No tears for him!—he saw by faith sublimeThrough the wan shimmer of life's wasted flame,Across the green hills of the future time,The golden breaking of the morn of fame.Faded by the diviner life, and worn,The dust has fallen away, and ye but seeThe ruins of the house wherein were borneThe birth-pangs of an immortality.His great life from the wondrous life to be,Clasped the bright splendors that no sorrow mars,As some pale, shifting column of the sea,Mirrors the awful beauty of the stars.What was Love's lily pressure, what the lightOf its pleased smile, that a chance breath may chill?His soul was mated with the winds of night,And wandered through the universe at will.Oft in his heart its stormy passion woke,Yet from its bent his soul no more was stirred,Than is the broad green bosom of the oakBy the light flutter of the summer bird.His loves were of forbidden realms, unwroughtIn poet's rhyme, the music of his themes,Hovering about the watch-fires of his thought,On the dim borders of the land of dreams.For while his hand with daring energyFed the slow fire that, burning, must consume,The ravishing joys of unheard harmonyBeat like a living pulse within the tomb.Pillars of fire that wander through life's night,Children of genius! ye are doomed to be,In the embrace of your far-reaching light,Locking the radiance of eternity.
No tears for him!—he saw by faith sublimeThrough the wan shimmer of life's wasted flame,Across the green hills of the future time,The golden breaking of the morn of fame.
Faded by the diviner life, and worn,The dust has fallen away, and ye but seeThe ruins of the house wherein were borneThe birth-pangs of an immortality.
His great life from the wondrous life to be,Clasped the bright splendors that no sorrow mars,As some pale, shifting column of the sea,Mirrors the awful beauty of the stars.
What was Love's lily pressure, what the lightOf its pleased smile, that a chance breath may chill?His soul was mated with the winds of night,And wandered through the universe at will.
Oft in his heart its stormy passion woke,Yet from its bent his soul no more was stirred,Than is the broad green bosom of the oakBy the light flutter of the summer bird.
His loves were of forbidden realms, unwroughtIn poet's rhyme, the music of his themes,Hovering about the watch-fires of his thought,On the dim borders of the land of dreams.
For while his hand with daring energyFed the slow fire that, burning, must consume,The ravishing joys of unheard harmonyBeat like a living pulse within the tomb.
Pillars of fire that wander through life's night,Children of genius! ye are doomed to be,In the embrace of your far-reaching light,Locking the radiance of eternity.
A more stately city than Copenhagen can scarcely be imagined. The streets, wide and long, filled with spacious and lofty houses of unspotted whiteness, and built with great regularity, remind one somewhat of Bath, but that the ground is level; many of them all but equal, in breadth, to the Irishman's test of street architecture—Sackville-street, Dublin. But large squares break up their continuous lines, and the eye rests on fine statues, noble palaces, and splendid buildings devoted to the arts, to amusement, to justice, or to the purposes of religion in every quarter of the city. Copenhagen is but a creation of the last century, and, after a little time spent there, a large portion of it gives the idea that it was built all of a sudden, by some Danish Grissell and Peto, according to contract. Surrounded by a deep foss, by ramparts and intrenchments, defended by formidable forts and batteries, filled with the halls of kings, with churches, museums, and castles, it combines the appearance of a new cut made by the royal commissioners through some old London rookery, with the air of an old feudal town. The moat prohibits any considerable extension. Seen under a bright cold sky, the blanched fronts of the houses, the white walls of the public edifices, the regularity of the streets, conveyed an impression of cleanliness, which could only be destroyed when one happened to look down at his feet, or ceased to keep guard over his nose. The paving is of the style which may be called Titanic, and was never intended for any foot garb less defensive than asabotor acaliga. The drainage is superficial,—that is, all the liquid refuse of the city runs, or rather walks very leisurely, along grooves in the pavement aforesaid, which are covered over by boards in various stages of decomposition. In summer, the city must be worse than Berlin (which, by the by, it very much resembles in many respects). In spring time, after rain, my own experience tells me it suggests forcible reminiscences of the antique odors of Fleet Ditch. One thing which soon strikes the stranger is the apparent want of shops. But they are to be found by those who want them. Nearly every trader carries on his business very modestly in his front parlor, and makes a moderate display of his stock in the ordinary window, so that the illusory and enchanting department of trade is quite gone. A Danish gentleman can walk out with his wife without the least fear that he will fall a victim to "a stupendous sacrifice," or be immolated on the altar of "an imperative necessity to clear out in a week."
Moving through these streets is a quiet, soberly-attired population. Bigger than most foreigners, and with great roundness of muscle and size of bone, your Dane wants the dapper air of the Frenchman, or the solemnity of the Spaniard, while he is not so bearded or so dirty as the German. But then he smokes prodigiously, dresses moderately in the English style, is addicted to jewelry in excess, and has a habit of plodding along, straight in the middle of the road, with his head down, which must be a matter of considerable annoyance to the native cabman. He is, however, amazingly polite. He not only takes off his hat to every one he knows, but gives any lady-acquaintance the trouble of recognizing him, by bowing to her before she has made up her mind whether the individual is known or not. Another of his peculiarities is, that he always has a dog. I should say, more correctly, there is always a dog following him,—for I have seen an animal, which seemed to be bound by the closest ties to a particular gentleman, placidly leave him at the corner of a street, and set off on an independent walk by itself. These dogs are, in fact, a feature of the place by themselves. In number they can only be excelled by the canine scavengers of Cairo or Constantinople, and in mongrelness and ugliness by no place in the world—not even in Tuum before the potato rot. They get up little extemporary hunts through the squares, the trail being generally the remnant of an old rat, carried away by the foremost, and dash between your legs from unexpected apertures in walls and houses, so as to cause very unpleasant consequences to the nervous or feeble sojourner. On seeking for an explanation of their great abundance, I was informed that they were kept to kill rats. But this is a mere delusion. These dogs are far too wise to lose their health by keeping late hours in pursuitof vermin. No, they retire as soon as darkness sets in, and with darkness, out come the rats in the most perfect security. Such rats! they are as big as kittens, and their squeaking under the wooden planks of the gutters as you walk home is perfectly amazing. The celebrated dog Billy would have died in a week of violent exercise in any one street in Copenhagen, giving him his usual allowance of murder. I must say that, in the matters of paving, dogs, rats, sewers, water, and lights, Copenhagen is rather behind the rest of the world. As to the lights, they are sparely placed, and as yet gas is not used. With a laudable economy, the oil-wicks are extinguished when the moon shines, and the result is, that sometimes an envious cloud leaves the whole city in Cimmerian darkness for the rest of the night, in consequence of five minutes' moonshine in the early part, as, once put out, they are not again relumed.
In the crowd you meet many pale, sorrow-stricken women in mourning, and now and then a poor soldier limps before you, with recent bandages on his stump, or hobbles along limpingly, with perhaps a sabre-cut across the face, or an empty coat-sleeve dangling from his shoulder; and then you remember all the horrors the late war must have caused Denmark, when, out of her small population, 90,000 men were under arms in the field. It can scarcely atone for this sight to meet dashing hussars, with their red coats and sheepskin calpacks; heavy dragoons in light-blue and dark-green; jagers in smart frocks of olive-green, decorated with stars and ribands, and swaggering along in all the pride of having smelt powder and done their duty. They are numerous enough, indeed every third man is a soldier; but one of these sad widows or orphans is an antidote to the glories of these fine heroes, scarcely less powerful than that of the spectacle of their mutilated and mangled comrades. This war has roused the national spirit of Denmark; it has caused her to make a powerful effort to shake off all connection with Germany, or dependence on her Germanic subjects, but it has cost her £5,000,000 of money, and it has left many a home desolate for ever.
