"The sweetest throat of SolitudeUnbarred her silver gates, and slowly hymnedTo the great heart of Silence, till it beatResponse with all its echoes: for from outThat far, immortal orient, whereinHis soul abides 'mid morning skies and dews,A wood-thrush, angel of the tree-top heaven,Poured clear his pure soprano through the place,Deepening the stillness with diviner calm,That gave to Silence all her inmost heartIn melody."
"The sweetest throat of SolitudeUnbarred her silver gates, and slowly hymnedTo the great heart of Silence, till it beatResponse with all its echoes: for from outThat far, immortal orient, whereinHis soul abides 'mid morning skies and dews,A wood-thrush, angel of the tree-top heaven,Poured clear his pure soprano through the place,Deepening the stillness with diviner calm,That gave to Silence all her inmost heartIn melody."
It was a regal welcome. What is like the note of the wood-thrush?—so full of royalty and psalm and sabbath! Regal in reserve, however, no less than utterance, the sovereign songster gave a welcome only, and then was silent; while a fine piping warbler caught up the theme, and discoursed upon it with liberal eloquence. The place to hear the song of the wood-thrush is wherever you can attain to that enjoyment by walking five or ten miles; the place so to hear it that the hearing shall be, by sober estimation, among the memorable events of your life, is at the head of a solemn, sunny cove, on three yards of tawny beach, in the harbor of Belles Amours, Labrador.
Item, seal-race. The male seals fight with fury in the season of their rude loves. Two of these had had a battle; the vanquished was fleeing, the victor after him. They were bounding from the water like dolphins. For some time I thought them such, though I have seen dolphins by thousands. It was a surprise to see these leisurely and luxurious animals spattering the water in such an ecstasy of amative rage.
Item, "killer." This is a savage cetacean, probably the same with the "thrasher," about fifteen feet in length, blunt-nosed, strong of jaw, with cruel teeth. On its back is a fin beginning about two thirds the way from tip to tail, running close to the latter, and then sloping away to a point, like the jib of a ship. In the largest this is some five feet long on the back, and eight or ten feet in height,—so large, that, when the creature is swimming on the surface, a strong side-wind will sometimes blow it over. It is a blue-fish on a big scale, or a Semmes in the sea, hungry as famine, fierce as plague, dainty as a Roman epicure, yet omnivorous as time. The seal is its South-Down mutton, the tongue of the whale its venison; for whenever its numbers are sufficient, it will attack this huge cetacean, and torture him till he submits and gives a horrible feast to their greed. Captain Handy had seen thirty or forty of them at this business. They fly with inconceivable fury at their victim, aiming chiefly at the lip, tearing great mouthfuls away, which they instantly reject while darting for another. The bleeding and bellowing monster goes down like a boulder from a cliff, shoots up like a shell from a mortar, beats the sea about him all into crimsoned spray with his tail; but plunge, leap, foam as he may, the finny pirates flesh their teeth in him still, still are fresh in pursuit, until at length, to end one torment by submitting to another, the helpless giant opens his mouth, and permits these sea-devils to devour the quivering morsel they covet. A big morsel; for the tongue of the full-sized right-whale weighs a ton and a half, and yields a ton of oil. The killer is sometimes confounded with the grampus. The latter is considerably larger, has a longer and slenderer jaw, less round at the muzzle, smaller teeth, and "isn't so clean a made fish"; for, in nautical parlance, cetaceans are still fish. Killers frequently try to rob whalers of their prize, and sometimes actually succeed in carrying it down, despite the lances and other weapons with which their attack is so strenuously resisted.
Item, cascade. A snowy, broken stripe down a mountain-side; taken to be snow till the ear better informed the eye. Fine; but you need not go there to see.
June 26.—Off to Henley Harbor, sixty-five miles, at the head of the Strait of Belle Isle. Belle Isle itself—sandstone, rich, the Professor said, in ancient fossils—lay in view. The anchor went down in deep water, close beside the notable Castle Island.
There were some considerable floes in the harbor, the largest one aground in a passage between the two islands by which it is formed. And now came the blue of pure floe-ice! There is nothing else like it on this earth, but the sapphire gem in its perfection; and this is removed from the comparison by its inferiority in magnitude. This incomparable hue appears wherever deep shadow is interposed between the eye and any intense, shining white. The floe in question contained two caverns excavated by the sea, both of which were partially open toward the ship. And out of these shone, shone on us, the cerulean and sapphire glory! Beyond this were the deep blue waters of York Bay; farther away, grouped and pushing down, headland behind headland, into the bay, rose the purple gneiss hills, broad and rounded, and flecked with party-colored moss; while nearer glowed this immortal blue eye, like the bliss of eternity looking into time!
Next day we rowed close to this: I hardly know how we dared! Heavens! such blue! It grew, as we looked into the ice-cavern, deeper, intenser, more luminous, more awful in beauty, the farther inward, till in the depths it became not only a shrine to worship at, but a presence to bow and be silent before! It is said that angels sing and move in joy before the Eternal; but there I learned that silence is their only voice, and stillness their ecstatic motion!
Meanwhile the portals of this sapphire sanctuary were of a warm rose hue, rich and delicate,—looking like the blush of mortal beauty at its nearness to the heavenly.
Bradford is all right in painting the intensest blue possible,—due care, of course, being taken not to extend it uniformly over large surfaces. If he can secure any suggestion of the subtilty and luminousness,—if he can! As I come back, and utter a word, he says that the only way will be to glaze over a white ground. It had already struck me, that, as this is the method by which Nature obtains such effects, it must be the method for Art also. He is on the right track. And how the gentle soul works!
But while outward Nature here assumed aspects of beauty so surpassing, man, as if to lend her the emphasis of contrast, appeared in the sorriest shape. I name him here, that I may vindicate his claim to remembrance, even when he is a blot upon the beauty around him. I will not forget him, even though I can think of him only with shame. To remember, however, is here enough. We will go back to Nature,—though she, too, can suckle "killers."
On the evening before our departure,—for we remained several days, and had a snow-storm meanwhile,—there was a glorious going down of the sun over the hills beyond York Bay, with a tender golden mist filling all the western heavens, and tinting air and water between. So Nature renewed her charm. And with that sun setting on Henley Harbor, we leave for the present the miserable, magnificent place.
June 30.—Iceberg! An iceberg! The real thing at last! We left Henley at tena. m., and were soon coming up with a noble berg. Its aspect, on our near approach, was that of a vast roof rising at one end, beside which, and about half its height, was the upper third of an enormous cylinder. Passing to the west, along one side of this roof, we beheld a vast cavernous depression, making a concave line in its ridge, and then dipping deep, beyond view, into the berg. The sharp upper rim of this depression came between us and the sky, with the bright shine of the forenoon sun beyond, and showed a skirt or fringe of infinitely delicate luminous green, whose contrast with the rich marble-white of the general structure was beautiful exceedingly. With the exception of this, and of a narrow blue seam, looking like lapis-lazuli, which ran diagonally from summit to base, the broad surface of this side had the look of snow-white marble lace or fretwork. Passing thence to the north face, we came apparently upon the partat which the berg separated from its parent glacier. Here was a new effect, and one of great beauty. In material it resembled the finest statuary marble,—but rather the crystalline marbles of Vermont, with their brilliant half-sparkle, than the dead polish of the Parian; while the form and character of this façade suggested some fascinating, supernatural consent of chance and art, of fracture with sculpturesque and architectural design.
"He works in rings, in magic rings, of chance,"—
"He works in rings, in magic rings, of chance,"—
the subtlest thing ever said of Turner,—might have been spoken even more truly of the workman who wrought this. The apparent fineness of material cannot be overstated, so soft and powerful. "A porcelain fracture," said Ph——,—well. Yet such porcelain! It were the despair of China. On the eastern, or cylinder side, there was next the water a strip of intensely polished surface, surmounted by an elaborate level cornice, and above this the marble lace again.
