The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 78, April, 1864

This tree I knew well. It was an irregular old apple-tree, one of whose branches formed of itself a nice seat, where Fanny and I had often sat from childhood up.

Afterwards she writes,—

"You have sent Rachel a ring,—a pearl ring; you didn't tell me, but I know. I have seen her kiss it. (Does this please you?) I happened to find it yesterday, while rummaging her box for the buttonhole scissors. (She sent me there.) Said I,—'Oh, what a pretty ring! Why don't you wear it?' I never thought till I had spoken; but then I knew in a minute, by her looking so red. She said she'd a reason for thinking it would not be quite right to wear it,—said perhaps she would tell sometime. It was last night I saw her kiss it, when she thought I was asleep,—we sleep in the same room. She tried it on her finger, but took it right off again, sighing, and looking so sad that I don't know what I should have done, had I not known how it was all coming out right pretty soon.—Aunt Huldah is completely entangled in my web. She has come into it with her sharp eyes wide open! She likes Rachel,—says she always knows where to take hold, and makes no fuss about doing things. She gets her to read the chapter, because she says she likes the sound of her voice. There is not only sound, but feeling in her voice, and that is what aunt means; but you know she never says all she means,—she isn't one of the kind. Rachel is always doing little things for her, and bringing home bunches of sweet-fern and everlasting. Even if my plan upsets now, much will be gained,—for aunt can't get back her liking, I have found a dear friend, and Rachel a good place. Your name has been mentioned, but only as Charley. I am in daily fear that aunt will allude to your school, though, to be sure, she is not at all communicative, (girls having brothers in college should use a big word now and then,) but we are getting so well acquainted that I begin to shake in my shoes. But the mornings are busy, the noons are short, and you know aunt always goes to bed with the hens. My dread is of callers,—not just the neighbors running in, but the regulars. It is so natural for them to say, 'How is your nephew?'—not that they care for you, except as being something to talk about."

Soon after, came the following:—

"Charley, my boy, what I feared has come to pass! Last night our new young minister called. He is a good young man, I know, but so stiff! Not too stiff, though, to take a good look at Rachel. We all sat up straight in our chairs. His eyes were deep and black, his face pale and solemn. He was all in black, but just the white about his throat. When the weather, the prospects of the farmers, and of the church, were all over with, then came an awful pause. Then it was that I began to shiver, and that the mischief was done. 'Mrs. Sprague.' he began, 'I understand you have a nephew, not now at home, who taught school last winter in the little village of Norway.' You may guess the rest. There was a long talk about you. Rachel hasn't said a word, but I see by her face that she is laying some desperate plan. Now, Charley, is your time! Hurry home! Come and spend next Sunday. Aunt spoke of your coming in four weeks, but I shall look for you next Saturday night. She gets through work earlier then. The stage reaches here about sunset. Stop at the tavern, and run home over the hills. You will come out behind the orchard, and Rachel and I will be sitting on the branch of the low apple-tree."

Now I had been getting uneasy for some time. All this while I had been living on Fanny's letters. Now I wanted more. It was much to know that Rachel loved me, but I longed to hear her say so. I depended upon her. She seemed already a part of myself. My shadowy pinafore-maker had assumed a living form of beauty, and was already more to me than I had ever imagined woman could be to man, than one soul could be to another. I had always, in common with other men, considered myself as an oak destined in the course of Nature to support some clinging vine; but, if I were an oak-tree, she was another, with an infinitude more of grace and beauty.

As may be supposed, I required no urging to take the Saturday's stage for home. We arrived at sunset. I made for the hills with all speed, rushing through bushes and briers, leaping brooks at a bound, until I came out just behind the orchard. There I paused. My happiness seemed so near that I would fain enjoy, before grasping it. I walked softly along under the trees, until I came in sight of two girls sitting with their arms around each other's waists upon the low branch of the apple-tree. There was just room for two. The branch, after running parallel with the ground for a little way, took a sudden turn upwards; and to this natural seat I had myself, in my younger days, added a back of rough branches. I came towards them, from behind, and hid myself awhile behind the trunk of a tree. Fanny was making Rachel talk, making her laugh, in spite of herself, as I could well see. Then she began to play with her dark hair, twining it prettily about her head, and twisting among it damask roses with their buds,—for it was June, and our damask rose-bush was then always in full bloom.

