II

CORN HUSKING.CORN HUSKING.

CORN HUSKING.

Such scenes as these give a touch of bright, gay color to the dull homespun texture of the social fabric of the times. Indeed, when all the pleasures have been enumerated, they seem a good many. But the effect of such an enumeration is misleading. Life remained tense, sad, barren; character moulded itself on a model of Spartan simplicity and hardihood, without the Spartan treachery and cunning.

But from the opening of the nineteenth century things grew easier. The people, rescued from the necessity of trying to be safe, began to indulge the luxury of wishing to be happy. Life ceased to be a warfare, and became an industry; the hand left off defending, and commenced acquiring; the moulding of bullets was succeeded by the coining of dollars.

MILITIA MUSTER.MILITIA MUSTER.

MILITIA MUSTER.

It is against the background of such a strenuous past that we find the Kentucky fair first projected by the practical and progressive spirit that ruled[135]among the Kentuckians in the year 1816. Nothing could have been conceived with soberer purpose, or worn less the aspect of a great popular pleasure. Picture the scene! A distinguished soldier and honored gentleman, with a taste for agriculture and fine cattle, has announced that on a certain day in July he will hold on his farm a "Grand Cattle Show and Fair, free for everybody." The place is near Lexington, which was then the centre of commerce and seat of learning in the[136]West. The meagre newspapers of the time have carried the tidings to every tavern and country cross-roads. It is a novel undertaking; the like has never been known this side of the Alleghanies. The summer morning come, you may see a very remarkable company of gentlemen: old pioneers, Revolutionary soldiers, volunteers of the War of 1812, walking in picturesque twos and threes out of the little town to the green woods where the fair is to be held; others jogging thitherward along the bypaths and newly-opened roads through the forest, clad in homespun from heel to head, and mindful of the cold lunches and whiskey-bottles in their coat-pockets or saddle-bags; some, perhaps, drawn thither in wagons and aristocratic gigs. Once arrived, all stepping around loftily on the velvet grass, peering curiously into each other's eyes, and offering their snuffboxes for a sneeze of convivial astonishment that they could venture to meet under the clear sky for such an undertaking. The five judges of the fair, coming from as many different counties, the greatest personages of their day—one, a brilliant judge of the Federal Court; the second, one of the earliest settlers, with a sword hanging up at home to show how Virginia appreciated his services in the Revolution; the third, a soldier and blameless gentleman of the old school; the fourth, one of the few early Kentuckians who brought into the new society the noble style of country-place, with park and deer,[137]that would have done credit to an English lord; and the fifth, in no respect inferior to the others. These "perform the duties assigned them with assiduity," and hand over to their neighbors as many as fifteen or twenty premium silver cups, costing twelve dollars apiece. After which, the assemblage variously disperses—part through the woods again, while part return to town.

Such, then, was the first Kentucky fair. It was a transplantation to Kentucky, not of the English or European fair, but of the English cattle-show. It resembled the fair only in being a place for buying and selling. And it was not thought of in the light of a merry-making or great popular amusement. It seems not even to have taken account of manufactures—then so important an industry—or of agriculture.

Like the first was the second fair held in the same place the year following. Of this, little is and little need be known, save that then was formed the first State Agricultural Society of Kentucky, which also was the first in the West, and the second in the United States. This society held two or three annual meetings, and then went to pieces, but not before laying down the broad lines on which the fair continued to be held for the next quarter of a century. That is, the fair began as a cattle-show, though stock of other kinds was exhibited. Then it was extended to embrace agriculture; and with[138]branches of good husbandry it embraced as well those of good housewifery. Thus at the early fairs one finds the farmers contesting for premiums with their wheats and their whiskeys, while their skilful helpmates displayed the products—the never-surpassed products—of their looms: linens, cassinettes, jeans, and carpetings.

With this brief outline we may pass over the next twenty years. The current of State life during this interval ran turbulent and stormy. Now politics, now finance, imbittered and distressed the people. Time and again, here and there, small societies revived the fair, but all efforts to expand it were unavailing. And yet this period must be distinguished as the one during which the necessity of the fair became widely recognized; for it taught the Kentuckians that their chief interest lay in the soil, and that physical nature imposed upon them the agricultural type of life. Grass was to be their portion and their destiny. It taught them the insulation of their habitat, and the need of looking within their own society for the germs and laws of their development. As soon as the people came to see that they were to be a race of farmers, it is important to note their concern that, as such, they should be hedged with respectability. They took high ground about it; they would not cease to be gentlemen; they would have their class well reputed for fat pastures and comfortable homes, but honored as[139]well for manners and liberal intelligence. And to this end they had recourse to an agricultural literature. Thus, when the fair began to revive, with happier auspices, near the close of the period under consideration, they signalized it for nearly the quarter[140]of a century afterwards by instituting literary contests. Prizes and medals were offered for discoveries and inventions which should be of interest to the Kentucky agriculturist; and hundreds of dollars were appropriated for the victors and the second victors in the writing of essays which should help the farmer to become a scientist and not to forget to remain a gentleman. In addition, they sometimes sat for hours in the open air while some eminent citizen—the Governor, if possible—delivered an address to commemorate the opening of the fair, and to review the progress of agricultural life in the commonwealth. But there were many anti-literarians among them, who conceived a sort of organized hostility to what they aspersed as book-farming, and on that account withheld their cordial support.