There are some books that leave upon the mind a strange impression, one of the most delightful reading can produce—a haunting of the memory, it may be, by one form or by several, strangely real, having a positive personal presence and identity, yet always preserving an immaterial existence, and occupying a "removed ground," from which they never stir to mingle with the realities of recollection. These shadows hold their place apart, as some rare dreams do, claiming from us an indescribable tenderness.
The "Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson" is such a book. In many passages it is tedious—a record of petty strategies of partisan warfare—and, more dreary still, of factious jealousies and polemical hatreds. The absolute truth of the book is fatal, in one direction to our hero-worship. The leaders of the Great Rebellion, in such minute details, appear as mere schemers, as rival agents at a borough election; and the most fervent in professions of religious zeal are as bitter in their revenges as the heroes of a hundred scalps; but there arises out of the book, and is evermore associated with it, the calm quiet shadow of a woman of exquisite purity, of wondrous constancy, of untiring affection—Lucy Hutchinson, its writer.
John Hutchinson is at Richmond, lodging at the house of his music-master. He is twenty-two years of age. The village is full of "good company," for the young Princes are being educated in the palace, and many "ingenious persons entertained themselves at that place." The music-master's house is the resort of the king's musicians; "and divers of the gentlemen and ladies that were affected with music came thither to hear." There was a little girl "tabled" in the same house with John Hutchinson, who was taking lessons of the lutanist—a charming child, full of vivacity and intelligence. She told John she had an elder sister—a studious and retiring person—who was gone with her mother, Lady Apsley, into Wiltshire—and Lucy was going to be married, she thought. The little girl ever talked of Lucy—and the gentlemen talked of Lucy—and one day a song was sung which Lucy had written—and John and the vivacious child walked, another day, to Lady Apsley's house, and there, in a closet, were Lucy's Latin books. Mr. Hutchinson grew in love with Lucy's image; and when the talk was more rife that she was about to be married—and some said that she was indeed married—he became unhappy—and "began to believe there was some magic in the place, which enchanted men out of their right senses; but the sick heart could not be chid nor advised into health." At length Lucy and her mother came home; and Lucy was not married. Then John and Lucy wandered by the pleasant banks of the Thames, in that spring-time of 1638, and a "mutual friendship" grew up between them. Lucy now talked to him of her early life; how she had been born in the Tower of London, of which her late father, Sir John Apsley, was the governor; how her mother was the benefactress of the prisoners, and delighted to mitigate the hard fortune of the noble and the learned, and especially Sir Walter Raleigh, by every needful help to his studies and amusements; how she herself grew serious amongst these scenes, and delighted in nothing but reading, and would never practise her lute or harpsichords, and absolutely hated her needle. John was of a like serious temper. Their fate was determined.
The spring is far advanced into summer.On a certain day the friends on both sides meet to conclude the terms of the marriage. Lucy is not to be seen. She has taken the small-pox. She is very near death. At length John is permitted to speak to his betrothed. Tremblingly and mournfully she comes into his presence. She is "the most deformed person that could be seen." Who could tell the result in words so touching as Lucy's own? "He was nothing troubled at it, but married her as soon as she was able to quit the chamber, when the priest and all that saw her were affrighted to look on her. But God recompensed his justice and constancy by restoring her; though she was longer than ordinary before she recovered to be as well as before."
They were married on the 3d of July, 1638.
In the autumn of 1641, John and Lucy Hutchinson are living in their own house of Owthorpe, in Nottinghamshire. They have two sons. They are "peaceful and happy." John has dedicated two years since his marriage to the study of "school divinity." He has convinced himself of "the great point of predestination." This faith has not, as his wife records, produced a "carelessness of life in him," but "a more strict and holy walking." He applies himself, in his house at Owthorpe, "to understand the things then in dispute" between the King and Parliament. He is satisfied of the righteousness of the Parliament's cause; but he then "contents himself with praying for peace." In another year the King has set up his standard in Nottingham; the battle of Edgehill has been fought; all hope of peace is at an end. John Hutchinson is forced out of his quiet habitation by the suspicions of his royalist neighbors. He is marked as a Roundhead. Lucy does not like the name. "It was very ill applied to Mr. Hutchinson, who having naturally a very fine thick-set head of hair, kept it clean and handsome, so that it was a great ornament to him; although the godly of those days, when he embraced their party, would not allow him to be religious because his hair is not in their cut." The divinity student now becomes a lieutenant-colonel. He raises a company of "very honest godly men." The Earl of Chesterfield is plundering the houses of the Puritans in the vale of Belvoir, near Owthorpe; and the young colonel has apprehensions for the safety of his family. In the depth of winter, a troop of horse arrive one night at the lonely house where Lucy and her children abide. They are hastily summoned to prepare for an instant journey. They are to ride to Nottingham before sunrise, for the soldiers are not strong enough to march in the day. Lucy is henceforth to be the companion of her husband in his perilous office—his friend, his comforter—a ministering angel amongst the fierce and dangerous spirits, whom he sways by a remarkable union of courage and gentleness.
Let us look at the shadow of Lucy Hutchinson. She tranquilly sits in one of the upper chambers of the old and ruinous castle of which her husband is appointed governor. It is a summer evening of 1643. In that tower, built upon the top of the rock, tradition says that Queen Isabel received her paramour Mortimer; and at the base of the rock are still shown Mortimer's Well, and Mortimer's Hole, as Lady Hutchinson saw them two centuries ago. She looks out of the narrow windows by which her chamber is lighted. There is the Trent, peacefully flowing on one side, amid flat meadows. On the other is the town of Nottingham. The governor has made the ruinous castle a strong fortress, with which he can defy the Cavaliers should they occupy the town beneath. Opposite the towers is the old church of St. Nicholas, whose steeple commands the platform of the castle. The Governor has sent away his horse, and many of his foot, to guard the roads by which the enemy could approach Nottingham. There is no appearance of danger. The reveille is beat. Those who have been watching all night lounge into the town. It is in the possession of the Cavaliers. The scene is changed. The din of ordnance rouses Lucy from her calm gaze upon the windings of the Trent. For five days and nights there is firing without intermission. Within the walls of the castle there are not more than eighty men. The musketeers on St. Nicholas steeple pick off the cannoniers at their guns.
Now and then, as the assailants are beaten from the walls, they leave a wounded man behind, and he is dragged into the castle. On the sixth day, after that terrible period of watchfulness, relief arrives. The Cavaliers are driven from the town with much slaughter, and the castle is filled with prisoners. Lucy has been idle during those six days of peril. There was a task to be performed,—a fitting one for woman's tenderness. Within the castle was a dungeon called the Lion's Den, into which the prisoners were cast; and as they were brought up from the town, two of the fanatical ministers of the garrison reviled and maltreated them. Lucy reads the commands of her Master after another fashion. As the prisoners are carried bleeding to the Lion's Den, she implores that they should be brought in to her, and she binds up and dresses their wounds. And now the two ministers mutter—and their souls abhor to see this favor done to the enemies of God—and they teach the soldiers to mutter. But Lucy says, "I have done nothing but my duty. These are our enemies, but they are our fellow-creatures. Am I to be upbraided for these poor humanities?" And then she breathes a thanksgiving to Heaven that her mother had taught her this humble surgery. There is a tear in John's eye as he gazes on this scene. That night the Cavalier officers sup with him, rather as guests than as prisoners.
