ByMrs. MARY LOW DICKINSON.
[Continued.]
Away from Boulogne-sur-Mer,—away from the treacherous sea, that laughs, as we look back upon it, tossing its white caps mischievously up to the smiling sky; away from thoughts of Thackeray, who has left the wide stretches of coast around Boulogne haunted by Claude Newcombe’s ghost, and on as fast as the “boat-train” can take us to the place where, some one has said, “good Americans go when they die.”
There is nothing interesting in the tame, flat country; nothing novel in the farm houses, and thatched cottages, and sleepy-looking villages along the route, or in the general aspect of the people, except that the bonnet of the English peasant is replaced by the snowy cap, the frock of the English farmer by the Frenchman’s clean blue blouse. The English fog keeps its own side of the channel, and we look up into the blue sky, radiant with sunshine, with a sense of having found an old long-absent friend. Long before we arrive in Paris, even the staunchest Briton of us all marvels why she wanted to stay in London, when here, just over the water, lay this smiling and beautiful France.
And to us, as to most strangers, Paris and France are one. We shall see none of its other cities unless, moving southward, we stop at Lyons, and linger a day at Marseilles. Provincial life will come to us only in the city’s borrowed attire, as we find it in Paris, imported, and making itself at home. Nature and natural scenery can do little to captivate unless, indeed, we enter Italy by the pass of Mont Cenis, when we shall see what it is, even to a frivolous people like the French, to “lift their eyes unto the hills.” Ordinarily, nature seems here at a disadvantage, a pale, flat background for the intense artificiality of France. Her rivers seem to wind—the sluggish Seine with the rest—to show the architectural effect of her bridges, rather than to make the green banks blossom and to refresh the thirsty land. Her forests, even Fontainebleau and Versailles, what are they but the background for palaces? And even her wide, straight, dusty roads stretch on with a dreadful symmetry of commonplaceness that makes one feel as if the land had no lovely nooks, to reach which one must choose a shaded or winding way.
Once in the city, and this impression of the extreme of artificial life deepens. Everything—streets, dwellings, shops, squares, fountains, monuments—has been made as fine as it well could be; but all has been made, nothing has been let to grow; and in the monotony of construction one longs to see something that reveals individuality in its maker or itself. Humanity has the same stamp, and it is only the intense vivacity common to its various national types that gives the pleasing sense of variety. Dress, habit, bearing, manners, are singularly after one style, a better one in some respects, we will admit, than we have as yet found time to cultivate. In minor manners this is most noticeable. The ready “good morning,” and “thank you,” are on the lips of every servant and child, and the prompt “beg pardon” reconciles one to an occasional rudeness or lack of care. It is only fair to say, however, that in a crowd where an American might tread on one’s toes and never say a word, yet be most careful not to repeat the offence, the Frenchman would politely “beg pardon,” and while replacing the lifted hat, tread on the unlucky toes again. Still, there is something flattering to vanity in the easy deference that makes the waiter help you on with your overcoat with an air that thanks you for permitting him the honor, and the wheels of the traveler’s life do run more smoothly for the lubricating of French good manners. How mightily ithelps the sales in the inevitable round of shopping that beguiles all womankind in Paris,—except of course, Chautauquans, good and true. American tradesmen might well learn a lesson here, and by practice take to themselves many a reluctant dollar that now stays pocket-safe, because of the gruffness or superciliousness of some airy clerk. But of all places, Paris needs no such addition as courtesy to the attractive seductions which her tasteful displays of beautiful things offer to the foreign purse. Her shop windows alone would draw one’s money up from the depths of the pocket, through the bewitchment of the eye. No matter how small the window, no matter how hideous the name of the shop—and these are of all names, from “Good Angel” to “Good Devil”—the very most and best is made of the goods to charm the eye and cause the passer’s step to halt. Halting, he is sure to enter; entering, he is sure to buy, and lucky the man or woman who escapes with a few lone rattling sous aspour boirefor the cabman whom he hails to drive him home.
One never knows what a magnificent creature a poor mortal can become, nor has a realizing sense of his capacity for enjoying “things,” till he has been set loose in the streets of this alluring world’s bazar. Things! He, the traveler—or, possiblyshe—becomes possessed by a demon for which there is no other name than “things.” Things to eat, things to wear, things to hide away, things to give away, things to take home,—there is no end to it after it is once begun. People go out, meaning to buy nothing, and buy everything, until the playful remark of an American author that “Paris is a great sweating furnace, in which human beings would turn life everlasting into gold, provided it were of negotiable value,” seems not so far from true. Thankful indeed might be the traveler, Chautauquan or other, who, unable to gratify temptation, escapes it, as only it can be escaped, by filling the time so full that there are left no hours for the loitering amid lovely and alluring things. Virtuous, very virtuous, indeed, no doubt, was our quartette in this prudent regard. “Why should they care for shining and insidious vanities of to-day,” asked the student, “with historical Paris, and ecclesiastical Paris, and monumental Paris, and artistic Paris, with Paris, living and dead, past and present, lying about, in unctuous abundance, waiting to be rolled in sweet morsels under their tongues?” “Why, indeed?” echoed the other three, as on the night of arrival they went rattling in a four-seated cab, in which two lolled comfortably back and indulged in exclamations of delight over the brilliant city, blazing with its thousand lights, and gay with moving throngs, and the other two hung on the edge of the narrow shelf called a front seat, and longed for annihilation as to knees that there might be room for big basket, little basket, bundles and bags.
