Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 by Various
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Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859
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He spoke, and looked up as if he heard the emblazoned folds crackling
over him in the breeze. We all looked up involuntarily, as if we should
see the national flag by so doing. The sight of the dingy ceiling and
the gas-fixture depending therefrom dispelled the illusion.
Bravo! bravo!--said the venerable gentleman on the other side of the
table.--Those are the sentiments of Washington's Farewell Address.
Nothing better than that since the last chapter in Revelations.
Five-and-forty years ago there used to be Washington societies, and
little boys used to walk in processions, each little boy having a copy
of the Address, bound in red, hung round his neck by a ribbon. Why don't
they now? Why don't they now? I saw enough of hating each other in the
old Federal times; now let's love each other, I say,--let's love each
other, and not try to make it out that there isn't any place fit to live
in except the one we happen to be born in.
It dwarfs the mind, I think,--said I,--to feed it on any localism. The
full stature of manhood is shrivelled----
The color burst up into my cheeks. What was I saying,--I, who would not
for the world have pained our unfortunate little boarder by an allusion?
I will go,--he said,--and made a movement with his left arm to let
himself down from his high chair.
No,--no,--he doesn't mean it,--you must not go,--said a kind voice next
him; and a soft, white hand was laid upon his arm.
Iris, my dear!--exclaimed another voice, as of a female, in accents that
might be considered a strong atmospheric solution of duty with very
little flavor of grace.
She did not move for this address, and there was a _tableau_ that lasted
some seconds. For the young girl, in the glory of half-blown womanhood,
and the dwarf, the cripple, the misshapen little creature covered with
Nature's insults, looked straight into each other's eyes.
Perhaps no handsome young woman had ever looked at him so in his life.
Certainly the young girl never had looked into eyes that reached
into her soul as these did. It was not that they were in themselves
supernaturally bright,--but there was the sad fire in them that flames
up from the soul of one who looks on the beauty of woman without hope,
but, alas! not without emotion. To him it seemed as if those amber gates
had been translucent as the brown water of a mountain-brook, and through
them he had seen dimly into a virgin wilderness, only waiting for the
sunrise of a great passion for all its buds to blow and all its bowers
to ring with melody.
That is my image, of course,--not his. It was not a simile that was
in his mind, or is in anybody's at such a moment,--it was a pang of
wordless passion, and then a silent, inward moan.
A lady's wish,--he said, with a certain gallantry of manner,--makes
slaves of us all.--And Nature, who is kind to all her children, and
never leaves the smallest and saddest of all her human failures without
one little comfit of self-love at the bottom of his poor ragged
pocket,--Nature suggested to him that he had turned his sentence well;
and he fell into a reverie, in which the old thoughts that were always
hovering just outside the doors guarded by Common Sense, and watching
for a chance to squeeze in, knowing perfectly well they would be
ignominiously kicked out again as soon as Common Sense saw them, flocked
in pellmell,--misty, fragmentary, vague, half-ashamed of themselves, but
still shouldering up against his inner consciousness till it warmed with
their contact:--John Wilkes's--the ugliest man's in England--saying,
that with half-an-hour's start he would cut out the handsomest man
in all the land in any woman's good graces; Cadenus--old and
savage--leading captive Stella and Vanessa; and then the stray line of
a ballad,--"And a winning tongue had he,"--as much as to say, it isn't
looks, after all, but cunning words, that win our Eves over,--just as
of old, when it was the worst-looking brute of the lot that got our
grandmother to listen to his stuff, and so did the mischief.
Ah, dear me! We rehearse the part of Hercules with his club, subjugating
man and woman in our fancy, the first by the weight of it, and the
second by our handling of it,--we rehearse it, I say, by our own
hearth-stones, with the _cold_ poker as our club, and the exercise is
easy. But when we come to real life, the poker is _in the fire_, and,
ten to one, if we would grasp it, we find it too hot to hold;--lucky for
us, if it is not white-hot, and we do not have to leave the skin of our
hands sticking to it when we fling it down or drop it with a loud or
silent cry!