The schooner soon tacked, and returned. As again we pass the cathedral cliff on the north, and join the western side with this in one view, we are somewhat prepared by familiarity to mingle its majesty and beauty, and take from them a single impression. The long Cyclopean wall and vast Gothic roof of the side, including many an arched, rounded, and waving line, emphasized by straight lines of blue seam, are set off against the strange shining traceries of the façade; while the union of flower-like softness and eternal strength, the fretted silver of surface, the combination of peak and cave, the fringe of blazing emerald on the ridge, the glancing, flashing lights contrasting with twilight blues and purples of deep shadow, and over all the stainless azure, and beneath and around all a sea of beryl strown with sun-dust,—these associate to engrave on the soul an impression which even death and the tomb, I would fain believe, will be powerless to efface. And if Art study hard and labor long and vehemently aspire to publish the truth of this, she does well. Her task is worthy, but is not easy: I think a greater, of the kind, has never been attempted. The height of this berg was determined by instruments—but with a conjecture only of the distance—to be one hundred and eighteen feet. Captain Brown, however, who went aloft, and thence formed a judgment, pronounced it not less than one hundred and fifty feet. One naturally inclines to the more moderate computation. But, as subsequent experience showed me that judgments of distance in such cases are almost always below the mark, I am of opinion that here, as sometimes in politics and religion, seeming moderation may be less accurate than seeming excess.
And, by the way, Noble's descriptions of icebergs, which, in the absence of personal observation, might seem excessive, are of real value. Finding a copy of his book on board, I read it with pleasure, having first fully made my own notes,—and refer to him any reader who may have appetite for more after concluding this chapter.
Early this evening we entered between bold cliffs into Square Island Harbor, latitude about 53°. It is a deep and deeply sheltered dog's hole,—dogs and dirt could make it such,—but overhung by purple hills, which proved, on subsequent inspection, to be largely composed of an impure labradorite. Labradorite, the reader may know, is a crystallized feldspar, with traces of other minerals. In its pure state it is opalescent, exhibiting vivid gleams of blue, green, gold, and copper-color, and, more rarely, of rose,—and is then, and deservedly, reckoned a precious stone. The general character of the rock here is sienitic; but, besides this peculiar quality of feldspar, the hornblende appears as actinolite, (ray-stone,) so called from the form of its crystallization; while the quartz element is faintly present, or appears in separate masses. The purple of the hills is due not only to the labradorite, which has that as a stable color, but also to a purple lichen, which clothes much of the rock on this coast. I found also fine masses of mica imbedded inquartz, edge upwards, and so compact that its lamination was not perceptible. Indeed, I did not, with my novice eyes, immediately recognize it, for it appeared a handsome copper-colored rock, projecting slightly from the quartz, as if more enduring.
Next day there was trouting, with a little, and but a little, better than the usual minnow result.
And on the next, the floe-ice poured in and packed the harbor like a box of sardines. The scene became utterly Arctic,—rock above, and ice below. Rock, ice, and three imprisoned ships; which last, in their helpless isolation, gave less the sense of companionship than of a triple solitude. And when next day, Sunday, the third day of July, I walked ashore on the ice with a hundred feet of water beneath, summer seemed a worn-out tradition, and one felt that the frozen North had gone out over the world as to a lawful inheritance.
But the new Czar reigned in beauty, if also in terror. Yard-wide spaces of emerald, amethyst, sapphire, yellow-green beryl, and rose-tinted crystal, grew as familiar to the eye as paving-blocks to the dwellers in cities. The shadows of the ice were also of a violet purple, so ethereal that it required a painter's eye at once to see it, though it was unmistakably there; and to represent it will task the finest painter's hand. Then the spaces of water between the floes, if not too large, appeared uniformly in deep wine-color,—an effect for which one must have more science than I to account. It is attributed to contrast; but if thus illusive, it is at least an illusion not to be looked out of countenance. No local color could assert itself more firmly. One marvellous morning, too, a dense, but translucent, mist hovered closely, beneath strong sunshine, over the ice, lending to its innumerable fantastic forms a new, weird, witching, indescribable, real-unreal strangeness, as if the ice and the ships it inclosed and we ourselves were all but embodied dreams, half come to consciousness, and rubbing our surprised moon-eyes to gaze upon each other. The power of this mist to multiply distance was not the least part of its witchery. A schooner ten rods off looked as far away as Cadmus and Abraham.
P—— was made happy by finding here a grasshopper, which subsequently proved, however, a prize indeed,—but not quite so much of a prize as he hoped, being probably the young of a species previously known as Alpine, rather than an adult identical with one found on the summit of Mount Washington.
During the latter part of our duress here we were driven below by raw, incessant rain, and the confinement became irksome. At length, during the day and night of July 14th, the ice finally made off with itself, and the next morning the schooner followed suit. The ice, however, had not done with us. It lingered near the land, while farther out it was seen in solid mass, making witch-work, as usual, on the northern and eastern sky; and we were soon dodging through the more open portion, still dense enough, close to the coast. It was dangerous business. A pretty breeze blew; and with anything of a wind our antelope of a schooner took to her heels with speed. Lightly built,—not, like vessels designed for this coast, double-planked and perhaps iron-prowed,—she would easily have been staved by a shock upon this adamantine ice. The mate stood at the bow, shouting, "Luff! Bear away! Hard up! Hard down!" And his voice wanting strength and his articulation distinctness, I was fain, at the pinch of the game, to come to his aid, and trumpet his orders after him with my best stentorship. The old pilot had taken the helm; but his nerves were unequal to his work; and a younger man was sent to take his place. Once or twice the ship struck smaller masses of ice, but at so sharp an angle as to push them and herself mutually aside, and slide past without a crash. But a wind from the land was steadily urging the floe-field away, and at length the sea before us lay clear.
At tena. m., we drew up to a majestic berg, and "came to,"—that is, brought the schooner close by the wind. The berg was one of the noblest. Picture to yourself two most immense Gothic churches without transepts, each with a tower in front. Place these side by side, but at a remove equal to about half their length. Build up now the space between the two towers, extending this connection back so that it shall embrace the front third or half of the churches, leaving an opengreencourt in the rear, and you have a general conception of this piece of Northern architecture. The rear of each church, however, instead of ascending vertically, sloped at an angle of about ten degrees, and, instead of having sharp corners, was exquisitely rounded. Elsewhere also were many rounded and waving lines, where the image of a church would suggest straightness. Nevertheless, you are to cling with force to that image in shaping to your mind's eye a picture of this astonishing cathedral.
Since seeing the former berg, we had heard many tales of the danger of approaching them. The Newfoundlanders and natives have of them a mortal terror,—never going, if it can be avoided, nearer than half a mile, and then always on the leeward side. "They kill the wind," said these people, so that one in passing to windward is liable to be becalmed, and to drift down upon them,—to drift upon them, because there is always a tide setting in toward them. They chill the water, it descends, and other flows in to assume its place. These fears were not wholly groundless. Icebergs sometimes burst their hearts suddenly, with an awful explosion, going into a thousand pieces. After they begin to disintegrate, moreover, immense masses from time to time crush down from above or surge up from beneath; and on all such occasions, proximity to them is obviously not without its perils. "The Colonel," brave, and a Greenland voyager, was more nervous about them than anybody else. He declared, apparently on good authority, that the vibration imparted to the sea by a ship's motion, or even that communicated to the air by the human voice, would not unfrequently give these irritable monsters the hint required for a burst of ill-temper,—and averred also that our schooner, at the distance of three hundred yards, would be rolled over, like a child's play-boat, by the wave which an exploding or over-setting iceberg would cause. And it might, indeed, be supposed, that, did one of those prodigious creations take a notion to disport its billions of tons in a somersault, it would raise no trivial commotion.
At a distance, these considerations weighed with me. I heard them respectfully, was convinced, and silently resolved not to urge, indeed, so far as I properly might, to discourage, nearness of approach. But here all these convictions vanished away. I knew that some icebergs were treacherous, but they were others, not this! There it stood in such majesty and magnificence of marble strength, that all question of its soundness was shamed out of me,—or rather, would have been shamed, had it arisen. This was not sentiment,—it was judgment,—myjudgment,—perhaps erroneous, yet a judgment formed from the facts as I saw them. Therefore I determined to launch the light skiff which Ph—— and I had bought at Sleupe Harbor, and row up to the berg, perhaps lay my hand upon it.
