natural image of him in me, and so I can't throw it strongly on any canvas. As for his manners, you've seen them;—now tell me, was there ever anything so winning when he pleases, and always a most gracious courtesy in his air, even when saying an insufferably uncivil thing? He has an art, a science, of putting the unpleasant out of his sight, ignoring or looking over it, which sometimes gives him an absent way; and that is because he so delights in beauty; he seems to have woven a mist over his face then, and to be shut in on his own inner loveliness; and many a woman thinks he is perfectly devoted, when, very like, he is swinging over some lonely Spanish sierra beneath the stars, or buried in noonday Brazilian forests, half stifled with the fancied breath of every gorgeous blossom of the zone. Till this time, it had been the perfection of form rather than tint that had enthralled him; he had come home with severe ideas, too severe; he needed me, you see.

But while looking at him and Lu, on that day, I didn't perceive half of this, only felt annoyed at their behavior, and let them feel that I was noticing them. There's nothing worse than that; it is a very upas-breath, it puts on the brakes, and of course a chill and a restraint overcame them till Mr. Dudley was announced.

"Dear! dear!" I exclaimed, getting upon my feet. "What ever shall we do, Lu? I'm not dressed for him." And while I stood, Mr. Dudley came in.

Mr. Dudley didn't seem to mind whether I was dressed in cobweb or sheet-iron; for he directed his looks and conversation so much to Lu, that Rose came and sat on a stool before me and began to talk.

"Miss Willoughby"—

"Yone, please."

"But you are not Yone."

"Well, just as you choose. You were going to say?"

"Merely to ask how you liked the Islands."

"Oh, well enough."

"No more?" he said. "They wouldn't have broken your spell so, if that had been all. Do you know I actually believe in enchantments now?"

I was indignant, but amused in spite of myself.

"Well," he continued, "why don't you say it? How impertinent am I? You won't? Why don't you laugh, then?"

"Dear me!" I replied. "You are so much on the 'subtle-souled-psychologist' line, that there's no need of my speaking at all."

"I can carry on all the dialogue? Then let me say how you liked the

Islands."

"I shall do no such thing. I liked the West Indies because there is life there; because the air is a firmament of balm, and you grow in it like a flower in the sun; because the fierce heat and panting winds wake and kindle all latent color, and fertilize every germ of delight that might sleep here forever. That's why I liked them; and you knew it just as well before as now."

"Yes; but I wanted to see if you knew it. So you think there is life there in that dead Atlantis."

"Life of the elements, rain, hail, fire, and snow."

"Snow thrice bolted by the northern blast, I fancy, by which time it becomes rather misty. Exaggerated snow."

"Everything there is an exaggeration. Coming here from England is like stepping out of a fog into an almost exhausted receiver; but you've no idea what light is, till you've been in those inland hills. You think a blue sky the perfection of bliss? When you see a white sky, a dome of colorless crystal, with purple swells of mountain heaving round you, and a wilderness of golden greens royally languid below, while stretches of a scarlet blaze, enough to ruin a weak constitution, flaunt from the rank vines that lace every thicket, and the whole world, and you with it, seems breaking into blossom,—why, then you know what light is and can do. The very wind there by day is bright, now faint, now stinging, and makes a low, wiry music through the loose sprays, as if they were tense harp-strings. Nothing startles; all is like a grand composition utterly wrought out. What a blessing it is that the blacks have been imported there,—their swarthiness is in such consonance!"

"No; the native race was in better consonance. You are so enthusiastic, it is pity you ever came away."

"Not at all. I didn't know anything about it till I came back."

"But a mere animal or vegetable life is not much. What was ever done in the tropics?"

"Almost all the world's history,—wasn't it?"

"No, indeed; only the first, most trifling, and barbarian movements."

"At all events, you are full of blessedness in those climates, and that is the end and aim of all action; and if Nature will do it for you, there is no need of your interference. It is much better to be than to do;—one is a strife, the other is possession."

"You mean being as the complete attainment? There is only one Being, then. All the rest of us are"–

"Oh, dear me! that sounds like metaphysics! Don't!"

"So you see, you are not full of blessedness there."

"You ought to have been born in Abelard's time,—you've such a disputatious spirit. That's I don't know how many times you have contradicted me to-day."

"Pardon."

"I wonder if you are so easy with all women."

"I don't know many."

"I shall watch to see if you contradict Lu this way."

"I don't need. How absorbed she is! Mr. Dudley is 'interesting'?"

