felt his death to be certain; yet all his business in court and out was marked by his ordinary clearness and ability, all his intercourse with his family and friends by his usual sweetness and cheerfulness of disposition.
On the Fourth of July, Hamilton and Burr met at the annual banquet of the Society of Cincinnati. Hamilton presided. No one was afterwards able to remember that his manner gave any indication of the dreadful event which was so near at hand. He joined freely in the conversation and badinage of such occasions, and towards the close of the feast sang a song,–the only one he knew,–the ballad of the Drum. But many remembered that Burr was silent and moody. He did not look towards Hamilton until he began to sing, when he fixed his eyes upon him and gazed intently at him until the song was ended.
Hamilton was living at the Grange, his country-seat, near Manhattanville. The place is still unchanged. His office was in a small house on Cedar Street, where he likewise found lodgings when necessary. The night previous to the duel was passed there. We have been told by an aged citizen of New York, that Hamilton was seen long after midnight walking to and fro in front of the house.
During these last hours both parties wrote a few farewell lines. In no act of their lives does the difference in the characters of Hamilton and Burr show itself so distinctly as in these parting letters. Hamilton was oppressed by the difficulties and responsibilities of his situation. His duty to his creditors and his family forbade him rashly to expose a life which was so valuable to them; his duty to his country forbade him to leave so evil an example; he was not conscious of ill-will towards Col. Burr; and his nature revolted at the thought of destroying human life in a private quarrel. These thoughts, and the considerations of pride and ambition which nevertheless controlled him, are beautifully expressed in language which is full of pathos and manly dignity. He had made his will the day before. He was distressed lest his estate should prove insufficient to pay his debts, and, after committing their mother to the filial protection of his children, he besought them, as his last request, to vindicate his memory by making up any deficiency which might occur. Burr’s letters to Theodosia and her husband are mainly occupied with directions as to the disposal of his property and papers. The tone of them does not differ greatly from that of his ordinary correspondence. They do not contain a word such as an affectionate father or a patriotic citizen would have written at such a time. They do not express a sentiment such as a generous and thoughtful man would naturally feel on the eve of so momentous an occurrence. There are no misgivings as to the propriety of his conduct, nor a whisper of regret at the unfortunate circumstances which, as he professed to think, compelled him to seek another’s blood. He addressed to his daughter a few lines of graceful compliment, and, in striking contrast with Hamilton’s injunction to his children, Burr’s last request with regard to Theodosia is, that she shall acquire a “critical knowledge of Latin, English, and all branches of natural philosophy.”
The combatants met on the 11th of July, 1804, at a place beneath the heights of Weehawken, upon the New Jersey side of the Hudson,–the usual resort, at that time, for such encounters. Burr fired the moment the word was given, raising his arm deliberately and taking aim. The ball struck Hamilton on the side, and, as he reeled under the blow, his pistol was discharged into the air. “I should have shot him through the heart,” said Burr, afterwards, “but, at the moment I was about to fire, my aim was confused by a vapor.” Burr stepped forward with a gesture of regret, when he saw his adversary fall; but his second hurried him from the field, screening him with an umbrella from the recognition of the surgeon and bargemen.
Hamilton was carried to the house of Mr. Bayard, in the suburbs of the city. The news flew through the town, producing intense excitement. Bulletins were posted at the Tontine, and changed with every new report. Crowds soon gathered around Mr. Bayard’s house, and in the grounds. So deep was the feeling, that visitors were permitted to pass one by one through the room where Gen. Hamilton was lying. From the first, there was no hope of his recovery. This opinion of the most eminent surgeons in the city was concurred in by the surgeons of two French frigates in the harbor, who were consulted. Gen. Hamilton was a man of slight frame, and a disorder, from which he had recently suffered, prevented the use of the ordinary remedies. He retained his composure to the last; nor was his fortitude disturbed until his seven children approached his bedside. He gave them one look, and, closing his eyes, did not open them again while they remained in the room. He expired at two o’clock on the day after the duel.
