MY last recollection of Farwell Hall is connected with a tall, graceful, sweet-faced old man, his head lovingly bending over a violin that old Stradivarius made centuries ago, his eyes closed, transfigured in a vision of music, until he seemed to me to wear the face that Beethoven, the Master, might have worn. In his hands the dull wood was again in life. It was part of an organism, and it told the old man of the rustle of leaves in the summer gales; of the songs of birds in the branches; of the brawling waters of the brooks that moistened the roots; of the rude winds that smote the tree on Italian hills; of the star that looked down upon it in delicious Italian nights; of the vernal thrill, the summer glow, the autumnal decay, and the wintry death in life—the great miracle which Nature performs for us each year; and the old man interpreted it in bewitching strains to some who gave themselves up to the spell and were drawn nearer together by the sympathy which music produces, to some who heard the sound and not the soul, and to some who heard neither, in the sound of their own small gabble.
And the next day, when a heap of smoking bricks, and charred beams, and twisted iron was all that wasleft of the beautiful hall, it seemed to me that I had met with an irreparable loss—that some friend had suddenly vanished.
January 11, 1868.
January 11, 1868.
One of the most charmingly chatty things Leigh Hunt ever wrote was his "Earth Upon Heaven," in which he imagined himself following out his earthly occupations in the upper world; dining with all the good fellows of past ages; reading new plays of Shakspeare and new novels of Scott; eating sugar that was not sanded, and drinking milk from celestial cows in the Milky Way.
It is to be hoped the earthly concert nuisances will be abated there also, and that we may hope to hear the Malibrans and the Linds, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Bach and Gluck in new and diviner symphonies and songs (think of that!), without being annoyed by a garrulous angel behind us commenting on the cut of this angel's wings, the color of that angel's feathers, and the awkward manner in which some other angel flies to her seat, and the dreadfully stupid way in which young Highflier sat down upon Blanche's wings. It would be horrible to think of an eternity of music with an eternity of nuisance.
Ibid.
Ibid.
THERE are two kinds of small talk—one which is very silly, and when it does not run to twaddle, takes the worse form of slander and cruel gossip. These two phases are not inconsistent with each other, for it takes a very silly person to be a good gossiper. The greater amount of nonsense that a woman can talk to your face, the worse will be the gossip that she will talk behind you. Her wits may be very small in one direction, but they will be very sharp in the other.
The other kind of small talk is very delightful. It is chatty, sunny, spicy and brilliant. It may not be as deep as the ocean, but is not a little brook, singing over the pebbles, flashing in the sunlight, and whispering pretty little stories it learned from the naiads in the fountain where it was born, to the scarlet cardinals and golden-rods that lean over to listen, just as delightful as the uncertain depths of the ocean with dim suggestions of dirty sea-weed, slimy monsters, ribs of argosies and dead men's bones? Is not the little brook which can take the most distant star right into its heart, just as beautiful as the heavy ocean into whose depths no star beam can penetrate?
This kind of small talk is an eloquent art, and fortunateare the favored few who have mastered it. It may commence with the weather, which you discover is not threadbare, for it is the weather which breaks the ice for you, and it runs from the weather to the opera, from opera to music in general, from music to art, art to books, and from books to men and women. Neat little criticisms; characteristic observations; flashes of wit; pleasant satire which never wounds—fragmentary yet always polished—superficial, perhaps, yet here and there giving you indications of lower depths which would be worth exploring at the proper time. These are the main characteristics of accomplished small talk.
This species of small talk can only exist between the opposite sexes. Between women, small talk becomes silly or it runs to confidences. In the one case it is soon exhausted, in the other it is vulgarly supposed to be eternal; and the amount of smothered grief, of heart-rending woe, of poignant anguish, of amorous doubts, of Sphynx-like mysteries, of secret grief which cannot be whispered even to her pillow, which one young woman will confide to four hundred other young women, is only equalled by the rapidity with which the latter will dispossess themselves ofles confidencesand the fertile imagination which will clothe them entirely new even before they are divulged for the second time.
Between men, small talk is simply idiotic.
You pass an evening with Serafina, and you get only simpers and syllabubs. She will not give you the ghost of a thought, although her tongue has been running like a mill-clapper for two mortal hours. She will run the whole gamut of talk, and you shall never once get a taste of the amber wine beneath the foam.