--I am frightened when I find into what a labyrinth of human character
and feeling I am winding. I meant to tell my thoughts, and to throw in
a few studies of manner and costume as they pictured themselves for
me from day to day. Chance has thrown together at the table with me a
number of persons who are worth studying, and I mean not only to look
on them, but, if I can, through them. You can get any man's or woman's
secret, whose sphere is circumscribed by your own, if you will only look
patiently on them long enough. Nature is always applying her reagents
to character, if you will take the pains to watch her. Our studies
of character, to change the image, are very much like the surveyor's
triangulation of a geographical province. We get a base-line in
organization, always; then we get an angle by sighting some distant
object to which the passions or aspirations of the subject of our
observation are tending; then another:--and so we construct our first
triangle. Once fix a man's ideals, and for the most part the rest is
easy. _A_ wants to die worth half a million. Good. _B_ (female) wants to
catch him,--and outlive him. All right. Minor details at our leisure.
What is it, of all your experiences, of all your thoughts, of all your
misdoings, that lies at the very bottom of the great heap of acts of
consciousness which make up your past life? What should you most dislike
to tell your nearest friend?--Be so good as to pause for a brief space,
and shut the pamphlet you hold with your fingers between the pages.--Oh,
that is it!
What a confessional I have been sitting at, with the inward ear of my
soul open, as the multitudinous whisper of my involuntary confidants
came back to me like the reduplicated echo of a cry among the craggy
hills!
At the house of a friend where I once passed the night was one of those
stately upright cabinet-desks and cases of drawers which were not rare
in prosperous families during the last century. It had held the clothes
and the books and the papers of generation after generation. The hands
that opened its drawers had grown withered, shrivelled, and at last been
folded in death. The children that played with the lower handles had got
tall enough to open the desk,--to reach the upper shelves behind the
folding-doors,--grown bent after a while,--and then followed those who
had gone before, and left the old cabinet to be ransacked by a new
generation.
A boy of ten or twelve was looking at it a few years ago, and, being a
quick-witted fellow, saw that all the space was not accounted for by the
smaller drawers in the part beneath the lid of the desk. Prying about
with busy eyes and fingers, he at length came upon a spring, on pressing
which, a hidden drawer flew from its hiding-place. It had never been
opened but by the maker. The mahogany shavings and dust were lying in it
as when the artisan closed it,--and when I saw it, it was as fresh as if
that day finished.
Is there not one little drawer in your soul, my sweet reader, which no
hand but yours has ever opened, and which none that have known you seem
to have suspected? What does it hold?--A sin?--I hope not.
What a strange thing an old dead sin laid away in a secret drawer of the
soul is! Must it some time or other be moistened with tears, until it
comes to life again and begins to stir in our consciousness,--as the dry
wheel-animalcule, looking like a grain of dust, becomes alive, if it is
wet with a drop of water?
Or is it a passion? There are plenty of withered men and women walking
about the streets who have the secret drawer in their hearts, which,
if it were opened, would show as fresh as it was when they were in the
flush of youth and its first trembling emotions. What it held will,
perhaps, never be known, until they are dead and gone, and some curious
eye lights on an old yellow letter with the fossil footprints of the
extinct passion trodden thick all over it.
There is not a boarder at our table, I firmly believe, excepting the
young girl, who has not a story of the heart to tell, if one could only
get the secret drawer open. Even this arid female, whose armor of black
bombazine looks stronger against the shafts of love than any cuirass of
triple brass, has had her sentimental history, if I am not mistaken. I
will tell you my reason for suspecting it.
Like many other old women, she shows a great nervousness and
restlessness whenever I venture to express any opinion upon a class of
subjects which can hardly be said to belong to any man or set of men
as their strictly private property,--not even to the clergy, or the
newspapers commonly called "religious." Now, although it would be a
great luxury to me to obtain my opinions by contract, ready-made, from a
professional man, and although I have a constitutional kindly feeling
to all sorts of good people which would make me happy to agree with all
their beliefs, if that were possible, still I must have an idea, now and
then, as to the meaning of life; and though the only condition of peace
in this world is to have no ideas, or, at least, not to express them,
with reference to such subjects, I can't afford to pay quite so much as
that even for peace.