PRODUCTS Of THE SOIL.PRODUCTS Of THE SOIL.

PRODUCTS Of THE SOIL.

It was not until about the year 1840 that the fair began to touch-the heart of the whole people. Before this time there had been no amphitheatre, no music, no booths, no side-shows, no ladies. A fair without ladies! How could the people love it, or ever come to look upon it as their greatest annual occasion for love-making?

An interesting commentary on the social decorum[141]of this period is furnished in the fact that for some twenty years after the institution of the fair no woman put her foot upon the ground. She was thought a bold woman, doing a bold deed, who one day took a friend and, under the escort of gentlemen, drove in her own carriage to witness the showing of her own fat cattle; for she was herself one of the most practical and successful of Kentucky farmers. But where one of the sex has been, may not all the sex—may not all the world—safely follow? From the date of this event, and the appearance of women on the grounds, the tide of popular favor set in steadily towards the fair.

For, as an immediate consequence, seats must be provided. Here one happens upon a curious bit of local history—the evolution of the amphitheatre among the Kentuckians. At the earliest fairs the first form of the amphitheatre had been a rope stretched from tree to tree, while the spectators stood around on the outside, or sat on the grass or in their vehicles. The immediate result of the necessity for providing comfortable seats for the now increasing crowd, was to select as a place for holding the fair such a site as the ancient Greeks might have chosen for building a theatre. Sometimes this was the head of a deep ravine, around the sides of which seats were constructed, while the bottom below served as the arena for the exhibition of the stock, which was led in and out through the mouth of the hollow. At[142]other times advantage was taken of a natural sink and semicircular hill-side. The slope was sodded and terraced with rows of seats, and the spectators looked down upon the circular basin at the bottom. But clearly enough the sun played havoc with the complexions of the ladies, and a sudden drenching shower was still one of the uncomfortable dispensations of Providence. Therefore a roofed wooden structure of temporary seats made its appearance, designed after the fashion of those used by the travelling show, and finally out of this form came the closed circular amphitheatre, modelled on the plan of the Colosseum. Thus first among the Kentuckians, if I mistake not, one saw the English cattle-show, which meantime was gathering about itself many characteristics of the English fair, wedded strangely enough to the temple of a Roman holiday. By-and-by we shall see this form of amphitheatre torn down and supplanted by another, which recalls the ancient circus or race-course—a modification corresponding with a change in the character of the later fair.

The most desirable spot for building the old circular amphitheatre was some beautiful tract of level ground containing from five to twenty acres, and situated near a flourishing town and its ramifying turnpikes. This tract must be enclosed by a high wooden paling, with here and there entrance gates for stock and pedestrians and vehicles, guarded by[143][144][145]gate-keepers. And within this enclosure appeared in quick succession all the varied accessories that went to make up a typical Kentucky fair near the close of the old social regime; that is, before the outbreak of the Civil War.

CATTLE AT LEXINGTON FAIR.CATTLE AT LEXINGTON FAIR.

CATTLE AT LEXINGTON FAIR.

Here were found the hundreds of neat stalls for the different kinds of stock; the gay booths under the colonnade of the amphitheatre for refreshments; the spacious cottages for women and invalids and children; the platforms of the quack-doctors; the floral hall and the pagoda-like structure for the musicians and the judges; the tables and seats for private dining; the high swings and the turnabouts; the tests of the strength of limb and lung; the gaudy awnings for the lemonade venders; the huge brown hogsheads for iced-water, with bright tin cups dangling from the rim; the circus; and, finally, all those tented spectacles of the marvellous, the mysterious, and the monstrous which were to draw popular attention to the Kentucky fair, as they had been the particular delight of the fair-going thousands in England hundreds of years before.

For you will remember that the Kentucky fair has ceased by this time to be a cattle-show. It has ceased to be simply a place for the annual competitive exhibition of stock of all kinds, which, by-the-way, is beginning to make the country famous. It has ceased to be even the harvest-home of the Bluegrass Region, the mild autumnal saturnalia of its[146]rural population. Whatever the people can discover or invent is indeed here; or whatever they own, or can produce from the bountiful earth, or take from orchard or flower-garden, or make in dairy, kitchen, or loom-room. But the fair is more than all this now. It has become the great yearly pleasure-ground of the people assembled for a week's festivities. It is what the European fair of old was—the season of the happiest and most general intercourse between country and town. Here the characteristic virtues and vices of the local civilization will be found in open flower side by side, and types and manners painted to the eye in vividest colorings.

Crowded picture of a time gone by! Bright glancing pageantry of life, moving on with feasting and music and love-making to the very edge of the awful precipice, over which its social system and its richly nurtured ideals will be dashed to pieces below!—why not pause an instant over its innocent mirth, and quick, awful tragedies?

The fair has been in progress several days, and this will be the greatest day of all: nothing shown from morning till night but horses—horses in harness, horses under the saddle. Ah! butthatwill be[147][148][149]worth seeing! Late in the afternoon the little boys will ride for premiums on their ponies, and, what is not so pretty, but far more exciting, young men will contest the prize of horsemanship. And then such racking and pacing and loping and walking!—such racing round and round and round to see who can go fastest, and be gracefulest, and turn quickest! Such pirouetting and curveting and prancing and cavorting and riding with arms folded across the breast while the reins lie on the horse's neck, and suddenly bowing over to the horse's mane, as some queen of beauty high up in the amphitheatre, transported by the excitement of the thousands of spectators and the closeness of the contest, throws her flowers and handkerchief down into the arena! Ah, yes! this will be the great day at the fair—at the modern tourney!