"I don't know. No. But then, Lu is a good girl, and he's her minister,—a Delphic oracle. She thinks the sun and moon set somewhere round Mr. Dudley. Oh! I mean to show him my amber."

And I tossed it into Lu's lap, saying,—

"Show it to Mr. Dudley, Lu,—and ask him if it isn't divine!"

Of course, he was shocked, and wouldn't go into ecstasies at all; tripped on the adjective.

"There are gods enough in it to be divine," said Rose, taking it from Lu's hand and bringing it back to me. "All those very Gnostic deities who assisted at Creation. You are not afraid that the imprisoned things work their spells upon you? The oracle declares it suits your cousin best," he added, in a lower tone.

"All the oaf knows!" I responded. "I wish you'd admire it, Mr. Dudley. Mr. Rose don't like amber,—handles it like nettles."

"No," said Rose, "I don't like amber."

"He prefers aqua-marina," I continued. "Lu, produce yours!" For she had not heard him.

"Yes," said Mr. Dudley, rubbing his finger over his lip while he gazed, "every one must prefer aqua-marina."

"Nonsense! It's no better than glass. I'd as soon wear a set of window-panes. There's no expression in it. It isn't alive, like real gems."

Mr. Dudley stared. Rose laughed.

"What a vindication of amber!" he said.

He was standing now, leaning against the mantel, just as he was before lunch. Lu looked at him and smiled.

"Yone is exultant, because we both wanted the beads," she said. "I like amber as much as she."

"Nothing near so much, Lu!"

"Why didn't you have them, then?" asked Rose, quickly.

"Oh, they belonged to Yone; and uncle gave me these, which I like better. Amber is warm, and smells of the earth; but this is cool and dewy, and"–

"Smells of heaven?" asked I, significantly.

Mr. Dudley began to fidget, for he saw no chance of finishing his exposition.

"As I was saying, Miss Louisa," he began, in a different key.

I took my beads and wound them round my wrist. "You haven't as much eye for color as a poppy-bee," I exclaimed, in a corresponding key, and looking up at Rose.

"Unjust. I was thinking then how entirely they suited you."

"Thank you. Vastly complimentary from one who 'don't like amber'!"

"Nevertheless, you think so."

"Yes and no. Why don't you like it?"

"You mustn't ask me for my reasons. It is not merely disagreeable, but hateful."

"And you've been beside me, like a Christian, all this time, and I had it!"

"The perfume is acrid; I associate it with the lower jaw of St. Basil the Great, styled a present of immense value, you remember,—being hard, heavy, shining like gold, the teeth yet in it, and with a smell more delightful than amber,"—making a mock shudder at the word.

"Oh, it is prejudice, then."

"Not in the least. It is antipathy. Besides, the thing is unnatural; there is no existent cause for it. A bit that turns up on certain sands,—here at home, for aught I know, as often as anywhere."

"Which means Nazareth. We must teach you, Sir, that there are some things at home as rare as those abroad."

"I am taught," he said, very low, and without looking up.

"Just tell me, what is amber?"

"Fossil gum."

"Can you say those words and not like it? Don't it bring to you a magnificent picture of the pristine world,—great seas and other skies,—a world of accentuated crises, that sloughed off age after age, and rose fresher from each plunge? Don't you see, or long to see, that mysterious magic tree out of whose pores oozed this fine solidified sunshine? What leaf did it have? what blossom? what great wind shivered its branches? Was it a giant on a lonely coast, or thick low growth blistered in ravines and dells? That's the witchery of amber,—that it has no cause,—that all the world grew to produce it,—may-be died and gave no other sign,—that its tree, which must have been beautiful, dropped all its fruits; and how bursting with juice must they have been"–

"Unfortunately, coniferous."

"Be quiet. Stripped itself of all its lush luxuriance, and left for a vestige only this little fester of its gashes."

"No, again," he once more interrupted. "I have seen remnants of the wood and bark in a museum."

"Or has it hidden and compressed all its secret here?" I continued, obliviously. "What if in some piece of amber an accidental seed were sealed, we found, and planted, and brought back the lost aeons? What a glorious world that must have been, where even the gum was so precious!"

"In a picture, yes. Necessary for this. But, my dear Miss Willoughby, you convince me that the Amber Witch founded your family," he said, having listened with an amused face. "Loveliest amber that ever the sorrowing sea-birds have wept," he hummed. "There! isn't that kind of stuff enough to make a man detest it?"