As the skiff went over the gunwale, the Parson cried,—
"Shall I go with you?"
"Yes, indeed, if you wish."
He seated himself in the stern; I assumed the oars, (I row cross-handed, with long oars, and among amateur oarsmen am a little vain of my skill) and pulled away. It was a longer pull than I had thought,—suggesting that our judgment of distances had been insufficient, and that the previous berg was higher than our measurement had made it.
Our approach was to rear of the berg,—that is, to the court or little bay before mentioned. The temptation to enter was great, but I dared not; for the long,deep ocean-swell over which the skiff skimmed like a duck, not only without danger, but without the smallest perturbation, broke in and out here with such force that I knew the boat would instantly be swept out of my possession. The Parson, however, always reckless of peril in his enthusiasm, and less experienced, cried,—
"In! in! Push the boat in!"
"No, the swell is too heavy; it will not do."
"Fie upon the swell! Never mind what will do! In!"
I sympathized too much with him to answer otherwise than by laying my weight upon the oars, and pushing silently past. The water in this bit of bay was some six or eight feet deep, and the ice beneath it—for the berg was all solid below—showed in perfection that crystalline tawny green which belongs to it under such circumstances. I pulled around the curving rear of the eastern church, with its surface of marble lace, such as we had seen before, gazing upward and upward at the towering awfulness and magnificence of edifice, myself frozen in admiration. The Parson, under high excitement, rained his hortative oratory upon me.
"Nearer! Nearer! Let's touch it! Let's lay our hands upon it! Don't be faint-hearted now. It's now or never!"
I heard him as one under the influence of chloroform hears his attendants. He exhorted a stone. His words only seemed to beat and flutter faintly against me, like storm-driven birds against a cliff at night. My brain was only in my eyeballs; and the arms that worked mechanically at the oars belonged rather to the boat than to me.
Saturated at last, if not satiated, with seeing, I glanced at the water-level, and said,—
"But see how the surge is heaving against it!"
But now it was I that spoke to stone, though not to a silent one.
"Hang the surge! I'm here for an iceberg, not to be balked by a bit of surf! It's not enough to see; I must have my hand on it! I wish to touch the veritable North Pole!"
It was pleasant to see the ever-genial Parson so peremptory; and I lingered half wilfully, not unwilling to mingle the relieving flavor of this pleasure with the more awful delight of other impressions: said, however, at length,—
"I intend to go up to it, when I have found a suitable place."
"Place! What better place do you desire than this?"
I could but smile and pull on.
Caution was not unnecessary. The sea rose and fell a number of feet beside the berg, beating heavily against it with boom and hiss; and I knew well, that, if our boat struck fairly, especially if it struck sidewise, it would be whirled over and over in two seconds. Besides, where we then were, there was a cut of a foot or more into the berg at the water-level,—or rather, it was excavated below, with this projection above; and had the skiff caught under that, we would drown. I had come there not to drown, nor to run any risk, but to get some more intimate acquaintance with an iceberg. Rowing along, therefore, despite the Parson's moving hortatives, I at length found a spot where this projection did not appear. Turning now the skiff head on, I drove it swiftly toward the berg; then, when its headway was sufficient, shipped the oars quickly, slipped into the bow, and, reaching forth my hand and striking the berg, sent the boat in the same instant back with all my force, not suffering it to touch.
"Now me! Now me!" shouted the Parson, brow hot, and eyes blazing. "You're going to give me a chance, too? I would not miss it for a kingdom!"
"Yes; wait, wait."
I took the oars, got sea-room, then turned its stern, where the Parson sat, toward the iceberg, and backed gently in.
"Put your hand behind you; reach out as far as you can; sit in the middle; keep cool, cool; don't turn your body."
"Cool, oh, yes! I'm cool as November," he said, with a face misty as a hot July morning with evaporating dew. As his hand struck the ice, I bent the oars, and we shot safely away.
"Hurrah! hurrah!" he shouted, making the little boat rock and tremble,—"hurrah! This, now, is the 'adventurous travel' we were promised. Now I am content, if we get no more."
"Cool; you'll have us over."
"Pooh! Who's cooler?"
We went leisurely around this glacial cathedral. The current set with force about it, running against us on the eastern side. At the front we found the "cornice" again, about twenty feet up, sloping to the water, and dipping beneath it on either side; below it, a crystal surface; above, marble fretwork. This cornice indicates a former sea-level, showing that the berg has risen or changed position. This must have taken place, probably, by the detachment of masses; so an occurrence of this kind was not wholly out of question, after all. There is always, however,—so I suspect,—some preliminary warning, some audible crack or visible vibration. I had kept in mind the possibility of such changes, and at the slightest intimation should have darted away,—a movement favored by the lightness of the skiff, and the extreme ease with which, under the advantage of a beautiful model, she was rowed.
A sense of awe, almost of fear, crept over me now that the adventure was over, and I looked up to the mighty towers of the façade with a somewhat humbled eye; and so, pulling slowly and respectfully along the western side, made away, solemn and satisfied, to the ship.
I expected a storm of criticism on our return, but found calm. The boat was hoisted in silently, and I hurried below, to lie down and enjoy the very peculiar entertainment which vigorous rowing was sure to afford me.
Released after a half-hour's toasting on the gridiron, I went on deck and found the Parson surrounded by a cloud of censure. The words "boyish foolhardiness," catching my ear, flushed me with some anger,—to which emotion I am not, perhaps, of all men least liable. So I stumped a little stiffly to the group, and said,—
"I don't feel myself altogether a boy, and foolhardiness is not my forte."
"Well, success is wisdom," said the Colonel, placably. "You have succeeded, and now have criticism at a disadvantage, I own."
Another, however,—not a braver man on board,—stood to his guns.
"Experienced men say that it is dangerous; I hear to them till I have experience myself."
"Right, if so it stands in your mind. You judge thus: you follow your judgment. I judge partly so, and partly otherwise, and I follow my judgment. Mere experience is but a purblind wisdom, after all. When I do not at all see my own way, I follow that, still aware of its imperfections; where eyes are of service, I use them, learning from experience caution, not submission. The real danger in this case was that of being dashed against the berg; with coolness and some skill" (was there a little emphasis on this wordskill?) "that danger could be disarmed. For any other danger I was ready, but did not fear it. 'Boyish?' The boyish thing, I take it, is always to be a pendant upon other people's alarms. I prefer rather to be kite than its tail only."
"Well, each of usdoesfollow his own judgment," replied Candor; "you act as you think; I think you are wrong. If it were shooting a Polar bear now,—there's pleasure in that, and it were worth the while to run some risk."
We had tried for a bear together. I seized my advantage.
"It is a pleasure to you to shoot a bear. So to me also. But I would rather get into intimacy with an iceberg than freight the ship with bears."
He smiled an end to the colloquy. As I went below, Captain Handy, the Arctic whaler, met me with,—
"I would as lief as not spend a week on that berg! I have made fast to such, and lain for days. All dependson the character of the berg. If it's rotting, look out! If it's sound as that one, you may go to sleep on it."
I hastened up to proclaim my new ally. "You heed experience; hear Captain Handy." And I launched his bolt at the head of Censure, and saw it duck, if no more.
We saw after this, going and returning, many bergs, hundreds in all. With one of the finest, a little more broken and varied than those previously described, we came up at a little past noon, and the schooner stood off and on while Bradford went in the boat to sketch it in color,—Captain Handy's steady and skilful hand upon the sculling-oar. Bradford worked at it like a beaver all the afternoon, and then directed the schooner to lie to through the night, that he might resume his task in the morning,—coveting especially the effects of early light The ardent man was off before three o'clock. Nature was kind to him; he sketched the berg under a dawn of amber and scarlet, followed by floods on floods of morning gold; and returned to breakfast, after five hours' work, half in rapture and half in despair. The colors, above all, the purples, were inconceivable, he said, and there was no use trying to render them. I reminded him of Ruskin's brave words:—"He that is not appalled by his tasks will do nothing great." But his was an April despair, after all, with rifted clouds and spring sunshine pouring through.
