Book: Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860




"How, then," she exclaimed, "dost thou, Giovanni Battista, thou vile
broker of frippery, miserable huckster of farthings, dost thou presume
to come hither with the intent to lay thy fingers on the ornaments which
belong to the chambers of gentlemen,--despoiling, as thou hast long
done and art ever doing, our city of the fairest ornaments to embellish
strange lands therewith? I prize these pictures from reverence to the
memory of my father-in-law, from whom I had them, and from the love I
bear to my husband; I mean to defend them, while I have life, with my
own blood. Away with thee, then, base creature of nothingness! If again
thou shouldest be so bold as to come on a similar errand to this house,
thou shalt be taught what is the respect due to the dwelling of a
gentleman, and that to thy serious discomfort; make sure of it!"

And so she drove the intriguing bargainer away, with "reproaches of such
intolerable bitterness, that the like had never before been hurled at
man alive." Be it remembered, too, that Vasari was a good judge of the
quality of a Florentine dame's scolding, for he had himself in his
younger days passed a painful apprenticeship under the weight of
Lucretia Feti's tongue.

Criticism is too often local in its tone, being pledged, as it were, to
the admiration of its favorite subjects and a corresponding disregard of
those with which it is not familiar. Particularly in Italy, where the
municipal feeling has been so strong, the partisans of each school were
greatly prejudiced. Each people also very naturally prefers its own to
another's art, and does not always question its motives of preference.
The Florentines have overlooked the merits of their rivals, the
Venetians and Sienese,--who, in turn, have reciprocated; while Italy,
as a whole, has had but small regard for the works of other nations.
England has been slow to recognize the great merits of the Southern
schools; and France, Holland, and Germany are equally in the bondage of
local tastes or transitory fashions. But true criticism is cosmopolitan.
It tests merit according to the standard of the nature on which it is
founded, not overlooking excellence in whatever respect or degree. A
truly catholic view of art is the result only of its universal study.
The critic may be just to all inspirations, and yet enjoy his own
preferences. But, as Blackwood observes, too many "are self-endowed with
the capacity to judge all matters relating to the fine arts just in
proportion to the extent of their ignorance, because it is not difficult
to condemn in general terms and to attain notoriety by shallow
pretence." Neither "the narrowness of sect nor the noise of party"
should be heard in this matter. As a great gallery should represent
all phases of art through their several stages of progress and decay,
meeting all wants and tastes, so criticism should be based upon a
foundation equally broad,--not proud of its erudition nor dictatorial,
but with due humility uttering its opinions, prompt to sustain them, and
yet ever ready to listen and learn.

"Old masters" are almost a by-word of doubt or contempt in America,
owing to the influx of cheap copies and pseudo-originals of no artistic
value whatever. It is the more important, therefore, that they should be
represented among us by such characteristic specimens as are still to
be procured. Some modern artists are jealous of or indifferent to past
genius, and sedulously disparage it in view of their own immediate
interests. Bayle St. John, in his "Louvre," relates that he heard an
associate of the Royal Academy deliberately and energetically declare,
that, if it were in his power, he would slash with his knife all the
works of the old masters, and thus compel people to buy modern. This
spirit is both ungenerous and impolitic. If neither respect nor care for
the works of departed talent be bestowed, what future has the living
talent itself to look forward to? Art is best nourished by a general
diffusion of aesthetic taste and feeling. There can be no invidious
rivalry between the dead and the living. Alfred Tennyson looks not with
evil eye upon John Milton. Why should a modern be jealous of a mediaeval
artist? The public can love and appreciate both. Nor should it be
forgotten that it is precisely in those countries where old art is most
appreciated that the modern is most liberally sustained.




'TENTY SCRAN'.


"Patience hath borne the bruise, and I the stroke."

"I think she's a-sinkin', Doctor," sobbed old Aunt Rhody, the nurse, as
she came out of Mary Scranton's bed-room into the clean kitchen, where
Doctor Parker sat before the fire, a hand on either knee, staring at the
embers, and looking very grave.

Doctor Parker got up from the creaky chair, and went into the bed-room.
It was very small, very clean, and two sticks of wood on the old iron
dogs burned away gradually, and softened the cool April air.

Before this pretence of a fire sat an elderly woman, with grave, set
features, an expression of sense and firmness, but a keen dark eye that
raised question of her temper. Miss Lovina Perkins was her style, being
half-aunt to the unpleasant-colored baby she now tended, rolled up in
a flannel shawl, and permitted to be stupid undisturbedly, since its
mother was dying.