HARNESS HORSES.HARNESS HORSES.

HARNESS HORSES.

So the tide of the people is at the flood. For days they have been pouring into the town. The hotels are overflowing with strangers; the open houses of the citizens are full of guests. Strolling companies of players will crack the dusty boards tonight with the tread of buskin and cothurnus. The easy-going tradespeople have trimmed their shops, and imported from the North their richest merchandise.

From an early hour of the morning, along every road that leads from country or town to the amphitheatre, pour the hurrying throng of people, eager to[150]get good seats for the day; for there will be thousands not seated at all. Streaming out, on the side of the town, are pedestrians, hacks, omnibuses, the negro drivers shouting, racing, cracking their whips, and sometimes running into the way-side stands where old negro women are selling apples and gingerbread. Streaming in, on the side of the country, are pedestrians, heated, their coats thrown over the shoulder or the arm; buggies containing often a pair of lovers who do not keep their secret discreetly; family carriages with children made conspicuously tidy and mothers aglow with the recent labors of the kitchen: comfortable evidences of which are the huge baskets or hampers that are piled up in front or strapped on behind. Nay, sometimes may be seen whole wagon-loads of provisions moving slowly in, guarded by portly negresses, whose eyes shine like black diamonds through the setting of their white-dusted eyelashes.

Within the grounds, how rapidly the crowd swells and surges hither and thither, tasting the pleasures of the place before going to the amphitheatre: to the stalls, to the booths, to the swings, to the cottage, to the floral hall, to the living curiosities, to the swinish pundits, who have learned their lessons in numbers and cards. Is not that the same pig that was shown at Bartholomew's four centuries ago? Mixed in with the Kentuckians are people of a different build and complexion. For Kentucky now is one of the[151][152][153]great summering States for the extreme Southerners, who come up with their families to its watering-places. Others who are scattered over the North return in the autumn by way of Kentucky, remaining till the fair and the fall of the first frost. Nay, is not the State the place for the reunion of families that have Southern members? Back to the old home from the rice and sugar and cotton plantations of the swamps and the bayous come young Kentucky wives with Southern husbands, young Kentucky husbands with Southern wives. All these are at the fair—the Lexington fair. Here, too, are strangers from wellnigh every Northern State. And, I beg you, do not overlook the negroes—a solid acre of them. They play unconsciously a great part in the essential history of this scene and festival. Briskly grooming the stock in the stalls; strolling around with carriage whips in their hands; running on distant errands; showering a tumult of blows upon the newly-arrived "boss" with their nimble, ubiquitous brush-brooms; everywhere, everywhere, happy, well-dressed, sleek—the fateful background of all this stage of social history.

THE MODERN TOURNEY.THE MODERN TOURNEY.

THE MODERN TOURNEY.

But the amphitheatre! Through the mild, chastened, soft-toned atmosphere of the early September day the sunlight falls from the unclouded sky upon the seated thousands. Ah, the women in all their silken and satin bravery! delicate blue and pink and canary-colored petticoats, with muslin over-dresses,[154]black lace and white lace mantles, white kid gloves, and boots to match the color of their petticoats. One stands up to allow a lemonade-seller to pass; she wears a hoop-skirt twelve feet in circumference. Here and there costumes suitable for a ball; arms and shoulders glistening like marble in the sunlight; gold chains around the delicate arching necks. Oh, the jewels, the flowers, the fans, the parasols, the ribbons, the soft eyes and smiles, the love and happiness! And some of the complexions!—paint on the cheeks, powder on the neck, stick-pomatum plastering the beautiful hair down over the temples. No matter; it is the fashion. Rub it in! Rub it in well—up to the very roots of the hair and eyebrows! Now, how perfect you are, madam! You are the great Kentucky show of life-size wax-works.

In another part of the amphitheatre nothing but men, red-faced, excited, standing up on the seats, shouting, applauding, as the rival horses rush round the ring before them. It is not difficult to know who these are. The money streams through their fingers. Did you hear the crack of that pistol? How the crowd swarms angrily. Stand back! A man has been shot. He insulted a gentleman. He called him a liar. Be careful. There are a great many pistols on the fair grounds.

In all the United States where else is there to be seen any such holiday assemblage of people—any such expression of the national life impressed with[155]local peculiarities? Where else is there to be seen anything that, while it falls far behind, approaches so near the spirit of uproarious merriment, of reckless fun, which used to intoxicate and madden the English populace when given over to the sports of a ruder age?

THE JUDGE'S STAND—THE FINISH.THE JUDGE'S STAND—THE FINISH.

THE JUDGE'S STAND—THE FINISH.

These are the descendants of the sad pioneers—of those early cavalcades which we glanced at in the primeval forests a few minutes ago. These have subdued the land, and are reclining on its tranquil autumn fulness. Time enough to play now—more time than there ever was before; more than there will ever be again. They have established their great fair here on the very spot where their forefathers were massacred or put to torture. So, at old Smithfield, the tumblers, the jesters, the[156]buffoons, and the dancers shouldered each other in joyful riot over the ashes of the earlier heroes and martyrs.