If Rachel had been beautiful in her rusty black dress, what could I say of her now? She wore a gown of pink gingham, made after the fashion of the day, short-waisted and low in the neck, with a—finishing-off—of white muslin or lace, edged with a tucker. There was color in her cheeks, and added to this was the glow from the roses, and from the pink gown. When she smiled, her mouth was beautiful. I had not been used to seeing her smile. As she threw her arm over the back of the seat, in turning her face towards Fanny, laughing as I had never before seen her laugh, I was so bewildered by the beauty of her face and figure that I forgot my caution, and made a hasty step towards her. The grass was soft, but they heard the noise and turned full upon me.

"Why, Charley! you dear boy!" exclaimed Fanny; and she came running up, throwing both arms around my neck.

I kissed her; and then she drew me towards Rachel, who stood, like one in despair, trembling, blushing, almost weeping.

"Charley," cried Fanny, roguishly, "kiss me, kiss my friend. This is my friend. Won't you kiss her, too?"

"With pleasure," I answered, with too much of deep feeling to laugh. "Rachel, I always mind Fanny; you will not, then, think it strange, if I"—

I cannot finish the sentence on paper, because it had not a grammatical ending. I kept hold of Rachel's hand, thus adding to her distress,—telling her, all the while, how good it was to see her, and to see her there. She tried to withdraw her hand, tried to speak, tried to keep silent, and at last burst out with,—

"Oh, Fanny! do tell him that I didn't know,—that I had no idea,—that you asked me,—that you never told me!"

"Charley," said Fanny, laughing, "did you ever know me to tell a lie? To my certain knowledge, this young woman came here to board, expecting to find nothing worse than Aunt Huldah and myself; and it was at my suggestion she came."

Then taking Rachel by the hand, she said,—

"Be easy, my dear child. You need not feel so pained. Charley loves you, and you love him, and we all love one another. Charley is a dear boy, and you mustn't plague him. I will tell you all about it, dear. When Charley came home, and I made him tell me about you, I know, from what he said, that you were—But I won't praise you to your face. Hasn't Charley seen plenty of girls, handsome girls, educated, accomplished? And haven't I watched him these years, to see when Love would catch him? Haven't I searched his face, time and again, for signs of love at his heart? When he came home in the spring, I saw that his time had come, and trouble with it. I made him tell, for I would not send him away with a grief shut up in his heart. Then I contrived this plan of seeing and knowing you, dear. I knew that Charley would never have been so deeply moved, had you not been worthy; but, my dear child, I never thought of loving you so! I shall be so proud, if you will be my sister,—for you will, I know. You can't refuse such a dear boy as Charley!"

I still held Rachel by the hand; and while Fanny was speaking so earnestly, my other hand, of itself, went creeping around her waist, and drew her close to me.

"You can't refuse," I whispered, reposting Fanny's words; and I knew by the look in her face, and the way her heart beat, that she couldn't.

But Fanny was one who never liked deep waters. Seeing that matters were growing earnest, she rose quickly to the surface, and went rattling on, in her lively way.

"Now, come, you two, and sit down in this cozy seat. You have never had a nice time all to yourselves, to make love in. Ah! how well you look together! Just room enough! Rachel, dear, rest your head on Charley's shoulder. You must. Charley always minds me, and you will have to. Now, buddy, just drop your head on hers a minute. Capital! Your light curls make her hair look more like black velvet than ever! That will do. Now I leave you to your fate. I am rattle-headed, I know, but I hope I have some consideration."

And so she left us, sitting there in the twilight, in the solemn hush of Saturday night.

The next day we all went to meeting. It seemed good that I was only to spend Sunday at home. The quiet, the air of solemnity all around us, harmonized well with the song my own soul was singing. It was Sabbath-day within, one long, blessed Sabbath, with which the bustle of week-day life would ill accord. That perfect day I never forgot. Even now I can scent its roses in the air. Even now I can almost feel the daisies brushing against my feet, while walking up the narrow lane on our way to church,—can see the sweetbrier by the red gate, and myself giving Rachel one of its blossoms.