In the vale of Belvoir, about seven miles from Belvoir Castle, is the little village of Owthorpe. When Colonel Hutchinson returned to the house of his fathers, after the war was ended, he found it plundered of all its movables—a mere ruin. In a few years it is a fit dwelling for Lucy to enjoy a lifelong rest, after the terrible storms of her early married days. There is no accusing spirit to disturb their repose. John looks back upon that solemn moment when he signed the warrant for the great tragedy enacted before Whitehall without remorse. He had prayed for "an enlightened conscience," and he had carried out his most serious convictions. He took no part in the despotic acts that followed the destruction of the monarchy. He had no affection for the fanatics who held religion to be incompatible with innocent pleasures and tasteful pursuits. At Owthorpe, then, he lived the true life of an English gentleman. He built—he planted—he adorned his house with works of art—he was the first magistrate—the benefactor of the poor. The earnest man who daily expounded the Scriptures to his household was no ascetic. There was hospitality within those walls—with music and revelry. The Puritans looked gloomily and suspiciously upon the dwellers at Owthorpe. The Cavaliers could not forgive the soldier who had held Nottingham Castle against all assaults.
The Restoration comes. The royalist connexions of Lucy Hutchinson have a long struggle to save her husband's life; but he is finally included in the Act of Oblivion. He is once more at Owthorpe, without the compromise of his principles. He has done with political strife for ever.
On the 31st of October 1663, there is a coach waiting before the hall of Owthorpe. That hall is filled with tenants and laborers. Their benefactor cheerfully bids them farewell; but his wife and children are weeping bitterly. That coach is soon on its way to London with the husband and wife, and their eldest son and daughter. At the end of the fourth day's journey, at the gates of that fortress within which she had been born, Lucy Hutchinson is parted from him whose good and evil fortunes she had shared for a quarter of a century.
About a mile from Deal stands Sandown Castle. In 1664, Colonel Hutchinson is a prisoner within its walls. It was a ruinous place, not weatherproof. The tide washed the dilapidated fortress; the windows were unglazed; cold, and damp, and dreary was the room where the proud heart bore up against physical evils. For even here there was happiness. Lucy is not permitted to share his prison; but she may visit him daily. In the town of Deal abides that faithful wife. She is with him at the first hour of the morning; she remains till the latest of night. In sunshine or in storm, she is pacing along that rugged beach, to console and be consoled.
Eleven months have thus passed, when Lucy is persuaded by her husband to go to Owthorpe to see her children.
"When the time of her departure came, she left with a very sad and ill-presaging heart." In a few weeks John Hutchinson is laid in the family vault in that Vale of Belvoir.
Lucy Hutchinson sits in holy resignation in the old sacred home. She has a task to work out. She has to tell her husband's history, for the instruction of her children:—"I that am under a command not to grieve at the common rate of desolate women, while I am studying which way to moderate my woe, and, if it were possible, to augment my love, can, for the present, find out none more just to your dear father, nor consolatory to myself, than the preservation of his memory."
So rests her shadow, ever, in our poor remembrance.
Southey, Coleridge, and Lovell, three poets, married three sisters, the Misses Fricker of Bristol. They were all alike poor when they married. Southey's aunt shut her door in his face when she found he was resolved on marrying in such circumstances; and he, postponing entry upon the married life, though he had contracted the responsibility of husband, parted from his wife at the church door, and set out on a six months' visit to Portugal, preparatory to entering on the study of the legal profession. Southey committed his maiden wife to the care of Mr. Cottle's sisters during his absence. "Should I perish by shipwreck," he wrote from Falmouth to Mr. Cottle, "or by any other casualty, I have relations whose prejudice will yield to the anguish of affection, and who will love, cherish, and give all possible consolation to my widow." With these words Southey set sail for Portugal, and his wife, who had persuaded him to go, and cried when he was going, though she would not then have permitted him to stay, meekly retired to her place of refuge, wearing her wedding-ring round her neck.
Southey returned to England, and commenced the study of the law, but after a year's drudgery gave it up. His wife joined him in a second visit to Portugal, and on his return he commenced the laborious literary career which he pursued till his death. He enjoyed on the whole a happy married life; took pleasure in his home and his family; loving his children and his wife Edith dearly. This is one of his own pictures:—"Glance into the little room where sits the gray-haired man, 'working hard and getting little—a bare maintenance, and hardly that; writing poems and history for posterity with his whole heart and soul; one daily progressingin learning, not so learned as he is poor, not so poor as proud, not so proud as happy.'" Great men have invited him to London, and he is now answering the invitation. The thought of the journey plagues him. "Oh dear, oh dear!" he writes, "there is such a comfort in one's old coat and old shoes, one's own chair and own fireside, one's own writing-desk and own library—with a little girl climbing up to my neck and saying, 'Don't go to London, papa, you must stay with Edith'—and a little boy whom I have taught to speak the language of cats, dogs, cuckoos, jackasses, &c., before he can articulate a word of his own—there is such a comfort in all these things, thattransportationto London seems a heavier punishment than any sins of mine deserve." But a sad calamity fell upon him in his old age. His dear Edith was suddenly bereft of reason. "Forty years," he writes to Grosvenor Bedford from York, "has she been the life of my life—and I have left her this day in a lunatic asylum." In the same letter he expresses the resignation of a Christian and the confident courage of a man. "God, who has visited me with this affliction," he says, "has given me strength to bear it, and will,I know, support me to the end, whatever that may be. To-morrow I return to my poor children. I have much to be thankful for under this visitation. For the first time in my life (he was sixty years old) I am so far beforehand with the world that my means are provided for the whole of next year, and that I can meet this expenditure, considerable in itself, without any difficulty."
Mrs. Southey, after two years' absence, returned to Keswick, the family home, and closed her pitiable existence there. Southey was now a broken-down man. "There is no one," he mournfully writes, "to partake with me the recollections of the best and happiest portion of my life; and for that reason, were there no other, such recollections must henceforth be purely painful, except when I collect them with the prospects of futurity." Two years after, however, Southey married again: the marriage was one of respect on the part of Caroline Bowles, the gifted authoress, who was his choice, and probably of convenience and friendship on the part of Southey. We have heard that the union greatly tended to his comfort, and that his wife tenderly soothed and cheered his declining years.
Southey, in addition to maintaining his own wife and family at Keswick by his literary labors, had the families of his two sisters-in-law occasionally thrown upon his hands. He was not two-and-twenty when Mr. Lovell, who married his wife's sister, fell ill of fever, died, and left his widow and child without the slightest provision. Robert Southey took mother and child at once to his humble hearth, and there the former found happiness until his death. Coleridge, not sufficiently instructed by a genius to which his contemporaries did homage, in a wayward and unpardonable mood withdrew himself from the consolations of home; and in their hour of desertion his wife and children were saved half the knowledge of their hardships by finding a second husband and another father in the sanctuary provided for them by Robert Southey.
Coleridge was unpunctual, unbusiness-like, improvident, and dreamy, to the full extent to which poets are said proverbially to be. When he married—his pantisocratic Owenite scheme having just been exploded, and his lectures at Bristol having proved a failure—he retired with Sara Fricker, his wife, to a cottage at Clevedon, near Bristol. Though the cottage was a poor one, consisting of little more than four bare walls, for which he paid only £5 annual rental, he and his wife made it pretty snug with the aid of the funds supplied by their constant friend, Mr. Cottle, the Bristol bookseller. Coleridge decorated this cottage with all the graces that his imagination and fancy could throw around it. It is alluded to in many of his poems:—
"Low was our pretty cot! our tallest rosePeep'd at the chamber window. We could hearAt silent noon, and eve, and early morn,The sea's faint murmur. In the open airOur myrtles blossom'd, and across the porchThick jasmines twin'd: the little landscape roundWas green and woody, and refreshed the eye.It was a spot which you might aptly callThe valley of seclusion."