Dying, evidently; she had not been conscious for several hours. Her
baby had not had its welcome; she knew nothing, cared for nothing, felt
nothing but the chill of the blood that stood still in her veins, and
the choking of the heart that hardly beat.

Poor child! poor widow! Her head lay on the pillow, white as the linen,
but of a different tint,--the indescribable pallor that you know and
I know, who have seen it drawn over a dear face,--a tint that is best
unknown, that cannot be reproduced by pen or pencil. Yet, for all its
pallor, you saw at once that this face was still young, had been
lovely, a true New-England beauty, quaint and trim and delicate as the
slaty-gray snow-bird, with its white breast, and soft, bright eyes, that
haunts the dusky fir-trees and dazzling hill-side slopes when no other
bird dare show itself,--a quiet, shy creature, full of innocent trust
and endurance, its chirp and low repetition dearer than the gay song of
lark or robin, because a wintry song.

But Mary Perkins had never been called handsome in Deerfield; if they
said she was "a real pretty girl," it only meant kindly and gentle, in
the Connecticut vernacular; and Tom Scranton, the village joiner, was
first to find out that the delicate, oval face, with its profuse brown
hair, its mild hazel eyes, and smiling mouth, was "jest like a
pictur'." So Tom and Mary duly fell in love, got married,--nobody
objecting,--went West, and eight months afterward Mary came home with
a coffin. Tom had fallen from a ladder, been taken up and brought home
dead, and she had travelled back five hundred miles to bury him in
Deerfield, beside his father and mother; for he was their only son.

There were about a hundred dollars left for Mary. She could not
work now, and she went to board with her half-sister, the Deerfield
tailoress.

Mary Scranton was only nineteen; but she did not want to live,--not even
for her baby's sake. All her sunshine and her strength went out of this
world with Tom, and she had no energy to care to live without him. She
did not say so to her sister,--for Miss 'Viny would have scolded her
smartly,--nor did she tell Doctor Parker; but she prayed about it,
and kept it in her heart all those silent days that she sat sewing
baby-clothes, and looking forward to an hour that should, even through a
death-agony, take her to Tom. She thought the baby would die, too, and
then they should all be together;--for Mary had a positive temperament,
without hope, because without imagination; what she had possessed and
lost eclipsed with her all uncertainties of the future; and she thought
seven times of Tom where she once thought of her child, though she took
pains to make its garments ready, and knit its tiny socks, and lay the
lumbering old cradle, that she had been rocked in, with soft and warm
wrappings, lest, indeed, the child should live longer than its
mother. So she sat in Miss 'Viny's bed-room in an old rush-bottomed
rocking-chair, sewing and sewing, day after day, the persistent will and
intent to die working out its own fulfilling, her white lips growing
more and more bloodless, her transparent cheek more wan, and the
temples, from which her lustreless hair was carelessly knotted away,
getting more hollow and clear and sharp-angled.

And now she lay on the bed, one hand under her cheek, the other picking
restlessly at the blanket,--for consciousness was fluttering back.

"Give me the brandy, Aunt Rhody," said Doctor Parker, softly.

He poured a few drops into the spoon she brought, and held it to Mary's
lips. The potent fluid stung the nerves into life again, and quickened
the flickering circulation; her thin fingers lay quiet, her eyes opened
and looked clear and calm at the Doctor. He tried to rouse her with an
interest deeper to most women than their own agony or languor.

"You've got a nice little girl, Mary," said he, cheerfully.

The ghost of a smile lit her face.

"I'm content," said she, in a low whisper.

Aunt Rhody brought the baby and laid it on its mother's arm. The child
stirred and cried, but Mary took no notice; her eyes were fixed and
glazing. Suddenly she smiled a brilliant smile, stretched both arms
upward, dropping her baby from its place. Only for one moment that
recognizing look defied death and welcomed life; her arms dropped, her
jaw fell;--it was over.

"I guess you'd better take the baby into the kitchen, Miss Loviny," said
Aunt Rhody; "'tisn't considered lucky to keep 'em round where folks has
died."

"Luck a'n't anything," grimly returned Lovina, who had squeezed her
tears back, lest the two or three that inclined to fall should spot the
baby's blanket; "but I'm goin' to take her out into the kitchen, because
I calculate to open the winder in here."

So the baby and Aunt 'Viny went out.