It is past high noon, and the thousands break away from the amphitheatre and move towards a soft green woodland in another part of the grounds, shaded by forest trees. Here are the private dinner-tables—hundreds of them, covered with snowy linen, glittering with glass and silver. You have heard of Kentucky hospitality; here you will see one of the peaceful battle-fields where reputation for that virtue is fought for and won. Is there a stranger among these thousands that has not been hunted up and provided for? And such dinners! Old Pepys should be here—immortal eater—so that he could go home and set down in his diary, along with other gastronomic adventures, garrulous notes of what he saw eaten and ate himself at the Kentucky fair. You will never see the Kentuckians making a better show than at this moment. What courtesy, what good-will, what warm and gracious manners! Tie a blue ribbon on them. In a competitive exhibition of this kind the premium will stay at home.

But make the most of it—make the most of this harmony. For did you see that? A father and a son met each other, turned their heads quickly and angrily away, and passed without speaking.

A DINNER-PARTY.A DINNER-PARTY.

A DINNER-PARTY.

Look how these two men shake hands with too much cordiality, and search each other's eyes. There[157]is a man from the North standing apart and watching with astonishment these alert, happy, efficient negroes—perhaps following with his thoughtful gaze one of Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Toms. A Southerner has drawn that Kentucky farmer beside a tree, and is trying to buy one of these servants for his plantation. Yes, yes, make the most of it! The war is coming. It is in men's hearts, and in their eyes and consciences. By-and-by this bright, gay pageant will pass so entirely away that even the thought of it will come back to one like the unsubstantial revelry of a dream. By-and-by there will be another throng filling these grounds: not in pink and white and canary, but in blue, solid blue—blue overcoats, showing sad and cold above the snow. All round the amphitheatre tents will be spread—not covering, as now, the hideous and the monstrous, but the sleeping[158]forms of young men, athletic, sinewy, beautiful. This, too, shall vanish. And some day, when the fierce summer sun is killing the little gray leaves and blades of grass, in through these deserted gates will pass a long, weary, foot-sore line of brown. Nothing in the floral hall now but cots, around which are nurses and weeping women. Lying there, some poor young fellow, with the death dew on his forehead, will open his shadowy eyes and remember this day of the fair, where he walked among the flowers and made love.

But it is late in the afternoon, and the people are beginning to disperse by turnpike and lane to their homes in the country, or to hasten back into town for the festivities of the night; for to-night the spirit of the fair will be continued in other amphitheatres. To-night comedy and tragedy will tread the village boards; but hand in hand also they will flaunt their colors through the streets, and haunt the midnight alleys. In all the year no time like fair-time: parties at private houses; hops, balls at the hotels. You shall sip the foam from the very crest of the wave of revelry and carousal. Darkness be over it till the east reddens! Let Bacchus be unconfined![159]

THE RACE-COURSE—THE FINISH.THE RACE-COURSE—THE FINISH.

THE RACE-COURSE—THE FINISH.

[160][161]

The fair languished during the war, but the people were not slow to revive it upon the return of peace. Peace, however, could never bring back the fair of the past: it was gone forever—gone with the stage and phase of the social evolution of which it was the unique and memorable expression. For there was no phase of social evolution in Kentucky but felt profoundly that era of upheaval, drift, and readjustment. Start where we will, or end where we may, we shall always come sooner or later to the war as a great rent and chasm, with its hither side and its farther side and its deep abyss between, down into which old things were dashed to death, and out of which new things were born into the better life.

Therefore, as we study the Kentucky fair of today, more than a quarter of a century later, we must expect to find it much changed. Withal it has many local variations. As it is held here and there in retired counties or by little neighborhoods it has characteristics of rural picturesqueness that suggest the manners of the era passed away. But the typical Kentucky fair, the fair that represents the leading interests and advanced ideas of the day, bears testimony enough to the altered life of the people.[162]

The old circular amphitheatre has been torn down, and replaced with a straight or a slightly curved bank of seats. Thus we see the arena turned into the race-course, the idea of the Colosseum giving way to the idea of the Circus Maximus. In front of the bank of seats stretch a small track for the exhibition of different kinds of stock, and a large track for the races. This abandonment of the old form of amphitheatre is thus a significant concession to the trotting-horse, and a sign that its speed has become the great pleasure of the fair.