Per contra, in an evening with Blanche, she will dive like a humming bird into every flower, sweet or bitter, beautiful or ugly, and extract honey from each. She does not linger long on anything. She does not go too deep to be tiresome, and yet you are aware that she would lead you a terrible chase into the real if you gave the word. With that infinite tact which no one but a clever woman possesses, she will draw you out and give you cues for conversation without your ever dreaming of it. If you have a hobby, she will quietly saddle it and help you to mount, and spur it up to a rattling pace with little ingenuous confessions of ignorance, and implied flatteries which show you at once your superiority over the rest of mankind; and she will take you off your hobby and turn him out to grass so gracefully that you will be thoroughly satisfied with your ride. She will read you a charming little homily on her gold cross, which "Jews might kiss or infidels adore," and she will lead you with that narrow edge of lace around her pretty throat, which a rude breath might dissipate, through meadows of talk, where every flower is "a thing of beauty" and "a joy forever."
But to effectually do this, she must have no hobbies, and she must assume an ignorance if she have it not. Ignorance is one of the strongest weapons in the female armory, and if the small talk assumes the form of an argument, a graceful yielding, especially if one is obstinate, is also politic.
January 18, 1868.
January 18, 1868.
I WRITE to you to-day with a sugar-coated pill and a small bottle of suspicious-looking fluid, which Æsculapius has designated with the cabalistic abbreviations "Aq. Cret. Rhu. Pulv. 2 jiii," between myself and the delirious chaos of fever.
My surroundings are not of a character to induce extravagant cheerfulness, or to resolve a very decided precipitate out of the mixture of virtue and necessity—a severely chemico-moral test I have been working at for the past three days.
I think a man might dig into a cucumber for sunbeams or a mushroom for moonlight, with better chances of success, than I shall have in attempting to extract humor from the scanty material at hand, viz: Several wet towels, ice water, a mustard plaster, sundry hot bricks, pills, potions and lotionsad libitum, and a small piece of toasted cracker.
The last item is the connecting link between myself and the good goddess Hygeia, and I regard it with an interest I never knew before, considering the clutch with which Febris has seized me.
Thus, skirting along the shore of Febris, sufficiently near to catch with full force the burning simooms which blow across its miasmatic lands—near enough to burn from its equator and to freeze from its poles, to feel itsclamps and hooks, with which it is tugging at bone and muscle, while the soul has gone visiting, and not even left the Will at home to resist disease—near enough all night long, as I sail in the darkness, to see the will-o'-the-wisps, and goblins, and chimeras, the skeletons of dead fancies, the ghosts of dreams and the realities of horror which are the only inhabitants of this land over which Febris reigns—behind me the very bright light of day, and before, only a very uncertain star—under a red-hot bed quilt, flanked with a small drug store—the great world outside only recognizable by a confused hum—isolated from complete sights and sounds—I vegetate and moralize.
If one should feed luxuriously on almond paste and comfits all his life, he would never appreciate the products of sour apple trees and the extracts of much-maligned herbs. So also if one should forever pursue the beaten track of good health, which is only the case in perfection among buffaloes and Digger Indians, one would never know the luxury and the blessing of being sick. We must have, now and then, a cessation of the good to appreciate the bad.
I can conceive that it would be the height of wretchedness to be compelled to live with a saint on earth. This world was not made for saints, and those who have made the foolish attempt to be saints, have wisely climbed pillars, gone into caves or wandered in deserts, getting as far out of the world as possible. Those who have persisted in being saints and remaining in the world, have usually been hanged or burned by other saints.
Equally, the man who is always well, becomes a nuisance after a time. His ruddy face hangs out aconstant banner of presumptuous defiance, and the only person who can conscientiously love him is a life insurance agent. He never knows the soft ministrations of small female hands, or the hygienic virtue in the hem of an old lady's robe. Consequently his milk of human kindness is very apt to freeze up. He can have but small sympathy, for no one can sympathize, who has not learned sympathy by experience. At this present moment I fairly burn with pity, and extend a red right hand of sympathy to every man, woman and child, who has ever had a fever, who has a fever now, or who is going to have a fever. In his great, strong animal existence he goes crashing and smashing about like a whale among minnows, with this difference—that the whale is bent upon legitimate prey, while your healthy man is simply trying to show that heisa whale.
As who should say, "Here am I, Mr. Merryman, the great American Healthist. Any lady or gentleman in the audience, wishing to show liver, lights or lungs, will please step forward into the arena."
But, of course, there are compensations for all this. In the next world our healthy friend will probably take twice as much punishment as some of the poor devils who took half of theirs before they went there.
A person whose wings have sprouted and grown, and who has become a precocious angel in the prescribed three score and ten, is certainly leaving a very narrow margin for angelic growth hereafter, and, equally, a man who goes through his three score and ten without any terrene ails, I fancy will need Hippocrates and Galen when he gets to the other shore.
At least, so it seems to a man flat on his back.
*********
Which stars are to be considered equivalent to the time consumed in taking the sugar-coated pill before referred to, reminding one, in its passage down the æsophagus, of the cathartic literature which St. John swallowed, sweet above and bitter below.