One night only for them in a large hotel in the American quarter, with the Grand Opera House before their windows, and a dozen hotels all crowded with Americans, within a quarter of a mile. Silently the sisters sit in a reception room about as large as a comfortable hall bed-room, while the student adds their names to the very long list of Americans in the register in the office, a little den just large enough for a double desk. Then a porter, once a black-haired, brawny Breton peasant in the ever-lasting blue blouse, swings a trunk upon his shoulder, gathers up in one hand all the umbrellas and bags, which it took four of us to bring, and theconcierge, from her own little den at the foot of the staircase, hands forth our keys with a smile that is purely French and means nothing, yet says plainer than words that she has been longing all day for our coming, and is so relieved that we are safely arrived at last. Cheered by its welcome, hollow though we know it to be, we mount the easy stairs behind the Breton and the baggage. Number fifty, one, two and three, calls the clerk to a frisky chambermaid in white apron and cap, and away she goes before with her white cap-strings flying, down the corridor. Why such speed? we question, but not for long. There are four rooms, and each room has from four to six candles—candles on bureau, mantle and table, “candles to right of us, candles to left of us, candles behind us glimmered and sputtered.” With incredible celerity the white-capped maid had lighted them all. Lights are an extra in France, and when we go away to-morrow we shall find them all upon the bill, and for eighteenbougiesit will be our duty to pay. Americans have been found, soon after our civil war, when the spirit of strife was not yet quelled, courageous enough to resist the candle swindle, and women prudent enough to take all they paid for, and to bear them away, rolled in bits ofGalignani’s Messenger, and tucked in with the best black silk. But the world still waits for the great spirit that shall successfully grapple thebougiefraud. Our quartette, I am ashamed to say, tamely submitted, the sisters unable to get the right proportions of sweetness and light on the subject, and the brethren remarking that some games were not worth the candles, and some candles were not worth the game. Still the rather luminous exhibition of what it would be likely to cost them to dwell in this particular quarter, helped them to see their way out, and before night of the second day they answered the tender parting smile of madame, theconcierge, each with a touching franc, and saw their luggage in a pyramid on the top of a two-seatedvoiture de place, the brethren shrunken as to knees, to the space allotted in front of their little shelf, and away they went to dine in their little cosy sitting room of an apartment far out in the suburb of Passy, beyond the city bounds, where they paid for the parlor and bed-rooms and service less per month than it would cost for one room at any of the grand hotels.
And here they lived as nearly as possible the life of the French home. Abandoning soon the hearty American breakfast, the student learned that the brain worked well during the morning hours on its cup of coffee and its share,—a yard if you like, for bread can be bought by the yard—of bread. And away out here in Passy they found their servant, the good old woman who owned the house, yet waited upon them with her own hands, had not yet learned the trick of the hotels and cafés frequented by foreigners, but still gave them coffee such as we read about as found in Paris in “ye olden time.” In common with nearly all French families, she frequented every morning the coffee-shops scattered at convenient distances throughout the whole city, and selected her coffee in just the quantity required for the day, from the freshly-roasted mass, and saw it ground and mixed before her eyes. The custom is to combine three kinds of coffee—one for strength, and two for flavor, for the morning use. Then it is neither smoked, drenched nor boiled until the result is an injurious decoction, but, placed in its perforated cup, just boiling water enough is poured upon it to swell every grain and force it to yield up its delicious first aroma; then again and again is the bath repeated, until a half a teacupful will be all the coffee prepared for a household. Now, to a tablespoonful or two of this beverage she adds a cup of milk, heated almost to a boiling point, and the liquid is fit for a king. Quite another affair is thecafé noir, made usually by boiling the residue of the breakfast coffee, and religiously let alone by the occupants of many French homes. Out of doors, after coffee, for two or three good hours of work in museums, and galleries, and palaces, and churches, and streets, wherever the city offered anything to be enjoyed or learned, and then back to breakfast at twelve o’clock in the day, a meal of meats and vegetables, salads and sweets,—a dinner really in all but soup and a name. Dinner at six,cooked by the owner of the rooms, served by her daughter, a black-eyed, tidy girl of seventeen, comprised themenuof the home. This was varied by an occasional raid upon the American gingerbread at the bakery of the Boulevard Malesherbes, or a visit to restaurants, where, at any price from thirty cents to a dollar and a half, according to location and appointments, one can be sure of a dinner, appetizing, clean, well-served, abundant, and so, whether one sits under the arches of the old historic Palais Royale, and takes history with his soup, and blends the gay kaleidoscopic throng before his eyes with the throngs that have filled the court in other days, or chooses his seat under the gilt and crystal of the glittering Boulevard des Italians, or boards at a pension at ten francs a day, and finds himself in a mitigated American boarding-house, where he puts a sou in the charity plate as a forfeit for every word of English spoken, or runs around in the Rue Neuve de Petit Champs, and consoles his patriotism by fish-balls and buckwheat cakes, or lets some kind, shrewd old woman buy and cook his chop, piously pilfering regularly her two sous a pound, there is no need to go hungry in Paris. Alas, that so much can not be said for the poorer classes of Parisians themselves, the laborers under whose lack of bread wrongs long suffered have so often ripened to revolutions. Let no one suppose the stimulating coffee, daintily prepared, is the drink of the laboring man of France. Happy is he who gets it once a week, and the common food on which the laborer works is soup, in which the meat is ordinarily scant enough, and the bread,—of which he can not always take as much as he would like and leave a portion of the loaf for the little ones at home;—a piece of bread with a bit of sausage, when he can afford it, makes the meal that marks the noonday pause in labor, and gives the more fortunate hisdejeuner a la fourchette. In no city in the world is there more destitution than in Paris among the unfortunate and the deserving poor. The surface of its social life is kept so whitened that one forgets that it is like the sepulcher of Holy Writ. Only now and then, on some grand holiday, when misery may seem only a farce, only a fantastic spectacle in a pageant, is squalor’s want and beggary allowed to see the light. At all other times, the beggar’s hand must hold something to sell, and the reality of want be treated as if it were sham, and crime be made to feel ashamed of nothing but the day. With the slow-coming change in public opinion, on all questions of philanthropy and morals, with the slow-coming emancipation of education, with the slow-coming freedom from priestcraft and the growth of true religious sentiment in France, there must dawn a brighter day for the masses, those enormous majorities who make the under strata of the nation’s life. That it is volcanic strata, with a heart of fire that now and then heaves with its gigantic throbs the upper world, and sends forth the low rumble of suppressed lava-floods and the dull smoke of threatening revolution, is no marvel to any student of the past history and present social and moral and political conditions of France.