As a picture, also, the fair of to-day lacks the Tyrolean brightness of its predecessor; and as a social event it seems like a pensive tale of by-gone merriment. Society no longer looks upon it as the occasion of displaying its wealth, its toilets, its courtesies, its hospitalities. No such gay and splendid dresses now; no such hundreds of dinner-tables on the shaded greensward. It would be too much to say that the disappearance of the latter betokens the loss of that virtue which the gracious usages of a former time made a byword. The explanation lies elsewhere. Under the old social regime a common appurtenance to every well-established household was a trained force of negro servants. It was the services of these that made the exercise of generous public entertainment possible to the Kentucky housewife. Moreover, the lavish ideals of the time threw upon economy the reproach of meanness;[163]and, as has been noted, the fair was then the universally recognized time for the display of munificent competitive hospitalities. In truth, it was the sharpness of the competition that brought in at last the general disuse of the custom; for the dinners grew more and more sumptuous, the labor of preparing them more and more severe, and the expense of paying for them more and more burdensome. So to-day the Kentuckians remain a hospitable people,[164]but you must not look to find the noblest exercise of their hospitality at the fair. A few dinners you will see, but modest luncheons are not despicable and the whole tendency of things is towards the understanding that an appetite is an affair of the private conscience. And this brings to light some striking differences between the old and the new Kentuckians. Along with the circular amphitheatre, the dresses, and the dinners, have gone the miscellaneous amusements of which the fair was ere-while the mongrel scene and centre. The ideal fair of to-day frowns upon the side-show, and discards every floating accessory. It would be self-sufficient. It would say to the thousands of people who still attend it as the greatest of all their organized pleasures, "Find your excitement, your relaxation, your happiness, in a shed for machinery, a floral hall, and the fine stock." But of these the greatest attraction is the last, and of all kinds of stock the one most honored is the horse. Here, then, we come upon a noteworthy fact: the Kentucky fair, which began as a cattle-show, seems likely to end with being a horse-show.

STALLIONS.STALLIONS.

STALLIONS.

If anything is lacking to complete the contrast between the fair in the fulness of its development before the war and the fair of to-day, what better could be found to reflect this than the differentmoraleof the crowd?

You are a stranger, and you have the impression[165][166][167]that an assemblage of ten, fifteen, twenty thousand Kentuckians out on a holiday is pervaded by the spirit of a mob. You think that a few broken heads is one of its cherished traditions; that intoxication and disorderliness are its dearest prerogatives. But nowadays you look in vain for those heated, excited men with money lying between their fingers, who were once the rebuke and the terror of the amphitheatre. You look in vain for heated, excited men of any kind: there are none. There is no drinking, no bullying, no elbowing, or shouldering, or swearing.

MULES.MULES.

MULES.

While still in their nurses' arms you may sometimes see the young Kentuckians shown in the ring at the horse-fair for premiums. From their early years they are taken to the amphitheatre to enjoy its color, its fleetness, and its form. As little boys they ride for prizes. The horse is the subject of talk in the hotels, on the street corners, in the saloons, at the stables, on county court day, at the cross-roads and blacksmiths' shops, in country church-yards before the sermon. The barber, as he shaves his morning customer, gives him points on the races. There will be found many a group of gentlemen in whose presence to reveal an ignorance of famous horses and common pedigrees will bring a blush to the cheek. Not to feel interested in such themes is to lay one's self open to a charge of disagreeable eccentricity. The horse has gradually emerged into prominence until to-day it occupies the foreground.[168][169]

[170]

[171]

More than two hundred and fifty years have passed since the Cardinal de Richelieu stood at the baptismal font as sponsor to a name that within the pale of the Church was destined to become more famous than his own. But the world has wellnigh forgotten Richelieu's godson. Only the tireless student of biography now turns the pages that record his extraordinary career, ponders the strange unfolding of his moral nature, is moved by the deep pathos of his dying hours. Dominique Armand-Jean le Bouthillier de Rancé! How cleverly, while scarcely out of short-clothes, did he puzzle the king's confessor with questions on Homer, and at the age of thirteen publish an edition of Anacreon! Of ancient, illustrious birth, and heir to an almost ducal house, how tenderly favored was he by Marie de Médicis; happy-hearted, kindly, suasive, how idolized by a gorgeous court! In what affluence of rich laces did he dress; in what irresistible violet-colored close coats, with emeralds at his wristbands, a diamond on his finger, red heels on his shoes! How nimbly he capered through the dance with a sword on his hip! How[172]bravely he planned quests after the manner of knights of the Round Table, meaning to take for himself the part of Lancelot! How exquisitely, ardently, and ah! how fatally he flirted with the incomparable ladies in the circle of Madame de Rambouillet! And with a zest for sport as great as his unction for the priestly office, how wittily—laying one hand on his heart and waving the other through the air—could he bow and say, "This morning I preached like an angel; I'll hunt like the devil this afternoon!"

All at once his life broke in two when half spent. He ceased to hunt like the devil, to adore the flesh, to scandalize the world; and retiring to the ancient Abbey of La Trappe in Normandy—the sponsorial gift of his Eminence and favored by many popes—there undertook the difficult task of reforming the relaxed Benedictines. The old abbey—situated in a great fog-covered basin encompassed by dense woods of beech, oak, and linden, and therefore gloomy, unhealthy, and forbidding—was in ruins. One ascended by means of a ladder from floor to rotting floor. The refectory had become a place where the monks assembled to play at bowls with worldlings. The dormitory, exposed to wind, rain, and snow, had been given up to owls. In the church the stones were scattered, the walls unsteady, the pavement was broken, the bell ready to fall. As a single solemn reminder of the vanished[173]spirit of the place, which had been founded by St. Stephen and St. Bernard in the twelfth century, with the intention of reviving in the Western Church the bright examples of primitive sanctity furnished by Eastern solitaries of the third and fourth, one read over the door of the cloister the words of Jeremiah: "Sedebit solitarius et tacebit" The few monks who remained in the convent slept where they could, and were, as Chateaubriand says, in a state of ruins. They preferred sipping ratafia to reading their breviaries; and when De Rancé undertook to enforce reform, they threatened to whip him for his pains. He, in turn, threatened them with the royal interference, and they submitted. There, accordingly, he introduced a system of rules that a sybarite might have wept over even to hear recited; carried into practice cenobitical austerities that recalled the models of pious anchorites in Syria and Thebais; and gave its peculiar meaning to the word "Trappist," a name which has since been taken by all Cistercian communities embracing the reform of the first monastery.