It was a new thing and a hard thing for Lovina Perkins to have a baby
on her hands; she would rather have charged herself with the care of a
farm, or the building of a house; she could work, she could order,
plan, regulate, and execute; but what to do with a baby? There it
lay, helpless, soft, incapable, not to be scolded, or worked, or made
responsible in any way, the most impracticable creature possible: a
kitten she could have put into a basket at night, and set in the shed;
a puppy she could and would have drowned; but a baby, an unlucky, red,
screeching creature, with a soul, was worse than all other evils.
However, she couldn't let it die; so she went after some milk, and, with
Aunt Rhody's help, after much patient disgust, taught the child how to
live, and it lived.

Mary Scranton was buried next to Tom, and the June grass grew over both
their graves, and people thought no more about it; only every now and
then Doctor Parker came to Miss Perkins's house to ask after "baby," who
grew daily fat and fair and smiling; and on one of these occasions he
met the minister, Parson Goodyear, who had come, as Miss 'Viny expressed
it, "o' purpose to take me to do, because I ha'n't presented the child
for baptism."

"Fact is," continued she, "I ha'n't an idea what _to_ call her. I don't
favor callin' of her Mary, because that was her mother's name, and I
couldn't think of two on 'em at once; and Scripter names are generally
rather ha'sh. Miss Parker, Doctor, kind of favored her bein' called
Aribelly, because there was one of that name rather come over in the
Mayflower; but I think it's too mighty for a child that's got to
work;--what do you say?"

"I think you're right, Miss 'Viny," said the Doctor, as gravely as he
could.

"I don't believe in fine names myself. I should think you might do worse
than to call the baby Content;--that was your own mother's name, wasn't
it? and it was the last word Mary spoke."

"Well, now, that's quite an idea, Doctor! I guess I will."

"And you will present her on the first Sabbath in May?" said Parson
Goodyear.

"Well, yes, if I'm spared," said Aunt 'Viny; and, being spared, on that
sweet May-Sunday she carried the smiling little child up the aisle of
the meeting-house, and had it baptized Content.

Strange to say,--yet not all strange,--before it was a year old, the
baby had found its way quite down into the middle of Aunt 'Viny's
heart. To be sure, it was a deal of trouble; it would ache and cry in a
reasonless way, when nobody could tell what ailed it; it would take a
great amount of caring-for with ungrateful silence and utter want
of demonstration for a long time;--but then it was so helpless!
--irresistible plea to a woman!--and under all Miss 'Viny's
rough exterior, her heart was as sweet as the kernel of a butternut,
though about as hard to discover. True, she was hard of feature, and
of speech, as hundreds of New-England women are. Their lives are hard,
their husbands are harder and stonier than the fields they half-reclaim
to raise their daily bread from, their existence is labor and endurance;
no grace, no beauty, no soft leisure or tender caress mitigates the
life that wears itself away on wash-tubs, cheese-presses, churns,
cooking-stoves, and poultry; but truth and strength and purity lie
clear in these rocky basins, and love lurks like a jewel at the
bottom,--visible only when some divine sun-ray lights it up,--love as
true and deep and healthy as it is silent and unknown.

So Miss 'Viny's hardness gave way before "baby." She could not feel
unmoved the tiny groping hands about her in the night, the soft beatings
of the little heart against her arm, the round downy head that would
nestle on her neck to be rocked asleep; she could not resist that
exquisite delight of miserable, exacting, feminine nature,--the
knowledge that one thing in the world loved her better than anybody
else. Sorry am I to betray this weakness of Aunt 'Viny's,--sorry to know
how many strong-minded, intellectual, highly educated and refined women
will object to this mean and jealous sentiment in a woman of like
passions with themselves. I know, myself, that a lofty love will regard
the good of the beloved object first, and itself last,--that jealousy
is a paltry and sinful emotion; but, my dear creatures, I can't help
it,--so it was. And if any one of you can, with a serene countenance
and calm mind, see your husband devote himself to a much prettier, more
agreeable, younger woman than yourself,--or hear your own baby scream
to go from you to somebody else,--or even behold your precious female
friend, your "congenial soul," as the Rosa Matilda literature hath
it, fascinated by a young woman or young man to the neglect of
yourself,--although in one and all of these instances the beloved object
seeks his or her best good,--then let that superhuman female throw a
stone at Aunt 'Viny;--but for the present she will not be lapidated.