Another memorable one was seen outside while we were in harbor, storm-bound. A vast arch went through the very heart of it, while each end rose to a pinnacle,—the arch blue, blue! We were going out to it; but, during the second night of storm, its strength broke, and beneath blinding snow there remained only a mad dance of waves over the wreck of its majesty.
There was another, curiously striped with diagonal dirt-bands, whose fellowship, however, the greens and purples did not disdain.
Another had the shape of three immense towers, seeming tostand on the water, more than a hundred feet of sea rolling between. The tallest tower could not be much less than two hundred feet in height; the others slightly, just perceptibly, lower. This was seen in rain, and the purples here were more crystalline and shining than any others which I observed.
These towers were seen on our last day among the bergs. In my memory they are monumental. They stand there, a purple trinity, to commemorate the terrors and glories that I shall behold no more.
"Tie stille, barn min!Imorgen kommer Fin,Fa'er din,Og gi'er dig Esbern Snares öine og hjerte at lege med!"Zealand Rhyme.
"Tie stille, barn min!Imorgen kommer Fin,Fa'er din,Og gi'er dig Esbern Snares öine og hjerte at lege med!"
Zealand Rhyme.
"Build at Kallundborg by the seaA church as stately as church may be,And there shalt thou wed my daughter fair,"Said the Lord of Nesvek to Esbern Snare.And the Baron laughed. But Esbern said,"Though I lose my soul, I will Helva wed!"And off he strode, in his pride of will,To the Troll who dwelt in Ulshoi hill."Build, O Troll, a church for meAt Kallundborg by the mighty sea;Build it stately, and build it fair,Build it quickly," said Esbern Snare.But the sly Dwarf said, "No work is wroughtBy Trolls of the Hills, O man, for nought.What wilt thou give for thy church so fair?""Set thy own price," quoth Esbern Snare."When Kallundborg church is builded well,Thou must the name of its builder tell,Or thy heart and thy eyes must be my boon.""Build," said Esbern, "and build it soon."By night and by day the Troll wrought on;He hewed the timbers, he piled the stone;But day by day, as the walls rose fair,Darker and sadder grew Esbern Snare.He listened by night, he watched by day,He sought and thought, but he dared not pray;In vain he called on the Elle-maids shy,And the Neck and the Nis gave no reply.Of his evil bargain far and wideA rumor ran through the country-side;And Helva of Nesvek, young and fair,Prayed for the soul of Esbern Snare.And now the church was wellnigh done;One pillar it lacked, and one alone;And the grim Troll muttered, "Fool thou art!To-morrow gives me thy eyes and heart!"By Kallundborg in black despair,Through wood and meadow, walked Esbern Snare,Till, worn and weary, the strong man sankUnder the birches on Ulshoi bank.At his last day's work he heard the TrollHammer and delve in the quarry's hole;Before him the church stood large and fair:"I have builded my tomb," said Esbern Snare.And he closed his eyes the sight to hide,When he heard a light step at his side:"O Esbern Snare!" a sweet voice said,"Would I might die now in thy stead!"With a grasp by love and by fear made strong,He held her fast, and he held her long;With the beating heart of a bird afeard,She hid her face in his flame-red beard."O love!" he cried, "let me look to-dayIn thine eyes ere mine are plucked away;Let me hold thee close, let me feel thy heartEre mine by the Troll is torn apart!"I sinned, O Helva, for love of thee!Pray that the Lord Christ pardon me!"But fast as she prayed, and faster still,Hammered the Troll in Ulshoi hill.He knew, as he wrought, that a loving heartWas somehow baffling his evil art;For more than spell of Elf or TrollIs a maiden's prayer for her lover's soul.And Esbern listened, and caught the soundOf a Troll-wife singing underground:"To-morrow comes Fine, father thine:Lie still and hush thee, baby mine!"Lie still, my darling! next sunriseThou'lt play with Esbern Snare's heart and eyes!""Ho! ho!" quoth Esbern, "is that your game?Thanks to the Troll-wife, I know his name!"The Troll he heard him, and hurried onTo Kallundborg church with the lacking stone."Too late, Gaffer Fine!" cried Esbern Snare;And Troll and pillar vanished in air!That night the harvesters heard the soundOf a woman sobbing underground,And the voice of the Hill-Troll loud with blameOf the careless singer who told his name.Of the Troll of the Church they sing the runeBy the Northern Sea in the harvest moon;And the fishers of Zealand hear him stillScolding his wife in Ulshoi hill.And seaward over its groves of birchStill looks the tower of Kallundborg church,Where, first at its altar, a wedded pair,Stood Helva of Nesvek and Esbern Snare!
"Build at Kallundborg by the seaA church as stately as church may be,And there shalt thou wed my daughter fair,"Said the Lord of Nesvek to Esbern Snare.
And the Baron laughed. But Esbern said,"Though I lose my soul, I will Helva wed!"And off he strode, in his pride of will,To the Troll who dwelt in Ulshoi hill.
"Build, O Troll, a church for meAt Kallundborg by the mighty sea;Build it stately, and build it fair,Build it quickly," said Esbern Snare.
But the sly Dwarf said, "No work is wroughtBy Trolls of the Hills, O man, for nought.What wilt thou give for thy church so fair?""Set thy own price," quoth Esbern Snare.
"When Kallundborg church is builded well,Thou must the name of its builder tell,Or thy heart and thy eyes must be my boon.""Build," said Esbern, "and build it soon."
By night and by day the Troll wrought on;He hewed the timbers, he piled the stone;But day by day, as the walls rose fair,Darker and sadder grew Esbern Snare.
He listened by night, he watched by day,He sought and thought, but he dared not pray;In vain he called on the Elle-maids shy,And the Neck and the Nis gave no reply.
Of his evil bargain far and wideA rumor ran through the country-side;And Helva of Nesvek, young and fair,Prayed for the soul of Esbern Snare.
And now the church was wellnigh done;One pillar it lacked, and one alone;And the grim Troll muttered, "Fool thou art!To-morrow gives me thy eyes and heart!"
By Kallundborg in black despair,Through wood and meadow, walked Esbern Snare,Till, worn and weary, the strong man sankUnder the birches on Ulshoi bank.
At his last day's work he heard the TrollHammer and delve in the quarry's hole;Before him the church stood large and fair:"I have builded my tomb," said Esbern Snare.
And he closed his eyes the sight to hide,When he heard a light step at his side:"O Esbern Snare!" a sweet voice said,"Would I might die now in thy stead!"
With a grasp by love and by fear made strong,He held her fast, and he held her long;With the beating heart of a bird afeard,She hid her face in his flame-red beard.
"O love!" he cried, "let me look to-dayIn thine eyes ere mine are plucked away;Let me hold thee close, let me feel thy heartEre mine by the Troll is torn apart!
"I sinned, O Helva, for love of thee!Pray that the Lord Christ pardon me!"But fast as she prayed, and faster still,Hammered the Troll in Ulshoi hill.
He knew, as he wrought, that a loving heartWas somehow baffling his evil art;For more than spell of Elf or TrollIs a maiden's prayer for her lover's soul.
And Esbern listened, and caught the soundOf a Troll-wife singing underground:"To-morrow comes Fine, father thine:Lie still and hush thee, baby mine!
"Lie still, my darling! next sunriseThou'lt play with Esbern Snare's heart and eyes!""Ho! ho!" quoth Esbern, "is that your game?Thanks to the Troll-wife, I know his name!"
The Troll he heard him, and hurried onTo Kallundborg church with the lacking stone."Too late, Gaffer Fine!" cried Esbern Snare;And Troll and pillar vanished in air!
That night the harvesters heard the soundOf a woman sobbing underground,And the voice of the Hill-Troll loud with blameOf the careless singer who told his name.
Of the Troll of the Church they sing the runeBy the Northern Sea in the harvest moon;And the fishers of Zealand hear him stillScolding his wife in Ulshoi hill.