"Low was our pretty cot! our tallest rosePeep'd at the chamber window. We could hearAt silent noon, and eve, and early morn,The sea's faint murmur. In the open airOur myrtles blossom'd, and across the porchThick jasmines twin'd: the little landscape roundWas green and woody, and refreshed the eye.It was a spot which you might aptly callThe valley of seclusion."
But his loved young wife was not forgotten; for again he sings:—
"My pensive Sara! thy soft cheek reclin'dThus on mine arm, most soothing sweet it isTo sit beside our cot—our cot o'ergrownWith white-flowered jasmine, and the broad leav'd myrtle(Meet emblems they of innocence and love!)And watch the clouds, that late were rich with light,Slow saddening round, and mark the star of eve,Serenely brilliant (such should wisdom be!)Shine opposite."
"My pensive Sara! thy soft cheek reclin'dThus on mine arm, most soothing sweet it isTo sit beside our cot—our cot o'ergrownWith white-flowered jasmine, and the broad leav'd myrtle(Meet emblems they of innocence and love!)And watch the clouds, that late were rich with light,Slow saddening round, and mark the star of eve,Serenely brilliant (such should wisdom be!)Shine opposite."
Here their first child was born—Hartley, the dreamer—on whom the happy parent shed tears of joy:—
"But when I saw it on its mother's arm,And hanging at her bosom (she the whileBent o'er its features with a tearful smile,)Then I was thrill'd and melted, and most warmImpress'd a father's kiss; and all beguil'dOf dark remembrance and presageful fear,I seem'd to see an angel's form appear—'Twas even thine, beloved woman mild!So for the mother's sake the child was dear,And dearer was the mother for the child."
"But when I saw it on its mother's arm,And hanging at her bosom (she the whileBent o'er its features with a tearful smile,)Then I was thrill'd and melted, and most warmImpress'd a father's kiss; and all beguil'dOf dark remembrance and presageful fear,I seem'd to see an angel's form appear—'Twas even thine, beloved woman mild!So for the mother's sake the child was dear,And dearer was the mother for the child."
But writing poetry, reading Hartley and Condillac, would not make the poet's pot boil at all briskly, and so he had to go a little nearer to the world, and went back to Bristol. Coleridge, however, wanted application, and could scarcely be induced to work, even though the prospect of liberal remuneration was offered to him. Hence, a few years after marriage, in July, 1796, we find him thus groaning in the spirit to a friend: "It is my duty and business to thank God for all his dispensations, and to believe them the best possible; but, indeed, I think I should have been more thankful if He had made me ajourneyman shoemaker, instead of an author, by trade. I have left my friends, I have left plenty," &c. "So I am forced to write for bread! with the nights of poetic enthusiasm, when every minute I am hearing a groan from my wife—groans, and complaints, and sickness! The present hour I am in a quickset of embarrassments, and whichever way I turn, a thorn runs into me! The future is a cloud and thick darkness! Poverty, perhaps, and the thin faces of them that want bread looking up to me," &c. This was not the kind of spirit to make a wife happy—very different indeed from the manly, courageous, and self-helping Southey—and the poor wife suffered much. Whatever Coleridge touched failed: his fourpenny paper, theWatchman, was an abortion; and the verses he wrote for a London paper did little for him. He next preached for a short time among the Unitarians, deriving a very precarious living from that source; when at length the Messrs. Wedgwood, struck by his great talents, granted him an annuity of £150 to enable him to devote himself to study. Then he went to Germany, leaving his wife and little family to the hospitality of Southey; and returned and settled down to the precarious life of a writer for the newspapers: his eloquent conversation producing unbounded admiration, but very little "grist." He was often distressed for money, wasting what he had by indulgence in opium, to which he was at one time a fearful victim. The great and unquestionable genius of Coleridge was expended chiefly on projections. He was a man who was capable of greatly adorning the literature of his time, and of creating an altogether new era in its history; but he could not or would not work, and his life was passed in dreamy idleness, in self-inflicted poverty, often in poignant misery, in gloomy regrets, and in unfulfilled designs. We fear the life of Mrs. Coleridge was not a happy one, good and affectionate though she was as a wife and mother.
Leonard and Helen settled themselves in two little chambers in a small lane. The neighborhood was dull enough—the accommodation humble; but their landlady had a smile. That was the reason, perhaps, why Helen chose the lodgings; a smile is not always found on the face of a landlady when the lodger is poor. And out of their windows they caught sight of a green tree, an elm, that grew up fair and tall in a carpenter's yard at the rear. That tree was like another smile to the place. They saw the birds come and go to its shelter; and they even heard, when a breeze arose, the pleasant murmur of its boughs.
Leonard went the same evening to Captain Digby's old lodgings, but he could learn there no intelligence of friends or protectors for Helen. The people were rude and sturdy, and said that the Captain still owed them £1 17s. The claim, however, seemed very disputable; and was stoutly denied by Helen. The next morning Leonard set off in search of Dr. Morgan. He thought his best plan was to inquire the address of the Doctor at the nearest chemist's, and the chemist civilly looked into theCourt Guide, and referred him to a house in Bulstrode-street, Manchester Square. To this street Leonard contrived to find his way, much marvelling at the meanness of London. Screwstone seemed to him the handsomest town of the two.
A shabby man-servant opened the door, and Leonard remarked that the narrow passage was choked with boxes, trunks, and various articles of furniture. He was shown into a small room, containing a very large round table, whereon were sundry works on homœopathy, Parry'sCymbrian Plutarch, Davies'Celtic Researches, and a Sunday newspaper. An engraved portrait of the illustrious Hahnemann occupied the place of honor over the chimneypiece. In a few minutes the door to an inner room opened, and Dr. Morgan appeared, and said politely, "Come in, sir."
The Doctor seated himself at a desk, looked hastily at Leonard, and then at a great chronometer lying on the table. "My time's short, sir—going abroad; and now that I am going, patients flock to me. Too late. London will repent its apathy. Let it!"
The Doctor paused majestically, and, not remarking on Leonard's face the consternation he had anticipated, he repeated peevishly—"I am going abroad, sir, but I will make a synopsis of your case, and leave it to my successor. Hum! Hair chestnut; eyes—what color? Look this way—blue,—dark blue. Hem! Constitution nervous. What are the symptoms?"
"Sir," began Leonard, "a little girl—"
Dr. Morgan, (impatiently)—"Little girl! Never mind the history of your sufferings; stick to the symptoms—stick to the symptoms."
Leonard.—"You mistake me, Doctor; I have nothing the matter with me. A little girl—"
Dr. Morgan.—"Girl again! I understand it! it is she who is ill. Shall I go to her? she must describe her own symptoms—I can't judge from your talk. You'll be telling me she has consumption, or dyspepsia, or some such disease that don't exist: mere allopathic inventions—symptoms, sir, symptoms."
Leonard, (forcing his way)—"You attended her poor father, Captain Digby, when he was taken ill in the coach with you. He is dead, and his child is an orphan."
Dr. Morgan, (fumbling in his medical pocket-book.)—"Orphan!nothing for orphans, especially if inconsolable, likeaconiteandchamomilla."[12]
With some difficulty Leonard succeeded in bringing Helen to the recollection of the homœopathist, stating how he came in charge of her, and why he sought Dr. Morgan.