Never, indeed, had she been quite as happy as now. Her life had been
a routine of hard work. Love and marriage had never looked over the
palings at her; and--to tell the truth--she had not suffered by their
neglect, in her own estimation. She was one of those supernumerary women
who are meant to do other people's work in life: servants, nurses,
consolers; accepting their part with unconscious humility as a matter
of course; quite as good as the Santas and Santissimas of legend and
chronicle, and not nearly so intrusive. So this new phase had its own
sweetness and special charm for Aunt 'Viny; the happiest hour in her
day lying between daylight and dark, when waistcoats and jackets and
trousers were laid aside, the dim light forbidding her to sew, and
economy delaying the lamp,--so she could with a clear conscience spare
half an hour, while the tea-kettle boiled, for undressing "baby,"
rubbing the little creature down,--much as a groom might have done,
only with a loving touch not kept for horses,--enduing it with a long
night-gown, and toasting its shell-pink feet at the fire, till, between
the luxury of ease and warmth and tending, "baby" cooed herself to
sleep, and lay along Miss 'Viny's lap like a petted kitten, the
firelight playing soft lights over its fair head, sealed eyelids, and
parted lips, tinting the relaxed arm and funny dimpled fist with a rosy
glow, while Aunt 'Viny's face took on a tender brooding gleam that
nobody who had seen her in church on Sunday, severely crunching fennel,
or looking daggers at naughty boys, could have believed possible. But
this expression is an odd wonder-worker. I saw but the other day a
bad-eyed, bronzed, "hard-favored" Yankee, with a head all angles, a
dirty face, the air of a terrified calf, and the habiliments of a poor
farmer; I looked at him aristocratically, and thanked the Lord for my
mind, my person, and my manners, in true Pharisaic triumph,--when his
little blue-eyed daughter came round the corner and pulled at the tail
of his ragged coat. Why, the man was transfigured! I wondered he was
willing to shake hands with me when I left him; I knew before that his
hands were brown and big and dirty, and mine were little and white and
soap-scented; but I thought afterwards I'd as lief have been Peter as
myself just then,--and I think so still. Wherefore, young ladies all,
learn from this that the true cestus, fabled----No! I shall make an
essay on that matter some day; I will not inflict it here.

So, by dint of hard work, Aunt 'Viny brought up her dead sister's child
in the way it should go, nor ever for one moment grudged her labor or
her time. Neither did she spoil Content by over-indulgence; her good
sense kept the child unharmed, taught her hardy and self-reliant
habits, made her useful all the time, and, even if Nature had not been
beforehand with her, would have made her happy. But 'Tenty had her
father's firm and sunny character; she never cried but for good reason,
and then screamed lustily and was over with it; fretting was out of the
question,--she did not know how; her special faults were a strong
will and a dogged obstinacy,--faults Miss 'Viny trained, instead of
eradicating; so that 'Tenty emerged from district-school into the
"'Cademy's" higher honors as healthy and happy an individual as ever
arrived at the goodly age of fourteen without a silk dress or a French
shoe to peacock herself withal. Every morning, rain or shine, she
carried her tin pail to Doctor Parker's for milk, hung on the
tea-kettle, set the table, wiped the dishes, weeded a bit of the
prolific onion-bed, then washed her hands and brushed her hair, put
on the green sun-bonnet or the blue hood, as the weather pleased, and
trotted off to school, where she plodded over fractions, and wearied
herself out with American history, and crammed geography, and wrote
copies, for a whole year, when Aunt 'Viny thought she might learn her
trade, being a stout girl of fifteen, and the 'Cademy knew her no more.

There is but little incident in a New-England village of the Deerfield
style and size,--full of commonplace people, who live commonplace lives,
in the same white and brown and red houses they were born in, and die
respectably in their beds, and are quietly buried among the mulleins
and dewberry-vines in the hill-side graveyard. Mary Scranton's life and
death, though they possessed the elements of a tragedy, were divested of
their tragic interest by this calm and pensive New-England atmosphere.
Nothing so romantic had happened there for many years, or did occur
again for more; yet nobody knew a romance had come and gone. People in
Deerfield lived their lives with a view to this world and the next,
after the old Puritanic fashion somewhat modified, and so preserved the
equilibrium. No special beauty of the town attracted summer-visitors.
It was a village of one street, intended to be straight, crossing a
decorous brook that turned the mill, and parting itself just below the
church and the "store," to accommodate a small "green," where the geese
waddled, hissed, and nibbled Mayweed all summer, and the boys played
ball sometimes after school. There was a post-office in the "store,"
beside boots, sugar, hams, tape, rake-tails, ploughs, St. Croix
molasses, lemons, calico, cheese, flour, straw hats, candles, lamp-oil,
crackers, and rum,--a good assortment of needles and thread, a shelf of
school-books, a seed-drawer, tinware strung from the ceiling, apples in
a barrel, coffee-mills and brooms in the windows, and hanging over the
counter, framed and glazed, the following remarkable placard, copied out
in a running hand:--

No
Credit Will be Given
in
This Store after
This Date.
Under no circumstances whatever.
My Reasons

I cannot buy goods or do business without cash, and as the bulk of my
capital is now trusted out with the promise to pay which that promise
has never been full filled I deem it a duty to myself and my Cash paying
customers to sell goods for cash at the lowest market price.

