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

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




Let me quote also Mr. Bryant's closing remarks:--

"Other hands will yet give the world a bolder, more vivid, and more
exact portraiture. In the mean time, when I consider for how many
years he stood before the world as an author, with still increasing
fame,--half a century in this most changeful of centuries,--I cannot
hesitate to predict for him a deathless renown. Since he began to write,
empires have arisen and passed away; mighty captains have appeared on
the stage of the world, performed their part, and been called to
their account; wars have been fought and ended which have changed the
destinies of the human race. New arts have been invented and adopted,
and have pushed the old out of use; the household economy of half
mankind has undergone a revolution. Science has learned a new dialect
and forgotten the old; the chemist of 1807 would be a vain babbler among
his brethren of the present day, and would in turn become bewildered in
the attempt to understand them. Nation utters speech to nation in words
that pass from realm to realm with the speed of light. Distant countries
have been made neighbors; the Atlantic Ocean has become a narrow frith,
and the Old World and the New shake hands across it; the East and the
West look in at each other's windows. The new inventions bring new
calamities, and men perish in crowds by the recoil of their own devices.
War has learned more frightful modes of havoc, and armed himself with
deadlier weapons; armies are borne to the battle-field on the wings of
the wind, and dashed against each other and destroyed with infinite
bloodshed. We grow giddy with this perpetual whirl of strange events,
these rapid and ceaseless mutations; the earth seems to be reeling under
our feet, and we turn to those who write like Irving for some assurance
that we are still in the same world into which we were born; we read,
and are quieted and consoled. In his pages we see that the language of
the heart never becomes obsolete; that Truth and Good and Beauty,
the offspring of God, are not subject to the changes which beset the
inventions of men. We become satisfied that he whose works were the
delight of our fathers, and are still ours, will be read with the same
pleasure by those who come after us."




IRENE ANADYOMENE.


O'er far Pacific waves the wanderer holding
His steady course before the strong monsoon,
Entranced, beholds the coral isle unfolding
Its ring of emerald and its bright lagoon.

At first their shadowy helms in the faint distance
The tree-tops rear; then, as he nearer glides,
The white surf gleams where the firm reef's resistance
Meets and hurls back the fiercely charging tides.

He sees outspread the wide sea-beach, all sparkling
With coral sand and many-tinted shells,
While high above, in tropic rankness darkling,
A cloud of verdure ever-brooding dwells,

With growing wonder and delight the stranger,
While his swift shallop nears the enchanted strand,
Sees the white surf cleared with one flash of danger,
And a broad portal opening through the land.

And deftly through the verdurous gateway steering,
The strong-armed oarsmen urge their flying boat,
Till now, the broad horizon disappearing,
On the still island-lake they pause and float.

The gun booms loud. With wishful eyes receding,
They watch from their swift boat the lessening isle.
The yards are squared. Again the good ship speeding
Sees the chafed waves beneath her counter file.

Long musing o'er his scientific pages,
The curious voyager pursues the theme,
And learns whate'er the geologic sages
Have found or fancied,--building each his scheme.




The Professor's Story.


This pleased him best:--In earth's red primal morning,
When Nature's forces wrought with youthful heat,
A mighty continent outspread, adorning
Our planet's face, where now the surges beat:

A land of wondrous growths, of strange creations,
Of ferns like oaks, of saurians huge and dire,
Of marshes vast, their dreary habitations,
Of mountains flaming with primeval fire.

At length, by some supernal fiat banished,
The land sank down in one great cataclysm;
The vales, the plains, the mountains slowly vanished,
Buried and quenched in the wide sea's abysm.

'Twas then (so ran the scheme) on each lost crater
The coral-builders laid their marvellous pile;
Millions on millions wrought, till ages later
Saw reared to light and air the circling isle.

Thus Science dreams: but from the dream upflashes
On his swift thought the subtly shadowed truth,
That all serener joys bloom on the ashes,
The lava, and spent craters of lost youth.

The heart, long worn by fierce volcanic surges,
Feels its old world slow sinking from the sight,
Till o'er the wreck a home of peace emerges,
Bright with unnumbered shapes of new delight.




THE PROFESSOR'S STORY.


CHAPTER XXI.

THE WIDOW BOWENS GIVES A TEA-PARTY.


There was a good deal of interest felt, as has been said, in the lonely
condition of Dudley Venner in that fine mansion-house of his, and with
that strange daughter, who would never be married, as many people
thought, in spite of all the stories. The feelings expressed by the good
folks who dated from the time when they "buried aour little Anny Mari,"
and others of that homespun stripe, were founded in reason, after all.
And so it was natural enough that they should be shared by various
ladies, who, having conjugated the verb _to live_ as far as the
preterpluperfect tense, were ready to change one of its vowels and begin
with it in the present indicative. Unfortunately, there was very little
chance of showing sympathy in its active form for a gentleman who kept
himself so much out of the way as the master of the Dudley Mansion.

Various attempts had been made, from time to time, of late years, to get
him out of his study, which had, for the moat part, proved failures. It
was a surprise, therefore, when he was seen at the Great Party at
the Colonel's. But it was an encouragement to try him again, and the
consequence had been that he had received a number of notes inviting him
to various smaller entertainments, which, as neither he nor Elsie had
any fancy for them, he had politely declined.

Such was the state of things when he received an invitation to take tea
_sociably,_ with _a few friends,_ at Hyacinth Cottage, the residence of
the Widow Rowens, relict of the late Beeri Rowens, Esquire, better known
as Major Rowens. Major Rowens was at the time of his decease a promising
officer in the militia, in the direct line of promotion, as his
waistband was getting tighter every year; and, as all the world knows,
the militia-officer who splits off most buttons and fills the largest
sword-belt stands the best chance of rising, or, perhaps we might say,
spreading, to be General.

Major Rowens united in his person certain other traits that help a
man to eminence in the arm of the service referred to. He ran to high
colors, to wide whisker, to open pores; he had the saddle-leather skin
common in Englishmen, rarer in Americans,--never found in the Brahmin
caste, oftener in the military and the commodores: observing people know
what is meant; blow the seed-arrows from the white-kid-looking button
which holds them on a dandelion-stalk, and the pricked-pincushion
surface shows you what to look for. He had the loud, gruff voice which
implies the right to command. He had the thick hand, stubbed fingers,
with bristled pads between their joints, square, broad thumb-nails, and
sturdy limbs, which mark a constitution made to use in rough out-door
work. He had the never-failing predilection for showy switch-tailed
horses that step high, and sidle about, and act as if they were going to
do something fearful the next minute, in the face of awed and admiring
multitudes gathered at mighty musters or imposing cattle-shows. He had
no objection, either, to holding the reins in a wagon behind another
kind of horse,--a slouching, listless beast, with a strong slant to his
shoulder and a notable depth to his quarter and an emphatic angle at the
hock, who commonly walked or lounged along in a lazy trot of five or
six miles an hour; but, if a lively colt happened to come rattling up
alongside, or a brandy-faced old horse-jockey took the road to show off
a fast nag, and threw his dust into the Major's face, would pick his
legs up all at once, and straighten his body out, and swing off into a
three-minute gait, in a way that "Old Blue" himself need not have been
ashamed of.

For some reason which must be left to the next generation of professors
to find out, the men who are knowing in horse-flesh have an eye also
for,----let a long dash separate the brute creation from the angelic
being now to be named,--for lovely woman. Of this fact there can be no
possible doubt; and therefore you shall notice, that, if a fast horse
trots before two, one of the twain is apt to be a pretty bit of
muliebrity, with shapes to her, and eyes flying about in all directions.

Major Rowens, at that time Lieutenant of the Rockland Fusileers, had
driven and "traded" horses not a few before he turned his acquired skill
as a judge of physical advantages in another direction. He knew a neat,
snug hoof, a delicate pastern, a well-covered stifle, a broad haunch, a
deep chest, a close ribbed-up barrel, as well as any other man in the
town. He was not to be taken in by your thick-jointed, heavy-headed
cattle, without any go to them, that suit a country-parson, nor yet by
the "galinted-up," long-legged animals, with all their constitutions
bred out of them, such as rich greenhorns buy and cover up with their
plated trappings.

Whether his equine experience was of any use to him in the selection of
the mate with whom he was to go in double harness so long as they both
should live, we need not stop to question. At any rate, nobody could
find fault with the points of Miss Marilla Van Deusen, to whom he
offered the privilege of becoming Mrs. Rowens. The _Van_ must have been
crossed out of her blood, for she was an out-and-out brunette, with hair
and eyes black enough for a Mohawk's daughter. A fine style of woman,
with very striking tints and outlines,--an excellent match for the
Lieutenant, except for one thing. She was marked by Nature for a widow.
She was evidently got up for mourning, and never looked so well as in
deep black, with jet ornaments.

The man who should dare to marry her would doom himself; for how could
she become the widow she was bound to be, unless he would retire and
give her a chance? The Lieutenant lived, however, as we have seen, to
become Captain and then Major, with prospects of further advancement.
But Mrs. Rowens often said she should never look well in colors. At last
her destiny fulfilled itself, and the justice of Nature was vindicated.
Major Rowens got overheated galloping about the field on the day of the
Great Muster, and had a rush of blood to the head, according to the
common report,--at any rate, something which stopped him short in his
career of expansion and promotion, and established Mrs. Rowens in her
normal condition of widowhood.

The Widow Rowens was now in the full bloom of ornamental sorrow. A very
shallow crape bonnet, frilled and froth-like, allowed the parted raven
hair to show its glossy smoothness. A jet pin heaved upon her bosom with
every sigh of memory, or emotion of unknown origin. Jet bracelets shone
with every movement of her slender hands, cased in close-fitting black
gloves. Her sable dress was ridged with manifold flounces, from beneath
which a small foot showed itself from time to time, clad in the same hue
of mourning. Everything about her was dark, except the whites of her
eyes and the enamel of her teeth. The effect was complete. Gray's Elegy
was not a more perfect composition.

Much as the Widow was pleased with the costume belonging to her
condition, she did not disguise from herself that under certain
circumstances she might be willing to change her name again. Thus, for
instance, if a gentleman not too far gone in maturity, of dignified
exterior, with an ample fortune, and of unexceptionable character,
should happen to set his heart upon her, and the only way to make him
happy was to give up her weeds and go into those unbecoming colors again
for his sake,--why, she felt that it was in her nature to make the
sacrifice. By a singular coincidence it happened that a gentleman was
now living in Rockland who united in himself all these advantages. Who
he was, the sagacious reader may very probably have divined. Just to see
how it looked, one day, having bolted her door, and drawn the curtains
close, and glanced under the sofa, and listened at the keyhole to be
sure there was nobody in the entry,--just to see how it looked, she
had taken out an envelope and written on the back of it _Mrs. Marila
Venner._ It made her head swim and her knees tremble. What if she should
faint, or die, or have a stroke of palsy, and they should break into the
room and find that name written? How she caught it up and tore it into
little shreds, and then could not be easy until she had burned the small
heap of pieces! But these are things which every honorable reader will
consider imparted in strict confidence.

The Widow Rowens, though not of the mansion-house set, was among the
most genteel of the two-story circle, and was in the habit of visiting
some of the great people. In one of these visits she met a dashing young
fellow with an olive complexion at the house of a professional gentleman
who had married one of the white necks and pairs of fat arms from a
distinguished family before referred to. The professional gentleman
himself was out, but the lady introduced the olive-complexioned young
man as Mr. Richard Venner.

The Widow was particularly pleased with this accidental meeting. Had
heard Mr. Venner's name frequently mentioned. Hoped his uncle was well,
and his charming cousin,--was she as original as ever? Had often admired
that charming creature he rode: _we_ had had some fine horses. Had never
got over her taste for riding, but could find nobody that liked a good
long gallop since--well--she couldn't help wishing she was alongside of
him, the other day, when she saw him dashing by, just at twilight.

The Widow paused; lifted a flimsy handkerchief with a very deep black
border so as to play the jet bracelet; pushed the tip of her slender
foot beyond the lowest of her black flounces; looked up; looked down;
looked at Mr. Richard, the very picture of artless simplicity,--as
represented in well-played genteel comedy.

"A good bit of stuff," Dick said to himself,--"and something of it left
yet; _caramba!_" The Major had not studied points for nothing, and
the Widow was one of the right sort. The young man had been a little
restless of late, and was willing to vary his routine by picking up an
acquaintance here and there. So he took the Widow's hint. He should like
to have a scamper of half a dozen miles with her some fine morning.

The Widow was infinitely obliged; was not sure that she could find any
horse in the village to suit her; but it was _so_ kind in him! Would he
not call at Hyacinth Cottage, and let her thank him again there?

Thus began an acquaintance which the Widow made the most of, and on the
strength of which she determined to give a tea-party and invite a number
of persons of whom we know something already. She took a half-sheet of
note-paper and made out her list as carefully as a country "merchant's"
"clerk" adds up two and threepence (New-England nomenclature) and twelve
and a half cents, figure by figure, and fraction by fraction, before he
can be sure they will make half a dollar, without cheating somebody.
After much consideration the list reduced itself to the following names:
Mr. Richard Venner and Mrs. Blanche Creamer, the lady at whose house she
had met him,--mansion-house breed,--but will come,--soft on Dick; Dudley
Venner,--take care of him herself; Elsie,--Dick will see to her,--won't
it fidget the Creamer woman to see him round her? the old Doctor,--he's
always handy; and there's that young master there, up at the
school,--know him well enough to ask him,--oh, yes, he'll come. One,
two, three, four, five, six,--seven; not room enough, without the leaf
in the table; one place empty, if the leaf's in. Let's see,--Helen
Darley,--she'll do well enough to fill it up,--why, yes, just the
thing,--light brown hair, blue eyes,--won't my pattern show off well
against her? Put her down,--she's worth her tea and toast ten times
over,--nobody knows what a "thunder-and-lightning woman," as poor Major
used to have it, is, till she gets alongside of one of those old-maidish
girls, with hair the color of brown sugar, and eyes like the blue of a
teacup.

The Widow smiled with a feeling of triumph at having overcome her
difficulties and arranged her party,--arose and stood before her glass,
three-quarters front, one-quarter profile, so as to show the whites of
the eyes and the down of the upper lip. "Splendid!" said the Widow,
--and to tell the truth, she was not far out of the way, and with
Helen Darley as a foil anybody would know she must be foudroyant and
pyramidal,--if these French adjectives may be naturalized for this one
particular exigency.

So the Widow sent out her notes. The black grief which had filled her
heart and overflowed in surges of crape around her person had left a
deposit half an inch wide at the margin of her note-paper. Her seal was
a small youth with an inverted torch, the same on which Mrs. Blanche
Creamer made her spiteful remark, that she expected to see that boy of
the Widow's standing on his head yet; meaning, as Dick supposed, that
she would get the torch right-side up as soon as she had a chance. That
was after Dick had made the Widow's acquaintance, and Mrs. Creamer had
got it into her foolish head that she would marry that young fellow,
if she could catch him. How could he ever come to fancy such, a
quadroon-looking thing as that, she should like to know?

It is easy enough to ask seven people to a party; but whether they will
come or not is an open question, as it was in the case of the "vasty
spirits." If the note issues from a three-story mansion-house, and goes
to two-story acquaintances, they will all be in an excellent state of
health, and have much pleasure in accepting this very polite invitation.
If the note is from the lady of a two-story family to a three-story one,
the former highly respectable person will find that an endemic complaint
is prevalent, not represented in the weekly bills of mortality, which
occasions numerous regrets in the bosoms of eminently desirable parties
that they _cannot_ have the pleasure of and-so-forth-ing.

In this case there was room for doubt,--mainly as to whether Elsie
would take a fancy to come or not. If she should come, her father would
certainly be with her. Dick had promised, and thought he could bring
Elsie. Of course the young schoolmaster will come, and that poor
tired-out looking Helen,--if only to get out of sight of those horrid
Peckham wretches. They don't get such invitations every day. The others
she felt sure of,--all but the old Doctor,--he might have some horrid
patient or other to visit; tell him Elsie Venner's going to be
there,--he always likes to have an eye on her, they say,--oh, he'd come
fast enough, without any more coaxing.

She wanted the Doctor, particularly. It was odd, but she was afraid of
Elsie. She felt as if she should be safe enough, if the old Doctor were
there to see to the girl; and then she should have leisure to devote
herself more freely to the young lady's father, for whom all her
sympathies were in a state of lively excitement.

It was a long time since the Widow had seen so many persons round her
table as she had now invited. Better have the plates set and see how
they will fill it up with the leaf in.--A little too scattering with
only eight plates set; if she could find two more people now that would
bring the chairs a little closer,--snug, you know,--which makes the
company sociable. The Widow thought over her acquaintances. Why! how
stupid! there was her good minister, the same that had married her, and
might--might--bury her for aught she knew, and his granddaughter
staying with him,--nice little girl, pretty, and not old enough to be
dangerous;--for the Widow had no notion of making a tea-party and asking
people to it that would be like to stand between her and any little
project she might happen to have on anybody's heart,--not she! It was
all right now;--Blanche was married and so forth; Letty was a child;
Elsie was his daughter; Helen Darley was a nice, worthy drudge,--poor
thing!--faded, faded,--colors wouldn't wash,--just what she wanted to
show off against. Now, if the Dudley mansion-house people would only
come,--that was the great point.

"Here's a note for us, Elsie," said her father, as they sat round the
breakfast-table. "Mrs. Rowens wants us all to come to tea."

It was one of "Elsie's days," as Old Sophy called them. The light in her
eyes was still, but very bright. She looked up so full of perverse and
wilful impulses, that Dick knew he could make her go with him and
her father. He had his own motives for bringing her to this
determination,--and his own way of setting about it.

"I don't want to go," he said. "What do you say, Uncle?"

"To tell the truth, Richard, I don't much fancy the Major's widow. I
don't like to see her weeds flowering out quite so strong. I suppose you
don't care about going, Elsie?"

Elsie looked up in her father's face with an expression which he knew
but too well. She was just in the state which the plain sort of people
call "contrary," when they have to deal with it in animals. She would
insist on going to that tea-party; he knew it just as well before she
spoke as after she had spoken. If Dick had said he wanted to go and her
father had seconded his wishes, she would have insisted on staying at
home. It was no great matter, her father said to himself, after
all; very likely it would amuse her; the Widow was a lively woman
enough,--perhaps a little _comme il ne faut pas_ socially, compared with
the Thorntons and some other families; but what did he care for these
petty village distinctions?

Elsie spoke.

"I mean to go. You must go with me, Dudley. You may do as you like,
Dick."

That settled the Dudley-mansion business, of course. They all three
accepted, as fortunately did all the others who had been invited.

Hyacinth Cottage was a pretty place enough, a little too much choked
round with bushes, and too much overrun with climbing-roses, which, in
the season of slugs and rose-bugs, were apt to show so brown about
the leaves and so coleopterous about the flowers, that it might be
questioned whether their buds and blossoms made up for these unpleasant
animal combinations,--especially as the smell of whale-oil soap was very
commonly in the ascendant over that of the roses. It had its patch
of grass called "the lawn," and its glazed closet known as "the
conservatory," according to that system of harmless fictions
characteristic of the rural imagination and shown in the names applied
to many familiar objects. The interior of the cottage was more tasteful
and ambitious than that of the ordinary two-story dwellings. In place
of the prevailing hair-cloth covered furniture, the visitor had the
satisfaction of seating himself upon a chair covered with some of the
Widow's embroidery, or a sofa luxurious with soft caressing plush. The
sporting tastes of the late Major showed in various prints on the
wall: Herring's "Plenipotentiary," the "red bullock" of the '34 Derby;
"Cadland" and "The Colonel"; "Crucifix"; "West-Australian," fastest of
modern racers; and ugly, game old "Boston," with his straight neck and
ragged hips; and gray "Lady Suffolk," "extending" herself till she
measured a rod, more or less, skimming along within a yard of the
ground, her legs opening and shutting under her with a snap, like the
four blades of a compound jack-knife.

These pictures were much more refreshing than those dreary fancy
death-bed scenes, common in two-story country-houses, in which
Washington and other distinguished personages are represented as
obligingly devoting their last moments to taking a prominent part in a
tableau, in which weeping relatives, attached servants, professional
assistants, and celebrated personages who might by a stretch of
imagination be supposed present, are grouped in the most approved style
of arrangement about the chief actor's pillow.

A single glazed bookcase held the family library, which was hidden from
vulgar eyes by green silk curtains behind the glass. It would have been
instructive to get a look at it, as it always is to peep into one's
neighbor's bookshelves. From other sources and opportunities a partial
idea of it has been obtained. The Widow had inherited some books from
her mother, who was something of a reader: Young's "Night-Thoughts";
"The Preceptor"; "The Task, a Poem," by William Cowper; Hervey's
"Meditations"; "Alonzo and Melissa"; "Buccaneers of America"; "The
Triumphs of Temper"; "La Belle Assemblee"; Thomson's "Seasons"; and a
few others. The Major had brought in "Tom Jones" and "Peregrine Pickle";
various works by Mr. Pierce Egan; "Boxiana"; "The Racing Calendar"; and
a "Book of Lively Songs and Jests." The Widow had added the Poems of
Lord Byron and T. Moore; "Eugene Aram"; "The Tower of London," by
Harrison Ainsworth; some of Scott's Novels; "The Pickwick Papers"; a
volume of Plays, by W. Shakspeare; "Proverbial Philosophy"; "Pilgrim's
Progress"; "The Whole Duty of Man" (a present when she was married);
with two celebrated religious works, one by William Law and the other
by Philip Doddridge, which were sent her after her husband's death, and
which she had tried to read, but found that they did not agree with her.
Of course the bookcase held a few school manuals and compendiums, and
one of Mr. Webster's Dictionaries. But the gilt-edged Bible always lay
on the centre-table, next to the magazine with the fashion-plates and
the scrapbook with pictures from old annuals and illustrated papers.

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