During the rest of the term I had frequent letters from Fanny and Rachel, telling how happy they both were, and what talks they had in the apple-tree,—telling that Aunt Huldah knew, but wasn't angry, only just a little at Fanny, for being so sly. Then came the long summer vacation. The very day I got home, the solemn young minister called. Fanny said that he came often, but she thought he would do so no longer, for he would see that it was of no use to be looking at Rachel. He did, however, and Rachel said he came to look at Fanny. I bestirred myself, therefore, to become acquainted with him. His stiffness was only of the manners. I found him a genial, cultivated, warm-hearted person; in fact, I liked him. How cold the word sounds now, applied to one whom I afterwards came to love as a brother, whose gentle heart sympathized in all our troubles, whose tears were ever ready to mingle with our own!

He gave us every opportunity of finding him out, joined us in our sunset walks, and in our long sittings under the trees. I soon came to be well satisfied that he should look at Fanny,—satisfied that she should watch for his coming, and blush when he came. I was happy to see the mist she once spoke of slowly gathering before her own eyes, and to know, from the strange quiet which came over her, that some new influence was at work within her heart.

The beauty of Rachel seemed each day more brilliant. Amid such happy influences, the lively, genial side of her nature expanded like a flower in the sunshine. "The soul of Rachel Lowe," having no longer to stand alone, bearing the weight of its own sorrows, brought its energies to promote the happiness of us all. She contrived pleasant surprises, and charmed Aunt Huldah with her constant acts of kindness. She sang beautiful songs, and filled the house with flowers; and when we sat long, in the cool of the evening, out under the trees, she would relate strange, wild stories which she had heard from her mother,—stories of other times and distant lands.

Meanwhile Aunt Huldah was as kind as heart could wish, treating us tenderly, and as if we were little children; and one stormy night, when we four sat with her in the keeping-room, talking, until daylight faded, and the short twilight left us nearly in darkness, she told us some things about her own youth, things of which, by daylight, she would never have spoken,—and told, too, of a dear, only brother, who was ruined for all time, and, she feared, for eternity also, from being crossed in love by the strong will of his father. Aunt Huldah had a tender heart. Her voice grew thick and hoarse, while telling the story. I was always glad we had that talk. It made us know her better. She lived only a year after. She died in June, when the grass was green and the roses were in bloom,—just a year from that Sabbath I spent at home, that perfect day when I walked to meeting with Rachel up the grassy lane. With sad hearts, we laid her to rest in a spot that she loved, where the sweet-fern and wild-roses were growing,—with sad, grateful hearts, for she had been to us as father, mother, and true friend. We loved her for the affection she showed, and still more for that which we knew she concealed within herself,—for the tenderness she would not let be revealed.

The next year Rachel and I were married, thus making the month of June trebly sacred. We had a double wedding; for the young minister, finding that he had looked at Fanny too long for his own tranquillity, proposed to mend matters in a way which no one whose faculties were not strangely betwisted by love would ever have thought of. And my sister must either have secretly liked the plan, or else have lost her old faculty of managing; for, when he said, "Come, Fanny, and let us dwell together in the parsonage," she went, just as quiet as a lamb.

Rachel and I remained, and do remain to this day, at the old house. Fanny said we ought to go into the world,—that I might possibly become brilliant, and Rachel would certainly be admired. But the first of these suggestions had little weight with me; and Rachel said how nice it would be to live here among the apple-trees, near Fanny, to read books, sing songs, and so have a good time all our lives!

"And have nobody but Charley see how handsome you are!" exclaimed Fanny.

Rachel didn't color at this, but remarked, a little roguishly, that she would rather have one of those sidelong looks I used to give her in the old school-house than all the admiration in the world.

