IT seems only a little handful of days ago that I was writing you of the note of the little blue trumpeter, announcing from the bare boughs the advent of Spring, and now the Autumn is here. And holding the days in our hands like grains of sand, there was now and then a golden one which you and I would have kept; but, alas! they, too, slipped through our powerless fingers, and the gold in the sand was but a dream within a dream.
I told Mignon the Fall was here, for our trees have commenced to lose their yellowing leaves, and show here and there in their boughs, hectic flushes, and harbingers of speedy dissolution.
But Mignon said that the flowers were still blossoming brightly in the garden, and that there was some happiness yet.
But I replied: "It is only for a few days my dear. The great trees are nearer the heart of nature and learn her secrets first. But the flowers will soon feel the dying breath of the year, and, smitten with the cruel arrows of the frost, will bow their heads in recognition of the great mystery, and the dahlias, and the asters, and the marigolds will strew the earth with the souvenirs of the summer sunshine. Some of the shrubs, to be sure, will decorate themselves with berries in a childish way, and the pines and ever-greens, clad in sombre green, willstand moodily thinking of their gay friends who have left them—bearing the winter's white burden on their bent branches as the penalty of life in death, condemned to live forever, like Ahasuerus, with the recollection of numberless summers and companions—strong, firm and inflexible, to bear the storms of winter, but without a leaf which may stir next spring in glad recognition of the breezes and the birds coming back again.
"The birds, too, have learned the mystery, and have flown, all save the brown sparrow, and other sober, songless little fellows, who know that they have no business here when the flowers are in bloom, and little winged bunches of blue and crimson and gold, are filling all the air with their trills and roulades. You may listen very earnestly now, and you will only hear in the day a chirp from the cricket, that little black undertaker of the insects, who tries to be very cheerful, but only succeeds in being sad."
And I further said to Mignon: "These latter days of the year are akin to music, which is only music when there runs through it a vein of melancholy—a melancholy like Tennyson's 'tender grace of a day that's dead'—not sorrow nor grief, but that indefinable sadness which is to sorrow what the twilight is to the blackness of darkness. But we will make these days the happiest, for believe me, the chattering bobolink is not as happy as the sparrow, nor the shrill, noisy, cicada as happy as the chirping cricket; and the truest happiness will be found in those lives which are shadowed with regrets, or veined with melancholy memories to which hope's tendrils may cling."
September 19, 1868.
September 19, 1868.
I THINK old women—I don't quite like the word "lady," because it don't mean anything now-a-days—are the most beautiful and lovable things in the world. They are so near heaven that they catch the glow and the brightness which radiate from the pearly gates and illuminate their faces. When the hair begins to silver, and the embers in the fire grow gray and cold, and the sun has got so far around in life's horizon that the present makes no shadow, while the past stretches down the hillside to a little mound of earth, where we will rest for a season—a little mound not big enough to hold our corner lots, and marble fronts, and safes, which we shall have to leave on the other side of the hill, but big enough, I trust, to hold our memories, and fancies, our air castles and secrets; and when the journey is nearly done, and the night is setting in, and the darkness begins to gather around us without any stars, and the birds sing low in the trees, and the flowers wither and die, and the music we hear comes from afar, strangely sweet, like sounds coming over the water, and like little children we live in ourselves, and the world gradually recedes from us—then I should like to be an old woman, full of blessed memories and peaceful anticipations.
I think I know the best woman in the world, and I think every other man knows her. I think the one I know has the kindest heart, and the dearest face, and the most caressing hand, and the most undying devotion among all women. Her eyes were once to me the boundaries of the world, and were the first things I ever looked into, and pray Heaven they may also be the last I shall look into. And I think the best woman every other man knows has all these qualities in the same degree. And I think there is not one of us who has strayed so far from that woman—the best of all women—not one of us so calloused with the strife and toil of life, not one of us in the midst of difficulty and danger, who does not feel the invisible arms around him to shield him, and who does not long to go back to the arms and the love of that woman, and to rest, as we rested before our feet got into the flinty roads, upon the breast of ourMOTHER.
October 3, 1868.
October 3, 1868.