Which recalls to me that the most of us are more or less sugar-coated—sweet outside, but quite bitter, or quite sad, or quite bad inside.
The partition between body and soul with some of us is so thin that the light shines through easily.
Some of us, again, cover up our little sepulchres so thickly with vines and roses, and fix such a laughing mask on the door, that we pass for very Ariels, God help us!
While others of us still, living in ourselves, isolated from all intimate relations, carry in our faces no sign of the toil and the weariness and the struggle. It is all blank on the outside; on the inside, it is isolation, death and expiation.
But, then, there are some of us who get our pills coated so badly that a child wouldn't touch them. For instance, good Deacon Jones, who slept all through Parson Primrose's sermon, and told Deacon Brown, who didn't sleep, that the Parson's doctrine was correct; Prof. Blather, who hitches himself to the tail of every high-flying kite, hoping thereby to be brought before the popular eyes; old Mrs. Peacock, who still persists in being young, making admirers, mincing through her spavined paces, leering with her faded eyes out of that painted face, when all Japonicadom knows there is not a genuine feather about her. And so one might go onfor hours, for the number of these badly coated pills is legion.
At least, so it seems to a man flat on his back.
*********
More stars for the Doctor who has been to see me. He is a jolly, sanguine dog, and assures me I shall be up in time for the opera—if not for the whole season, at least that I shall have two days off—one for Bellini'sEnglishmanand one for Hermanns'Mephisto.
What a blessing these jolly doctors are. They give one an invoice of moral courage, wherewith to make a stout fight against disease. They light up your room as beautifully as the sun this morning kindled my frosty window-panes with burning gold. And my jolly doctor will not take it unkindly of me if I say that I have more confidence in his jolliness than in his cabalistic abbreviations.
On the other hand, I can conceive that if I were compelled to receive the attentions of one of those solemn, owl-like doctors—those funereal-looking personages in deep black, whose noses and chins meet—who wear heavy canes, the knobs of which do heavy thinking for the wearers—whose only remark is an ominous shake of the head, and the preparation of a bill at the neighboring drug store—who have made the very sunlight look mercurial, and who cut off the supply of that delicious Muscat which Blanche sent in—I think, after one visit from such a walking Bolus, I should say, with Elijah of old: "It is enough; now let me die. You may call in your friend Sir." For I should know that as soon as he came into the house Death would sneak after him, and wait outside the door.
At least, so it seems to a man flat on his back.
*********
Another night in the darkness, sailing along these shores of Febris, and this crystal Saturday morning, it seems all bright and clear ahead. I feel no more the breath of the burning gales, but in its place an ecstasy of pain. My hand wearies and the head tires with this trifling work which has run through three days of nullity.
At least, so it seems to a man flat on his back.
January 31, 1868.
January 31, 1868.
GETTING out of bed is one of the little circumstances which shows man in his abstract essence. He is then a pure animal with all his instincts on the surface. There is no dignity in him then, no majesty, no true religion, no concealment of his nature. In fact he is worse off than the lower orders of the brute creation, as they awake in the full plenitude of their life. A butterfly, which has slept all night in a tulip, rises from his gorgeously curtained couch just as beautiful as he is under the noonday sun, when he lazily flutters among the languid roses. Man, when he rises, is a fragmentary being and has to be set up piece by piece and arrayed in his conventional garments before he can say good morning to the world.
There are various methods of getting out of bed. One man in a thousand wakes up all over at once, kicks off his bedclothes and bounds out of bed as Minerva bounded out of Jupiter's brain, armed and equipped as the law directs. He never tasted lotus in his life. He owns no real estate in Spain, but a good deal of outside city property. He never saw the point of a joke in his life. He never dreams. He is fiendishly healthy, and will, therefore, have much to answer for in the next world. He has no idea of thedolce far niente. If he has imagination, he clipped its wings long ago. Apost mortemexamination of his internal economy would revealnothing to speak of but columns of logarithms, interest tables and bills of lading in his skull, a complete set of office furniture in his stomach, and his abdominal canal crowded with cargoes of lumber and perches of stone. And he is apt to forget to say his prayers.
There are men who get out of bed a little at a time. The first symptoms of life are uneasy movements and a gentle rustling of the bedclothes. Slowly one arm appears from under the coverlid, and is thrown over the head. Then out comes another arm, disposed of in a similar manner. His legs are uneasy. One eye opens in a very uncertain manner and blinks, and the other opens and winks, and then both blink and wink for some minutes. He then commences to uncoil himself and straighten himself out. This is the stretching process. He mutters to himself incoherent nothings. He tries to go to sleep again, but the charm is broken. He yawns, and the process fairly opens his eyes. He sneezes, and the grand currents of life are once more in motion. One more stretch all over, and he accepts the hard necessity of nature which condemns him to quit his lotus to feed on hash, and he slowly gets out of bed as one utterly disgusted.