The Doctor was much moved.
"But really," said he after a pause, "I don't see how I can help the poor child. I know nothing of her relations. This Lord Les—whatever his name is—I know of no lords in London. I knew lords, and physicked them too, when I was a blundering allopathist. There was the Earl of Lansmere—has had many a blue pill from me, sinner that I was. His son was wiser; never would take physic. Very clever boy was Lord L'Estrange—I don't know if he was as good as he was clever—"
"Lord L'Estrange!—that name begins with Les—"
"Stuff! He's always abroad—shows his sense. I'm going abroad too. No development for science in this horrid city; full of prejudices, sir, and given up to the most barbarous allopathical and phlebotomical propensities. I am going to the land of Hahnemann, sir—sold my good-will, lease, and furniture, and have bought in on the Rhine. Natural life there, sir—homœopathy needs nature; dine at one o'clock, get up at four—tea little known, and science appreciated. But I forget. Cott! what can I do for the orphan?"
"Well, sir," said Leonard rising, "Heaven will give me strength to support her."
The doctor looked at the young man attentively. "And yet," said he in a gentler voice, "you, young man, are, by your account, a perfect stranger to her, or were so when you undertook to bring her to London. You have a good heart—always keep it. Very healthy thing, sir, a good heart—that is, when not carried to excess. But you have friends of your own in town?"
Leonard.—"Not yet, sir; I hope to make them."
Doctor.—"Bless me, you do? How? I can't make any."
Leonard colored and hung his head. He longed to say "Authors find friends in their readers—I am going to be an author." But he felt that the reply would savor of presumption, and held his tongue.
The Doctor continued to examine him, and with friendly interest. "You say you walked up to London—was that from choice or economy?"
Leonard.—"Both, sir."
Doctor.—"Sit down again and let us talk. I can give you a quarter of an hour, and I'll see if I can help either of you, provided you tell all the symptoms—I mean all the particulars."
Then with that peculiar adroitness which belongs to experience in the medical profession, Dr. Morgan, who was really an acute and able man, proceeded to put his questions, and soon extracted from Leonard the boy's history and hopes. But when the Doctor, in admiration at a simplicity which contrasted so evident an intelligence, finally asked him his name and connections, and Leonard told them, the homœopathist actually started. "Leonard Fairfield, grandson of my old friend, John Avenel of Lansmere! I must shake you by the hand. Brought up by Mrs. Fairfield!—Ah, now I look, strong family likeness—very strong!"
The tears stood in the Doctor's eyes. "Poor Nora!" said he.
"Nora! Did you know my aunt?"
"Your aunt! Ah—ah! yes—yes! Poor Norah!—she died almost in these arms—so young, so beautiful. I remember it as of yesterday."
The Doctor brushed his hand across his eyes, and swallowed a globule; and, before the boy knew what he was about, had in his benevolence thrust another between Leonard's quivering lips.
A knock was heard at the door.
"Ha! that's my great patient," cried the Doctor, recovering his self-possession—"must see him. A chronic case—excellent patient—tic, sir, tic. Puzzling and interesting. If I could take that tic with me, I should ask nothing more from Heaven. Call again on Monday; I may have something to tell you then as to yourself. The little girl can't stay with you—wrong and nonsensical. I will see after her. Leave me your address—write it here. I think I know a lady who will take charge of her. Good-bye. Monday next, ten o'clock."
With this, the Doctor thrust out Leonard, and ushered in his grand patient, whom he was very anxious to take with him to the banks of the Rhine.
Leonard had now only to discover the nobleman whose name had been so vaguely uttered by poor Captain Digby. He had again recourse to theCourt Guide; and finding the address of two or three lords the first syllables of whose titles seemed similar to that repeated to him, and all living pretty near to each other, in the regions of May Fair, he ascertained his way to that quarter, and, exercising his mother-wit, inquired at the neighboring shops as to the personal appearance of these noblemen. Out of consideration for his rusticity, he got very civil and clear answers; but none of the lords in question corresponded with the description given by Helen. One was old, another was exceedingly corpulent, a third was bed-ridden—none of them was known to keep a great dog. It is needless to say that the name of L'Estrange (no habitant of London) was not in theCourt Guide. And Dr. Morgan's assertion that that person was alwaysabroad, unluckily dismissed from Leonard's mind the name the homœopathist had so casually mentioned. But Helen was not disappointed when her young protector returned late in the day and told her of his ill success. Poor child! she was so pleased in her heart not to be separated from her new brother; and Leonard was touched to how she had contrived, in his absence, to give a certain comfort and cheerful grace to the bare room devoted to himself. She had arranged his few books and papers so neatly, near the window, in sight of the one green elm. She had coaxed the smiling landlady out of one or two extra articles of furniture, especially a walnut-tree bureau, and some odds and ends of ribbon—with which last she had looped up the curtains. Even the old rush-bottom chairs had a strange air of elegance, from the mode in which they were placed. The fairies had given sweet Helen the art that adorns a home, and brings out a smile from the dingiest corner of hut and attic.
Leonard wondered and praised. He kissed his blushing ministrant gratefully, and they sat down in joy to their abstemious meal, when suddenly his face was overclouded—there shot through him the remembrance of Dr. Morgan's words—"The little girl can't stay with you—wrong and nonsensical. I think I know a lady who will take charge of her."
"Ah," cried Leonard, sorrowfully, "how could I forget?" And he told Helen what grieved him. Helen at first exclaimed that she would not go. Leonard, rejoiced, then began to talk as usual of his great prospects; and, hastily finishing his meal, as if there were no time to lose, sat down at once to his papers. Then Helen contemplated him sadly, as he bent over his delighted work. And when, lifting his radiant eyes from his MS. he exclaimed, "No, no, you shallnotgo.Thismust succeed, and we shall live together in some pretty cottage, where we can see more than one tree"—thenHelen sighed, and did not answer this time, "No, I will not go."
Shortly after she stole from the room, and into her own; and there, kneeling down, she prayed, and her prayer was somewhat this—"Guard me against my own selfish heart. May I never be a burden to him who has shielded me."
Perhaps, as the Creator looks down on this world, whose wondrous beauty beams on us more and more, in proportion as our science would take it from poetry into law—perhaps He beholds nothing so beautiful as the pure heart of a simple loving child.
Leonard went out the next day with his precious MSS. He had read sufficient of modern literature to know the names of the principal London publishers; and to these he took his way with a bold step, though a beating heart.
That day he was out longer than the last; and when he returned, and came into the little room, Helen uttered a cry, for she scarcely recognised him. There was on his face so deep, so concentrated a despondency. He sat down listlessly, and did not kiss her this time, as she stole towards him. He felt so humbled. He was a king deposed.Hetake charge of another life! He!
She coaxed him at last into communicating his day's chronicle. The reader beforehand knows too well what it must be, to need detailed repetition. Most of the publishers had absolutely refused to look at his MSS.; one or two had good-naturedly glanced over and returned them at once, with a civil word or two of flat rejection. One publisher alone—himself a man of letters, and who in youth had gone through the same bitter process of dis-illusion that now awaited the village genius—volunteered some kindly though stern explanation and counsel to the unhappy boy. This gentleman read a portion of Leonard's principal poem with attention, and even with frank admiration. He could appreciate the rare promise that it manifested. He sympathized with the boy's history, and even with his hopes; and then he said, in bidding him farewell—
"If I publish this poem for you, speaking as a trader, I shall be a considerable loser. Did I publish all that I admire, out of sympathy with the author, I should be a ruined man. But suppose that, impressed as I really am with the evidence of no common poetic gifts in this MS., I publish it, not as a trader, but a lover of literature, I shall in reality, I fear, render you a great disservice, and perhaps unfit your whole life for the exertions on which you must rely for independence."