But it is not in these undercurrents that control national destiny that we can afford to drift our little tourist bark. What ought to be done, one can but vaguely feel; of what is being done, one may have a faint glimpse who will follow the history of the Protestant movement, and make himself acquainted with the missions in the city of Paris alone. I doubt if it would do to take our quartette too near the heart of this work, since some of them, at least, would never be willing to come away. And we can never let them leave Paris without a sight of the wonders that everybody sees. From Passy they make daily theirentreeinto the city by the Avenue de la Grande Armee, and pass under the great Arc de Triomphe, that stands, the largest triumphal arch in the world, in the center of the beautiful Place de l’Etoile, from which branch like the points to a star the new beautiful avenues cut by Napoleon III in every direction, straight through miles of the most populous portions of the city. Climb the arch, a massive pile of stone larger than our largest churches, and let the eye run down the star-points. Here on the right is the most beautiful of all, the Avenue de l’Imperatrice, over three hundred feet wide, and extending to the Bois de Boulogne, the Central Park of Paris. Down this drive on any Saturday morning one may see many a cab containing a groom and bride of humble station, she in her white dress and orange wreath, going out to spend the wedding day walking and talking, and feasting at one of the many restaurants in the beautiful wood. A little earlier in the day, in the Madelaine, one might see the marriage ceremony performed. Our travelers chanced on one sunny morning to find a bride and groom before one altar, a coffin in the aisle, while at the font a priest was baptising a little child. Down this avenue to the Bois, all the finest equipages of the pleasure-lovers of Paris drift every day, and especially every Sunday. On Sunday occur the races and the military reviews. In the mornings the churches are thinly peopled with worshippers, principally women; in the afternoon the city is alive with pleasure seekers of every class. Yet let no one imagine Paris given to pleasure to be what New York or Chicago under the same conditions might be—noisy, uproarious, or rude. Everybody on the brilliant, crowded boulevards, in the Bois, all down the whole length of the Champs Elysees, is decorous, moderate, well dressed and well behaved. The whirligigs laden with little children whirl softly; even Punch and Judy, never-failing delight of childhood, are not too noisy in their quarrels. The cabmen drowse on their boxes, the horses go at a slow and steady jog. On the sidewalks the people sip their ices or their soda. There is animation, vivacity, but no rush or scramble or haste such as marks not only our work-a-day; but our holiday life. It is on the boulevards and the Champs Elysees that French leisure and pleasure may be seen at their best.
This wonderful Champs Elysees lies before one who stands at the Place de l’Etoile, in its whole length of more than two miles from the Arc de Triomphe to the beautiful Tuilleries gardens. In the daytime it is all foliage and sunshine and brightness; at night the gas-lights glitter in unbroken chains from tree to tree. From one end we can see the fountains play at the other, as they sparkle all day in the square by the old Egyptian obelisk, that marks the place of the guillotine, the memory of which changes all the brightness to gloom in the space of a single thought. Beyond, the half-ruined piles of the Tuilleries palace stand up gray and grim, as if they had not yet recovered from the astonishment and shock of their blows. Further still rise the palace and gallery of the Louvre, which some one has aptly called “the first and last fascination of Paris.” We would make the fascinations plural, and include the Luxembourg gallery, which, though smaller, holds no second place in the Parisian world of art. Let no one fancy our tourists saw the Louvre in a day, or can write of it in a paragraph. What one finds there depends on what one carries in of technical knowledge, in intelligent apprehension, in sympathetic insight and appreciation. Words are not the medium for the description of pictures, or for the transmission of the sense of beauty. One should go to the Louvre once, at least, thinking of the building only. Remember that if it and the adjoining Tuilleries palace were extended their full length along the Seine, we should walk a mile to pass them. Once within, and relieved of our umbrellas, lest we forget ourselves and inadvertently “poke” some antique marble warrior, or try the point upon some crumbling mummy, we climb innumerable stairs and walk over acres of slippery, polished floors, and through roomsheavy with gilded decoration, burdened with every adornment that wealth or taste could devise. The lower floors are devoted to libraries, to Egyptian, Assyrian, and Greek museums, and the upper to room after room of paintings, where one wanders at first aimless and bewildered, like a child whose Christmas riches leave it unknowing what first to enjoy. One or two sauntering visits like this, and the great pictures begin to come out from the mass, and we know which are those which belong to us by some subtle power of entering into their significance which we feel, but can not define. Then one by one they begin to lay a touch upon us, and draw us back again and again, for just one other look. How, after a little, our eyes let go, as our souls do also, of nine-tenths of the pictures, those with which we have been able to establish no line of communication, which may be, and are, doubtless, fine, only they are not for us. Then how we yield ourselves to the touch of those that have reached us through their greatness, that could not be resisted. Then we feel the pathos of Triosa’s “Burial,” and the passion of despair in the writhing forms and agonized faces of his “Deluge.” Then we feel the strength in the masterpieces of David, and the exquisite delicacy and suffering and resolve in the “Ecce Homo” of Guido. Here Raphael’s genius shines upon us in the seraphic sweetness of the “Holy Family,” and Veronese’s “Marriage of Cana,” with its beauty of form and richness of color, and marvelous vigor of conception. And here is the mysterious, half-triumphant, half-timid, grace and beauty of “The Conception,” by Murillo. The longer one lingers, the more one dreads to hear the voice of the guard who calls out the time to close, and when the spell is fairly