There is another class of men who always get out of bed over the footboard, and are uncomfortable all day after it. Their idea of happiness is realized in making somebody wretched, and they are singularly fortunate in the realization of that idea. They are sour in aspect and in disposition. No one has any rights they are bound to respect. Mrs. Gilliflower and her daughter, who always come late and go away early from the concerts, get out over the footboard. The man who mistakesa horse car for a hog pen and acts accordingly, although in some respects he is not much mistaken, gets out over the footboard. The man who worries his butcher or his baker over an insignificant trifle, and is too mean to have the snow shoveled off his sidewalk; the man who makes his lady clerks stand on their feet all day whether engaged or not; the woman who has a keen scent for ferreting out other persons' foibles and attending to other persons' business; the woman who is constantly lamenting over the wickedness and follies of the times; the man whose clumsiness trips him over and who then anathematizes an innocent curbstone; the man who raises a domestic war every morning over a lost button which he ripped off the night before, over an open window which he left open himself, over the discovery of his boots under the bed, where he placed them himself, over a dried up beefsteak which has been waiting an hour for him; the man whose pious nose goes heavenward at the sight of innocent pleasure, and who doesn't give his clerks time enough for dinner; the man who is sour himself and sours everything he touches—all these people get up over the footboard, and they won't get up any other way. If the footboard was forty feet high they would go over it with a step ladder, and curse every rung of it all the way up.
Then, there are men who get up only half awake, and don't fairly wake up until it is time to go to bed again. These are the unlucky ones, against whom fate and nature have a grudge. In the grand lottery of life they draw all the blanks. They usually receive all the broken limbs and fractured legs. They have come within a hair's breadth of making a fortune a number oftimes, but the hair was always too much. Such a man is always the one killed on a railway train. If he hears of a case of small-pox in West Wheeling, he will catch it. He is always the man in the great crowd who loses his pocket-book, and although he is one of the best of fellows, it will be just his luck to be overlooked by St. Peter at the gate of Heaven.
My favorite way of getting out of bed is to wake up, bid good morning to the newly created day, quietly turn over and go to sleep again without disturbing any one, and sleep the sleep of the just. In that second nap, I visit my Spanish castles. Their architecture is more elaborate and ethereal than ever Wren dreamed of, and they float always in an amber haze just over the Pyrenees. I have leased them all to a goodly company of ladies and gentlemen, and they are the best of pay. Among them are the fair Rosamund; poor Beatrice Cenci; that other Beatrice, who has come down from her shining beatitudes and occupies one of the best of them with Dante; the yellow-haired Gretchen and Faust; the rare and radiant Countess Irma; Spenser's Fairy Queen and Titania; Aspasia, still reclining on beds of roses; Dame Durden, whose house is no longer bleak; Cinderella, with her tiny slipper; Joan of Domremy, still talking with the angels; Undine, bathing in eternal streams; Colonel Newcome, and that prince of good fellows, George Warrington; Wilkins Micawber and Samuel Weller, who are living together—(Uriah Heep and Mr. Chadband made application for one castle, but their references were not good)—Wilhelm Meister and Nathan the Wise; the Lady of Shallott and Hiawatha, who have become firm friends; the fair Florindaand the Princess Scherezade, who amuse each other with rare stories; Sinbad and Aladdin and Rasselas; and Donatello, who never can agree with Werter. When I arrive, they hang out the banners, and such music as Malibran and Sontag sing, which Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Schubert have been writing for them, you don't hear in our concert halls. All the charming women and good fellows, of all times, come in to breakfast and we drink ambrosial wines, sweeter than the honey of Hymettus, and breakfast on fruits which have mellowed in the hanging gardens. There is no such lotus, by the bye, on the Nile banks as grows in those gardens. Time would fail me to narrate the sonnets that Dante is writing; the good jokes that George Warrington and Sam Weller have with each other over Wilkins, who is still waiting for something to turn up; the philosophical speculations of Rasselas, and the Munchausenisms of Sinbad; to tell you of a magnificent Spanish symphony that Beethoven has just finished, and the delight with which he listens to a new Ave Maria by Schubert, for the grand old master's hearing has been restored; the songs of Irma, as she looks down upon the mountains of her transfiguration; and the great joy of Faust and Gretchen, who have deciphered the vital problem they could not solve in the baneful shadow of Mephisto. The most beautiful castle is reserved for the friend who died years ago and passed away from me, but who is now like the living, because he greets me every morning in my castle with the warm grip of the hand and the cheery voice and the pleasant face of old times. He has not grown old since then, and I....
February 15, 1868.
February 15, 1868.