IN the round of my daily walks, it is my pleasure to pass a school-house, and I try to arrange my walks that I may happen to be there when school is opening and closing. The little men and women who compose the miniature world in the schoolyard, and make sunlight for me, undoubtedly have no idea of the great pleasure they afford me, or how rapidly my thoughts, under the magic influence of their bright eyes, lithe forms, and merry games, go back into the past, the morning-red of life, when the beautiful glamor of morning brightened every object it touched; when the flowers bloomed perennially; when the birds sang the sweetest of melodies; and when the brooks went laughing and dancing over the pebbles, full soon to broaden into sad, serene rivers, too soon to be hurled and beaten against the grey crags in eternal unrest; and forward, into the future, a hazy, twilight land, full of indefinable shapes and perplexing uncertainties. And yet, as our shadows lengthen in the journey towards it, there is always one certainty: that we shall find there, those who have gone before. Some who traveled the whole weary journey, and arrivedfootsore and travel-stained, and some who never became old, and were spared the toilsome journey, because the angels loved them better than we and better than us.
And I think, as I watch those children at play, how many unseen agencies are at work around them—of avarice which will corrode and blacken this young life, and of charity which will make that young life beautiful; of ambition, which some day with its trumpet blasts will wake this thoughtful one into action, and make the world wonder at him; of love, which will make this one's pathway smooth, thinking of what is; which will interlace cypress in the myrtle, thinking of what might have been; which will darken all God's Heaven for this one, thinking of what never should have been; of fame which will send the name of this one sounding round the world; of skill which will enable this one to see and know the very heart of nature; of misery which will follow this one like a Mephistophiles; and of despair, which never stops short of the grave.
And all this time, as I watch these children, chasing each other at play, as the yellow skeletons of the leaves chase each other in the wind in these memorial mornings, the fates sit spinning in the air above them, and weaving the tangled web of their destinies, some of them all white, some with here and there a black thread, while Atropos sits by with her fatal shears, which will sever this thread too soon and that too late.
It is only a few days, and this chase in the schoolyard will be transferred into life, where no walls will hem them in, and away they will go to the four winds of Heaven, and another set will take their places as they took ours. Ours! Do you remember anything aboutthose days in the midst of your invoices and bills of lading, your Berlin wools and Grecian Bends, and somebody coming home to tea and nothing in the house to eat? Do you remember the little red school-house on the hill, with poplar trees in front of it, that you used to think almost touched the sky? Do you remember the school mistress, with her pale face and sweet smile, and her little blue ribbon, now sleeping under the flowers, for school's out forever, and she has a long vacation? Do you remember the little girl in white apron and blue gown, with blue eyes and golden curls, whose satchel you carried up the hill, and whose name you cut into the bark of the apple-trees, vowing an eternal constancy—an eternity which lasted until the apple-trees lost the last of their pink-and-white blossoms? Do you remember the swallows which twittered round the eaves of the school house all the spring and summer, and suddenly one bright morning all left together, scared by a little brown bird, who came from the far north, and told them a story of something coming, which made them all shiver? And when that something came, do you remember the old box stove piled up with logs, and the snow-houses, and the nuts and cider, and the forfeits at the parties, especially that one where you carried the pillow to the girl with black hair, instead of little Gold Curls, not being on speaking terms with her, and the school mistress, with cheeks paler, and eyes brighter than ever, and flushes in the face which came and went like lightnings in the western sky in summer eves, for the little brown bird did not warn her that she ought to go with the swallows? You remember that when the swallows came back one sunny morning in the next May,they did not find the school-mistress, for she went away with the brown bird.
If you don't remember any of these things, I pity you, for the friction of life must have worn you quite smooth, and the outlook must be very dreary.
October 11, 1868.
October 11, 1868.
IN these latter days of the year, so full of melancholy, it occurs to me that we do not altogether die when we shuffle off this mortal coil. Is not physical death only a change to vegetable birth? We are born, we mature, flourish, and decay, and are laid away in the mould, only to reappear in the flower, the shrub, and the tree. That little child whom you buried when the leaves were falling, as you weep over its grave, in the bright springtime, when the leaves are repeating the miracle of the new creation, may look at you out of the golden petals of the dandelion and the butter-cup. There may be remembrance for you in the leaves of the shrub at the headstone, as they are ruffled by the breeze. There may be thesouvenirof a familiar smile in the tremor of a daisy.
The generations of men come and go, but their life is not all gone. Life does not cease to exist. It is eternal in its revolutions, its changes, and its new forms. Down under the sod this active principle of life is still at work. Mysterious chemical processes are operating in that silent darkness. The old life shoots up in the grasses. All the lives, and loves, and passions of long ago blossom in the flowers. The life you once knew isgiving strength to the sturdy trunks of trees. It flows through the veins of the branches with the sap, and gives color to the leaves. In mythology, the Fauns and Dryads, Naiads and Hamadryads, typified this idea to a certain extent, and were the most beautiful creatures of that beautiful mythology—so beautiful, indeed, that I am heretic enough to acknowledge I would like to have known all those dear divine creatures, so full of good, old-fashioned mortal failings; to have sipped nectar from Hebe's cup, and lunched on ambrosia with the Thunder Bearer himself; to have gone to the opera with Apollo, flirted with the naughty Venus, philosophized with Minerva, taken tea with Juno, and had one roaring old supper with Bacchus.