on one who loves art, he will pass from Louvre to Luxembourg, and back again from Luxembourg to Louvre, unheeding the great, gay, bustling world that is surging up and down between. At the smaller gallery, modern art and living artists are better represented than at the Louvre. Look here for De la Roche and Rosa Bonheur, and if the horrors of the French Revolution are not already coming up too often, as you pass about the city, dwell upon the anguished faces of the prisoners in the picture called “The Night Before Execution,” and I can promise you an afternight of troubled sleep. How gladly one turns from its horrors to the calm, sad strength in the face of the Christ in Ary Scheffer’s “Temptation,” rejoicing in the grand expression the artist has given to the power before which ultimately shall shrink back all the pain of the world, all the horrors and shames of sin. Between the thick walls of her silent galleries, and in the hushed air of her churches, one who had time could find a wealth of association, historical and other, that would enrich weeks spent in their examination alone.
But we cannot see all, and we can linger in but very few. We must go to the Hotel des Invalides, under whose dome lie in solemn splendor the remains of Napoleon I. We must stand for a moment, at least, in the spots made interesting by associations with history that can never be forgotten. Who would not go out of his way, for example, to hear for a few strokes the bell of St. Germain L’Auxerrois, when he remembers that it gave the midnight signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew? Who would not seek his opportunities to sit for a while under the towers of Notre Dame, or behind the porches of the Madelaine, or to rest in the rustic chapel behind the high altar of St. Roche? Here, as they should be everywhere, the churches are open all day long. The busy mother of a family on her way to market, may come in and, dropping her basket on the floor, kneel and pray for patience and strength for her round of common care. The world-weary soul may creep into the shadow of some high column, or kneel at some dim altar, and find the rest he craves. It is, at least, a spot to escape for a while into blessed stillness from the wearing turmoil of the world, and forgetting the papal altars, and the tinsel, and the gaudy images of the Virgin, and caricatures of angels, and remembering the great sea of human sin and sorrow surging forever beyond, the stranger can but be glad that the gates stand open wide.
Little time have we to linger in the most interesting, but we must surely go out to the church of St. Denis and see where, for thirteen hundred years, France has laid her royal dead. It is a drive of only five miles, and that is only a fair walk for some of our number, who would enjoy walking it every step alone, and calling up out of the past a procession of priests and courtiers bearing a dead king to his rest. Alas, that so many of them blessed France on the day they were borne to St. Denis more than in all their long, luxurious lives.
And to St. Denis is not the only little excursion that must be made from Paris. We cannot turn our faces southward without having visited Fontainebleau, and having had at least a long bright day in the palace of Versailles.
For the former excursion, only thirty-five miles from Paris, a day may be taken, though a charming little hotel outside the wood will tempt one to linger for a night, and thus secure an uninterrupted day for visiting the palace, strolling about the grounds, or driving in the charming roads through the forest.
The entire nine hundred apartments of the palace are not open for inspection, but at twelve o’clock daily a guide gathers up the waiting visitors and drives them like a flock of sheep through the apartments, many of them beautiful and sumptuous in adornment, and some neglected and forlorn. We entered by the Court of the White Horse, or the Court of Adieux, as it has been called since the time when Napoleon I there bade farewell to the remnant of his old guard before his departure for Elba. His bed-room, said to be in the same state as when he left it, and the table on which he signed his abdication, naturally claim the attention of all strollers through these halls. Within there is the jargon of the chattering people, who feel of the draperies as they pass warily over the slippery floors, the autocratic twang of the guide who means to hold us to his story until he gets us safely through and out at the door with our francs snugly stored away in his pocket. Outside there are lovely gardens and grounds, but cabmen beset us to drive in the forest, and once there, produce a new waterfall, or a high rock, or a rustic bridge, anything, everything, that a sixty-mile forest can afford for which apour boirecan be extracted. On the whole, we are ready on the second afternoon to return to Paris, and equally ready on the very next day to take the train for Versailles. It is only a little journey; we are there almost before we seem started, and in company with many other strangers, a few French families out for a day’s holiday, and many earnest talking deputiesen routeto the Assembly, we go up in the omnibus through the town, which now fairly hugs the palace gates, to the entrance of the great court, and before us lies the enormous but not imposing pile of the Palace of Versailles. Everybody who has never seen it knows it through pictures. We need not even quote the guide-books, and say that the great palace is over a quarter of a mile long, and cost France in money two hundred millions of dollars, to say nothing of what it cost in after-suffering to the nation and to the descendants of the king who built it as a magnificent monument to his vanity and ambition. We all know what part the Revolution played in it, and also that no government since the Revolution could take the enormous expense of using it as a royal residence. Hence, in the time of Louis Phillipe it became a grand museum, and to-day the visitor, after exhausting himself in the effort to traverse some of the miles of walks to see the grounds, traverses miles of corridors and apartments lined with pictures, principally of French battles,and dedicated to all the glories of France. To Marie Antoinette the place of most tragic interest, to Louis Phillipe and Louis Napoleon it was simply a museum, and to France it has come to be, after the humiliation of seeing the German emperor encamped here, the seat of her new government and the stronghold of the power of the Republic.