In the retirement of this mass of woods and sky De Rancé passed the rest of his long life, doing nothing more worldly, so far as is now known, than quoting Aristophanes and Horace to Bossuet, and allowing himself to be entertained by Pellisson, exhibiting the accomplishments of his educated spider. There, in acute agony of body and perfect meekness of[174]spirit, a worn and weary old man, with time enough to remember his youthful ardors and emeralds and illusions, he watched his mortal end draw slowly near. And there, asking to be buried in some desolate spot—some old battle-field—he died at last, extending his poor macerated body on the cross of blessed cinders and straw, and commending his poor penitent soul to the mercy of Heaven.

A wonderful spectacle to the less fervid Benedictines of the closing seventeenth century must have seemed the work of De Rancé in that old Norman abbey! A strange company of human souls, attracted by the former distinction of the great abbot as well as by the peculiar vows of the institute, must have come together in its silent halls! One hears many stories, in the lighter vein, regarding some of its inmates. Thus, there was a certain furious ex-trooper, lately reeking with blood, who got himself much commended by living on baked apples; and a young nobleman who devoted himself to the work of washing daily the monastery spittoons. One Brother, the story runs, having one day said there was too much salt in his scalding-hot broth, immediately burst into tears of contrition for his wickedness in complaining; and another went for so many years without raising his eyes that he knew not a new chapel had been built, and so quite cracked his skull one day against the wall of it.

The abbey was an asylum for the poor and helpless,[175]the shipwrecked, the conscience-stricken, and the broken-hearted—for that meditative type of fervid piety which for ages has looked upon the cloister as the true earthly paradise wherein to rear the difficult edifice of the soul's salvation. Much noble blood sought De Rancé's retreat to wash out its terrifying stains, and more than one reckless spirit went thither to take upon itself the yoke of purer, sweeter usages.

De Rancé's work remains an influence in the world. His monastery and his reform constitute the true background of material and spiritual fact against which to outline the present Abbey of La Trappe in Kentucky. Even when thus viewed, it seems placed where it is only by some freak of history. An abbey of La Trappe in Kentucky! How inharmonious with every element of its environment appears this fragment of old French monastic life! It is the twelfth century touching the last of the nineteenth—the Old World reappearing in the New. Here are French faces—here is the French tongue. Here is the identical white cowl presented to blessed St. Alberick in the forests of Burgundy nine hundred years ago. Here is the rule of St. Benedict, patriarch of the Western monks in the sixth century. When one is put out at the way-side station, amid woodlands and fields of Indian-corn, and, leaving the world behind him, turns his footsteps across the country towards the abbey, more than a mile away,[176]the seclusion of the region, its ineffable quietude, the infinite isolation of the life passed by the silent brotherhood—all bring vividly before the mind the image of that ancient distant abbey with which this one holds connection so sacred and so close. Is it not the veritable spot in Normandy? Here, too, is the broad basin of retired country; here the densely wooded hills, shutting it in from the world; here the orchards and vineyards and gardens of the ascetic devotees; and, as the night falls from the low, blurred sky of gray, and cuts short a silent contemplation of the scene, here, too, one finds one's self, like some belated traveller in the dangerous forests of old, hurrying on to reach the porter's lodge, and ask within the sacred walls the hospitality of the venerable abbot.

OFFICE OF THE FATHER PRIOR.OFFICE OF THE FATHER PRIOR.

OFFICE OF THE FATHER PRIOR.

For nearly a century after the death of De Rancé it is known that his followers faithfully maintained his reform at La Trappe. Then the French Revolution drove the Trappists as wanderers into various countries, and the abbey was made a foundery for cannon. A small branch of the order came in 1804 to the United States, and established itself for a while in Pennsylvania, but soon turned its eyes towards the greater wilds and solitudes of Kentucky.[177]For this there was reason. Kentucky was early a great pioneer of the Catholic Church in the United States. Here the first episcopal see of the West was erected, and Bardstown held spiritual jurisdiction, within certain parallels of latitude, over all States and Territories between the two oceans. Here, too, were the first Catholic missionaries of the West, except those who were to be found in the French stations along the Wabash and the Mississippi. Indeed, the Catholic population of Kentucky, which was principally descended from the colonists of Lord Baltimore, had begun to enter the State as early as 1775, the nucleus of their settlements soon becoming Nelson County, the locality of the present abbey. Likewise it should be remembered that the Catholic Church in the United States, especially that portion of it in Kentucky, owes a great debt to the zeal of the exiled French clergy of early days. That buoyancy and elasticity of the French character, which naturally adapts it to every circumstance and emergency, was then most demanded and most efficacious. From these exiles the infant missions of[178]the State were supplied with their most devoted laborers.