Thus there are whole races of men in the boundless forests, and friends of yours and mine in the flowers. It seems to me a very pleasant thought to believe that those whom we have loved, and whose lives were so beautiful and graceful, are still growing in the beauty of the flowers, and the grace of the vines; that those whose lives were bad and ungracious, yet exist in the nightshade and hemlock; that those whose lives never blossomed in the shadow of great misfortunes, still live for us in those flowerless plants whose leaves are full of perfume; that Nero is in the Upas, and Marat is in the dogwood.
It is a pleasant fancy to me to think that some friend whom I love will not altogether die, but will live in a rose; that I shall see the red of her cheeks in its petals, and that her grace will continue in its form; that the fragrance of her memory will come to me in the fragrance of its perfume, and that the tears which havestood in her eyes will be forever sacred in the dew drops on its leaves.
There are strong, upright, and sturdy lives, which live again in the firs and pines, which are proof against all storms, and are green when all others are bare and sere; there are far-reaching, all-embracing lives, which live again in the umbrageous oaks; there are lives, which were warped in childhood, which live again in the crooked, gnarled trunks; there are lives full of the gall of bitterness, which never sweeten in the crab and wormwood; there are graceful lives, which curve and undulate in the vines; there are black lives which grow blacker in the poisonous plants, and the birds avoid the vegetable life as the children avoided the human, for birds and children are very much alike; and I think sometimes that the souls of the musicians are still sentient in the murmuring waves of the sea, and in the diapason of the wind-swept pines.
November 14, 1868.
November 14, 1868.
FITZ-HERBERT happened in this morning, and was lounging against the mantel, trying to look interesting. Old Blobbs was very much disgusted with the fellow, and begged to be allowed to have his say. So I yielded the floor to him.
And Old Blobbs' screed ran somewhat as follows: "I think it is every woman's duty to look as pretty as she can, and, so long as she doesn't carry fashion to an extreme and commit the mistake of making herself ridiculous, she is excusable. I don't see any particular necessity in a young man's looking pretty. In fact, it has been my experience that when a young man does try to look pretty, he generally succeeds in making an ass of himself. It should be the duty of every man to do something before he dies of which he may be proud, and which may be of some benefit to the world or to the individual, so that when he gets up to the gates, and St. Peter questions his right to come in, he may have something to show for himself. I think a young man who is merely a walking advertisement for his tailor and barber, and who has degenerated into a fashionable dawdler, is in a poor way to accomplish anything forhimself, let alone the world. And I furthermore thinkthat if I were St. Peter, and such a specimen came before me, I would lift my blessed angelic foot and send him flying into Chaos, without asking to see his credentials at all. A small, black-backed beetle, pushing his lump of dirt before him, is praising God more with those busy legs of his, fulfilling the duty which God gave him to do, and conferring more benefit upon mankind in general, than an army of fashionable dawdling young men, the energy of whose enormous natures is mainly confined to murdering King's English, and endangering the integrity of looking-glasses. And when this fashionable young man lets his fashion run him into fashionable expenditure, there isn't a fashionable young woman in the city who can keep up with him. If he cannot have his Grecian Bend, he can have his benders, which, if not so Grecian, are vastly more expensive. Dress, dinners, fast horses, betting, gambling, and the elegant vices which follow in their train, are ten thousand fold worse than all the pleasant little sillinesses of which Araminta may be guilty. The extremely fashionable young woman is pitiable, but she is only trying to make herself look handsome, and that is the object of her life; but the extremely fashionable young man is disgusting, because he has no right to look pretty, and is simply squandering away opportunities he has no right to waste."