"Yes."

"And you are quite as bad in another way."

"Oh!"

"Just because, when we hold it in our hands, we hold also that furious epoch where rioted all monsters and poisons,—where death fecundated and life destroyed,—where superabundance demanded such existences, no souls, but fiercest animal fire;—just for that I hate it."

"Why, then, is it fitted for me?"

He laughed again, but replied,—"The hues harmonize,—the substances; you both are accidents; it suits your beauty."

So, then, it seemed I had beauty, after all.

"You mean that it harmonizes with me, because I am a symbol of its period. If there had been women then, they would have been like me,—a great creature without a soul, a"–

"Pray, don't finish the sentence. I can imagine that there is something rich and voluptuous and sating about amber, its color, and its lustre, and its scent; but for others, not for me. Yea, you have beauty, after all," turning suddenly, and withering me with his eye,—"beauty, after all, as you didn't say just now.—Mr. Willoughby is in the garden. I must go before he comes in, or he'll make me stay. There are some to whom you can't say, No."

He stopped a minute, and now, without looking,—indeed, he looked everywhere but at me, while we talked,—made a bow as if just seating me from a waltz, and, with his eyes and his smile on Louise all the way down the room, went out. Did you ever know such insolence?

SONG OF NATURE

Mine are the night and morning,The pits of air, the gulf of space,The sportive sun, the gibbous moon,The innumerable days.I hide in the blinding glory,I lurk in the pealing song,I rest on the pitch of the torrent,In death, new-born and strong.No numbers have counted my tallies,No tribes my house can fill,I sit by the shining Fount of life,And pour the deluge still.And ever by delicate powersGathering along the centuriesFrom race on race the fairest flowers,My wreath shall nothing miss.And many a thousand summersMy apples ripened well,And light from meliorating starsWith firmer glory fell.I wrote the past in charactersOf rock and fire the scroll,The building in the coral sea,The planting of the coal.And thefts from satellites and ringsAnd broken stars I drew,And out of spent and aged thingsI formed the world anew.What time the gods kept carnival,Tricked out in star and flower,And in cramp elf and saurian formsThey swathed their too much power.Time and Thought were my surveyors,They laid their courses well,They boiled the sea, and baked the layersOf granite, marl, and shell.But him—the man-child glorious,Where tarries he the while?The rainbow shines his harbinger,The sunset gleams his smile.My boreal lights leap upward,Forthright my planets roll,And still the man-child is not born,The summit of the whole.Must time and tide forever run?Will never my winds go sleep in the West?Will never my wheels, which whirl the sunAnd satellites, have rest?Too much of donning and doffing,Too slow the rainbow fades;I weary of my robe of snow,My leaves, and my cascades.I tire of globes and races,Too long the game is played;What, without him, is summer's pomp,Or winter's frozen shade?I travail in pain for him,My creatures travail and wait;His couriers come by squadrons,He comes not to the gate.Twice I have moulded an image,And thrice outstretched my hand,Made one of day, and one of night,And one of the salt-sea-sand.I moulded kings and saviours,And bards o'er kings to rule;But fell the starry influence short,The cup was never full.Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more,And mix the bowl again,Seethe, Fate! the ancient elements,Heat, cold, dry, wet, and peace and painLet war and trade and creeds and songBlend, ripen race on race,—The sunburnt world a man shall breedOf all the zones and countless days.No ray is dimmed, no atom worn,My oldest force is good as new,And the fresh rose on yonder thornGives back the bending heavens in dew.

NEMOPHILY

An earnest plea was once entered in Maga's pages for the bodies of saints. Yet it is to be hoped that others not included in that respectable class may have physical needs also, and it is to be feared that they may not be above the necessity of a little of the same invigorating tonic. For there are not a few on this continent of ours, whom the Avvocata del Diavolo would certainly expect to enter a nolo contendere, who stand in much need of a healthy animalism. That these sinners would be benefited by what Mr. Kingsley's critics call "muscular Christianity" cannot be denied. For they are not sinners beyond all hope of amendment, by any means; and their offences being rather against the laws and light of Nature than against any of the commands of the Decalogue, it is earnestly desired that they be brought within the pale of promise, even if they never reach the sacred fane of canonization.