I find that there is a very prevalent opinion among the dwellers on the
shores of Sir Isaac Newton's Ocean of Truth, that _salt fish_, which
have been taken from it a good while ago, split open, cured and dried,
are the only proper and allowable food for reasonable people. I
maintain, on the other hand, that there are a number of live fish still
swimming in it, and that every one of us has a right to see if he cannot
catch some of them. Sometimes I please myself with the idea that I have
landed an actual living fish, small, perhaps, but with rosy gills and
silvery scales. Then I find the consumers of nothing but the salted and
dried article insist that it is poisonous, simply because it is alive,
and cry out to people not to touch it. I have not found, however, that
people mind them much.
The poor boarder in bombazine is my dynamometer. I try every
questionable proposition on her. If she winces, I must be prepared for
an outcry from the other old women. I frightened her, the other day, by
saying that _faith, as an intellectual state, was self-reliance_, which,
if you have a metaphysical turn, you will find is not so much of a
paradox as it sounds at first. So she sent me a book to read which was
to cure me of that error. It was an old book, and looked as if it had
not been opened for a long time. What should drop out of it, one day,
but a small heart-shaped paper, containing a lock of that straight,
coarse, brown hair which sets off the sharp faces of so many
thin-flanked, large-handed bumpkins? I read upon the paper the name
"Hiram."--Love! love! love!--everywhere! everywhere!--under diamonds and
Attleboro' "jewelry,"--lifting the marrowy camel's-hair, and rustling
even the black bombazine!--No, no,--I think she never was pretty, but
she was young once, and wore bright ginghams, and, perhaps, gay merinos.
We shall find that the poor little crooked man has been in love, or is
in love, or will be in love before we have done with him, for aught that
I know!
Romance! Was there ever a boarding-house in the world where the
seemingly prosaic table had not a living fresco for its background,
where you could see, if you had eyes, the smoke and fire of some
upheaving sentiment, or the dreary craters of smouldering or burnt-out
passions? You look on the black bombazine and high-necked decorum of
your neighbor, and no more think of the real life that underlies this
despoiled and dismantled womanhood than you think of a stone trilobite
as having once been full of the juices and the nervous thrills of
throbbing and self-conscious being. There is a wild creature under that
long yellow pin which serves as brooch for the bombazine cuirass,--a
wild creature, which I venture to say would leap in his cage, if
I should stir him, quiet as you think him. A heart which has been
domesticated by matrimony and maternity is as tranquil as a tame
bulfinch; but a wild heart which has never been fairly broken in
flutters fiercely long after you think time has tamed it down,--like
that purple finch I had the other day, which could not be approached
without such palpitations and frantic flings against the bars of his
cage, that I had to send him back and get a little orthodox canary
which had learned to be quiet and never mind the wires or his keeper's
handling. I will tell you my wicked, but involuntary experiment on the
wild heart under the faded bombazine.
Was there ever a person in the room with you, marked by any special
weakness or peculiarity, with whom you could be two hours and not touch
the infirm spot? I confess the most frightful tendency to do just this
thing. If a man has a brogue, I am sure to catch myself imitating it.
If another is lame, I follow him, or, worse than that, go before him,
limping. I could never meet an Irish gentleman--if it had been the Duke
of Wellington himself--without stumbling upon the word "Paddy,"--which I
use rarely in my common talk.
I have been worried to know whether this was owing to some innate
depravity of disposition on my part, some malignant torturing instinct,
which, under different circumstances, might have made a Fijian
anthropophagus of me, or to some law of thought for which I was not
answerable. It is, I am convinced, a kind of physical fact like
_endosmosis_, with which some of you are acquainted. A thin film of
politeness separates the unspoken and unspeakable current of thought
from the stream of conversation. After a time one begins to soak through
and mingle with the other.
We were talking about names, one day. Was there ever anything,--I
said,--like the Yankee for inventing the most uncouth, pretentious,
detestable appellations,--inventing or finding them,--since the time of
Praise-God Barebones? I heard a country-boy once talking of another whom
he called _Elpit_, as I understood him. _Elbridge_ is common enough, but
this sounded oddly. It seems the boy was christened _Lord Pitt_,--and
called, for convenience, as above. I have heard a charming little girl,
belonging to an intelligent family in the country, called _Anges_
invariably; doubtless intended for Agnes. Names are cheap. How can a
man name an innocent new-born child, that never did him any harm,
_Hiram_?--The poor relation, or whatever she is, in bombazine, turned
toward me, but I was stupid, and went on.--To think of a man going
through life saddled with such an abominable name as that!--The poor
relation grew very uneasy.--I continued; for I never thought of all this
till afterwards.--I knew one young fellow, a good many years ago, by the
name of Hiram--
--What's got into you, Cousin,--said our landlady,--to look so?--There!
you've upset your teacup!