Old Blobbs, as is his wont, grew excited as he talked, and, bringing his fist down upon the table with a vim which made the glasses fairly dance in their fright, and sent the condiments of the castor and the contents of the sugar bowl into promiscuous ruin, added: "Yes sir! a man with nothing to do but to entertain himselfand exhibit himself to society, is the most contemptible object on God's footstool, and the sooner he gets off from it, and makes room for somebody else, the better." And here he grew slightly personal, and very red as to the face. "Yes sir! You, Mr. Fitz-Herbert, holding up the mantel-piece! You think you are of some importance in the world, and yet I will wager that your direst responsibility to-day will be the parting of your back hair. I will wager that you never had an opinion in your life of more consequence than the relative merits of Macassar and Ursine! I will wager that you are not capable of feeling any distress keener than the anxiety of a doubt relative to the exact condition of your neck-tie. I will wager that Timothy Maloney, scraping dirt on the avenue to-day, although he may get drunk to-night and beat his wife, like the brute that he is, is of more service to the world than you are. That is my opinion of you, Mr. Fitz-what's-your-name, and if an opinion on any conceivable subject can be of any service to you, you are heartily welcome to it, sir. I repeat it, welcome to it, sir."
I think Fitz-Herbert got an idea through his head that Old Blobbs was talking about him, for he actually took his tooth-pick out of his mouth and himself out of the room.
December 5, 1868.
December 5, 1868.
A LITTLE black-bordered billet reached us yesterday, and a cloud has settled down upon all of us, for it brought the news of the death of the Maiden Aunt.
She died in the night, by the side of the sea, which she always loved, and the last sounds she heard were its waves moaning on the beach, as her own life ebbed away on the strand of death; and, after that, such music as Raphael's St. Cecilia would sing, or the angels who hover around his Madonnas.
She died by the side of the church-yard, in which for thirty years the daisies have bloomed over him, to whom she promised always to be loyal, and for whom she always wore the forget-me-not in the silken floss of her hair, in eternal remembrance. The forget-me-not is now quite withered, for memory has blossomed into realization, and hope is lost in possession, and the snow now covers them side by side here, and, for all that, they are side by side There.
Her life was so hidden from the world, that few knew her except the children and the house-dog, and some birds which were pets, and they mourn her loss. The children miss her, and it is something to be missed bythe children, for it shows that however the body may have been tossed about and weather-beaten in the tempest of life, the soul has preserved itself in the repose of childhood. The dog misses her, and goes about the house moaning, and stirs uneasily in his sleep as if dreaming of her, just as Florence Dombey's dog did, in her and his first sorrow. And it is something to be missed by a dog, for it argues a great deal of humanity. The birds miss her, and have ceased their songs; and it is something to be missed by the birds, for no ungracious souls care for them or their songs.
The heavens were mantled with grey, and the air was full of snow, and the black harbor waves moaned on the bar like a knell, when they buried her by the side of him who took away all her sunshine when he died, and left her life in the shadow. She sent some little remembrances to us—a curl of her hair to Aurelia; a bit of blue ribbon, full of memories, to Celeste; a turquoise ring, which he had worn, to Blanche; and the faded forget-me-not to Mignon. For the Maiden Aunt was rich only in memories.
She did not die like a saint, for she was not a saint; neither like a sinner, for she was not a sinner; but like a true woman, full of courage and dignity, contented to cross the River, because she knew she would find him waiting for her on the other side, and wherever he went she would go.
The Maiden Aunt always regarded human nature as something very sacred and sublime, and she regulated herself by that regard. I remember she used to tell me that she believed there was no nature so bad, but that it had a chord which would vibrate to goodness, providedthe finger was skilled to find and touch that chord; and that there was no soul so barren, but that somewhere in it a flower was blooming. She did not believe that the divine spark which God implanted in each nature could ever be utterly quenched, however its light might be concealed in life's confusion and chaos. She had faith in His omnipotence.
She had her faults and her frailties, which proved her humanity. She was intensely human. The dead were to her as the living, and he who had gone before her, I think was always with her. He was only absent on a journey, and would send for her when the time came, and she waited in patience. Her knowledge, like the knowledge of the most of us, was bounded by this life; and she used to say that, when her thoughts reached that boundary where knowledge ceased, her thoughts ceased also. Consequently, she gave her work to this life, and her love to him, whom she kept in this life, although absent; and, notwithstanding all her faults and her frailties, I think, in the presence of the great sorrow which had eclipsed her inward being, the angels at the Celestial Gate did not question her—for the faults and the frailties were of the body, and under the snow with his, and never soiled the spirit, which had been sanctified and purified by the grief which she had carried as a burden at her heart. I think the angels recognized her at once, as they recognized the Beatrices who died—the one in glory, the other in agony—or that Irmgard, who found repose on the Heights.