And seaward over its groves of birchStill looks the tower of Kallundborg church,Where, first at its altar, a wedded pair,Stood Helva of Nesvek and Esbern Snare!
And first, let it be on record that his name isGeorge Cruikshank, and notCruickshank. The good old man is seventy years of age, if not more, (the earliest drawing I have seen of his bears the date of 1799, and he could scarcely have begun to limn in his long-clothes,) yet, with a persistence of perversity wellnigh astonishing,—although his name has been before the public for considerably more than half a century,—although he has published nothing anonymously, but has appended his familiar signature in full to the minutest scratchings of his etching-needle,—although he has been the conductor of two magazines, and of late years has been one of the foremost agitators and platform-orators in the English temperance movement,—the vast majority of his countrymen have always spelt his surname "Cruickshank," and will continue so to spell it, I suppose, even should he live as long as Cornaro. I hope he may, I am sure, with or without the additionalcfor his age and his country can ill spare him.
But George Cruikshank in Mexico! What on earth can the most stay-at-home of British artists have to do with that out-of-the-way old curiosity-shop of the American continent? One might fancy him now—but that it is growing late—in the United States. He might be invited to attend a Total Abstinence Convention. He might run Mr. J.B. Gough hard on his favorite stump. He might be tempted, perchance, to cross the ocean in the evening of his days, to note down, with his inimitable and still unfaltering pencil, some of the humors of Yankee-land. I am certain, that, were George Cruikshank or Dicky Doyle to come this way and give a pictorial history of a tour through the States, somewhat after the immortal Brown, Jones, and Robinson pattern, the Americans would be in a better temper with their brothers in Old England than after reading some long spun-out book of travels by brainless Cockneys or cynical dyspeptics. The laugh awakened by a droll picture hurts nobody. It is that ugly letter-press which smarts and rankles, and festers at last into a gangrene of hatred. The Patriarch of Uz wished that his enemy had written a book. He could have added ten thousand fold to the venom of the aspiration, had he likewise expressed a wish that the book had been printed.
You will be pleased to understand, then, that the name of the gentleman who serves as text for this essay is Cruikshank, and not Cruickshank. There is an old Scottish family, I believe, of that ilk, which spells its name with acbefore thek. Perhaps the admirers of our George wished to give something like an aristocratic smack to his patronymic, and so interpolated the objectionable consonant. There is no Cruikshank to be found in the "Court Guide," but Cruickshanks abound. As for our artist, he is a burgess among burgesses,—a man of the peoplepar excellence, and an Englishman above all. His travels have been of the most limited nature. Once, in the course of his long life, and with what intent you shall presently hear, he went to France, as Hogarth did; but France didn't please him, and he came home again, like Hogarth, with all convenient speed,—fortunately, without being clapped up in jail for sketching the gates of Calais. I believe that he has not crossed the Straits of Dover since George IV. was king. I have heard, on good authority, that he protested strongly, while in foreign parts, against the manner in which the French ate new-laid eggs, and against the custom, then common among the peasantry, of wearing wooden shoes. I am afraid even, that, were George hard pressed, he would own to a dim persuasion thatallFrenchmen wear wooden shoes; also pigtails; likewise cocked hats. He does not say so in society; but those who have his privateear assert that his faith or his delusion goes even farther than this, and that he believes that all Frenchmen eat frogs,—that nine tenths of the population earn their living as dancing-masters, and that the late Napoleon Buonaparte (George Cruikshank always spells the Corsican Ogre's name with au) was first cousin to Apollyon, and was not, upon occasion, averse to the consumption of human flesh,—-babies of British extraction preferred. Can you show me an oak that ever took so strong a root as prejudice?
Not that George Cruikshank belongs in any way to the species known as "Fossil Tories." He is rather a fossil Liberal. He was a Whig Radical, and more, when the slightest suspicion of Radicalism exposed an Englishman to contumely, to obloquy, to poverty, to fines, to stripes, to gyves, and to the jail. He was quite as advanced a politician as William Cobbett, and a great deal honester as a man. He was the fast friend of William Hone, who, for his famous "Political Catechism,"—a lampoon on the borough-mongers and their bloated king,—was tried three times on three successive days, before the cruel Ellenborough, but as many times acquitted. George Cruikshank inveighed ardently, earnestly, and at last successfully, with pencil and with etching-point, against the atrocious blood-thirstiness of the penal laws,—the laws that strung up from six to a dozen unfortunates on a gallows in front of Newgate every Monday morning, often for no direr offence than passing a counterfeit one-pound note. When the good old Tories wore top-boots and buckskins, George Cruikshank was conspicuous for a white hat and Hessians,—the distinguishing outward signs of ultra-liberalism. He was, of course, a Parliamentary Reformer in the year '30; and he has been a social reformer, and a most useful one, ever since. Still is there something about this brave old English worthy that approaches the fossil type. His droll dislike to the French—a hearty, good-humored disfavor, differing widely from the polished malevolence of Mr. John Leech, who never missed an opportunity to represent the airy Gaul as something repulsive, degraded, and ungentlemanly—I have already noticed. Then George Cruikshank has never been able to surmount a vague notion that steamboats and steam-engines are, generically speaking, a humbug, and that the old English sailing craft and the old English stage-coach are, after all, the only modes of conveyance worthy the patronage of Britons. Against exaggerated hoop-skirts he has all along set his face, and seldom, if ever, condescends to delineate a lady in crinoline. His beau-ideal of female beauty is comprised in an hour-glass waist, a skirt that fits close to the form, a sandalled shoe, and very long ringlets; whereas tight lacing, narrow skirts, sandalled shoes, and ringlets have been banished from the Englishmodesany time these fifteen years. Those among George's critics, too, who are sticklers for exactitude in the "abstract and brief chronicle of the time" complain that his dandies always wear straps to their tight pantaloons in lieu of pegtops; that their vests are too short and their coat-collars too high; that they wear bell-crowned hats, and carry gold-knobbed canes with long tassels; and that they are dressed, in short, after the fashion of the year one, when Brummell or Pea-Green Haynes commanded theton. It is obvious that the works of an artist who has refused to be indoctrinated with the perpetual changes of a capricious code of dress would never be very popular with the readers of "Punch,"—a periodical which, pictorially, owes its very existence to the readiness and skill displayed by its draughtsmen in shooting folly as it flies and catching the manners living as they rise, and pillorying the madness of the moment. Were George Cruikshank called upon, for instance, to depict a lady fording a puddle on a rainy day, and were he averse (for he is the modestest of artists) to displaying too much of her ankle, he would assuredly make manifest, beneath her upraised skirts, some antediluvian pantalet, bordered by a pre-Adamitefrill. But the keen-eyed Mr. Leech would be guilty of no such anachronism. He would discover that the mysterious garments in question were ofttimes encircled by open-worked embroidery.He would find out that the ladies sometimes wore Knickerbockers.And this is what the ladies like. Exaggerate their follies as much as you please; but woe be to you, if you wrongfully accuse them! You may sneer at, you may censure, you may castigate them for what they really do, but beware of reprehending them for that which they have never done. Even Sir John Falstaff revolted at the imputation of having kissed the keeper's daughter. A sermon against crinoline, be it ever so fulminating, finds ever an attentive and smiling congregation; but venture to preach against coal-scuttle bonnets—until the ladies have really taken to wearing them—and your hearers would pull down the pulpit and hang the preacher.