This was the time when I chose my profession, as mentioned in the beginning. And I may say that we have had a good time all our lives. Yet we have known sorrow. Four times has the dark shadow fallen upon our hearts; four sad processions have passed up the narrow lane; four little graves, by the side of Aunt Huldah's, show where, standing together, we wept tears of agony! Yet we stood together; and Rachel, who knew so well, taught me how to bear. In every hour of anguish I have found myself leaning upon the strong, steadfast "soul of Rachel Lowe." I say still, therefore, that we have had a good time, for we have loved one another all our lives. And we have never been too much alone. Plenty of friends have been glad to come and see us; and on Anniversary Week we have usually made a journey to Boston, to wear off the rust, and get stirred up generally. We attend most frequently the Anti-Slavery Conventions. I know of no better place, whether for getting stirred up, or wearing off the rust. That couple whom you may have noticed sitting near the platform—that bald-headed old gentleman and intelligent-looking elderly lady—are my wife and I. We met with the early Abolitionists in a stable; we saw Garrison dragged through the streets, and heard Phillips's first speech in Faneuil Hall.

I have always kept my old habit of watching pretty faces; only I don't look sideways now: for the girls never think that an old man cares to see them; but he does. We have one son, who Fanny devoutly hopes will turn out better than his father. May he go through life as happily! And he is in a fair way for it. I like to see him with Jenny, the pretty daughter of my friend the watchmaker. If my good friend thinks to keep always with him that youngest one of his flock, he will find his mistake; for it was only yesterday that I saw them sitting together on the seat in the low-branching apple-tree.

PICTOR IGNOTUS

Human nature is impatient of mysteries. The occurrence of an event out of the line of common causation, the advent of a person not plastic to the common moulds of society, causes a great commotion in this little ant-hill of ours. There is perplexity, bewilderment, a running hither and thither, until the foreign substance is assigned a place in the ranks; and if there be no rank to which it can be ascertained to belong, a new rank shall be created to receive it, rather than that it shall be left to roam up and down, baffling, defiant, and alone. Indeed, so great is our abhorrence of outlying, unclassified facts, that we are often ready to accept classification for explanation; and having given our mystery a niche and a name, we cease any longer to look upon it as mysterious. The village-schoolmaster, who displayed his superior knowledge to the rustics gazing at an eclipse of the sun by assuring them that it was "only a phenomenon," was but one of a great host of wiseacres who stand ready with brush and paint-pot to label every new development, and fancy that in so doing they have abundantly answered every reasonable inquiry concerning cause, character, and consequence.

When William Blake flashed across the path of English polite society, society was confounded. It had never had to do with such an apparition before, and was at its wits' end. But some Daniel was found wise enough to come to judgment, and pronounce the poet-painter mad; whereupon society at once composed itself, and went on its way rejoicing.

There are a few persons, however, who are not disposed to let this verdict stand unchallenged. Mr. Arthur Gilchrist, late a barrister of the Middle Temple, a man, therefore, who must have been accustomed to weigh evidence, and who would not have been likely to decide upon insufficient grounds, wrote a life of Mr. Blake, in which he strenuously and ably opposed the theory of insanity. From this book, chiefly, we propose to lay before our readers a slight sketch of the life of a man who, whether sane or insane, was one of the most remarkable productions of his own or of any age.

One word, in the beginning, regarding the book before us. The death of its author, while as yet but seven chapters of his work had been printed, would preclude severe criticism, even if the spirit and purpose with which he entered upon his undertaking, and which he sustained to its close, did not dispose us to look leniently upon imperfections of detail. Possessing that first requisite of a biographer, thorough sympathy with his subject, he did not fall into the opposite error of indiscriminate panegyric. Looking at life from the standpoint of the "madman," he saw how fancies could not only appear, but be, facts; and then, crossing over, he looked at the madman from the world's standpoint, and saw how these soul-born facts could seem not merely fancies, but the wild vagaries of a crazed brain. For the warmth with which he espoused an unpopular cause, for the skill with which he set facts in their true light, for the ability which he brought to the defence of a man whom the world had agreed to condemn, for the noble persistence with which he forced attention to genius that had hitherto received little but neglect, we cannot too earnestly express our gratitude. But the greater our admiration of material excellence, the greater is our regret for superficial defects. The continued oversight of the author would doubtless have removed many infelicities of style; yet we marvel that one with so clear an insight should ever, even in the first glow of composition, have involved himself in sentences so complicated and so obscure. The worst faults of Miss Sheppard's worst style are reproduced here, joined to an unthriftiness in which she had no part nor lot. Not unfrequently a sentence Is a conglomerate in which the ideas to be conveyed are heaped together with no apparent attempt at arrangement, unity, or completeness. Surely, it need be no presumptuous, but only a tender and reverent hand that should have organized these chaotic periods, completing the work which death left unfinished, and sending it forth to the world in a garb not unworthy the labor of love so untiringly bestowed upon it by the lamented author.