Our lives are twofold. There is the active, every-day life in ourselves, and the life which we live in sleep, and is made up of the tangled web of dreams. One of herlives was in herself, hidden to the outward gaze, and yet manifesting its presence in a thousand graceful ways. The other, which no one ever saw or knew but herself, went even beyond the realm of dreams, and in the place left vacant in her heart, by the absence of that life, there was eternal snow.
What was beautiful a thousand years ago, is beautiful now, and if there were saints a thousand years ago, there must be saints now, although their record may be unchronicled, save in some human heart. I think the Maiden Aunt was as worthy of canonization as Ursula or Agatha, and that in this common, homely human life, there are many worthy of it, whose saintliness will not be known until that day when we are all brought upon a common level. The homeliest humanity is full of contests as fierce as those Tamerlane waged; full of deeds as glorious as those achieved by the gods and demigods we set up for worship. They are never known to the world, for they have no historians or singers to chronicle them, but when they come to be known as they will be one day, we shall be surprised to find that they were the real victors.
December 12, 1868.
December 12, 1868.
I SUPPOSE this old world will revolve about its axis in 1869, just as it did in 1868, and that we shall revolve with it just the same. I suppose we shall go on loving, hating, praying, cursing, marrying, dying, and doing foolish things in the new, as we did in the old; that Old Midas and Gunnybags will chase the Almighty Dollar just as hard, and swindle just as much; that Mrs. Blobbs will continue to lecture Old Blobbs on the proprieties, and that Old Blobbs will continue to grow worse and worse; that Aurelia will have another baby in the new year just as she did in the old, and will think there never was such a baby born before; that Celeste will continue to do foolish things, and be the most delightfully wicked little creature in the world, for she is just wicked enough to be completely good; that Fitz-Herbert will make an ass of himself next year as he did this; that Mignon will be just as sweet and lovely, and keep all the rest of us in sunshine, and that Blanche will still search for the lost melody in her life.
In general, I suppose, men and women will do in the new year just as they did in the last, and will continue to air their vices in the courts as if they were of anyinterest to other people who have vices of their own, which are a great deal more interesting, and boasting their virtues, when everybody knows that under the cuticle they are just as shabby as the rest of the world. This is the one grand mistake which people make, viz: To suppose their virtues or their vices are of any earthly interest to other people.
As a general rule, you are only essential to yourself, and the man who takes off your boots, and puts on your coat, or the young woman who does up your coiffure, and looks after your toilet, and knows you best, will tell you this. Some people succeed in making heroes of themselves, and are worshipped by some other people, but they are never heroes to those who know them best. Strip your hero of his decorations, bid him come down from his pedestal, undress him, and stand him up by the side of Terence Maloney, and you can't tell one from the other.
You see the whole thing is conventional.
So I suppose the sun will rise and set, and the world go on just the same, until suddenly it stops going, for you and for me, and we shall go out of it like gentlemen, I trust.
We shall make the usual number of resolutions, I suppose, on New Year's Day, and break them before the next with our usual success. We shall firmly persuade ourselves next Friday morning that we are hereafter to be models of goodness, and pinks of propriety. We shall appropriate to ourselves the most of virtue and decency in the world, and set examples for the rest of mankind. We shall all be shining instances of temperance and godliness. We shall confine ourselves to aproper use of King's English. We shall attend upon Parson Primrose's ministrations twice each Sunday. We shall no longer ruin the characters of others with our idle, foolish gossip. We shall take off our masks and wear our souls upon our sleeves. And before the year is over, there isn't one of us who will do anything of the kind. Our cemeteries, next New Year's Day, will be just as full of head-stones set up to mark where our broken resolutionslie, as they have ever been.
And a hundred years hence, it is extremely doubtful whether any one will care for our resolutions, whether they were kept or broken, or for us, whether we have lived or died. But I suppose, for all that, it will be necessary for us, during the coming year, to conceive that we are of some importance, and that the curious looker-on in Jupiter, and the Man in the Moon, will wonder what we are all doing on our ant-hills, and why we are making such a fuss.
And I suppose when you and I retire from the stage, and the curtain comes down on the little farce we have been playing, that the great audience will not go home, nor the manager close up the theatre, but that other actors will step into our buskins, and thus the play will be kept up, and men will laugh, and women will weep, and others will love and hate, and do brave deeds and naughty deeds, although the call-boy may never summon us again behind the lights.
Now, I might go on from this point and preach you a sermon, as my brethren in the pulpit will do, upon the brevity of time and the stern realities of life, but I am not going to do anything of the kind. Life is not measured by years, nor by flight of time. He livesmost who loves most, and lives longest who appreciates what is best. Some men live longer in a year than others in a lifetime.