WE were all sitting at the table together. All told, we were ten, viz: Celeste and her maiden aunt, who had a sorrow when she was young, a blighted affection, or something of that sort; Aurelia, now Mrs. Peplum; Mr. Peplum, who has become much more sedate since his family affair with Aurelia; Aurelia's mother, who is getting old and rather fussy; Blanche, and young Boosey, who is sweet on Blanche; Old Blobbs, the Water street indigo merchant, and Mrs. Blobbs; and myself.
"As I was about to say when I was interrupted, the teapot...."
Here I was again interrupted by young Boosey, who was filling himself to repletion with brandied peaches, and who rather scornfully remarked to Old Blobbs that tea might do well enough for old women, but that, for a steady diet, he preferred champagne punches. Old Blobbs silenced him by telling him that if he spent less for champagne punches, it would be for the interest of his landlady.
The rebuke was severe, but just.
As I was about to say when I was interrupted the second time, the teapot is one of the strongest links inthe chain of society. If my friend Blobbs, across the way, will recall his youthful days, he will confess that all his subsequent prosperity and happiness are due to the teapot. He will remember that in those days, when, strange as it may seem, he was addicted to Byronic collars and bad rhymes, he accompanied the future Mrs. Blobbs home from singing-school one June night, and that, as they went across the fields instead of by the straight road, he felt excessively foolish at the manner in which the stars winked and blinked at each other. You see, my friend Blobbs thought that he was the first man in the world who had ever done that sort of thing; and my dear Mrs. Blobbs will pardon me if I say that she was excessively sheepish also over the fancy that, for the first time in the world, she was receiving the attentions of a young man. But the stars were used to it, and knew what would come of it. Ever since they peeped through the branches of the Tree of Knowledge and saw Adam sitting up with Eve, they had been looking at a young man and a young woman rehearsing this same old story, and, my dear Blobbs, long after you and I are under the daisies, they will shine down upon young men and young women, going across the fields and telling the same old story. It is the only story which can't be printed fast enough to supply the demand.
And my friend Blobbs will also remember that when they reached the gate, the air was full of the perfume of apple-blossoms and roses; that the bell of the village church over on the hill was striking eleven, and that its tones were borne on the night air, across the meadows, as softly and soothingly as if they were the audible pulsationsof the moonlight; that an officious little insect, shrouded in the gloom of the fir tree in the front yard, was continually informing him that Katy-did; that, before they parted, they chose a mutual star which should ever be their symbol and souvenir; and that when at last he took her little white hand in his—itwasa pretty hand in those days, you know, Blobbs—she said: "Won't you come over to tea to-morrow night, Mr. Blobbs?" Did you refuse, Mr. Blobbs?
He will furthermore be so good as to remember that he walked on air as he went home; that he whistled as he went; that all the stars in Heaven, except that particular one, were laughing at him, and that he wouldn't have taken a thousand dollars for himself.
Now I put it to you, Mr. Blobbs, as a man of honor, if that teapot, the next evening, did not do the business and make a man of you all the rest of your life.
Blobbs looked rather uncomfortable, but I thought I detected some of the brilliancy of those days shining through all the conventionalities and financial callouses of his life, as he assented; and if a tear stood in the corner of Mrs. B.'s eye, as she looked at her consort in the indigo trade, it dropped immediately into the quince sauce and dissolved into sweetness.
And as I passed my cup to Aurelia's mother the second time, with a deprecating look at Boosey, I continued: I know of no pleasanter sight in the world than a steaming teapot upon the tray and five or six old ladies gathered about it, who have just dropped over and brought their knitting. They have all made the voyage of life, weathered the storms and gone into old age's winter quarters. Life's spring will never come for them again.The roses will not bloom for them, and the birds will miss them, but the frosts and the keen winter winds touch them kindly; and if they sometimes regard the blue, lichen-covered slate stones with the unutterable thoughts of old age, it is only because they feel the first breath of the gales blowing from the eternal springs, inhale the faint perfumes of the asphodels and the lilies on the banks of the River of Life, and hear, as in a dream, the sounds of music from the golden harps over the battlements of Heaven.
And as the cups go round and the dear old creatures become inspired with the delicate aroma, how they will compare their rheumatisms, and backaches, and headaches, and neuralgias—those inevitable signs that the silver cords are growing looser, and that the pitchers will soon be broken at the fountains! How they will yearn after the days when they were young, and lament the decadence of the present! How they will recall the scenes of fifty years ago! (Here the maiden aunt let her eyes fall, and I fancied her lips quivered some). How they will indulge in just the slightest gossip in the world, meantime mysteriously shaking their frosty heads, but just as harmless as the rage of Mignon's canary! How they will analyze and dissect the last new baby in the neighborhood, and lament over the weakness of its mother who will allow it to eat anything and everything! How they will deprecate the new-fangled notions of the young pastor who has just succeeded old Parson Tenthly, lately called home!