It suddenly occurred to me what I had been doing, and I saw the poor
woman had her hand at her throat; she was half-choking with the
"hysteric ball,"--a very odd symptom, as you know, which nervous women
often complain of. What business had I to be trying experiments on this
forlorn old soul? I had a great deal better be watching that young girl.
Ah, the young girl! I am sure that she can hide nothing from me. Her
skin is so transparent that one can almost count her heart-beats by the
flushes they send into her cheeks. She does not seem to be shy, either.
I think she does not know enough of danger to be timid. She seems to
me like one of those birds that travellers tell of, found in remote,
uninhabited islands, who, having never received any wrong at the hand
of man, show no alarm at and hardly any particular consciousness of his
presence.
The first thing will be to see how she and our little deformed gentleman
get along together; for, as I have told you, they sit side by side. The
next thing will be to keep an eye on the duenna,--the "Model" and
so forth, as the white-neckcloth called her. The intention of that
estimable lady is, I understand, to launch her and leave her. I suppose
there is no help for it, and I don't doubt this young lady knows how to
take care of herself, but I do not like to see young girls turned loose
in boarding-houses. Look here now! There is that jewel of his race, whom
I have called for convenience the Koh-i-noor, (you understand it
is quite out of the question for me to use the family names of our
boarders, unless I want to get into trouble,)--I say, the gentleman with
the _diamond_ is looking very often and very intently, it seems to me,
down toward the farther corner of the table, where sits our amber-eyed
blonde. The landlady's daughter does not look pleased, it seems to me,
at this, nor at those other attentions which the gentleman referred to
has, as I have learned, pressed upon the newly-arrived young person. The
landlady made a communication to me, within a few days after the arrival
of Miss Iris, which I will repeat to the best of my remembrance.
He, (the person I have been speaking of,)--she said,--seemed to
be kinder hankerin' round after that young woman. It had hurt her
daughter's feelin's a good deal, that the gentleman she was a-keepin'
company with should be offerin' tickets and tryin' to send presents to
them that he'd never know'd till just a little spell ago,--and he as
good as merried, so far as solemn promises went, to as respectable a
young lady, if she did say so, as any there was round, whosomever they
might be.
Tickets! presents!--said I.--What tickets, what presents has he had the
impertinence to be offering to that young lady?
Tickets to the Museum,--said the landlady.--There is them that's glad
enough to go to the Museum, when tickets is given 'em; but some of 'em
ha'n't had a ticket sence Cenderilla was played,--and now he must be
offerin' 'em to this ridiculous young paintress, or whatever she is,
that's come to make more mischief than her board's worth. But it a'n't
her fault,--said the landlady, relenting;--and that aunt of hers, or
whatever she is, served him right enough.
Why, what did she do?
Do? Why, she took it up in the tongs and dropped it out o' window.
Dropped? dropped what?--I said.
Why, the _soap_,--said the landlady.
It appeared that the Koh-i-noor, to ingratiate himself, had sent an
elegant package of perfumed soap, directed to Miss Iris, as a delicate
expression of a lively sentiment of admiration, and that, after having
met with the unfortunate treatment referred to, it was picked up by
Master Benjamin Franklin, who appropriated it, rejoicing, and indulged
in most unheard-of and inordinate ablutions in consequence, so that his
hands were a frequent subject of maternal congratulation, and he smelt
like a civet-cat for weeks after his great acquisition.
After watching daily for a time, I think I can see clearly into the
relation which is growing up between the little gentleman and the young
lady. She shows a tenderness to him that I can't help being interested
in. If he was her crippled child, instead of being more than old enough
to be her father, she could not treat him more kindly. The landlady's
daughter said, the other day, she believed that girl was settin' her cap
for Little Boston.
Some of them young folks is very artful,--said her mother,--and there is
them that would merry Lazarus, if he'd only picked up crumbs enough.
I don't think, though, this is one of that sort; she's kinder
child-like,--said the landlady,--and maybe never had any dolls to play
with; for they say her folks was poor before Ma'am undertook to see to
her teachin' and board her and clothe her.