December 26, 1868.
December 26, 1868.
AT breakfast, this morning, our first topic of conversation was on the matter of parties. It has been, as you know, a great party week, and Old Blobbs, in a casual kind of way, desired to know my opinion of them. Celeste looked a little uneasy at this request, for there is nothing that so delights that Dear Child as a party crush, and nothing is sweeter to her than the fine disorder of her green silk, after young Gauche has emptied his sherry over it, or old Mrs. Dalrymple, who ischaperoningher two nieces to the marital market, has spilled a plate of escalloped oysters upon it, and that overgrown boy of the Midases, who is out for the first time, has trodden them in and disturbed the integrity of thepanierbesides. She regards all these things as the veteran does his scars, and loves to talk of them in her "confidences" to her two-and-forty dear young friends, who have just bobbed in after dinner to say "How do you do?" and inquire if it was really true, that bit of scandal about Matilda So-and-So and young Codliver. The company immediately pushed their chairs back. Mignon called the Canary from his cage for its morning meal, and as it flew to its customary place upon her shoulder, and watched with its sharp little black eyes the bread which was being crumbled forit, I thought I would rather talk about those two birds than parties. Blanche sat with her fine eyes half closed, as dear old Rossini used to sit at his table, and listened in a dreamy sort of way. Aurelia had all she could do to keep the baby still by threatening it with her shapely fore-finger, while Old Blobbs took his fifth baked potato, a feat in gormandizing which incurred a glance from Mrs. Blobbs that would have withered any other person and caused a rustle of her black silk (for Mrs. B.willwear her black silk to breakfast), eloquent with promises of something between the curtains which would not be as soothing as a lullaby nor as delicious as a love-song.
And I spoke somewhat after the following manner: Some time ago I did myself the pleasure to give you my opinion of fashionable public weddings. Upon that occasion, you will remember that my principal objection to those weddings, was the fact that people mistake vulgarity for elegance. The same fatal mistake applies to public parties, as they are usually given; where genuine elegance becomes impossible, and there are no opportunities offered for the display of taste.
You all well know that party giving, at present, is a mere competition. Mrs. So-and-So issues her cards for two hundred. Mrs. This-and-That immediately sends out three hundred, and Mrs. Whether-or-No, at her party, increases her list to five hundred, and so on. Now, I have no hesitation in pronouncing this simple vulgarity. You cannot make miscellaneous herding elegant. In the first place the social element is killed. To claim that you have five hundred friends is simply stupid. To claim that you have fifty is susceptible of doubt. If you have five, you are much better off.Your five hundred people are, then, merely acquaintances. In the race to get ahead of some one else, you have invited scores of people you don't care a straw for, scores of others who don't care a straw for you, scores of boobies and simpletons, and when you have herded and packed them together, in a house not capable of holding one-fourth that number comfortably, you have simply made a vulgar crush, where no one knows his neighbor, and where mutual acquaintance is impossible, because, however peripatetic you may be in principle, you are stationary in fact. To make such an affair elegant, is in the nature of things impossible. Mere show, noise, glitter, gilt, gingerbread, and gew-gaw, are not elegance. Taste cannot be exercised among, nor appreciated by a genteel mob. In forms of art, in matters of taste and true elegance, there must be the element of repose. It is indispensable to perfection. A gathering of people without any conditions of age, character, or quality, literally packed into a space so small, that locomotion becomes impossible; a table which your restaurateur can't make a success, owing to this fact; an intellectual atmosphere, surcharged only with the small gossip and twaddle of the hour; an utter absence of culture, which alone could impart the repose of true elegance; a meretricious display of glitter, and no true gold; a feasting which is only gormandizing—for in such a miscellaneous gathering you cannot keep out the gluttons; an absence of all true courtesy, because it is impossible to exercise it in the crush; an occasion which does not offer a single inducement for attendance, in the way of art, music, literature, or the best forms of social intercourse—is all that you have accomplished.
Was it worth accomplishing? You know it was not, my dear madame, as well as I. You know that when you wake up the next morning, you are utterly disgusted with the whole affair, and that there is not a single element of gratification in remembering it, except the empty honor of beating Mrs. So-and-So. You know that nine-tenths of those who were present did not enjoy a single minute of comfort, and look back upon your party as a bore, while the happy ones are those whose regrets lie upon your table.