The place of meeting of the National Assembly is in the former theater of the palace, and if one is so fortunate as to have a friend among the deputies, there is no difficulty in securing admission to any session. Ordinarily, guests are shown to boxes, from which they can look down upon the seven hundred representative men of France. The President’s seat is at one end of the hall, with before him a tribune, or platform, from which the deputies speak. On the right of the speaker are the Royalists, including Legitimists, Orleanists, and Imperialists, and on the left the Republicans. Besides these two grand divisions, there are the minor divisions of the Right and Left Center, the former wishing a constitutional monarchy, and the latter a conservative republic. One should visit the Assembly more than once to bring away anything beyond a confused sense of much animated gesticulation, violent discussion, often rising into a frenzy of speech and movement only equalled by the excitement of the Bourse. Calm talk grows to an apparent tempest of speech, for which there is no control, until it subsides of itself. Those familiar with emotional French manner will tell us that it all means nothing serious; that, notwithstanding this turmoil, all important questions are calmly discussed in party councils before they are submitted to public debate, and that the excitement is only the natural outlet of irrepressible human nature as it exists in sunny France. And it matters little with what petty bluster or serious throes she does it, if, out of her agitations, the nation comes, as she seems to be slowly doing, into larger light and truer liberty, into the grand freedom of self-control. Once there, revolutions will cease to be chronic, and regeneration, begun in the governmental center, may permeate the spiritual and intellectual, and ultimately reach even the corruption of the social life. Any influence that tends toward this, however convulsive in its action, must be welcomed by the thinking world. In her transformed palaces and half deserted churches one can but think on these things, forgetting that our business is for the present to observe and not to think. There is small time now for processes of thought, and none for opinions or conclusions. Three-quarters of the globe is before us, and even bewildering, bewitching France must be left behind.
[To be continued.]
By MARY R. D. DINGWALL.
“So many of our students are in middle and after middle life; the death rate is, therefore, unusually large.”
“So many of our students are in middle and after middle life; the death rate is, therefore, unusually large.”
“I will have them be with me where I am,”Says Christ of his sainted ones;And we give them up with sorrowing hearts,When the Master’s summons comes.Fold we the hands, though tasks at which they wroughtMay be but half completed;And we press the lips with a solemn thoughtOf the last words they repeated.“I will have them be with me where I am,”Says he who o’er Lazarus wept;And with tears we lay our loved ones away,To sleep as Lazarus slept.And we take up the tasks they left undone,Sing songs they would be singing,While we run with patience the race they run,Bring sheaves as they were bringing.
“I will have them be with me where I am,”Says Christ of his sainted ones;And we give them up with sorrowing hearts,When the Master’s summons comes.Fold we the hands, though tasks at which they wroughtMay be but half completed;And we press the lips with a solemn thoughtOf the last words they repeated.“I will have them be with me where I am,”Says he who o’er Lazarus wept;And with tears we lay our loved ones away,To sleep as Lazarus slept.And we take up the tasks they left undone,Sing songs they would be singing,While we run with patience the race they run,Bring sheaves as they were bringing.
“I will have them be with me where I am,”Says Christ of his sainted ones;And we give them up with sorrowing hearts,When the Master’s summons comes.Fold we the hands, though tasks at which they wroughtMay be but half completed;And we press the lips with a solemn thoughtOf the last words they repeated.
“I will have them be with me where I am,”
Says Christ of his sainted ones;
And we give them up with sorrowing hearts,
When the Master’s summons comes.
Fold we the hands, though tasks at which they wrought
May be but half completed;
And we press the lips with a solemn thought
Of the last words they repeated.
“I will have them be with me where I am,”Says he who o’er Lazarus wept;And with tears we lay our loved ones away,To sleep as Lazarus slept.And we take up the tasks they left undone,Sing songs they would be singing,While we run with patience the race they run,Bring sheaves as they were bringing.
“I will have them be with me where I am,”
Says he who o’er Lazarus wept;
And with tears we lay our loved ones away,
To sleep as Lazarus slept.
And we take up the tasks they left undone,
Sing songs they would be singing,
While we run with patience the race they run,
Bring sheaves as they were bringing.
By CHARLES LAMB.
Lear, King of Britain, had three daughters; Gonerill, wife to the Duke of Albany; Regan, wife to the Duke of Cornwall; and Cordelia, a young maid, for whose love the King of France and Duke of Burgundy were joint suitors, and were at this time making stay for that purpose in the court of Lear.
The old king, worn out with age and the fatigues of government, he being more than fourscore years old, determined to take no further part in state affairs, but to leave the management to younger strengths, that he might have time to prepare for death, which must at no long period ensue. With this intent he called his three daughters to him, to know from their own lips which of them loved him best, that he might part his kingdom among them in such proportions as their affection for him should seem to deserve.