It is a mortifying fact that young Pastor Primrosedoesprefer to visit Blanche and Celeste, who dote upon him and make book-marks and slippers for him, ratherthan be obliged to listen to the catalogues of the old ladies' physical and theological complaints. You see, Blanche and Celeste are not a severe tax upon his theological resources, while the old ladies are. Neither can the old ladies see why it is necessary that the young clergyman should be so particular about his back hair and the immaculateness of his neck-tie.
February 22, 1868.
February 22, 1868.
DID you ask me if the Masquerade, this week, was a success?
Considering that nine-tenths of the people who go to balls are idiots; that carnival folly without carnival license is Hamlet without Hamlet; that only they in whose veins the blood is tropical understand the realespritof thebal masque; and that among our masques every man insists upon being a Harlequin and every woman a nondescript, showing the inevitable tendency of human nature;—it was a success.
It is impossible for Boosey in a masque to feel tropical. Champagne, and not blood, is the natural current through his veins. Disguised as a gorgeous Harlequin, in cap and bells, he is not at home. He is inchoate, crude and lonesome. He may talk soft things to the unknown Blanche, hanging upon his arm in the black tarletan, gold stars and crescent, but the liquid eyes and beaming face tell no story through the grinning, goggle-eyed pasteboard, and do not disturb the placidity of the manly breast of Harlequin, or make any intellectual impression upon him, further than to confirm us in our original statement that he is an idiot. What Boosey may do when the masques are off and church-yards beginto yawn, as he and the unknown Blanche say matins at the shrine of the jolly King Gambrinus, concerns us not.
Neither does it concern you who are reading these lines, who never take your masque off at all.
Although my German friends sandwiched their carnival into a funny place, making sin follow repentance, and mixing up scarlet Mardi Gras and gray Ash Wednesday with a frightful negligence of proprieties, it was enjoyable and delightfully sinful. Celeste, when she came to my confessional the other day, complained of it. She was clad in russet and serge, had sprinkled herself with ashes, was mortifying the flesh by concealing those white shoulders and marble arms, which are the envy of our set, and eating lentils as if she liked them. Could I do anything but pity her when she criedpeccavi, mea culpa, mea culpa. And as she told me, with those pretty lips, of her melon-colored dress, how superbly it hung; of her pearl neck-lace, which actually looked dark on her neck; of an unknown cavalier, who whispered something transporting over his bouquet, and then vanished; of the wild waltz with Mephisto, whose sneering gibes were alchemized into delicious flattery—and as the Dear Creature told me that she had followed too much the devices and desires of her own heart, and that all was vanity, was it a wonder that I, even in the garb of the confessor, cheered and consoled her, and said:
My dear young friend, the only trouble with you is that Divine Providence, instead of Canova, made you, and, in making you, gave you a human nature. He was also at fault in making flowers that die of their ownsweetness, and grapes that burst of their own voluptuousness, and swans that expire in their own melody. The moralists have got hold of you, my dear, and, with their mallets and chisels, are trying to make you into a cold, senseless, white statue of virtue, while all the while the blood is bounding to your finger-tips, and every pulsation of your heart is in waltztempo. Enjoy your carnivals, my dear, for soon come the snow and the chilling winds, which will wrinkle your pretty face, and film your bright eyes, and turn those white shoulders to parchment, and deaden all the fire of life. Then may you wrap yourself in your black robes and weep over the dead carnivals in the gray ashes.
And if you know of any of your friends who are so miserably unfortunate as to be without fault, let them cast stones at you. I may say,entre nous, that I do not think you will be much hurt. The stone-throwing will be the feeblest you ever saw.
And the Dear Creature went away, as one not utterly bereft of consolation.
March 7, 1868.
March 7, 1868.
WE were sitting at the opera the other evening, Celeste and I. Celeste wasennuyee. Not even the Garden music of Faust—music which so deftly pictures the grand struggle between the Angel and the Fiend, which is waged on the battle-field of each man's soul—music which so vividly paints the lapse from guilelessness to guilt; not even the closing duo, an outburst of sensuous rapture with an under-tone of the wildest despair, seemed to have any effect upon her. So she twirled her fan impatiently, flirted with Fitz-Herbert opposite, through her lorgnette, and listlessly pulled the waxen petals out of the camelia in her bouquet.
And she turned to me and said: "Don't you think this is very stupid? Everything is soblase. I would give a year of my life for a new sensation. How happy Eve must have been, when everything was bright and fresh and new, and for the first time;" and, the camelia destroyed, she commenced upon roses and heliotropes.