"How, sir?" cried Leonard—"Not that I would ask you to injure yourself for me," he added with proud tears in his eyes.
"How, my young friend? I will explain. There is enough talent in these verses to induce very flattering reviews in some of the literary journals. You will read these, find yourself proclaimed a poet, will cry 'I am on the road to fame.' You will come to me, 'And my poem, how does it sell?' I shall point to some groaning shelf, and say, 'not twenty copies!' The journals may praise, but the public will not buy it. 'But you will have got a name,' you say. Yes, a name as a poet just sufficiently known to make every man in practical business disinclined to give fair trial to your talents in a single department of positive life;—none like to employ poets;—a name that will not put a penny in your purse—worse still, that will operate as a barrier against every escape into the ways whereby men get to fortune. But, having once tasted praise, you will continue to sigh for it: you will perhaps never again get a publisher to bring forth a poem, butyou will hanker round the purlieus of the muses, scribble for periodicals, fall at last into a bookseller's drudge. Profits will be so precarious and uncertain, that to avoid debt may be impossible; then, you who now seem so ingenuous and so proud, will sink deeper still into the literary mendicant—begging, borrowing—"
"Never—never—never!" cried Leonard, veiling his face with his hands.
"Such would have been my career," continued the publisher. "But I luckily had a rich relative, a trader, whose calling I despised as a boy, who kindly forgave my folly, bound me as an apprentice, and here I am; and now I can afford to write books as well as sell them.
"Young man, you must have respectable relations—go by their advice and counsel; cling fast to some positive calling. Be any thing in this city rather than poet by profession."
"And how, sir, have there ever been poets? Hadtheyother callings?"
"Read their biography, and then envy them!"
Leonard was silent a moment; but, lifting his head, answered loud and quickly,—"Ihaveread their biography. True, their lot poverty—perhaps hunger. Sir, I envy them!"
"Poverty and hunger are small evils," answered the bookseller, with a grave kind smile. "There are worse,—debt and degradation, and—despair."
"No, sir, no—you exaggerate; these last are not the lot of all poets."
"Right, for most of our greatest poets had some private means of their own. And for others, why, all who have put into a lottery have not drawn blanks. But who could advise another man to set his whole hope of fortune on the chance of a prize in a lottery? And such a lottery!" groaned the publisher, glancing towards sheets and reams of dead authors lying like lead upon his shelves.
Leonard clutched his MSS. to his heart, and hurried away.
"Yes," he muttered, as Helen clung to him and tried to console—"yes, you were right: London is very vast, very strong, and very cruel;" and his head sank lower and lower yet upon his bosom.
The door was flung widely open, and in, unannounced, walked Dr Morgan.
The child turned to him, and at the sight of his face she remembered her father; and the tears that, for Leonard's sake, she had been trying to suppress, found way.
The good Doctor soon gained all the confidence of these two young hearts. And, after listening to Leonard's story of his paradise lost in a day, he patted him on the shoulder and said, "Well, you will call on me on Monday, and we will see. Meanwhile, borrow these of me,"—and he tried to slip three sovereigns into the boy's hand. Leonard was indignant. The bookseller's warning flashed on him. Mendicancy! Oh no, he had not yet come to that! He was almost rude and savage in his rejection; and the Doctor did not like him the less for it.
"You are an obstinate mule," said the homœopathist, reluctantly putting up his sovereigns. "Will you work at something practical and prosy, and let the poetry rest awhile?"
"Yes," said Leonard doggedly, "I will work."
"Very well, then. I know an honest bookseller, and he shall give you some employment; and meanwhile, at all events, you will be among books, and that will be some comfort."
Leonard's eyes brightened—"A great comfort, sir." He pressed the hand he had before put aside to his grateful heart.
"But," resumed the Doctor seriously, "you really feel a strong predisposition to make verses?"
"I did, sir."
"Very bad symptom indeed, and must be stopped before a relapse! Here, I have cured three prophets and ten poets with this novel specific."
While thus speaking, he had got out his book and a globule. "Agaricus muscariusdissolved in a tumbler of distilled water—tea-spoonful whenever the fit comes on. Sir, it would have cured Milton himself."
"And now for you, my child," turning to Helen—"I have found a lady who will be very kind to you. Not a menial situation. She wants some one to read to her and tend on her—she is old and has no children. She wants a companion, and prefers a girl of your age to one older. Will this suit you?"
Leonard walked away.
Helen got close to the Doctor's ear, and whispered, "No, I cannot leavehimnow—he is so sad."
"Cott!" grunted the Doctor, "you two must have been readingPaul and Virginia. If I could but stay in England, I would try whatignatiawould do in this case—interesting experiment! Listen to me—little girl; and go out of the room, you, sir."
Leonard, averting his face, obeyed. Helen made an involuntary step after him—the Doctor detained and drew her on his knee.
"What is your Christian name?—I forget."
"Helen."
"Helen, listen. In a year or two you will be a young woman, and it would be very wrong then to live alone with that young man. Meanwhile, you have no right to cripple all his energies. He must not have you leaning on his right arm—you would weigh it down. I am going away, and when I am gone there will be no one to help you, if you reject the friend I offer you. Do as I tell you, for a little girl so peculiarly susceptible(a thoroughpulsatillaconstitution) cannot be obstinate and egotistical."
"Let me see him cared for and happy, sir," said she firmly, "and I will go where you wish."
"He shall be so; and to-morrow, while he is out, I will come and fetch you. Nothing so painful as leave-taking—shakes the nervous system, and is a mere waste of the animal economy."
Helen sobbed aloud; then, writhing from the Doctor, she exclaimed, "But he may know where I am? We may see each other sometimes? Ah, sir, it was at my father's grave that we first met, and I think Heaven sent him to me. Do not part us for ever."
"I should have a heart of stone if I did," cried the Doctor vehemently, "and Miss Starke shall let him come and visit you once a week. I'll give her something to make her. She is naturally indifferent to others. I will alter her whole constitution, and melt her into sympathy—withrhododendronandarsenic!"
Before he went, the Doctor wrote a line to Mr. Prickett, bookseller, Holborn, and told Leonard to take it, the next morning, as addressed. "I will call on Prickett myself to-night, and prepare him for your visit. And I hope and trust you will only have to stay there a few days."
He then turned the conversation, to communicate his plans for Helen. Miss Starke lived at Highgate—a worthy woman, stiff and prim, as old maids sometimes are. But just the place for a little girl like Helen, and Leonard should certainly be allowed to call and see her.
Leonard listened and made no opposition; now that his day-dream was dispelled, he had no right to pretend to be Helen's protector. He could have bade her share his wealth and his fame; his penury and his drudgery—no.
It was a very sorrowful evening—that between the adventurer and the child. They sat up late, till their candle had burned down to the socket; neither did they talk much; but his hand clasped hers all the time, and her head pillowed itself on his shoulder. I fear, when they parted, it was not for sleep.
And when Leonard went forth the next morning, Helen stood at the street door, watching him depart—slowly, slowly. No doubt, in that humble lane there were many sad hearts; but no heart so heavy as that of the still quiet child, when the form she had watched was to be seen no more, and, still standing on the desolate threshold, she gazed into space—and all was vacant.