And all this, simply because it was vulgar—not vulgar as meaning immoral or low, but as meaning silly and common. You have made your house too common. No party can be a success, in the best sense of the word, in which there is not some discrimination used in inviting your guests. You should always arrange, if possible, to bring people together of similar tastes, and then have some central point to hold them together. If youmustinvite five hundred people, you had better make five parties of one hundred each, carefully discriminating, so that your guests may enjoy themselves, than to herd the whole five hundred into one, and thus make a mere rush, scramble, crush and guzzle of it, and transform your house into a menagerie. I am glad to know that this view is not confined to myself, but that in good society, (not the "best" society, for that is almost always the worst), the home parties are included in small soirees of a distinctive character, in which there is ample room for the display of cultivated and artistic elegance, admission to which is deemed an honor.
But do not forget above all, that when a thingbecomes miscellaneous, it becomes vulgar, and that judicious exclusiveness and cultured repose are absolutely essential to true elegance. The most delicate rose in the garden planted among hollyhocks, and sunflowers, and weeds, loses all its beauty and fragrance.
Old Blobbs had finished his potato, and was far advanced upon his sixth, when I concluded. He heartily agreed with me, although Celeste was pouting her pretty lips, and said that he desired to make a few remarks also, whereupon Mignon commenced teasing the Canary with a geranium leaf from our breakfast bouquet, and Mrs. Blobbs suddenly excused herself, which did not, however, deter Blobbs from saying his say.
January 10, 1869.
January 10, 1869.
IT is necessary I should say something about Aurelia's Baby, for it is the only baby in the whole world. At least Aurelia thinks so—just as any other mother thinks.
I suppose there never was a baby born into this vale of tears, that its mother did not suppose to be the only baby in the world. I suppose those poor women who were the mothers of Nero, Richard, Elizabeth, Robespierre, Marat, and the latest murderer who has expiated his villainies on the gallows-tree, thought the same thing, equally with the mothers of all good and blessed people. I see no good reason why they should not, for the birth of the first baby revolutionizes the world. The mother passes into a new sphere of being, illumined by other suns and stars, in which other flowers blossom and other birds sing, and the only inhabitants of which are she and the baby. All her great love centres in the baby, and where all her love centres, of course, there is her world. The whole world of the baby is limited by the boundaries of its mother's eyes. You may have noticed a baby lying in its nurse's arms, looking up into the sky with wide-staring, vacant eyes and blank face. It has no more intelligence in its face than a small kitten or any other sucking possibility. In the arms of a nurse, all babies are alike—merely breathingbits of blank vacancy—apple-dumplings, with plums for eyes, and stuffed with colic. But, change the scene, and place the baby in the arms of its mother, and, somehow, by some strange necromancy that passes between the two, some subtle link of affinity, that baby's face lights up with intelligence and its little white soul looks out of the eyes as it recognizes its world in the calm, holy eyes of the mother; for I think every mother's eyes, from Aurelia's to some wild Indian mother's, crooning strange weird lullabies under tropic palms, to her first born, are saintly when they gaze into the sweet face of the first baby. And I believe that the angels do not know such a love as exists between those two mortals.
Which reminds me to say that I think Eve's baby, which she named Cain, had the advantage of Aurelia's baby in some respects. The chronicles of that day do not show that the baby Cain was obliged to take soothing syrup, squills, or paregoric. There is no proof that the angels smiled at him or talked to him in his sleep, as they do to modern babies through the medium of colic. Cain could wander about at his own sweet will, without any danger of catching the whooping cough, measles, chicken-pox or any other of the contagious infantile necessities which have been imposed upon all coming babies by his mother's exploits in stealing and eating apples. Adam did not have to walk the floor o' nights, have his whiskers pulled out by the roots, or buy rattles and india-rubber rings. There isn't a line on record to show that the infantile Cain suffered from pins sticking into his blessed little legs and arms. I do not suppose that the old ladies of the neighborhoodcame in every day or so, and scared Eve's life out of her, by conjuring up all sorts of diseases, with all sorts of remedies and cheerful predictions that Cain would die young, although I think it would have been better for Cain if he had. Holy Writ does not show, again, that Cain was entrusted in his marsupial days, to the care of that curious compound of a gin bottle and a baby-tender, who has a profound contempt for the mother, knows more than all the rest of the world combined, and looks upon a physician as a foe to the human race. I do not suppose Cain was kissed within an inch of his life by prospective young mothers and youthful females, who have graduated from the doll stage of their existence, nor that he was rigged up in bib, pinafore, and ribbon, until he was purple in the face, with the point of one very sharp pin inserted into the end of his back, and placed on exhibition in a state of squalls and general disgust consequent upon the aforesaid point, which he could feel, if he couldn't see. The youthful Cain was not made the victim of the maternal meetings, and crammed with Watts' hymns, and chapters of the Bible before he was into his fig-leaf breeches—and right here, I suppose somebody will say he would have turned out better if he had been brought up in this manner, to which I might retort with the fact that Abel was not subjected to the cramming process either. Cain never bumped his precious little head by falling out of his crib. He could not fall out of the cradle of the beautiful white arms of the first mother, which encircled him with their zone of love, and which, I warrant you, yearned for him even when he wandered through the earth, with the brand upon his brow, andthe stain upon his heart, and our common mother mourned in the depths of a triple agony. And it is to be recorded as one of the incidents of his early days, that Eve was a healthy woman, and he was not brought up on chalk and water, and did not ruin his small stomach with candy and sweetmeats, presented by injudicious, but kindly disposed people, whose generosity was only equalled by their stupidity.