Thus, although foreigners may express wonder that a designer, who for so many years has been in the front rank of English humorous artists, should never have contributed to the pages of our leading humorous periodical, astonishment may be abated, when the real state of the case, as I have endeavored to put it, is known. George Cruikshank is at once too good for, and not quite up to the mark of "Punch." His best works have always been his etchings on steel and copper; and wonderful examples of chalcographic brilliance and skill those etchings are,—many of them surpassing Callot, and not a few of them (notably the illustrations to Ainsworth's "Tower of London") rivalling Rembrandt. From the nature of these engravings, it would be impossible to print them at a machine-press for a weekly issue of fifty or sixty thousand copies. George has drawn much on wood, and his wondrous wood-cuts—xylographs, if you wish a more pretentious word—to "Three Courses and a Dessert," "The Odd Volume," "The Gentleman in Black," Grimm's "Fairy Tales," "Philosophy in Sport," and "The Table-Book," will be long remembered, and are now highly prized by amateurs; but his minute and delicate pencil-drawings have taxed the energies of the very best engravers of whom England can boast,—of Vizetelly, of Landells, of Jackson, of Thompson, and of Thurston. George Cruikshank would never suffer his drawings on wood to be slashed and chopped about by hasty or incompetent gravers; and although the ateliers of "Punch" are supplied with a first-rate staff of wood-cutters, very great haste and very little care must often be apparent in the weekly pabulum of cuts; nor should such an appearance excite surprise, when the exigencies of a weekly publication are remembered. The "Punch" artists, indeed, draw with a special reference to that which they know their engravers can or cannot do. Mr. Tenniel's cartoons are put on wood precisely as they are meant to be cut, in broad, firm, sweeping lines, and the wood-engraver has only to scoop out the white interstices between the network of lines; whereas Mr. Leech dashed in a bold pen-and-ink-like sketch and trusted to the xylographer, who knew his style well and of old, to produce an engraving,tant bien que mal, but as bold and as dashing as the original. The secession, for reasons theological, from "Punch" of Mr. Richard Doyle, an event which took place some fifteen years since, (how quickly time passes, to be sure!) was very bitterly regretted by his literary and artistic comrades; and the young man who calmly gave up something like a thousand pounds a year for conscience' sake lost nothing, but gained rather in the respect and admiration of society. But the wood-engravers must have held high carousal over the defection of Mr. Doyle. To cut one of his drawings was a crucial experiment. His hand was not sure in its touch; he always drew six lines instead of one; and in the portrait of a lady from his pencil, the agonized engraver had to hunt through a Cretan labyrinth of faces before he found the particular countenance which Mr. Doyle wished to be engraved.
I have strayed away, perhaps unpardonably,from George Cruikshank. To those whose only ludicrous prophet is "Punch" he may be comparatively little known. But in the great world of pictorial art, both in England and on the Continent, he worthily holds an illustrious place. His name is a household word with his countrymen; and whenever a young hopeful displays ever so crude an aptitude for caricaturing his schoolmaster, or giving with slate and pencil the facetious side of his grandmother's cap and spectacles, he is voted by the unanimous suffrage of fireside critics to be a "regular Cruikshank." In this connection I have heard him sometimes called "Crookshanks," which is taking, I apprehend, even a grosser liberty with his name than in the case of the additionalc,—"Crookshanks" having seemingly a reference, and not a complimentary one, to George's legs.
This admirable artist and good man was the son of old Isaac Cruikshank, in his day a famous engraver of lottery-tickets, securities in which the British public are now no longer by law permitted to invest, but which, fifty years since, made as constant a demand on the engraver's art as, in our time and in America, is made by the thousand and one joint-stock banks whose pictorial promises-to-pay fill, or should properly fill, our pocket-books. The abilities of Isaac were not entirely devoted to the lottery; and I have at home, from his hand, a very rare and curious etching of the execution of Louis XVI., with an explanatory diagram beneath of the working of the guillotine. George Cruikshank's earliest pencil-drawings are dated, as I have remarked, before the present century drew breath; but he must have begun to gain reputation as a caricaturist upon copper towards the end of the career of Napoleon I.,—the "Boney" to whom he has adhered with such constant, albeit jocular, animosity. He was the natural successor of James Gillray, the renowned delineator of "Farmer George and Little Nap," and "Pitt and Boney at Dinner," and hundreds of political cartoons, eagerly bought in their day, but now to be found only in old print-shops. Gillray was a man of vast, but misapplied talents. Although he etched caricatures for a livelihood, his drawing was splendid,—wellnigh Michel-Angelesque,—but always careless andoutré. He was continually betting crown-bowls of punch that he would design, etch, and bite in so many plates within a given time, and, with the assistance of a private bowl, he almost always won his bets; but the punch was too much for him in the long run. He went mad and died miserably. George Cruikshank was never his pupil; nor did he ever attain the freedom and mastery of outline which the crazy old reprobate, who made the fortune of Mr. Humphries, the St. James's Street print-seller, undeniably possessed; but his handling was grounded upon Gillray's style; and from early and attentive study of his works he must have acquired that boldness of treatment, that rotundity of light and shade, and that general "fatness," ormorbidezza, of touch, which make the works of Gillray and Cruikshank stand out from the coarse scrawls of Rowlandson, and the bald and meagre scratches of Sir Charles Bunbury. Unless I am much mistaken, one of the first works that brought George into notice was an etching published in 1815, having reference to the exile of the detested Corsican to St. Helena. But it was in 1821 that he first made a decided mark. For William Hone—a man who was in perpetual opposition to the powers that were—he drew on wood a remarkable series of illustrations to the scurrilous, but perhaps not undeserved, satires against King George IV., called, "The Political House that Jack Built," "The Green Bag," "A Slap at Slop," and the like,—all of them having direct and most caustic reference to the scandalous prosecution instituted against a woman of whom it is difficult to say whether she was bad or mad or both, but who was assuredly most miserable,—the unhappy Caroline of Brunswick. George Cruikshank's sketch of the outraged husband, the finest and stoutest gentleman in Europe, being lowered bymeans of a crane into a pair of white kid pantaloons suspended between the posts of his bed, was inimitably droll, and clearly disloyal. But disloyalty was fashionable in the year '21.
For twenty years afterwards the history of the artist's career is but the history of his works, of his innumerable illustrations to books, and the sketchbooks, comic panoramas, and humorous cartoons he published on his own account. Besides, I am not writing a life of George Cruikshank, and all this time I have been keeping him on the threshold of the city of Mexico. Let it suffice to say, briefly, that in 1841 came a stand-point in his life, through the establishment of a monthly magazine entitled "George Cruikshank's Omnibus." Of this he was the sole illustrator. The literary editor was Laman Blanchard; and in the "Omnibus," William Makepeace Thackeray, then a gaunt young man, not much over thirty, and quite unknown to fame,—although he had published "Yellowplush" in "Fraser,"—wrote his quaint and touching ballad of "The King of Brentford's Testament." The "Omnibus" did not run long, nor was its running very prosperous. George Cruikshank seemed for a while wearied with the calling of a caricaturist; and the large etchings on steel, with which between '40 and '45 he illustrated Ainsworth's gory romances, indicated a power of grouping, a knowledge of composition, a familiarity with mediæval costume, and a command over chiaroscuro, which astonished and delighted those who had been accustomed to regard him only as a funny fellow,—one of infinite whim, to be sure, but still a jester of jests, and nothing more. Unfortunately, or fortunately, as the case might be,—for the rumor ran that George intended to abandon caricaturing altogether, and to set up in earnest as an historical painter,—there came from beyond the sea, to assist in illustrating "Windsor Castle," a Frenchman named Tony Johannot. Who but he, in fact, was the famous master of the grotesque who illustrated "Don Quixote" and the "Diable Boiteux" of Le Sage? To his dismay, George Cruikshank found a competitor as eccentric as himself, as skilful a manipulatorrem acu, the etching-point, and who drew incomparably better than he, George Cruikshank, did. He gave up the mediæval in disgust; but he must have hugged himself with the thought that he had already illustrated Charles Dickens's "Oliver Twist," and that the Frenchman, powerful as he was, could never hope to come near him in that terrific etching of "Fagin in the Condemned Cell."