Mr. Prickett was a believer in homœopathy, and declared, to the indignation of all the apothecaries round Holborn, that he had been cured of a chronic rheumatism by Dr. Morgan. The good Doctor had, as he promised, seen Mr. Prickett when he left Leonard, and asked him as a favor to find some light occupation for the boy, that would serve as an excuse for a modest weekly salary. "It will not be for long," said the Doctor; "his relations are respectable and well off. I will write to his grandparents, and in a few days I hope to relieve you of the charge. Of course, if you don't want him, I will repay what he costs meanwhile."
Mr. Prickett, thus prepared for Leonard, received him very graciously, and, after a few questions, said Leonard was just the person he wanted to assist him in cataloguing his books, and offered him most handsomely £1 a-week for the task.
Plunged at once into a world of books vaster than he had ever before won admission to, that old divine dream of knowledge, out of which poetry had sprung, returned to the village student at the very sight of the venerable volumes. The collection of Mr. Prickett was, however, in reality by no means large; but it comprised not only the ordinary standard works, but several curious and rare ones. And Leonard paused in making the catalogue, and took many a hasty snatch of the contents of each tome, as it passed through his hands. The bookseller, who was an enthusiast for old books, was pleased to see a kindred feeling (which his shop-boy had never exhibited) in his new assistant; and he talked about rare editions and scarce copies, and initiated Leonard in many of the mysteries of the bibliographist.
Nothing could be more dark and dingy than the shop. There was a booth outside, containing cheap books and odd volumes, round which there was always an attentive group; within, a gas-lamp burned night and day.
But time passed quickly to Leonard. He missed not the green fields, he forgot his disappointments, he ceased to remember even Helen. O strange passion of knowledge! nothing like thee for strength and devotion.
Mr. Prickett was a bachelor, and asked Leonard to dine with him on a cold shoulder of mutton. During dinner the shop-boy kept the shop, and Mr. Prickett was really pleasant as well as loquacious. He took a liking to Leonard—and Leonard told him his adventures with the publishers, at which Mr. Prickett rubbed his hands and laughed as at a capital joke. "Oh give up poetry, and stick to a shop," cried he; "and, to cure you for ever of the mad whim to be an author, I'll just lend you theLife and Works of Chatterton. You may take it home with you and read before you go to bed. You'll come back quite a new man to-morrow."
Not till night, when the shop was closed, did Leonard return to his lodging. And when he entered the room, he was struck to the soul by the silence, by the void. Helen was gone!
There was a rose-tree in its pot on the table at which he wrote, and by it a scrap of paper, on which was written—
"Dear, dear Brother Leonard, God bless you. I will let you know when we can meet again. Take care of this rose, Brother, and don't forget poor
Helen."
Over the word "forget" there was a big round blistered spot that nearly effaced the word.
Leonard leant his face on his hands, and for the first time in his life he felt what solitude really is. He could not stay long in the room. He walked out again, and wandered objectless to and fro the streets. He passed that stiller and humbler neighborhood, he mixed with the throng that swarmed in the more populous thoroughfares. Hundreds and thousands passed him by, and still—still such solitude.
He came back, lighted his candle, and resolutely drew forth the "Chatterton" which the bookseller had lent him. It was an old edition in one thick volume. It had evidently belonged to some contemporary of the Poet's—apparently an inhabitant of Bristol—some one who had gathered up many anecdotes respecting Chatterton's habits, and who appeared even to have seen him, nay, been in his company; for the book was interleaved, and the leaves covered with notes and remarks in a stiff clear hand—all evincing personal knowledge of the mournful immortal dead. At first,Leonard read with an effort; then the strange and fierce spell of that dread life seized upon him—seized with pain, and gloom, and terror—this boy dying by his own hand, about the age Leonard had attained himself. This wondrous boy, of a genius beyond all comparison—the greatest that ever yet was developed and extinguished at the age of eighteen—self-taught—self-struggling—self-immolated. Nothing in literature like that life and that death!
With intense interest Leonard perused the tale of the brilliant imposture, which had been so harshly and so absurdly construed into the crime of a forgery, and which was (if not wholly innocent) so akin to the literary devices always in other cases viewed with indulgence, and exhibiting, in this, intellectual qualities in themselves so amazing—such patience, such forethought, such labor, such courage, such ingenuity—the qualities that, well directed, make men great, not only in books, but action. And, turning from the history of the imposture to the poems themselves, the young reader bent before their beauty, literally awed and breathless. How had this strange Bristol boy tamed and mastered his rude and motley materials into a music that comprehended every tune and key, from the simplest to the sublimest? He turned back to the biography—he read on—he saw the proud, daring, mournful spirit, alone in the Great City like himself. He followed its dismal career, he saw it falling with bruised and soiled wings into the mire. He turned again to the later works, wrung forth as tasks for bread,—the satires without moral grandeur, the politics without honest faith. He shuddered and sickened as he read. True, even here his poet mind appreciated (what perhaps only poets can) the divine fire that burned fitfully through that meaner and more sordid fuel—he still traced in those crude, hasty, bitter offerings to dire Necessity, the hand of the young giant who had built up the stately verse of Rowley. But, alas! how different from that "mighty line." How all serenity and joy had fled from these later exercises of art degraded into journey-work. Then rapidly came on the catastrophe—the closed doors—the poison—the suicide—the manuscripts torn by the hands of despairing wrath, and strewed round the corpse upon the funeral floors. It was terrible! The spectre of the Titan boy, (as described in the notes written on the margin,) with his haughty brow, his cynic smile, his lustrous eyes, haunted all the night the baffled and solitary child of song.
It will often happen that what ought to turn the human mind from some peculiar tendency produces the opposite effect. One would think that the perusal in the newspaper of some crime and capital punishment would warn away all who had ever meditated the crime, or dreaded the chance of detection. Yet it is well known to us that many a criminal is made by pondering over the fate of some predecessor in guilt. There is a fascination in the Dark and Forbidden, which, strange to say, is only lost in fiction. No man is more inclined to murder his nephews, or stifle his wife, after reading Richard the Third or Othello. It is therealitythat is necessary to constitute the danger of contagion. Now, it was this reality in the fate, and life, and crowning suicide of Chatterton, that forced itself upon Leonard's thoughts, and sat there like a visible evil thing, gathering evil like cloud around it. There was much in the dead poet's character, his trials, and his doom, that stood out to Leonard like a bold and colossal shadow of himself and his fate. Alas! the bookseller, in one respect, had said truly. Leonard came back to him the next day a new man, and it seemed even to himself as if he had lost a good angel in losing Helen. "Oh that she had been by my side," thought he. "Oh that I could have felt the touch of her confiding hand—that, looking up from the scathed and dreary ruin of this life, that had sublimely lifted itself from the plain, and sought to tower aloft from a deluge, her mild look had spoken to me of innocent, humble, unaspiring childhood! Ah! If indeed I were still necessary to her—still the sole guardian and protector—then could I say to myself, 'Thou must not despair and die!Thou hast her to live and to strive for.' But no, no! Only this vast and terrible London—the solitude of the dreary garret, and those lustrous eyes glaring alike through the throng and through the solitude."
On the following Monday, Dr. Morgan's shabby man-servant opened the door to a young man in whom he did not at first remember a former visitor. A few days before, embrowned with healthful travel—serene light in his eye, simple trust in his careless lip—Leonard Fairfield had stood at that threshold. Now again he stood there pale and haggard, with a cheek already hollowed into those deep anxious lines that speak of working thoughts and sleepless nights; and a settled sullen gloom resting heavily on his whole aspect.