I shall indeavor make it an interest of my customers to pay cash for
all goods purchas by them. I shall offer goods at reduced rates as an
inducement for all to pay cash.

If I am asked if I give credit I want this to be my answer

No Never.

ELKANAH MILLS.

Distrust not, O reader! This is _verbatim et literatim_ a copy.

In front of the "store" was a hay-scale, across the way a tavern, and,
at respectful distances along the street, white or red houses, with the
inevitable front-door, south-door, kitchen-and shed-floor, lilacs and
altheas before the windows, fennel, tiger-lilies, sweet-brier, and
Bar_gun_dy rosebushes, with red "pinies" and livid hydrangeas, or now
and then a mat of stonecrop and "voilets" along the posy-bed that edged
cabbage and potato-plots, while, without the fence, Bouncing-Bets
adorned the road-side, or blue sea-pinks from the pasture-lot strayed
beyond its rails.

Nothing happened in Deerfield; so nothing happened to "'Tenty Scran',"
as the school-children nicknamed her. She earned her living now at
tailoring and dress-making; for Miss 'Viny was much "laid up with
rheumatiz," and could not go about as was her wont. Also, the art and
mystery of housekeeping became familiar to the child, and economy of
the domestic sort was a virtue she learned unconsciously by continual
practice. She went to church on Sundays in a clean calico frock and a
white cape, sat in the singers' seat and uplifted her voice in Lenox and
Mear, Wells and Bethesda, shared her fennel with the children in the
gallery, looked out the text in her Bible, and always thought Parson
Goodyear's sermon was intended for her good, and took it in accordingly.

I should like to say that 'Tenty Scran' was pretty; in fact, I have
always regarded it as one of the chief pleasures of a literary calling,
that you are not obliged to take people as they are, but can make them
to order, since it takes no more pen-scratches to describe luxuriant
curls and celestial eyes and roseate lips than it does to set forth much
less lovely things; but when it comes to stubborn facts, why, there you
have to come down to this world, and proceed accordingly,--so I must
say 'Tenty was not handsome. She had fresh rosy cheeks and small brown
eyes, hair to match the eyes, a nose undeniably pug, a full, wide mouth,
and strong, white teeth,--fortunately, since every one showed when she
laughed, and she laughed a great deal. Then she had a dumpy figure, and
good large hands and feet, a look of downright honesty and good-temper,
and a nice, clear voice in speech or singing, though she only sang
hymns. But for all this, every-body in Deerfield liked 'Tenty Scran';
old and young, men and maidens, all had a kindly welcome for her; and
though Aunt 'Viny did not say much, she felt the more.

But "everybody has their sorrers," as Hannah-Ann Hall remarked, in one
of her "'Cademy" compositions, and 'Tenty came to hers when she was
about twenty-two. Miss Lovina was almost bed-ridden with the rheumatism
that year, and 'Tenty had to come back twice a day from her work to see
to her, so that she made it up by staying evenings, against her usual
rules. Now about the middle of that May, Doctor Parker's scapegrace son
Ned came home from sea,--a great, lazy, handsome fellow, who had run
away from Deerfield in his fifteenth year, because it was so "darned
stupid," to use his own phrase. Doctor Parker was old, and Mrs. Parker
was old, too, but she called it nervous; and home was stupider than ever
to Ned, particularly as he had broken his ankle and was laid on the sofa
for a good six weeks at least. About the second of those weeks, Content
Scranton came to "do over" Mrs. Parker's summer-gowns, and put her caps
together after their semi-annual starching.

Of course 'Tenty sat in the "keeping-room," where the old sofa was;
and of course Ned had nothing better to do than to watch the gay, good
little bee at her toil, hear her involuntary snatches of hymn-singing,
laugh at her bright simplicity, and fall in love with her,
sailor-fashion,--"here to-day, and gone tomorrow."

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