Hither, accordingly, the Trappists removed from Pennsylvania, establishing themselves on Pottinger's Creek, near Rohan's Knob, several miles from the present site. But they remained only a few years. The climate of Kentucky was ill suited to their life of unrelaxed asceticism; their restless superior had conceived a desire to christianize Indian children, and so removed the languishing settlement to Missouri. There is not space for following the solemn march of those austere exiles through the wildernesses of the New World. From Missouri they went to an ancient Indian burying-ground in Illinois, and there built up a sort of village in the heart of the prairie; but the great mortality from which they suffered, and the subsidence of the fury of the French Revolution recalled them in 1813 to France, to reoccupy the establishments from which they had been banished.

It was of this body that Dickens, in hisAmerican Notes, wrote as follows:

Looming up in the distance, as we rode along, was another of the ancient Indian burial-places, called Monk's Mound, in memory of a body of fanatics of the order of La Trappe, who founded a desolate convent there many years ago, when there were no settlements within a thousand miles, and were all swept off by the pernicious climate; in which lamentable fatality few rational people will suppose, perhaps, that society experienced any very severe deprivation.

This is a better place in which to state a miracle[179]than discuss it; and the following account of a heavenly portent, which is related to have been vouchsafed the Trappists while sojourning in Kentucky, may be given without comment:

In the year 1808 the moon, being then about two-thirds full, presented a most remarkable appearance. A bright, luminous cross, clearly defined, was seen in the heavens, with its arms intersecting the centre of the moon. On each side two smaller crosses were also distinctly visible, though the portions of them most distant from the moon were more faintly marked. This strange phenomenon continued for several hours, and was witnessed by the Trappists on their arising, as usual, at midnight, to sing the Divine praise.

The present monastery, which is called the Abbey of Gethsemane, owes its origin immediately to the Abbey of La Meilleraye, of the department of the Loire-Inférieure, France. The abbot of the latter had concluded arrangements with the French Government to found a house in the island of Martinique, on an estate granted by Louis Philippe; but this monarch's rule having been overturned, the plan was abandoned in favor of a colony in the United States. Two Fathers, with the view of selecting a site, came to New York in the summer of 1848, and naturally turned their eyes to the Catholic settlements in Kentucky, and to the domain of the pioneer Trappists. In the autumn of that year, accordingly, about forty-five "religious" left the mother-abbey of La Meilleraye, set sail from Havre de Grace for New Orleans, went thence by boat to Louisville, and from this point walked to Gethsemane,[180]a distance of some sixty miles. Although scattered among various countries of Europe, the Trappists have but two convents in the United States—this, the oldest, and one near Dubuque, Iowa, a colony from the abbey in Ireland.

WITHIN THE GATES.WITHIN THE GATES.

WITHIN THE GATES.

The domain of the abbey comprises some seventeen hundred acres of land, part of which is tillable, while the rest consists of a range of wooded knobs that furnish timber to the monastery steam saw-mill. Around this domain lie the homesteads of Kentucky farmers, who make indifferent monks. One leaves the public road that winds across the open country and approaches the monastery through a long, level avenue, enclosed on each side by a hedge-row of cedars, and shaded by nearly a hundred beautiful English elms, the offspring of a single parent stem. Traversing this dim, sweet spot, where no sound is heard but the waving of boughs and the softened notes of birds, one reaches the porter's lodge, a low, brick building, on each side of which extends the high brick-wall that separates the inner from the outer world. Passing beneath the archway of the lodge, one discovers a graceful bit of landscape gardening—walks fringed with cedars, beds for flowers,[181]pathways so thickly strewn with sawdust that the heaviest footfall is unheard, a soft turf of green, disturbed only by the gentle shadows of the pious-looking Benedictine trees: a fit spot for recreation and meditation. It is with a sort of worldly start that you come upon an enclosure at one end of these grounds wherein a populous family of white-cowled rabbits trip around in the most noiseless fashion, and seemed ashamed of being caught living together in family relations.

Architecturally there is little to please the æsthetic sense in the monastery building, along the whole front of which these grounds extend. It is a great quadrangular pile of brick, three stories high, heated by furnaces and lighted by gas—modern appliances[182]which heighten the contrast with the ancient life whose needs they subserve. Within the quadrangle is a green inner court, also beautifully laid off. On one side are two chapels, the one appropriated to the ordinary services of the Church, and entered from without the abbey-wall by all who desire; the other, consecrated to the offices of the Trappist order, entered only from within, and accessible exclusively to males. It is here that one finds occasion to remember the Trappist's vow of poverty. The vestments are far from rich, the decorations of the altar far from splendid. The crucifixion-scene behind the altar consists of wooden figures carved by one of the monks now dead, and painted with little art. No tender light of many hues here streams through long windows rich with holy reminiscence and artistic fancy. The church has, albeit, a certain beauty of its own—that charm which is inseparable from fine proportion in stone and from gracefully disposed columns growing into the arches of the lofty roof. But the cold gray of the interior, severe and unrelieved, bespeaks a place where the soul comes to lay itself in simplicity before the Eternal as it would upon a naked, solitary rock of the desert. Elsewhere in the abbey greater evidences of votive poverty occur—in the various statues and shrines of the Virgin, in the pictures and prints that hang in the main front corridor—in all that appertains to the material life of the community.[183]

Just outside the church, beneath the perpetual benediction of the cross on its spire, is the quiet cemetery garth, where the dead are side by side, their graves covered with myrtle and having each for its head-stone a plain wooden crucifix bearing the religious name and station of him who lies below—Father Honorius, Father Timotheus, Brother Hilarius, Brother Eutropius. Who are they? And whence? And by what familiar names were they greeted on the old play-grounds and battle-fields of the world?