I am getting away from Aurelia's baby somewhat, but there are still some analogies between Aurelia and Eve untouched upon, and, as I am writing this screed I will be obliged to you if you do not interrupt me again, but leave me to say my say in my own manner. I candidly confess to you that I don't know where this baby business will take me, or when I shall get through talking about it, but just at present I prefer to let the subject take me along at will. I had rather trust myself to babies, than some grown people who insist upon interruption.
After this necessary parenthetical defence of my rights, I may say that although the youthful Cain turned out very badly, I do not suppose that Eve—as she sat under the pleasant trees of Eden, and watched the little Cain playing in the flowers, while all the birds, as yet unharmed by man, came and sang to her—ever thought her first-born would be a murderer, or ever saw anything in his face, as he lay upon her bosom, but love and joy. For the good God never made anything ugly or bad. All that comes from his hand is perfect and beautiful. No human being, do I sincerely believe, is born absolutely ugly. The ugly man has made himself ugly. The ugly woman is at fault herself.
And as Aurelia sits looking into the eyes of her baby, I do not think she ever dreams of what may be in store for it in the coming days. Her whole world is in the present. But as I watch them, smoking my cigar, I cannot help seeing visions in the smoke, and I sometimes shudder as I think that the sweet blue eyes may lose all their light of beauty, and purity, and innocence, and burn with the fierce flame of passion, or be dimmed with the mists of misery, or darkened with the night of anguish through which she may have to pass; that the little soft pink-and-white feet may have to travel and bleed on the flinty roads to which they are all unused, and that, weary and travel-worn, soiled and dusty, they may find no resting place this side of Heaven, save in the long rest under the flowers; that the tiny hands which now grasp at the world, as if they would clutch it all in the little fists, may full soon fold themselves, tired with the conflict, may grasp another only to be deceived, only to wither and waste away, only to be crossed above a cold, silent heart, with a flower in their marble fingers, may know cruel grasps of parting, and heart-ache, may do the deed which shall dishonor the sweet mother-hand which must too soon cease to guide, and must let go the hold which it would fain keep forever.
And in all the great joy in her eyes, I see no traces of a shadow which may come into the house; no fear that some day the sun will not shine for her, and the stars be darkened in the cruel heavens; that the baby which but yesterday filled all the home with the light of her eyes and the silvery music of her voice, will be lying cold and still in the chamber overhead; that the little waxen facemoulded into a moment's unearthly beauty, by that cunning sculptor, Death, will cease to respond to her; that the white and green of the cross and the crown, and the half opened rose-bud, no whiter than the fingers holding it, will be the only souvenirs of her whom the jealous angels carried away in the night watches, because she was fairer than they. I think sometimes of these things as I sit watching them, but I know that she does not, and I pray Heaven to avert the cruel blow, and that the mother may be waiting for the child at the Gate Beautiful, and not the child waiting for the mother; and that all the good angels may watch over them, and shield them both, however deep the waters through which they may pass.
I think that Aurelia's face has suffered "a sea-change" since the little one was born; that it has been transfigured into something more beautiful—a serenity, and holy calm, which is not altogether beauty, but a rapt and saintly expression, such as you may see in the Madonna della Sedia of Raphael. I think you will often see it in young mothers at certain times. All that was there before imprinted by the wear and friction of life, with its petty annoyances, vexations and passions, all the weariness andennui, all the storms and conflicts, seem to have passed away, and in their stead has settled down a placid, gentle, saintly expression, just as after the noise and bustle, the smoke and dust, the jangle and jar of the day, come the brooding wings of the twilight, the holy hush of evening, and the silence of the stars.
January 17, 1869.
January 17, 1869.