And, after the opera, I freed my mind to the Dear Creature, upon the foolish idea—which not only she but the majority of people have—that the world was any brighter or fresher, or any more for the first time, in the days of Adam and Eve than now, speaking somewhat after the following fashion:
My dear Celeste, the fault is not in the world, but in yourself, that nothing seems bright, and fresh, and new. The miracle of creation and the process of life are new every morning and every evening, and are performed for the first time for each human being, yourself included. But you have allowed conventionality and form and artificiality to dim your eyes, destroy your taste, and blunt all your sensibilities. The world is just as beautiful, the mountains just as grand, the flowers just as lovely, the streams just as sparkling, the songs of the birds just as sweet, this spring day of 1868,Anno Domini, as they were on the same spring day of the year 1,Ante Christum. Adam and Eve saw them for the first time, and you are seeing them for the first time. The first sunrise which Adam and Eve saw, as they took their morning walk in the garden, was not a whit more beautiful than the sunrise this morning; and if that was given to them for the first time, this was given to you for the first time—only your eyes, albeit they are very pretty, are totally blind to the fact; and, equally, the light of the sunset which filtered through the leaves of the trees, and stained the whole flowery floor of the Garden with golden glory, what time the first man and woman said vespers in God's grand temple of Nature, was not more golden than that which flooded the earth last evening, what time, my dear, you were yawningly doing up your back-hair, preparatory to Mrs. Fitz-Boodle's hop, utterly unconscious that there was a sun in the heavens, or that Nature was painting for you for the first time the miracle of a sunset, which she did for Adam for the first time.
The same analogy holds good in all the operations oflife. Eve, holding the wicked Cain in the cradle of her arms, experienced the same joys and griefs of maternity; the same concentration of all that is beautiful in the world, in the blue eyes of the nestling; the same mysterious yearnings; the same strong, deep love; the same foreboding pain that is experienced by the last fair-browed mother "in marble halls," or by some tawny, wild-eyed Indian mother, crooning weird songs to her little one under torrid palms.
And when, my dear Madame, you laid your little Johnny or Susie, all covered with immortelles and rosebuds, under the violets; or when you received a letter, written in a strange hand, that your first and only one, who had grown to man's estate, and who went sailing over the seas, was down among the sea-tangles and the corals; when, as by a sudden breath, every light of joy was blown out; when that terrible silence of death lay on the household; when, in the night watches, you listened for some tidings from that far-off shore of the To Be, whither the child had sailed all alone, without your watchful care over him; when it seemed to you that the heavens should be hung with black, and you wondered that the sun could shine, and the birds sing, and men and women come and go as if nothing had occurred—when all this happened, you were experiencing, for the first time, the same feelings that Eve experienced for the first time, as she looked into the stark face of Abel.
March 24, 1868.
March 24, 1868.
I WAS sitting last evening in the library, absorbed in that wonderful book of Auerbach's—"On the Heights"—a book which always has the charm of being new whenever I take it up, and always gives me some fresh insight into the beauties of this world, and the sublimity of human nature. It was twilight, the time to read it. Minerva on the one shelf was drowsily nodding at Clytie on the other, and Dante on his bracket was looking out of the window into the sky, as if momentarily expecting Beatrice to float luminously down in shining garments. The flowers in the window were shutting up their petals for the night. And thus we sat there—Auerbach, Clytie, Minerva, Dante, the flowers, and I; and as the lines of the book dimmed over in the receding light, our star appeared goldening in the Western sky, just over the crimson of the dying day.
When who should walk in but the Dear Children, Boosey and Celeste, arm in arm! Minerva at once woke up and looked wisely at B., and my calla, which always recognizes Celeste as a butterfly, leaned lovingly towards her, as if inviting her to fly into her milk-white bosom and sleep there for the night.
They cautiously and modestly informed me of their engagement, and had come to ask me for some advice relative to the wedding and how it should be celebrated. Whereupon I laid Auerbach down, and spoke to them somewhat after the following manner:
My Dear Children, I will give you some views on weddings in general, which you may apply to your own case. While it is eminently proper to invite personal friends to a wedding, and the more the merrier, avoid publicity. Publicity in private matters inevitably tends towards snobbishness, and often towards vulgarity. You may lay the gilt on vulgarity just as thickly as you please and it will only make it the more glaring, just as the process of varnishing a poor picture makes its defects more obvious. A wedding will always be public enough without any courting of publicity, and it is a very poor way of starting off in life, by trying to outdo some one else in the way of show and expense. It is like throwing out your ace of trumps without stopping to see whether you have got suit in your hand to win the game with. The lavish expenditure of money on a wedding, merely to outdo some one else, is only for popular effect, and what is done only for popular effect is very apt to be vulgar. By vulgarity, of course I do not mean anything that is morally wrong, but simply common and snobbish. The motive is a very cheap one, and is apparent to the most superficial observer; and the least justifiable occasion for the exercise of that motive is a wedding, which should be free from tinsel and frippery. An event so important, and in a certain degree so sacred, should be celebrated with a delicacy and dignity befitting its character. It is the turning-pointfor weal or wo in two lives, and it is not well to make it a public show. The occasions in society-life for display of gilt and gingerbread, sugar candy and gewgaws, are amply sufficient, without seizing upon the hymeneal altar and exhibiting the sacred fire to a curious public, with blare of trumpets and glare of trappings.