Again nearly twenty years have passed, and George Cruikshank still waves his Ithuriel's spear of well-ground steel, and still dabbles in aquafortis. An old, old man, he is still strong and hale. If you ask him a reason for his thus rivalling Fontenelle in his patriarchal greenness, for his being able at threescore and ten to paint pictures, (witness that colossal oil-painting of the "Triumph of Bacchus,") to make speeches, and to march at the head of his company as a captain of volunteers, he will give you at once the why and because. He is the most zealous, the most conscientious, and the most invulnerable of total abstainers. There were days when he took tobacco: witness that portrait of himself, smoking a very long meerschaum pipe in "Love's Triumph," etched about 1845. There were times when he heard the chimes at midnight, and partook of that "richt gude willie waucht" which tipsy Scotchmen, when they have formed in a ring, standing upon chairs, each with one foot on the table, hiccoughingly declare that we are bound to take for the sake of "auld lang syne." But George Cruikshank has done with willie wauchts as with bird's-eye and Killikinick. For many years he has neither drunk nor smoked. He is more than a confessor, he is an apostle of temperance. His strange, wild, grand performances, "The Bottle" and "The Drunkard's Children,"—the first quite Hogarthian in its force and pungency,—fell like thunderbolts among the gin-shops. I am afraid that George Cruikshank would not be a very welcomeguest at Felix Booth's distillery, or at Barclay and Perkins's brewery. For, it must be granted, the sage is a little intolerant. "No peace with the Fiery Moloch!" "Écrasons l'infâme!" These are his mottoes. He would deprive the poor man of the scantiest drop of beer. You begin with a sip of "the right stuff," he teaches us in "The Bottle," and you end by swigging a gallon of vitriol, jumping on your wife, and dying in Bedlam ofdelirium tremens. I have not heard his opinions concerning cider, or root-beer, or effervescing sarsaparilla, or ginger-pop; but I imagine that each and every one of those reputed harmless beverages would enter into hisIndex Expurgatorius. "Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop [of alcohol] to drink." 'Tis thus he would quote Coleridge. He is as furious against tobacco as ever was King James in his "Counterblast." He is of the mind of the old divine, that "he who plays with the Devil's rattles will soon learn to draw his sword." In his pious rage against intemperance, and with a view to the instruction of the rising generation, he has even published teetotal versions of "Cinderella" and "Jack the Giant-Killer,"—a proceeding which Charles Dickens indignantly reprobated in an article in "Household Words," called "Frauds upon the Fairies." Nearly the last time I met George Cruikshank in London was at a dinner given in honor of Washington's birthday. He had just been gazetted captain of his rifle company, and was good enough to ask me if I knew any genteel young men, of strictly temperance principles, who would like commissions in his corps. I replied, that, so far as principles were concerned, I could recommend him five hundred postulants; but that, as regarded practice, most of the young men of my acquaintance, who had manifested an ambition for a military career, drank hard.
The which, oddly enough, leads me at last to Mexico.—We had had, on the whole, rather a hard morning of it. The Don, who was my host in thesiempre leal y insigne ciudad de Méjico,—and a most munificent and hospitable Don he was,—took me out one day in the month of March last to visit ahaciendaor farm which he possessed, called, if I remember aright, La Escalera. I repeat, we had a hard morning of it. We rose at six,—and in mountainous Mexico the ground at early morn, even during summer, is often covered with a frosty rime. I looked out of the window, and when I saw the leaves of the trees glistening with something which wasnotdew, and Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl mantled with eternal snows in the distance, I shivered. A cup of chocolate, atortillaor thin griddle-cake of Indian meal, and a paper cigar, just to break your fast, and then to horse. To horse! Do you know what it is, being a poor horseman, to bestride a full-blood, full-bred white Arab, worth ever so many hundredpesos de oro, and, with his flowing mane and tail, and small, womanly, vixenish head, beautiful to look upon, but which in temper, like many other beauteous creatures I have known, is an incarnate fiend? The Arab they gave me had been the property of a French general. I vehemently suspect that he had been dismissed from the Imperial army for biting achef d'escadronthrough one of his jackboots, or kicking in three of the ribs of amaréchal des logis. That was hard enough, to begin with. Then the streets of Mexico are execrably paved, and the roads leading out of the city are full of what in Ireland are termed "curiosities," to wit, holes; and my Arab had a habit, whenever he met an equine brother, and especially an equine sister, on the way, of screaming like a possessed Pythoness, and then of essaying to stand on his hind legs. However, with a Mexican saddle,—out of which you can scarcely fall, even though you had a mind to it,—and Mexican stirrups, and a pair of spurs nearly as big as Catharine-wheels, the Arab and I managed to reach the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe, five miles out, and thence, over tolerably good roads, another five miles, to the Escalera. I wish they would make Mexican saddles of somethingelse besides wood very thinly covered with leather. How devoutly did I long for the well-stuffed pig-skin of Hyde Park! We had an hour or two more hard work riding about the fields, when we reached the farm, watching the process of extractingpulquefrom themagueyor cactus,—and a very nasty process it is,—inspecting the granaries belonging to thehacienda, and dodging between the rows of Indian corn, which grows here to so prodigious a height as to rival the famous grain which is said to grow somewhere down South, and to attain such an altitude that a Comanche perched upon the head of a giraffe is invisible between the rows. About noon we had breakfast, and that was the hardest work of all.Item, we had mutton-chops, beefsteaks, veal cutlets, omelets, rice, hominy, fried tomatoes, and an infinity of Mexican hashes and stews seasoned withchilesor red-pepper pods.Item, we had a hugepavo, a turkey,—a wild turkey; and then, for the first time, did I understand that the bird we Englishmen consume only at Christmas, and then declare to be tough and flavorless, is to be eaten to perfection only in the central regions of the American continent. The flesh of thispavowas like softened ivory, and his fat like unto clotted cream. There were some pretty little tiny kickshaws in the way of pine-apples, musk-melons, bananas, papaws, and custard-apples, and many other tropical fruits whose names I have forgotten. I think, too, that we had some stewediguanaor lizard; but I remember, that, after inflicting exemplary punishment on a bowl of sour cream, we wound up by an attack on analbacor, a young kid roasted whole, or rather baked in a lump of clay with wood-ashes heaped over him, and brought to table on a tea-tray! Shade of Gargantua, how we ate! I blessed that fiery Arab for giving me such an appetite. There was a good deal of smoking going on at odd times during breakfast; but nobody ventured beyond acigarroof paper and fine-cut before we attacked thealbacor. When coffee was served, each man lighted apuro, one of the biggest of Cabaña's Regalias; and serious and solemn puffing then set in. It was a memorable breakfast. TheAdministrador, or steward of the estate, had evidently done his best to entertain his patron the Don with becoming magnificence, nor were potables as dainty as the edibles wanting to furnish forth the feast. There waspulquefor those who chose to drink it. I never could stomach that fermented milk of human unkindness, which combines the odor of a dairy that has been turned into a grogshop with the flavor of rotten eggs. There was wine of Burgundy and wine of Bordeaux; there was Champagne: these three from the Don's cellar in Mexico, and the last cooled, not with vulgar ice, but with snow from the summit of Popocatepetl,—snow that had been there from the days of Montezuma and Guatimozin; while aschasseandpousseto the exquisitely flavored Mexican coffee, grown, ground, and roasted on thehacienda, we had some very ripe old French Cognac, (1804, I think, was the brand,) and some Peruvianpisco, a strong white cordial, somewhat resemblingkirsch-wasser, and exceeding toothsome. We talked and laughed till we grew sleepy, (the edibles and potables had of course nothing to do with our somnolence,) and then, the farm-house of thehaciendahaving seemingly as many rooms as the Vatican, each man hied him to a cool chamber, where he found a trundle-bed, or a hammock, or a sofa, and gravely laid himself out for an hour'ssiesta. Then the Administrador woke us all up, and gleefully presented us with an enormous bowl of sangaree, made of the remains of the Bordeaux and the brandy and the pisco, and plenty of ice,—ice this time,—and sugar, and limes, and slices of pineapple, Madam,—the which he had concocted during our slumber. We drained this,—one gets so thirsty after breakfast in Mexico,—and then to horse again for a twelve miles' ride back to the city. I omitted to mention two or three little circumstances which gave a zest and piquancy to the entertainment.When we arrived at thehacienda, although servitors were in plenty, each cavalier unsaddled and fed his own steed; and when we addressed ourselves to oursiesta, every one who didn't find a double-barrelled gun at the head of his bed took care to place a loaded revolver under his pillow. For accidents will happen in the best-regulated families; and in Mexico you can never tell at what precise moment Cacus may be upon you.