The Trappists do not, as it is commonly understood, daily dig a portion of their own graves. When one of them dies and has been buried, a new grave is begun beside the one just filled, as a reminder to the survivors that one of them must surely take his place therein. So, too, when each seeks the cemetery enclosure, in hours of holy meditation, and, standing bareheaded among the graves, prays softly for the souls of his departed brethren, he may come for a time to this unfinished grave, and, kneeling, pray Heaven, if he be next, to dismiss his soul in peace.

Nor do they sleep in the dark, abject kennel, which the imagination, in the light of mediæval history, constructs as the true monk's cell. By the rule of St. Benedict, they sleep separate, but in the same dormitory—a great upper room, well lighted and clean, in the body of which a general framework several feet high is divided into partitions that look like narrow berths.[184]

We have acquired poetical and pictorial conceptions of monks—praying with wan faces and upturned eyes half darkened by the shadowing cowl, the coarse serge falling away from the emaciated neck, the hands pressing the crucifix close to the heart; and with this type has been associated a certain idea of cloistral life—that it was an existence of vacancy and idleness, or at best of deep meditation of the soul broken only by express spiritual devotions. There is another kind of monk, with the marks of which we seem traditionally familiar: the monk with the rubicund face, sleek poll, good epigastric development, and slightly unsteady gait, with whom, in turn, we have connected a different phase of conventual discipline—fat capon and stubble goose, and midnight convivial chantings growing ever more fast and furious, but finally dying away in a heavy stertorous calm. Poetry, art, the drama, the novel, have each portrayed human nature in orders; the saint-like monk, the intellectual monk, the bibulous, the felonious, the fighting monk (who loves not the hermit of Copmanhurst?), until the memory is stored and the imagination preoccupied.

Living for a while in a Trappist monastery in[185]modern America, one gets a pleasant actual experience of other types no less picturesque and on the whole much more acceptable. He finds himself, for one thing, brought face to face with the working monk. Idleness to the Trappist is the enemy of the soul, and one of his vows is manual labor. Whatever a monk's previous station may have been, he must perform, according to abbatial direction, the most menial services. None are exempt from work; there is no place among them for the sluggard. When it is borne in mind that the abbey is a self-dependent institution, where the healthy must be maintained, the sick cared for, the dead buried, the necessity for much work becomes manifest. In fact, the occupations are as various as those of a modern factory. There is scope for intellects of all degrees and talents of wellnigh every order. Daily life, unremittingly from year to year, is an exact system of duties and hours. The building, covering about an acre of ground and penetrated by corridors, must be kept faultlessly clean. There are three kitchens—one for the guests, one for the community, and one for the infirmary—that require each acoquinariusand separate assistants. There is a tinker's shop and a pharmacy; a saddlery, where the broken gear used in cultivating the monastery lands is mended; a tailor's shop, where the worn garments are patched; a shoemaker's shop, where the coarse, heavy shoes of the monks are made and cobbled; and a barber's[186]shop, where the Trappist beard is shaved twice a month and the Trappist head is monthly shorn.

Out-doors the occupations are even more varied. The community do not till the farm. The greater part of their land is occupied by tenant farmers, and what they reserve for their own use is cultivated by the so-called "family brothers," who, it is due to say, have no families, but live as celibates on the abbey domain, subject to the abbot's authority, without being members of the order. The monks, however, do labor in the ample gardens, orchards, and vineyard, from which they derive their sustenance, in the steam saw-mill and grain-mill, in the dairy and the cheese factory. Thus picturesquely engaged one may find them in autumn: monks gathering apples and making pungent cider, which is stored away in the vast cellar as their only beverage except water; monks repairing the shingle roof of a stable; monks feeding the huge swine, which they fatten for the board of their carnal guests, or the fluttering multitude of chickens, from the eggs and young of which they derive a slender revenue; monks grouped in the garden around a green and purple heap of turnips, to be stored up as a winter relish of no mean distinction.

Amid such scenes one forgets all else while enjoying the wealth and freshness of artistic effects. What a picture is this young Belgian cheese-maker, his sleeves rolled above the elbows of his brawny[187][188][189]arms, his great pinkish hands buried in the golden curds, the cap of his serge cloak falling back and showing his closely clipped golden-brown hair, blue eyes, and clear, delicate skin! Or this Australian ex-farmer, as he stands by the hopper of grist or lays on his shoulder a bag of flour for the coarse brown-bread of the monks. Or this dark old French opera singer, who strutted his brief hour on many a European stage, but now hobbles around, hoary in his cowl and blanched with age, to pick up a handful of garlic. Or this athletic young Irishman, thrusting a great iron prod into the glowing coals of the sawmill furnace. Or this slender Switzer, your attendant in the refectory, with great keys dangling from his leathern cincture, who stands by with folded hands and bowed head while you are eating the pagan meal he has prepared for you.

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