Gonerill, the eldest, declared that she loved her father more than words could give out, that he was dearer to her than the light of her own eyes, dearer than life and liberty, with a deal of such professing stuff, which is easy to counterfeit where there is no real love, only a few fine words delivered with confidence being wanted in that case. The king, delighted to hear from her own mouth this assurance of her love, and thinking truly that her heart went with it, in a fit of fatherly fondness bestowed upon her and her husband one third of his ample kingdom.
Then calling to him his second daughter, he demanded what she had to say. Regan, who was made of the same hollow metal as her sister, was not a whit behind in her professions; but rather declared that what her sister had spoken came short of the love which she professed to bear for his highness; insomuch that she found all other joys dead, in comparison with the pleasure which she took in the love of her dear king and father. Lear blest himself in having such loving children, as he thought; and could do no less, after the handsome assurances which Regan had made, than bestow a third of his kingdom upon her and her husband, equal in size to that which he had already given away to Gonerill.
Then turning to his youngest daughter Cordelia, whom he called his joy, he asked what she had to say; thinking no doubt that she would glad his ears with the same loving speeches which her sisters had uttered, or rather that her expressions would be so much stronger than theirs, as she had always been his darling, and favored by him above either of them. But Cordelia, disgusted with the flattery of her sisters, whose hearts she knew were far from their lips, and seeing that all their coaxing speeches were only intended to wheedle the old king out of his dominions, that they and their husbands might reign in his life-time, made no other reply but this, that she loved his majesty according to her duty, neither more nor less. The king, shocked with this appearance of ingratitude in his favorite child, desired her to consider her words, and to mend her speech, lest it should mar her fortunes. Cordelia then told her father, that he was her father, that he had given her breeding, and loved her, that she returned those duties back as was most fit, and did obey him, love him, and most honor him. But that she could not frame her mouth to such large speeches as her sisters had done, or promise to love nothing else in the world. Why had her sisters husbands, if (as they said) they had no love for anything but their father? If she should ever wed, she was sure the lord to whom she gave her hand would want half her love, half of her care and duty: she should never marry like her sisters, to love her father all.
Cordelia, who in earnest loved her old father, even almost as extravagantly as her sisters pretended to do, would have plainly told him so at any other time, in more daughter-like and loving terms, and without these qualifications, which did indeed sound a little ungracious: but after the crafty flattering speeches of her sisters, which drew such extravagant rewards, she thought the handsomest thing she could do was to love and be silent. This put her affection out of suspicion of mercenary ends, and showed that she loved, but not for gain: and that her professions, the less ostentatious they were, had so much the more of truth and sincerity than her sisters’.
This plainness of speech, which Lear called pride, so enraged the old monarch—who in his best of times always showed much of spleen and rashness, and in whom the dotage incident to old age had so clouded over his reason, that he could not discern truth from flattery, nor a gay painted speech from words that came from the heart—that in a fury of resentment he retracted the third part of his kingdom which he had reserved for Cordelia, and gave it away from her, sharing it equally between her two sisters, and their husbands, the Dukes of Albany and Cornwall; whom he now called to him, and in presence of all his courtiers, bestowing a coronet between them, invested them jointly with all the power, revenue, and execution of government, only retaining to himself the name of king; all the rest of royalty he resigned: with this reservation, that himself, with a hundred knights for his attendants, was to be maintained by monthly course in each of his daughters’ palaces in turn.
So preposterous a disposal of his kingdom, so little guided by reason, and so much by passion, filled all his courtiers with astonishment and sorrow; but none of them had the courage to interpose between this incensed king and his wrath, except the Earl of Kent, who was beginning to speak a good word for Cordelia, when the passionate Lear on pain of death commanded him to desist; but the good Kent was not so to be repelled. He had been ever loyal to Lear, whom he had honored as a king, loved as a father, followed as a master; and had never esteemed his life further than as a pawn to wage against his royal master’s enemies, nor feared to lose it when Lear’s safety was the motive; nor now that Lear was most his own enemy did this faithful servant of the king forget his old principles, but manfully opposed Lear, to do Lear good; and was unmannerly only because Lear was mad. He had been a most faithful counselor in times past to the king, and he besought him now, that he would see with his eyes (as he had done in many weighty matters), and go by his advice still, and in his best consideration recall this hideous rashness; for he would answer with his life, his judgment, that Lear’s youngest daughter did not love him least, nor were those empty-hearted whose low sound gave no token of hollowness. When power bowed to flattery, honor was bound to plainness. For Lear’s threats, what could he do to him, whose life was already at his service, that should not hinder duty from speaking?
The honest freedom of this good Earl of Kent only stirred up the king’s wrath the more, and like a frantic patient who kills his physician, and loves his mortal disease, he banished his true servant, and allotted him but five days to make his preparations for departure; but if on the sixth his hated person was found within the realm of Britain, that moment was to be his death. And Kent bade farewell to the king, and said, that since he chose to show himself in such a fashion, it was but banishment to stay there; and before he went he recommended Cordelia to the protection of the gods, the maid who had so rightly thought, and so discreetly spoken; and only wished that her sisters’ large speeches might be answered with deeds of love; and then he went, as he said, to shape his old course to a new country.