I could not help overhearing this conversation. "Board her and clothe
her!"--speaking of such a young creature! Oh, dear!--Yes,--she must
be fed,--just like Bridget, maid-of-all-work at this establishment.
Somebody must pay for it. Somebody has a right to watch her and see how
much it takes to "keep" her, and growl at her, if she has too good an
appetite. Somebody has a right to keep an eye on her and take care that
she does not dress too prettily. No mother to see her own youth over
again in those fresh features and rising reliefs of half-sculptured
womanhood, and, seeing its loveliness, forget her lessons of
neutral-tinted propriety, and open the cases that hold her own ornaments
to find her a necklace or a bracelet or a pair of earrings,--those
golden lamps that light up the deep, shadowy dimples on the cheeks of
young beauties,--swinging in a semi-barbaric splendor that carries the
wild fancy to Abyssinian queens and musky Odalisques! I don't believe
any woman has utterly given up the great firm of Mundus & Co., so long
as she wears earrings.
I think Iris loves to hear the little gentleman talk. She smiles
sometimes at his vehement statements, but never laughs at him. When he
speaks to her, she keeps her eye always steadily upon him. This may be
only natural good-breeding, so to speak, but it is worth noticing.
I have often observed that vulgar persons, and public audiences of
inferior collective intelligence, have this in common: the least thing
draws off their minds, when you are speaking to them. I love this
young creature's rapt attention to her diminutive neighbor while he is
speaking.
He is evidently pleased with it. For a day or two after she came, he was
silent and seemed nervous and excited. Now he is fond of getting the
talk into his own hands, and is obviously conscious that he has at least
one interested listener. Once or twice I have seen marks of special
attention to personal adornment,--a ruffled shirt-bosom, one day, and a
diamond pin in it,--not so _very_ large as the Koh-i-noor's, but more
lustrous. I mentioned the death's-head ring he wears on his right hand.
I was attracted by a very handsome red stone, a ruby or carbuncle or
something of the sort, to notice his left hand, the other day. It is a
handsome hand, and confirms my suspicion that the cast mentioned was
taken from his arm. After all, this is just what I should expect. It is
not very uncommon to see the upper limbs, or one of them, running away
with the whole strength, and, therefore, with the whole beauty, which we
should never have noticed, if it had been divided equally between all
four extremities. If it is so, of course he is proud of his one strong
and beautiful arm; that is human nature. But he does not make himself
ridiculous, at any rate, as people who have any one showy point are apt
to do,--especially dentists with handsome teeth, who always smile back
to their last molars.
Sitting, as he does, next to the young girl, and next but one to the
calm lady who has her in charge, he cannot help seeing their relations
to each other.
That is an admirable woman, Sir,--he said to me one day, as we sat alone
at the table after breakfast,--an admirable woman, Sir,--and I hate her.
Of course, I begged an explanation.
An admirable woman, Sir, because she does good things, and even kind
things,--takes care of this--this--young lady--we have here, talks like
a sensible person, and always looks as if she was doing her duty with
all her might. I hate her because her voice sounds as if it never
trembled, and her eyes look as if she never knew what it was to cry.
Besides, she looks at me, Sir, stares at me, as if she wanted to get
an image of me for some gallery in her brain,--and we don't love to be
looked at in this way, we that have--I hate her,--I hate her,--her eyes
kill me,--it is like being stabbed with icicles to be looked at so,--the
sooner she goes home, the better. I don't want a woman to weigh me in
a balance; there are men enough for that sort of work. The judicial
character isn't captivating in females, Sir. A woman fascinates a man
quite as often by what she overlooks as by what she sees. Love prefers
twilight to daylight; and a man doesn't think much of, nor care much
for, a woman outside of his household, unless he can couple the idea
of love, past, present, or future, with her. I don't believe the Devil
cares half so much for the services of a sinner as he does for those of
one of these folks that are always doing virtuous acts in a way to make
them unpleasing.--That young girl wants a tender nature to cherish her
and give her a chance to put out her leaves,--sunshine, and not east
winds.
He was silent,--and sat looking at his handsome left hand with the red
stone ring upon it.--Is he going to fall in love with Iris?
Here are some lines I read to the boarders the other day:--
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