One of the worst features of our fashionable weddings is the insane desire of the parties to it to make their appearance in the public prints, and figure with stunning head-lines among the announcements of the last raid upon gamblers, police court trials, sensational divorces, murders, rapes and suicides. The avidity with which this publicity is sought will be astonishing to the general reader. In some instances printed, and in others written invitations, have been sent to the reporters of the daily press, stating the exact time and place when and where they can visit the dressmaker and have the mysteries of the bridal toilet explained to them, when and where they can inspect other toilets, and when and where they can see the wedding gifts and be informed of their nature and cost; all of which, of course, will be unfolded in due time to the admiring public, and small female vanity and large female curiosity will be gratified.
Unless, as is always the case, reporters are human and printers capricious; whereupon it happens that great expectations are not always realized—as, for instance, when that diamond pin, which cost $2,000, appears in print at the ridiculously small figure of $200; when Mrs. Crœsus, who has devoted days of toil and nights of anxiety, and has distracted her dressmakers over hersuperb silk—who has flattered herself upon the sensation her point lace will make, and the universal admiration which will greet her diamond set—appears in print clad in blue tarletan, with Brussels lace and pearl jewelry; when the two thousand invitations appear on paper as two hundred; when the reporter, who came late, mistakes a bridesmaid for the bride, and goes into glowing raptures over the loveliness of the young creature; when another reporter, who has not had an opportunity of writing up the gifts beforehand, gets into a chaos of ormolu clocks, bronzes, and silverware, and mixes them up indiscriminately; when John Thomas, the family driver, who is not free from the failings of human nature any more than his superiors, by a quiet little reportorial bribe, or a secret visit to the place so dear to every well-organized reporter—the wine cellar—gets his name mentioned for the graceful manner in which he presided over the white ribbons and the rosetted steeds; when all these things happen, as happen they will, and people laugh, then the great expectations are not realized; and Mrs. Midas, who lives next door to Mrs. Croesus, had a small difficulty with her and was not invited to the wedding, has her revenge.
On general principles, this avidity of people to get their garments advertised in the public prints, while it may minister to their foolish vanity, is pernicious in its effects, and a positive injury to society. It has one of two effects. It will either keep a great many ladies away from places of public amusement, who cannot afford to dress in a showy manner, and are too sensitive to have their plain toilets spread before the universal eye; or it will encourage them to foolishly fling awaymoney, in order that they may make a presentable appearance. And beyond these effects, it directly encourages, or rather compels a competition in dress which is ruinous to good taste, not to speak of purses.
And now, my Dear Children, let me advise you to avoid all show. A house full of wedding presents and dear friends, and detectives to watch the costly presents, lest the dear friends steal them, is not desirable. A weddingtrousseauconstructed regardless of expense, to outdo some othertrousseauand to create popular effect, is very vulgar. A lavish display of diamonds and silver, and glittering gewgaws, exhibited merely for ostentation, may make your curious friends envious, but it will make your judicious friends grieve. A clean flag-stone walk to the church will not injure your dainty feet any more than the Brussels carpet, and I would not favor your feet too much, for they may have to walk in some very flinty places yet. It is well, also, to have some regard to the proprieties of the church itself, and not transform it so much, that if St. Paul should happen to drop in, he wouldn't know whether he was in a circus or a menagerie.
I always tremble for the bride who starts off in life in this manner. We cannot always float smoothly along, reclining on velvet cushions, with favoring winds swelling silken sails, and golden oars keeping time to music. It has been discreetly ordered that reverses shall overtake us all before we get into the snug haven of old age. And in that night of tempests, when the whole heavens seem shutting grimly down, and not a star of hope can peep through the wild wrack, the fate of a Canary bird in a thunder-storm is the fate of this bride. The firstmove is the key to all the rest. It is well, therefore, to have that move made calmly, deliberately and thoughtfully, without any reference to the opinions or the curiosities of others, with all the contingencies of life steadily in view, and with the two lives in one, braced and fortified to meet them.
My say was ended, and as Boosey and Celeste thanked me and went out seriously, she with a little faster hold upon his arm, and he with a firmer look of resolution upon his face, as if he were mentally bidding good bye to his follies, I sent my blessing out with them, for I was sure that he would get the vessel into such good trim that he and the Butterfly would be uninjured in any storm.
March 28, 1868.
March 28, 1868.