To show that our strictures are not undeserved, we transcribe a few sentences, taken at random from the memoir:—

"Which decadence it was led this Pars to go into the juvenile Art-Academy line, vice Shipley retired."

"The unusual notes struck by William Blake, in any case appealing but to one class and a small one, were fated to remain unheard, even by the Student of Poetry, until the process of regeneration had run its course, and, we may say, the Poetic Revival gone to seed again: seeing that the virtues of simplicity and directness the new poets began by bringing once more into the foreground, are those least practised now."

"In after years of estrangement from Stothard, Blake used to complain of this mechanical employment as engraver to a fellow-designer, who (he asserted) first borrowed from one that, in his servile capacity, had then to copy that comrade's version of his own inventions—as to motive and composition his own, that is."

"And this imposing scroll of fervid truisms and hap-hazard generalities, as often disputable as not, if often acute and striking, always ingenuous and pleasant, was, like all his other writings, warmly welcomed in this country."

Let us now go back a hundred years, to the time when William Blake was a fair-haired, smooth-browed boy, wandering aimlessly, after the manner of boys, about the streets of London. It might seem at first a matter of regret that a soul full of all glowing and glorious fancies should have been consigned to the damp and dismal dulness of that crowded city; but, in truth, nothing could be more fit. To this affluent, creative mind dinginess and dimness were not. Through the grayest gloom golden palaces rose before him, silver pavements shone beneath his feet, jewelled gates unfolded on golden hinges turning, and he wandered forth into a fair country. What need of sunshine and bloom for one who saw in the deepest darkness a "light that never was on sea or land"? Rambling out into the pleasant woods of Dulwich, through the green meadows of Walton, by the breezy heights of Sydenham, bands of angels attended him. They walked between the toiling haymakers, they hovered above him in the apple-boughs, and their bright wings shone like stars. For him there was neither awe nor mystery, only delight. Angels were no more unnatural than apples. But the honest hosier, his father, took different views. Never in all his life had that worthy citizen beheld angels perched on tree-tops, and he was only prevented from administering to his son a sound thrashing for the absurd falsehood by the intercession of his mother. Ah, these mothers! By what fine sense is it that they detect the nascent genius for which man's coarse perception can find no better name than perverseness, and no wiser treatment than brute force?

The boy had much reason to thank his mother, for to her intervention it was doubtless largely due that he was left to follow his bent, and haunt such picture-galleries as might be found in noblemen's houses and public sale-rooms. There he feasted his bodily eyes on earthly beauty, as his mental gaze had been charmed with heavenly visions. From admiration to imitation was but a step, and the little hands soon began to shape such rude, but loving copies as Raffaelle, with tears in his eyes, must have smiled to see. His father, moved by motherly persuasions, as we can easily infer, bought him casts for models, that he might continue his drawing-lessons at home; his own small allowance of pocket-money went for prints; his wistful child-face presently became known to dealers, and many a cheap lot was knocked down to him with amiable haste by friendly auctioneers. Then and there began that life-long love and loyalty to the grand old masters of Germany and Italy, to Albrecht Dürer, to Michel Angelo, to Raffaelle, which knew no diminution, and which, in its very commencement, revealed the eclecticism of true genius, because the giants were not the gods in those days.

But there came a time when Pegasus must be broken in to drudgery, and travel along trodden ways. By slow, it cannot be said by toilsome ascent, the young student had reached the vestibule of the temple; but