The King of France and Duke of Burgundy were now called in to hear the determination of Lear about his youngest daughter, and to know whether they would persist in their courtship to Cordelia, now that she was under her father’s displeasure, and had no fortune but her own person to recommend her. The Duke of Burgundy declined the match, and would not take her to wife upon such conditions; but the King of France, understanding what the nature of the fault had been which had lost her the love of her father, that it was only a tardiness of speech, and the not being able to frame her tongue to flattery like her sisters, took this young maid by the hand, and saying that her virtues were a dowry above a kingdom, bade Cordelia to take farewell of her sisters, and of her father, though he had been unkind, and she should go with him, and be queen of him and of fair France, and reign over fairer possessions than her sisters: and he called the Duke of Burgundy in contempt a waterish duke, because his love for this young maid had in a moment run all away like water.
Then Cordelia, with weeping eyes, took leave of her sisters and besought them to love their father well, and make good their professions; and they sullenly told her not to prescribe to them for they knew their duty, but to strive to content her husband, who had taken her (as they tauntingly expressed it) as Fortune’s alms. And Cordelia with a heavy heart departed, for she knew the cunning of her sisters, and she wished her father in better hands than she was about to leave him in.
Cordelia was no sooner gone than the devilish dispositions of her sisters began to show themselves in their true colors. Even before the expiration of the first month, which Lear was to spend by agreement with his eldest daughter, Gonerill, the old king began to find out the difference between promises and performances. This wretch, having got from her father all that he had to bestow, even to the giving away of the crown from off his head, began to grudge even those small remnants of royalty which the old man had reserved to himself, to please his fancy with the idea of being still a king. She could not bear to see him and his hundred knights. Every time she met her father, she put on a frowning countenance; and when the old man wanted to speak with her, she would feign sickness, or anything to be rid of the sight of him; for it was plain that she esteemed his old age a useless burden, and his attendants an unnecessary expense. Not only she herself slackened in her expressions of duty to the king, but by her example, and (it is to be feared) not without her private instructions, her very servants treated him with neglect, and would refuse to obey his orders, or still more contemptuously pretend not to hear them. Lear could not but perceive this alteration in the behavior of his daughter, but he shut his eyes against it as long as he could, as people commonly are unwilling to believe the unpleasant consequences which their own mistakes and obstinacy have brought upon them.
True love and fidelity are no more to be estranged by ill, than falsehood and hollow-heartedness can be conciliated by good usage. This eminently appears in the instance of the good Earl of Kent, who, though banished by Lear, and his life made forfeit if he were found in Britain, choose to stay and abide all consequences, as long as there was a chance of his being useful to the king, his master. See to what mean shifts and disguises poor loyalty is forced to submit sometimes; yet it counts nothing base or unworthy, so as it can but do service where it owes an obligation. In the disguise of a serving-man, all his greatness and pomp laid aside, this good earl proffered his services to the king, who not knowing him to be Kent in that disguise, but pleased with a certain plainness, or rather bluntness in hisanswers which the earl put on, (so different from that smooth oily flattery which he had so much reason to be sick of, having found the effects not answerable in his daughter), a bargain was quickly struck, and Lear took Kent into his service by the name of Caius, as he called himself, never suspecting him to be his once great favorite, the high and mighty Earl of Kent. This Caius quickly found means to show his fidelity and love to his royal master; for Gonerill’s steward that same day behaving in a disrespectful manner to Lear, and giving him saucy looks and language, as no doubt he was secretly encouraged to do by his mistress, Caius not enduring to hear so open an affront put upon majesty, made no more ado, but presently tripped up his heels, and laid the unmannerly slave in the kennel, for which friendly service Lear became more and more attached to him.
Nor was Kent the only friend Lear had. In his degree, and so far as so insignificant a personage could show his love, the poor fool, or jester, that had been of his palace while Lear had a palace, as it was the custom of kings and great personages at that time to keep a fool (as he was called) to make them sport after serious business. This poor fool clung to Lear after he had given away his crown, and by his witty sayings would keep up his good humor, though he could not refrain sometimes from jeering at his master for his imprudence, in uncrowning himself and giving all away to his daughters, at which time, as he rhymingly expressed it, these daughters
For sudden joy did weep,And he for sorrow sung,That such a king should play bo-peep,And go the fools among.
For sudden joy did weep,And he for sorrow sung,That such a king should play bo-peep,And go the fools among.
For sudden joy did weep,And he for sorrow sung,That such a king should play bo-peep,And go the fools among.
For sudden joy did weep,
And he for sorrow sung,
That such a king should play bo-peep,
And go the fools among.
And in such wild sayings and scraps of songs, of which he had plenty, this pleasant, honest fool poured out his heart even in the presence of Gonerill herself, in many a bitter taunt and jest which cut to the quick; such as comparing the king to the hedge-sparrow, who feeds the young of the cuckoo till they grow old enough, and then has its head bit off for its pains. And saying that the ass may know when the cart draws the horse (meaning that Lear’s daughters, that ought to go behind, now ranked before their father); and that Lear was no longer Lear, but the shadow of Lear; for which free speeches he was once or twice threatened to be whipped.
The coolness and falling off of respect which Lear had begun to perceive, were not all which this foolish-fond father was to suffer from his unworthy daughter. She now plainly told him that his staying in her palace was inconvenient so long as he insisted upon keeping up an establishment of a hundred knights; that this establishment was useless and expensive, and only served to fill her court with riot and feasting; and she prayed him that he would lessen their number, and keep none but old men about him, such as himself, and fitting his age.