Indeed, at the outset, let there be a protest entered on behalf of the sinner against this unnecessary pity of the saint. It is a part of that false halo with which enthusiastic admiration (reckless of gilding and ruinously prodigal of ochre) delights to endue the favored heads of the beati. The saint himself countenances the folly, and meekly inclines his head (sideways) to the rays. It is a part of the capital of the calling to look interesting. The revered and reverend Charles Honeyman, in the hands of that acute manager, Mr. Sherrick, was bidden to sit in his pew at evening service and cough. A qualified consumption and a moderate bronchitis are no bad substitutes for eloquence, learning, and that indiscreet piety which is so careless of feminine favor as to bring into the pulpit a robust person and to the dinner-table a healthy appetite.

But the saint, if he have a reasonable sense of his pastoral duty, gets, malgré lui, a very fair share of that open-air medicine which is supposed to be the great lack of his profession. For if he be a clergyman in a rural parish of tolerable extent and with no great superfluity of wealth, he will not want for either air or exercise. The George Herbert so situated finds by no means his whole round of duty in the study. Old Mrs. Smith, sick and bedridden, lives a couple of miles from the parsonage; but the thoughtless creature actually expects a weekly visit and half-hour's reading of certain old familiar English literature, and will remind her pastor of it, if the expected day pass without his coming. Jones and his wife, who live in just the other direction, are wantonly apt, upon the insufficient plea of a long walk, to be missed from their wonted pew on a stormy Sunday, and must be looked up. Little Mary Gray has not been to Sunday-school. Cause suspected,—insufficient shoes. Bessy Bell, up the cross-road, quite over beyond Beman's Farms, is likewise delinquent, from the opposite want of a bonnet. Wilson, the cross-grained vestryman, has an idea, which never fails by Saturday night to break out into a positive rush of conviction, that the minister is neglecting his studies and "going to Rome," if he doesn't in the course of the week go to Wilson and carry him the Church papers and take a look at the Wilson prize-pigs. So good Mr. Herbert never fails, in due attestation of his "abhorrence of the Bishop of Rome and his detestable enormities," to foot it over the rocky hill and down across the rickety little bridge and past the poor-house farm, (where he stops on a little private business of his own, that perhaps makes a few old hearts and certainly one old coat-pocket the lighter,) and so on, a good piece, through the woods, to where Vestryman Wilson is bending over the hoe or swinging the axe, and thinking the while what an easy life the parson has of it.

Then Mr. Herbert gets the occasional tonic of a brisk walk over the hard-beaten snow, of a moonlight winter's night. A walk-only think of it!—over the crisp, crunching snow, to the distant outlying hamlet of Paton's Corner, where a few are gathered in the little school-house to hear him preach, and to give him the happy relief of a five-mile tramp home again.

It is really doubtful if dumb-bells, a gymnasium, and a pickerel-back racing-wherry would meet precisely the case of Mr. Herbert, however desirable for city saints who have plenty of spare sixpences for the omnibuses.

But the miserable sinner,—"where," as the shepherd exclaimed, to Mr. Weller's indignation, "is the miserable sinner?" Keeping school, keeping books, making books, standing behind counters when busy and on street-corners when disengaged, doing anything or everything but taking care of his precious body, and thereby giving his precious soul the chance of being in very bad company, and following the fate of poor Tray, and of the well-meaning stork in Dr. Aesop's fable. What shall he, or rather, what can he, do with his leisure? For leisure more or less almost every young man has,—and it is of young men, and especially of the very young men, that we are benevolently writing. If he dwell in an inland town, the boat-club is hopeless,—and boat-clubs, though capital things for the young gentlemen of Harvard and Yale and Trinity, have also their drawbacks. One cannot always be ready to move in complete unison with a dozen fellow-mortals. Pendennis is never ready when the club are desirous to row; Newcome is perpetually anxious to tempt the wave when the wave tempts nobody else. The gymnasium gets to be a wearisome round of very mill-horse-like work, after the varieties of possible dislocation of all one's bones have been exhausted. Climbing ropes and poles with nothing but cobwebs at the top, and leaping horses with only tan at the bottom, grow monotonous after six months' steady dissipation thereat. Base-ball clubs do not always find desirable commons, and the municipal fathers of the towns have a prejudice against them in the streets. What shall youth, conscious of muscle and eager for fresh air, do? Even the gloves are not fancy-free, but are very apt to bring with them the slang of the ring and the beastly associations of professional pugilism. Youth looks up to its teachers; but if its teachers in the manly art be the Game-Chicken, the Pet, the Slasher, youth, in learning to respect the brute strength of such men, will hardly learn to respect itself.