"I call by appointment," said the boy testily, as the servant stood irresolute. The man gave way. "Master is just called out to a patient; please to wait, sir;" and he showed him into the little parlor. In a few moments two other patients were admitted. These were women, and they began talking very loud. They disturbed Leonard's unsocial thoughts. He saw that the door into the Doctor's receiving-room was half open, and, ignorant of the etiquette which holds suchpenetraliaas sacred, he walked in to escape from the gossips. He threw himself into the Doctor's own well-worn chair, and muttered to himself, "Why did he tell me to come? What new can he think of for me? And if a favor, should I take it? He has given me the means of bread by work: that is all I have a right to ask from him, from any man—all I should accept."
While thus soliloquizing, his eye fell on a letter lying open on the table. He started. He recognized the handwriting—the same as the letter which had enclosed £50 to his mother—the letter of his grandparents. He saw his own name: he saw something more—words that made his heart stand still, and his blood seem like ice in his veins. As he thus stood aghast, a hand was laid on the letter, and a voice, in an angry growl, muttered, "How dare you come into my room, and be reading my letters? Er—r—r!"
Leonard placed his own hand on the Doctor's firmly, and said in a fierce tone, "This letter relates to me—belongs to me—crushes me. I have seen enough to know that. I demand to read all—learn all."
The Doctor looked round, and seeing the door into the waiting-room still open, kicked it to with his foot, and then said, under his breath, "What have you read? Tell me the truth."
"Two lines only, and I am called—I am called"—Leonard's frame shook from head to foot, and the veins on his forehead swelled like cords. He could not complete the sentence. It seemed as if an ocean was rolling up through his brain, and roaring in his ears. The Doctor saw, at a glance, that there was physical danger in his state, and hastily and soothingly answered,—"Sit down, sit down—calm yourself—you shall know all—read all—drink this water;" and he poured into a tumbler of the pure liquid a drop or two from a tiny phial.
Leonard obeyed mechanically, for indeed he was no longer able to stand. He closed his eyes, and for a minute or two life seemed to pass from him; then he recovered, and saw the good Doctor's gaze fixed on him with great compassion. He silently stretched forth his hand towards the letter. "Wait a few moments," said the physician judiciously, "and hear me meanwhile. It is very unfortunate you should have seen a letter never meant for your eye, and containing allusions to a secret you were never to have known. But, if I tell you more, will you promise me, on your word of honor, that you will hold the confidence sacred from Mrs. Fairfield, the Avenels—from all? I myself am pledged to conceal a secret, which I can only share with you on the same condition."
"There is nothing," announced Leonard indistinctly, and with a bitter smile on his lip,—"nothing, it seems, that I should be proud to boast of. Yes, I promise—the letter, the letter!"
The Doctor placed it in Leonard's right hand, and quietly slipped to the wrist of the left his forefinger and thumb, as physicians are said to do when a victim is stretched on the rack. "Pulse decreasing," he muttered; "wonderful thing,Aconite!" Meanwhile Leonard read as follows, faults in spelling and all:—
"Dr.Morgan—Sir: I received your favur duly, and am glad to hear that the pore boy is safe and Well. But he has been behaving ill, and ungrateful to my good son Richard, who is a credit to the whole Family, and has made himself a Gentleman, and Was very kind and good to the boy, not knowing who and What he is—God forbid! I don't want never to see him again—the boy. Pore John was ill and Restless for days afterwards.—John is a pore cretur now, and has had paralytiks. And he Talked of nothing but Nora—the boy's eyes were so like his Mother's. I cannot, cannot see the Child of Shame. He can't cum here—for our Lord's sake, sir, don't ask it—he can't, so Respectable as we've always been!—and such disgrace! Base born—base born. Keep him where he is, bind him prentis, I'll pay anything for That. You says, sir, he's clever, and quick at learning; so did Parson Dale, and wanted him to go to Collidge, and make a Figur—then all would cum out. It would be my death, sir; I could not sleep in my grave, sir. Nora that we were all so proud of. Sinful creturs that we are! Nora's good name that we've saved now, gone, gone. And Richard, who is so grand, and who wasso fond of pore, pore Nora! He would not hold up his Head again. Don't let him make a Figur in the world—let him be a tradesman, as we were afore him—any trade he Takes to—and not cross us no more while he lives. Then I shall pray for him, and wish him happy. And have not we had enuff of bringing up children to be above their birth? Nora, that I used to say was like the first lady o' the land—oh, but we were rightly punished! So now, sir, I leave all to you, and will pay all you want for the boy. And be Sure that the secret's kep. For we have never heard from the father, and, at least, no one knows that Nora has a living son but I and my daughter Jane, and Parson Dale and you—and you Two are good Gentlemen—and Jane will keep her word, and I am old, and shall be in my grave Soon, but I hope it won't be while pore John needs me. What could he do without me? And ifthatgot wind, it would kill me straght, sir. Pore John is a helpless cretur, God bless him. So no more from your servant in all dooty,
"M. Avenel."
Leonard laid down this letter very calmly, and, except by a slight heaving at his breast, and a death-like whiteness of his lips, the emotions he felt were undetected. And it is a proof how much exquisite goodness there was in his heart that the first words he spoke were, "Thank Heaven!"
The Doctor did not expect that thanksgiving, and he was so startled that he exclaimed, "For what?"
"I have nothing to pity or excuse in the woman I knew and honored as a mother. I am not her son—her—"
He stopped short.
"No; but don't be hard on your true mother—poor Nora!"
Leonard staggered, and then burst into a sudden paroxysm of tears.
"Oh, my own mother!—my dead mother! Thou for whom I felt so mysterious a love—thou, from whom I took this poet soul—pardon me, pardon me! Hard on thee! Would that thou wert living yet, that I might comfort thee! What thou must have suffered!"
These words were sobbed forth in broken gasps from the depth of his heart. Then he caught up the letter again, and his thoughts were changed as his eyes fell upon the writer's shame and fear, as it were, of his very existence. All his native haughtiness returned to him. His crest rose, his tears dried.—"Tell her," he said, with a stern unfaltering voice—"tell Mrs. Avenel that she is obeyed—that I will never seek her roof, never cross her path, never disgrace her wealthy son. But tell her, also, that I will choose my own way in life—that I will not take from her a bribe for concealment. Tell her that I am nameless, and will yet make a name."
A name! Was this but an idle boast, or was it one of those flashes of conviction which are never belied, lighting up our future for one lurid instant, and then fading into darkness?
"I do not doubt it, my prave poy," said Dr. Morgan, growing exceedingly Welsh in his excitement; "and perhaps you may find a father, who—"
"Father—who is he—what is he? He lives then! But he has deserted me—he must have betrayed her? I need him not. The law gives me no father."
The last words were said with a return of bitter anguish; then in a calmer tone, he resumed, "But I should know who he is—as another one whose path I may not cross."
Dr. Morgan looked embarrassed, and paused in deliberation. "Nay," said he at length, "as you know so much, it is surely best that you should know all."
The Doctor then proceeded to detail, with some circumlocution, what we will here repeat from his account more succinctly.
Nora Avenel, while yet very young, left her native village, or rather the house of Lady Lansmere, by whom she had been educated and brought up, in order to accept the place of governess or companion in London. One evening she suddenly presented herself at her father's house, and at the first sight of her mother's face she fell down insensible. She was carried to bed. Dr. Morgan (then the chief medical practitioner of the town) was sent for. That night Leonard came into the world, and his mother died. She never recovered her senses, never spoke intelligibly from the time she entered the house. "And never therefore named your father," said Dr. Morgan. "We know not who he was."