Riding back to thesiempre leal y insigne ciudadat about three o'clock in the afternoon, when the sun was at its hottest, was no joke. Baking is not precisely the word, nor boiling, nay, nor frying; something which is a compound of all these might express the sensation I, for one, felt. Fortunately, the Don had insisted on my assuming the orthodox Mexican riding-costume: cool linen drawers, cut Turkish fashion; over these, and with just sufficient buttons in their respective holes to swear by, the leathernchaparerosor overalls; morocco slippers, to which were strapped the Catharine-wheel spurs; no vest; no neckerchief; a round jacket, with quarter doubloons for buttons; and a low-crowned felt hat, with an enormous brim, a brim which might have made a Quaker envious, and have stricken mortification to the soul of a Chinese mandarin. This brim kept the sun out of your eyes; and then, by way of hatband, there was a narrow, but thick turban or "pudding," which prevented the rays of Sol from piercing through your skull, and boiling your brains into batter. The fact of the whole of this costume, and the accoutrements of your horse to boot, being embroidered with silver and embellished with golden bosses, thus affording a thousand tangents for Phœbus to fly off from, rather detracted from the coolness of your array; but one must not expect perfection here below. In a stove-pipe hat, a shooting-coat, and riding-cords, I should have suffered much more from the heat. As it was, I confess, that, when I reached home, in the Calle San Francisco, Mexico, I was exceedingly thankful. I am not used to riding twenty-four miles in one day. I think I had a warm bath in the interval between doffing thechaparerosand donning the pantaloons of every-day life. I think I went to sleep on a sofa for about an hour, and, waking up, called for a cocktail as a restorative. Yes, Madam, there are cocktails in Mexico, and our Don's body-servant made them most scientifically. I think also that I declined, with thanks, the Don's customary invitation to a drive before dinner in the Paseo. Nor barouche, nor mail-phaëton, nay, nor soft-cushioned brougham delighted me. I felt very lazy and thoroughly knocked up.
The Don, however, went out for his drive, smiling at my woful plight. Is it only after hard riding that remorse succeeds enjoyment? I was left alone in his great caravansary of a mansion. I wandered from room to room, from corridor to corridor,—now glancing through the window-jalousies, and peeping at thechinasin theirribosos, and the shovel-hatted priests in the street below creeping along on the shady side of the way,—now hanging over the gallery in the inner court-yard, listening to the horses stamping in their stables or rattling their tethers against the mangers, listening now to the English grooms as they whistled the familiar airs of home while they rubbed their charges down, and now to the sleepy, plaintive drone of the Indian servants loitering over their work in the kitchens. Then I wandered back again,—from drawing-room to dining-room, from bedchamber to boudoir. And at last I found that I had crossed a bridge over another court-yard, and gotten into another house, abutting on another street. The Don was still lord here, and I was free to ramble. More drawing-rooms, more bedchambers, more boudoirs, a chapel, and at last a library. Libraries are not plentiful in Mexico. Here, on many shelves, was a goodly store of standard literature in many languages. Here was Prescott's History of the Conquest, translated into choice Castilian, and Señor Ramirez his comments thereupon. Here was Don Lucas Alamanhis History of Mexico, and works by Jesuit fathers innumerable. How ever did they get printed? Who ever bought, who ever read, those cloudy tomes in dog Latin? Here was Lord Kingsborough's vast work on Mexican Antiquities,—the work his Lordship is reported to have ruined himself in producing; and Macaulay, and Dickens, and Washington Irving, and the British Essayists, and the Waverley Novels, and Shakspeare, and Soyer's Cookery, and one little book of mine own writing: a very well-chosen library indeed.
What have we here? A fat, comely, gilt-lettered volume, bound in red morocco, and that might, externally, have passed for my grandmother's edition of Dr. Doddridge's Sermons. As I live, 't is a work illustrated by George Cruikshank,—a work hitherto unknown to me, albeit I fancied myself rich, even to millionnairism, in Cruikshankiana. It is a rare book, a precious book, a book that is not in the British Museum, a book for which collectors would gladly give more doubloons than I lost atmontelast night; for here the most moral people playmonte. It isun costumbre del pais,—a custom of the country; and, woe is me! I lost a pile 'twixt midnight and cock-crow.
"Life in Paris; or the Rambles, Sprees, and Amours of Dick Wildfire, Squire Jenkins, and Captain O'Shuffleton, with the Whimsical Adventures of the Halibut Family, and Other Eccentric Characters in the French Metropolis. Embellished with Twenty-One Comic Vignettes and Twenty-One Colored Engravings of Scenes from Real Life, by George Cruikshank. London: Printed for John Cumberland. 1828." This "Life in Paris" was known to me by dim literary repute; but I had never seen, the actual volume before. Its publication was a disastrous failure. Emboldened by the prodigious success of "Life in London,"—the adventures in the Great Metropolis of Corinthian Tom and Jerry—Somebody—and Bob Logic, Esquire, written by Pierce Egan, once a notorious chronicler of the prize-ring, the compiler of a Slang Dictionary, and whose proficiency inargotand flash-patter was honored by poetic celebration from Byron, Moore, and Christopher North, but whom I remember, when I was first climbing into public life, a decrepit, broken-down old man,—Mr. John Cumberland, of Ludgate Hill, (the publisher, by the way, of that series of the "Acting Drama" to which, over the initials of D—G, and the figure of a hand pointing, some of the most remarkable dramatic criticisms in the English language are appended,) thought, not unreasonably, that "Life in Paris" might attain a vogue as extensive as that achieved by "Life in London." I don't know who wrote the French "Life." Pierce Egan could scarcely have been the author; for he was then at the height of a vicious and ephemeral popularity; and any book, however trashy, with his name to it, would have been sure to sell. This "Life in Paris" was very probably the work of some obscure hack, who, when he was describing the "eccentric characters in the French metropolis," may not impossibly have been vegetating in the Rules of the King's Bench Prison. But crafty Mr. Cumberland, to insure the success of his enterprise, secured the services of George Cruikshank as illustrator. George had a brother Robert, who had caught something of his touch and manner, but nothing of his humorous genius, and who assisted him in illustrating "Life in London"; but "Life in Paris" was to be all his own; and he undertook a journey to France in order to study Gallic life and make sketches. The results were now before me in twenty-one small vignettes on wood, (of not much account,) and of as many large aquatint engravings, (George can aquatint as well as etch,) crowded with figures, and displaying the unmistakable and inimitable Cruikshankianvimand point. There is Dick Wildfire being attired, with the aid of thefriseurand the tailor, and under the sneering inspection of Sam Sharp, his Yorkshire valet, according to the latest Parisian fashions. Next we have Dick andCaptain O'Shuffleton (an Irish adventurer) "promenading in the Gardens of the Tuileries"; next, "real life" in the galleries of the Palais Royal; next, Dick, the Captain, Lady Halibut, and Lydia "enjoying a lounge on the Italian Boulevard." To these succeed a representation of a dinner at Véry's; Dick and his companions "smashing the glim on a spree by lamplight"; Dick and the Captain "paying their respects to the FairLimonadièreat the Café des Mille Colonnes"; Dick introduced by the Captain to aRouge et Noirtable; the same and his valet "showing fight in a Caveau"; "Life behind the Curtain of the Grand Opera, or Dick and the Squire larking with theFigurantes"; Dick and the Squire "enjoying the sport at the Combat of Animals, or Duck Lane of Paris"; Dick and Jenkins "in a Theatrical Pandemonium, or the Café de la Paix in all its glory"; "Life among the Dead, or the Halibut Family in the Catacombs"; "Life among the Connoisseurs," or Dick and his friends "in the Grand Gallery of the Louvre"; "a Frolic in theCafé d'Enfer, or Infernal Cellar"; "Life on Tiptoe, or Dick quadrilling it in the Salons de Mars in the Champs Élysées"; the "Entréeto the Italian Opera"; the "Morning of the Fête of St. Louis"; the "Evening of the same, with Dick, Jenkins, and the Halibuts witnessing theCanaillein all their glory"; and, finally, "Life in a Billiard-Room, or Dick and the Squireau faitto the Parisian Sharpers."