Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860

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"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 eyes
All 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 feminisent_." 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?

[To be continued.]

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 powers
Gathering along the centuries
From race on race the fairest flowers,
My wreath shall nothing miss.

And many a thousand summers
My apples ripened well,
And light from meliorating stars
With firmer glory fell.

I wrote the past in characters
Of rock and fire the scroll,
The building in the coral sea,
The planting of the coal.

And thefts from satellites and rings
And broken stars I drew,
And out of spent and aged things
I formed the world anew.

What time the gods kept carnival,
Tricked out in star and flower,
And in cramp elf and saurian forms
They swathed their too much power.

Time and Thought were my surveyors,
They laid their courses well,
They boiled the sea, and baked the layers
Of 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 sun
And 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 pain

Let war and trade and creeds and song
Blend, ripen race on race,--
The sunburnt world a man shall breed
Of 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 thorn
Gives 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,
_malgre 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.

But--and here lies the purport of this article--there is hardly a town
or village of New England which has not within a quarter of a mile of
its suburbs a patch of woodland or a strip of sandy beach. What is to
hinder the sinner, if he repent him of the foul air and cramped posture
of which he has been the victim, from a little pedestrianism? Do
American men and boys ever walk? Drive, it is known they do; they can
always get time for that. But to walk, certainly to scramble and to
climb, must be added by Mr. Phillips, in the new editions of his
exquisite and inexhaustible Lecture, to the catalogue of the "Lost
Arts."

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