Lear at first could not believe his eyes or ears, nor that it was his daughter who spoke so unkindly. He could not believe that she who had received a crown from him should seek to cut off his train, and grudge him the respect due to his old age. But she persisting in her undutiful demand, the old man’s rage was so excited, that he called her a detested kite, and said that she spoke an untruth. And so indeed she did, for the hundred knights were all men of choice behavior and sobriety of manners, skilled in all particulars of duty, and not given to rioting and feasting as she said. And he bid his horses to be prepared, for he would go to his other daughter, Regan, he and his hundred knights. And he spoke of ingratitude, and said it was a marble-hearted devil, and showed more hideous in a child than the sea-monster. And he cursed his eldest daughter Gonerill so as was terrible to hear, praying that she might never have a child, or if she had, that it might live to return that scorn and contempt upon her, which she had shown to him; that she might feel how sharper than a serpent’s tooth it was to have a thankless child. And Gonerill’s husband, the Duke of Albany, beginning to excuse himself for any share which Lear might suppose he had in the unkindness, Lear would not hear him out, but in rage ordered his horses to be saddled, and set out with his followers for the abode of Regan, his other daughter. And Lear thought to himself, how small the fault of Cordelia (if it was a fault) now appeared, in comparison with her sister’s, and he wept. And then he was ashamed that such a creature as Gonerill should have so much power over his manhood as to make him weep.
Regan and her husband were keeping their court in great pomp and state at their palace; and Lear despatched his servant Caius with letters to his daughter, that she might be prepared for his reception, while he and his train followed after. But it seems that Gonerill had been beforehand with him, sending letters also to Regan, accusing her father of waywardness and ill humors, and advising her not to receive so great a train as he was bringing with him. This messenger arrived at the same time with Caius, and Caius and he met. And who should it be but Caius’ old enemy, the steward, whom he had formerly tripped up by the heels for his saucy behavior to Lear. Caius not liking the fellow’s look, and suspecting what he came for, began to revile him, and challenged him to fight, which the fellow refusing, Caius, in a fit of honest passion, beat him soundly, as such a mischief-maker and carrier of wicked messages deserved; which coming to the ears of Regan and her husband, they ordered Caius to be put in the stocks, though he was a messenger from the king her father, and in that character demanded the highest respect, so that the first thing the king saw when he entered the castle, was his faithful servant Caius sitting in that disgraceful situation.
This was but a bad omen of the reception which he was to expect; but a worse followed, when upon inquiry for his daughter and her husband, he was told they were weary with traveling all night, and could not see him: and when lastly, upon his insisting in a positive and angry manner to see them, they came to greet him, whom should he see in their company but the hated Gonerill, who had come to tell her own story, and set her sister against the king her father!
This sight much moved the old man, and still more to see Regan take her by the hand: and he asked Gonerill if she was not ashamed to look upon his white beard? And Regan advised him to go home again with Gonerill and live with her peaceably, dismissing half of his attendants, and to ask her forgiveness; for he was old and wanted discretion, and must be ruled and led by persons that had more discretion than himself. And Lear showed how preposterous that would sound, if he were to go down on his knees, and beg of his own daughter for food and raiment, and he argued against such an unnatural dependence; declaring his resolution never to return with her, but to stay where he was with Regan, he and his hundred knights: for he said that she had not forgot the half of the kingdom which he had endowed her with, and that her eyes were not fierce like Gonerill’s, but mild and kind. And he said that rather than return to Gonerill, with half his train cut off, he would go over to France, and beg a wretched pension of the king there, who had married his youngest daughter without a portion.
But he was mistaken in expecting kinder treatment of Regan than he had experienced from her sister Gonerill. As if willing to outdo her sister in unfilial behavior, she declared that she thought fifty knights too many to wait upon him; that five-and-twenty were enough. Then Lear, nighheart-broken, turned to Gonerill, and said that he would go back with her, for her fifty doubled five-and-twenty, and so her love was twice as much as Regan’s. But Gonerill excused herself and said, “What need of so many as five-and-twenty? or even ten? or five? when he might be waited upon by her servants or her sister’s servants?” So these two wicked daughters, as if they strove to exceed each other in cruelty to their old father who had been so good to them, by little and little would have abated him of all his train, all respect (little enough for him that once commanded a kingdom), which was left him to show that he had once been a king! Not that a splendid train is essential to happiness, but from a king to a beggar is a hard change, from commanding millions to be without one attendant: and it was the ingratitude in his daughters denying it, more than what he would suffer by the want of it, which pierced this poor king to the heart: insomuch that with this double ill-usage, and vexation for having so foolishly given away a kingdom, his wits began to be unsettled, and while he said he knew not what, he vowed revenge against those unnatural hags, and to make examples of them that should be a terror to the earth!
While he was thus idly threatening what his weak arm could never execute, night came on, and a loud storm of thunder and lightning with rain; and his daughters still persisting in their resolution not to admit his followers, he called for his horses, and chose rather to encounter the utmost fury of the storm abroad, than to stay under the same roof with these ungrateful daughters; and they, saying that the injuries which willful men procure to themselves are their just punishment, suffered him to go in that condition, and shut their doors upon him.
The winds were high and the rain and storm increased when the old man sallied forth to combat with the elements, less sharp than his daughters’ unkindness. For many miles about there was scarce a bush: and there upon a heath, exposed to the fury of the storm in a dark night, did King Lear wander out, and defy the winds and the thunder; and he bid the winds to blow the earth into the sea, or swell the waves of the sea till they drowned the earth, that no token might remain of any such ungrateful animal as man. The old king was now left with no companion but the poor fool, who still abided with him, with his merry conceits striving to out-jest misfortune, saying, it was but a naughty night to swim in, and truly the king had better go in and ask his daughter’s blessing: