Читать книгу: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 23, September, 1859», страница 14
Here, too, Iris found an atmosphere of peace and love. The same gentle, thoughtful faces, the same cheerful but reverential spirit, the same quiet, the same life of active benevolence. But in all else how different from the Church of Saint Polycarp! No clerical costume, no ceremonial forms, no carefully trained choirs. A liturgy they have, to be sure, which does not scruple to borrow from the time-honored manuals of devotion, but also does not hesitate to change its expressions to its own liking.
Perhaps the good people seem a little easy with each other;—they are apt to nod cheerfully, and have even been known to whisper before the minister came in. But it is a relief to get rid of that old Sunday—no,—Sabbath face, which suggests the idea that the first day of the week is commemorative of some most mournful event. The truth is, these people meet very much as a family does for its devotions, not putting off their humanity in the least, considering it on the whole quite a cheerful matter to come together for prayer and song and good counsel from kind and wise lips. And if they are freer in their demeanor than some very precise congregations, they have not the air of a worldly set of people. Clearly they have not come to advertise their tailors and milliners, nor for the sake of exchanging criticisms on the literary character of the sermon they may hear. There is no restlessness and no restraint among this quiet, cheerful people. One thing that keeps them calm and happy during the season so evidently trying to many congregations is, that they join very generally in the singing. In this way they get rid of that accumulated nervous force which escapes in all sorts of fidgety movements, so that a minister trying to keep his congregation still reminds one of a boy with his hand over the nose of a pump which another boy is working,—this spirting impatience of the people is so like the jets that find their way through his fingers, and the grand rush out at the final Amen! has such a wonderful likeness to the gush that takes place when the boy pulls his hand away, with such immense relief, as it seems, to both the pump and the officiating youngster.
How sweet is this blending of all voices and all hearts in one common song of praise! Some will sing a little loud, perhaps,—and now and then an impatient chorister will get a syllable or two in advance, or an enchanted singer so lose all thought of time and place in the luxury of a closing cadence that he holds on to the last semibreve upon his private responsibility; but how much more of the spirit of the old Psalmist in the music of these imperfectly trained voices than in the academic niceties of the paid performers who take our musical worship out of our hands!
I am of the opinion that the creed of the Church of the Galileans is not quite so precisely laid down as that of the Church of Saint Polycarp. Yet I suspect, if one of the good people from each of those churches had met over the bed of a suffering fellow-creature, or for the promotion of any charitable object, they would have found they had more in common than all the special beliefs or want of beliefs that separated them would amount to. There are always many who believe that the fruits of a tree afford a better test of its condition than a statement of the composts with which it is dressed,—though the last has its meaning and importance, no doubt.
Between these two churches, then, our young Iris divides her affections. But I doubt if she listens to the preacher at either with more devotion than she does to her little neighbor when he talks of these matters.
What does he believe? In the first place, there is some deep-rooted disquiet lying at the bottom of his soul, which makes him very bitter against all kinds of usurpation over the right of private judgment. Over this seems to lie a certain tenderness for humanity in general, bred out of life-long trial, I should say, but sharply streaked with fiery lines of wrath at various individual acts of wrong, especially if they come in an ecclesiastical shape, and recall to him the days when his mother's great-grandmother was strangled on Witch Hill, with a text from the Old Testament for her halter. With all this, he has a boundless belief in the future of this experimental hemisphere, and especially in the destiny of the free thought of its northeastern metropolis.
–A man can see further, Sir,—he said one day,—from the top of Boston State-House, and see more that is worth seeing, than from all the pyramids and turrets and steeples in all the places in the world! No smoke, Sir; no fog, Sir; and a clean sweep from the Outer Light and the sea beyond it to the New Hampshire mountains! Yes, Sir,—and there are great truths that are higher than mountains and broader than seas, that people are looking for from the tops of these hills of ours,—such as the world never saw, though it might have seen them at Jerusalem, if its eyes had been open!—Where do they have most crazy people? Tell me that, Sir!
I answered, that I had heard it said there were more in New England than in most countries, perhaps more than in any part of the world.
Very good. Sir,—he answered.—When have there been most people killed and wounded in the course of this century?
During the wars of the French Empire, no doubt,—I said.
That's it! that's it!—said the little gentleman;—where the battle of intelligence is fought, there are most minds bruised and broken! We're battling for a faith here, Sir.
The divinity-student remarked, that it was rather late in the world's history for men to be looking out for a new faith.
I didn't say a new faith,—said the little gentleman;—old or new, it can't help being different here in this American mind of ours from anything that ever was before; the people are new, Sir, and that makes the difference. One load of corn goes to the sty, and makes the fat of swine,—another goes to the farm-house, and becomes the muscle that clothes the right arms of heroes. It isn't where a pawn stands on the board that makes the difference, but what the game round it is when it is on this or that square.
Can any man look round and see what Christian countries are now doing, and how they are governed, and what is the general condition of society, without seeing that Christianity is the flag under which the world sails, and not the rudder that steers its course? No, Sir! There was a great raft built about two thousand years ago,—call it an ark, rather,—the world's great ark! big enough to hold all mankind, and made to be launched right out into the open waves of life,—and here it has been lying, one end on the shore and one end bobbing up and down in the water, men fighting all the time as to who should be captain and who should have the state-rooms, and throwing each other over the side because they could not agree about the points of compass, but the great vessel never gelling afloat with its freight of nations and their rulers;—and now, Sir, there is and has been for this long time a fleet of "heretic" lighters sailing out of Boston Bay, and they have been saying, and they say now, and they mean to keep saying, "Pump out your bilge-water, shovel over your loads of idle ballast, get out your old rotten cargo, and we will carry it out into deep waters and sink it where it will never be seen again; so shall the ark of the world's hope float on the ocean, instead of sticking in the dock-mud where it is lying!"
It's a slow business, this of getting the ark launched. The Jordan wasn't deep enough, and the Tiber wasn't deep enough, and the Rhone wasn't deep enough, and the Thames wasn't deep enough,—and perhaps the Charles isn't deep enough; but I don't feel sure of that, Sir, and I love to hear the workmen knocking at the old blocks of tradition and making the ways smooth with the oil of the Good Samaritan. I don't know, Sir,—but I do think she stirs a little,—I do believe she slides;—and when I think of what a work that is for the dear old three-breasted mother of American liberty, I would not take all the glory of all the greatest cities in the world for my birthright in the soil of little Boston!
–Some of us could not help smiling at this burst of local patriotism, especially when it finished with the last two words.
And Iris smiled, too. But it was the radiant smile of pleasure which always lights up her face when her little neighbor gets excited on the great topics of progress in freedom and religion, and especially on the part which, as he pleases himself with believing, his own city is to take in that consummation of human development to which he looks forward.
Presently she looked into his face with a changed expression,—the anxiety of a mother that sees her child suffering.
You are not well,—she said.
I am never well,—he answered.—His eyes fell mechanically on the death's-head ring he wore on his right hand. She took his hand as if it had been a baby's, and turned the grim device so that it should be out of sight. One slight, sad, slow movement of the head seemed to say, "The death-symbol is still there!"
A very odd personage, to be sure! Seems to know what is going on,—reads books, old and new,—has many recent publications sent him, they tell me,—but, what is more curious, keeps up with the every-day affairs of the world, too. Whether he hears everything that is said with preternatural acuteness, or whether some confidential friend visits him in a quiet way, is more than I can tell. I can make nothing more of the noises I hear in his room than my old conjectures. The movements I mention are less frequent, but I often hear the plaintive cry,—I observe that it is rarely laughing of late;—I never have detected one articulate word, but I never heard such tones from anything but a human voice.
There has been, of late, a deference approaching to tenderness, on the part of the boarders generally, so far as he is concerned. This is doubtless owing to the air of suffering which seems to have saddened his look of late. Either some passion is gnawing at him inwardly, or some hidden disease is at work upon him.
–What's the matter with Little Boston?—said the young man John to me one day.—There a'n't much of him, anyhow; but 't seems to me he looks peakeder than ever. The old woman says he's in a bad way, 'n' wants a nuss to take care of him. Them nusses that take care of old rich folks marry 'em sometimes,—'n' they don't commonly live a great while after that. No, Sir! I don't see what he wants to die for, after he's taken so much trouble to live in such poor accommodations as that crooked body of his. I should like to know how his soul crawled into it, 'n' how it's goin' to get out. What business has he to die, I should like to know? Let Ma'am Allen (the gentleman with the diamond) die, if he likes, and be (this is a family-magazine); but we a'n't goin' to have him dyin'. Not by a great sight. Can't do without him anyhow. A'n't it fun to hear him blow off his steam?
I believe the young fellow would take it as a personal insult, if the little gentleman should show any symptoms of quitting our table for a better world.
–In the mean time, what with going to church in company with our young lady, and taking every chance I could get to talk with her, I have found myself becoming, I will not say intimate, but well acquainted with Miss Iris. There is a certain frankness and directness about her that perhaps belong to her artist nature. For, you see, the one thing that marks the true artist is a clear perception and a firm, bold hand, in distinction from that imperfect mental vision and uncertain touch which give us the feeble pictures and the lumpy statues of the mere artisans on canvas or in stone. A true artist, therefore, can hardly fail to have a sharp, well-defined character. Besides this, many young girls have a strange audacity blended with their instinctive delicacy. Even in physical daring many of them are a match for boys; whereas you will find few among mature women, and especially if they are mothers, who do not confess, and not unfrequently proclaim, their timidity. One of these young girls, as many of us hereabouts remember, climbed to the top of a jagged, slippery rock lying out in the waves,—an ugly height to get up, and a worse one to get down, even for a bold young fellow of sixteen. Another was in the way of climbing tall trees for crows' nests,—and crows generally know about how far boys can "shin up," and set their household establishments above high-water-mark. Still another of these young ladies I saw for the first time in an open boat, tossing on the ocean ground-swell, a mile or two from shore, off a lonely island. She lost all her daring, after she had some girls of her own to look out for.
Many blondes are very gentle, yielding in character, impressible, unelastic. But the positive blondes, with the golden tint running through them, are often full of character. They come from those deep-bosomed German women that Tacitus portrayed in such strong colors. The negative blondes, or those women whose tints have faded out as their line of descent has become impoverished, are of various blood, and in them the soul has often become pale with that blanching of the hair and loss of color in the eyes which makes them approach the character of Albinesses.
I see in this young girl that union of strength and sensibility which, when directed and impelled by the strong instinct so apt to accompany this combination of active and passive capacity, we call genius. She is not an accomplished artist, certainly, as yet; but there is always an air in every careless figure she draws, as it were of upward aspiration,—the elan of John of Bologna's Mercury,—a lift to them, as if they had on winged sandals, like the herald of the gods. I hear her singing sometimes; and though she evidently is not trained, yet is there a wild sweetness in her fitful and sometimes fantastic melodies,—such as can come only from the inspiration of the moment,—strangely enough, reminding me of those long passages I have heard from my little neighbor's room, yet of different tone, and by no means to be mistaken for those weird harmonies.
I cannot pretend to deny that I am interested in the girl. Alone, unprotected, as I have seen so many young girls left in boarding-houses, the centre of all the men's eyes that surround the table, watched with jealous sharpness by every woman, most of all by that poor relation of our landlady, who belongs to the class of women that like to catch others in mischief when they are too mature for indiscretions, (as one sees old rogues turn to thief-catchers,) one of Nature's gendarmerie, clad in a complete suit of wrinkles, the cheapest coat-of-mail against the shafts of the great little enemy,—so surrounded, Iris spans this commonplace household-life of ours with her arch of beauty, as the rainbow, whose name she borrows, looks down on a dreary pasture with its feeding flocks and herds of indifferent animals.
These young girls that live in boarding-houses can do pretty much as they will. The female gendarmes are off guard occasionally. The sitting-room has its solitary moments, when any two boarders who wish to meet may come together accidentally, (accidentally, I said, Madam, and I had not the slightest intention of Italicizing the word,) and discuss the social or political questions of the day, or any other subject that may prove interesting. Many charming conversations take place at the foot of the stairs, or while one of the parties is holding the latch of a door,—in the shadow of porticos, and especially on those outside balconies which some of our Southern neighbors call "stoops," the most charming places in the world when the moon is just right and the roses and honeysuckles are in full blow,—as we used to think in eighteen hundred and never mention it.
On such a balcony or "stoop," one evening, I walked with Iris. We were on pretty good terms now, and I had coaxed her arm under mine,—my left arm, of course. That leaves one's right arm free to defend the lovely creature, if the rival—odious wretch!—attempt to ravish her from your side. Likewise if one's heart should happen to beat a little, its mute language will not be without its meaning, as you will perceive when the arm you hold begins to tremble,—a circumstance like to occur, if you happen to be a good-looking young fellow, and you two have the "stoop" to yourselves.
We had it to ourselves that evening. The Koh-i-noor, as we called him, was in a corner with our landlady's daughter. The young fellow John was smoking out in the yard. The gendarme was afraid of the evening air, and kept inside. The young Marylander came to the door, looked out and saw us walking together, gave his hat a pull over his forehead and stalked off. I felt a slight spasm, as it were, in the arm I held, and saw the girl's head turn over her shoulder for a second. What a kind creature this is! She has no special interest in this youth, but she does not like to see a young fellow going off because he feels as if he were not wanted.
She had her locked drawing-book under her arm.—Let me take it,—I said.
She gave it to me to carry.
This is full of caricatures of all of us, I am sure,—said I.
She laughed, and said,—No,—not all of you.
I was there, of course?
Why, no,—she had never taken so much pains with me.
Then she would let me see the inside of it?
She would think of it.
Just as we parted, she took a little key from her pocket and handed it to me.—This unlocks my naughty book,—she said,—you shall see it. I am not afraid of you.
I don't know whether the last words exactly pleased me. At any rate, I took the book and hurried with it to my room. I opened it, and saw, in a few glances, that I held the heart of Iris in my hand.
–I have no verses for you this month, except these few lines suggested by the season.
Midsummer
Here! sweep these foolish leaves away,—
I will not crush my brains to-day!—
Look! are the southern curtains drawn?
Fetch me a fan, and so begone!
Not that,—the palm-tree's rustling leaf
Brought from a parching coral-reef!
Its breath is heated;—I would swing
The broad gray plumes,—the eagle's wing.
I hate these roses' feverish blood!—
Pluck me a half-blown lily-bud,
A long-stemmed lily from the lake,
Cold as a coiling water-snake.
Rain me sweet odors on the air,
And wheel me up my Indian chair,
And spread some book not overwise
Flat out before my sleepy eyes.
—Who knows it not,—this dead recoil
Of weary fibres stretched with toil,—
The pulse that flutters faint and low
When Summer's seething breezes blow?
O Nature! bare thy loving breast
And give thy child one hour of rest,—
One little hour to lie unseen
Beneath thy scarf of leafy green!
So, curtained by a singing pine,
Its murmuring voice shall blend with mine,
Till, lost in dreams, my faltering lay
In sweeter music dies away.
Reviews and Literary Notices
Life and Liberty in America: or Sketches of a Tour in the United States and Canada in 1857-8. By Charles Mackay, LL.D., F.S.A. London: Smith, Elder, & Co. 1859.
"Let him come back and write a book about the 'Merrikins as'll pay all his expenses and more, if he blows 'em up enough," urged Mr. Anthony Weller, by way of climax to his scheme for Mr. Pickwick's liberation from the Fleet Prison. Whether Mr. Dickens, in putting forth this suggestion through one of his favorite characters, had or had not a view to subsequent operations of his own, has long been a sore question among his admirers on this side of the Atlantic. We believe that he had not; and that such "blowing-up" as he imparted to the people of this country was wholly unpremeditated and spontaneous, besides being of so harmless a nature that the patriot of most uneasy virtue need have been nowise distressed in consequence. The language can show few more amusing books than the "American Notes," especially the serious parts thereof.
Mr. Dickens had plenty of objects besides his future self at which to aim his satirical shot. At the time he discharged it, the literary market of England was overstocked with books on America, the authors of which had apparently tasked the best energies of their lungs in incessant "blowings-up" of all that came within range of their breath. Up to that period, though viewing America from various stand-points, they had seldom failed to recognize this one essential element of success. Since then, however, attempts have been made to satisfy the prejudices of all sides,—in which the bitter and the sweet have been deftly mingled, with the obvious belief that persons aggrieved, while suffering from the authors' stings, would derive comfort from the consciousness of accompanying honey. These hopes generally proved fallacious, and the authors, falling to the ground between the two stools of American sensitiveness and British asperity, were regarded in the light of stern warnings by many of their successors, who straightway became pitiless.
The critical works on America by English writers, published during the last fifty years, may be numbered by hundreds. Of these, nearly half have at different times been reprinted in this country. Most of them are now unknown, having passed to that oblivion of letters from whose bourn no short-sighted and narrow-minded traveller ever ought to return. The annual harvest began to appear about a half-century ago, when little more than descriptions of scenery and geographical statistics were ventured upon,—although one quaint explorer, John Lambert, vouchsafed, in 1810, some sketches of society, from which we learn, among other interesting facts, that a species of Bloomerism pervaded New York, and flourished on Broadway, even at that early day. Our visitors very soon enlarged the sphere of their observations, and entered upon the widest discussions of republican manners and morals. Slavery, as was to be expected, received immediate attention. In the course of ten years, "American Tours" had set in with such rigor, that one writer felt called upon to apologize for adding another to the already profuse supply. This was in 1818. For the next fifteen years, the principle of unlimited mockery was quite faithfully observed. The Honorable De Roos, who made a naval examination in 1826, and satisfied himself that the United States could never be a maritime power,—Colonel Maxwell, who entered upon a military investigation, and came to a similar conclusion respecting our prospects as to army, and who gained great credit for independent judgment by pronouncing Niagara a humbug,—Mrs. Kemble, frisky and fragmentary, excepting when her father was concerned, and then filially diffuse,—Mrs. Trollope, who refused to incumber herself with amiability or veracity,—Mr. Lieber, who was principally troubled by a camp meeting at which he assisted,—Miss Martineau, who retailed too much of the gossip that had been decanted through the tunnel of her trumpet,—and Captain Marryatt, who was simply clownish,—afford fair examples of the style which dominated until about 1836 or 1837. Then works of a better order began to appear. America received scientific attention. It had been agriculturally worked up in 1818 by Cobbett, whose example was now followed by Shirreff and others. In 1839, George Combe subjected us to phrenological treatment, and had the frankness to acknowledge that it was impossible for an individual to properly describe a great nation. Afterwards came Lyell, the geologist, who did not, however, confine himself to scientific research, but also analyzed the social deposits, and ascertained that Slavery was triturable. The manufacturers of gossip, meanwhile, had revolutionized the old system. Mr. Dickens blew hot and cold, uniting extremes. Godley, in 1841, disavowed satire, and was solemnly severe. Others evinced a similar disposition, but the result was not triumphant. Alexander Mackay, in 1846, returned to ridicule; and Alfred Bunn, a few years after, surpassed even Marryatt in his flippant falsehood. Mr. Arthur Cunynghame, a Canadian officer, entertained his friends, in 1850, with a dainty volume, in which the first personal pronoun averaged one hundred to a page, and the manner of which was as stiff as the ramrods of his regiment. Of our more recent judges, the best remembered are Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley who gave to the world the details of her private experiences,—Mr. Chambers, of whose book there is really nothing in particular to say,—Mr. Baxter, who considered Peter Parley a shining light of American literature,—Miss Murray, who sacrificed her interests at St. James's upon the shrine of Antislavery,—Mr. Phillipps, scientific,—Mr. Russell, agricultural,—Mr. Jobson, theological,—and Mr. Colley Grattan, who may be termed the Sir Anthony Absolute of American censors, insisting that the Lady Columbia shall be as ugly as he chooses, shall have a hump on each shoulder, shall be as crooked as the crescent, and so forth.
Last of all comes Mr. Charles Mackay's book. Before proceeding to the few general words we have to say of it, let us look for a moment at a question which he, like a number of his predecessors, has considered with some attention. Why it is that the people of the United States manifest such acute sensibility to the strictures of English writers, and receive their criticisms with so much suspicion, Mr. Mackay is unable fully to determine. He is forced to believe that it is only their anxiety "to stand well in English opinion which causes them to wince"; particularly as "French and Germans may condemn, and nobody cares what they say." This is but a part of the truth. Unquestionably, Americans do, as Mr. Mackay says, "attach undue importance to what English travellers may say"; but this does not account for the universal feeling of mortification which follows the appearance of each new tourist's story. Americans have not failed to observe, that, of the hundreds of writers who come over, only a few of the most prominent of whom we have mentioned above, not one in fifty is animated by a sincere impulse of honest good-will. They have learned to mistrust them all, as triflers with our reputation, if not predetermined calumniators. They have witnessed over and over again the childish ignorance, the discourtesy, the vulgar deceptions of this class of bookmakers. They are not blind to these repeated struggles to digest a mass of mental food for years, in days or weeks. They know their nation cannot be understood by these chance viewers, feebly glancing through greenest spectacles, any more than the Atlantic can be sounded with a seven-fathom line. They have become familiar with the English traveller only to regard him with contempt. Each new production has opened the old wound. Each new announcement awakens only derisive expectations. As for "French and Germans," with them it is very different; and Mr. Mackay ought to know it. They commonly write, if not with comprehensive vision, at least with integrity of purpose. The best works on America are by Frenchmen. What Englishman has shown the sincerity and fairness of De Tocqueville or Chevalier? Knowing, then, that absurd malice and a capacity for microscopic investigation of superficial irregularities in a society not yet defined are the principal, and in many cases the only, qualifications deemed necessary to accomplish an English book on America, is it matter for wonder that Americans should hesitate to kiss the clumsy rods so liberally dispensed?
We hasten to say that Mr. Charles Mackay's "Life and Liberty in America" is unusually free from the worst of these faults. Hasty judgments, offences against taste, inaccuracies, occasional revelations of personal pique it has; but it is not malicious. Sometimes it is even affecting in its tenderness. It breathes a spirit of paternal regard. But it is, perhaps, the dullest of books. If not "icily regular," it is "splendidly null." The style is as oppressive as a London fog. It is marked, to use the author's own words, by "elegant and drowsy stagnation." After the first few pages, it is with weariness that we follow him. We are inclined to think Mr. Mackay has written too much, Mr. Squeers had milk for three of his pupils watered up to the necessities of five. Mr. Mackay's experiences might have sustained him through a single small volume, but he has diluted them to the requirements of two large ones. This would injure the prospects of his work in America, but may not interfere with them in England. Minute details of toilet agonies, pecuniary miseries, laundry tribulations, and anxieties of appetite may possess an interest abroad which we are unable to appreciate here. We are not excited by the intelligence that Mr. Mackay had an altercation with a negro servant on board a Sound steamer, because he could not have lager-beer at table. Such things have been noticed before. We do not shed a sympathetic tear over the two dollars which he once had to disgorge in New York, in payment for a ride of two miles; nor do we mourn for the numerous other dollars with which he reluctantly parted to satisfy the rapacity of hack-drivers all over the Union. We do not thrill with indignation, when we learn that he was, on a certain occasion, swept by crinolines into the middle of Broadway. Neither are we in any way stirred by such information as, that he, like an English lord of whom he tells, was accustomed to eat oysters every night in New York; or that he "was pervaded, permeated, steeped, and bathed in a longing desire to behold Niagara," and that, when he beheld it, his "feelings were not so much those of astonishment as of an overpowering sense of Law"; or that a peddler in a railroad-car sold nine bottles of quack medicine at a dollar a bottle; or that he had eight pages of interview with a Baltimore madman, who proved his insanity by perpetually calling Mr. Mackay the "Prince of the Poets of England." The dreary solemnity with which these incidents are narrated renders them doubly tedious. A flash of humor might enliven them, but we never see a spark. Mr. Mackay's comic stories, too, of which there are not a few, are most lamentable specimens of wit, suggesting forcibly the poppy-seeds spoken of by Mr. Pillicoddy, which are soporific in tendency, and which, if taken incessantly for a period of three weeks, produce instant death.