He was not the only victim. His oldest daughter, a girl of twenty, whose education he had carefully directed, and whose musical talents gave him great pleasure, never recovered from the shock of her father’s death. In her disordered fancy, she visited by night the fatal ground at Weehawken, and told her friends that she crossed the river and returned before morning. Her mind soon gave way entirely; and only last spring death released her from a total, though gentle insanity of fifty years’ duration.
The sudden and tragic death of Alexander Hamilton produced a universal feeling of sympathy and sorrow. As the leader of the bar, the advocate of the Constitution, the statesman who had given the law to American commerce, the most accomplished soldier in the army, and connected with the still recent glories of the Revolution,–his name had become familiar to every ear, and was associated with every subject of popular interest. His career was, in all respects, an extraordinary one. He came here a stranger, without fortune or powerful family connections. While yet a school-boy, he had borne a creditable part in the discussion of public affairs. At an age when the ambition of most young soldiers is satisfied, if, by the performance of their ordinary duties as subalterns, they have attracted the regard of their superiors, he was in a position of responsibility, and occupied with the most serious and complicated matters of war. He was one of the youngest and at the same time one of the most influential members of the Constitutional Convention. To this distinction in affairs and arms he added equal distinction at the bar. It will he difficult to find in our history, or in that of England, an instance of such eminence in three departments of action so distinct and dissimilar. Although it may he said of Hamilton, that he had not the intuitive perception, which Jefferson possessed, of the necessities imposed upon the country by its anomalous condition, yet, as a statesman under an established government, he was surpassed by no man of his generation. His talents were of the kind which most attracts the sympathies and impresses the understandings of others. He was a grave man, occupied with business affairs, but not unequal to occasions which required the display of taste and eloquence. His solid qualities of mind inspired universal confidence in the soundness of his views upon all questions which were not the subject of political dispute. There were many plain Republicans of that day who were firmly attached to the principles which Jefferson advocated, but who thought that Jefferson was a dreamer and an enthusiast, and that Hamilton was a far safer man in the ordinary affairs of government.
The grief which the death of Hamilton caused in the nation reacted upon Burr; and when the correspondence was published, a storm of condemnation burst upon him. Indictments were found against him in New York and New Jersey. In every pulpit, upon every platform, where the virtues and services of Hamilton were celebrated, the features of his malignant foe were displayed in dramatic contrast He was compared to Richard III. and Catiline, to Saul, and to the wretch who fired the temple of Diana. This feeling was not confined to orators and clergymen, nor to this country. It reached other communities, and was shared by men of the world like Talleyrand, and retired students like Jeremy Bentham. The former, a few years before his death, related to an American gentleman, that Burr, on his arrival in Paris, in 1810, sent to him and requested an interview. The French statesman could not well refuse to receive an American of such distinction, with whom he was personally acquainted, and by whom he had formerly been hospitably entertained, and told the gentleman who brought the message,–“Say to Col. Burr, that I will receive him to-morrow; but tell him also, that Gen. Hamilton’s likeness always hangs over my mantel.” Burr did not call upon him. Talleyrand directed that after his death the miniature should be sent to Hamilton’s descendants, with some newspaper scraps relating to him, which he had thrust into the lining. When Burr was in England, he became intimate with Bentham. The latter, in his “Memoirs and Correspondence,” makes a brief allusion to the acquaintance, in which the following passage occurs: “Burr gave me an account of his duel with Hamilton. He was sure of being able to kill him: _so I thought it little better than a murder_.”
Previously to his retirement from the Vice-Presidency, in March, 1805, Burr had formed the design of seeking a home in the Southwest. Little more than a year before, Louisiana had been annexed, and then offered a wide field to an ambitious man. Encouraged by some acquaintances, he projected various political and financial speculations. In April, he repaired to Pittsburg, and started upon a journey down the Ohio and the Mississippi. On the way, curiosity led him to the house of Herman Blennerhassett, and he thus accidentally made the acquaintance of a man whose name has become historic by its association with his own. Blennerhassett was an Irishman by birth; he had inherited a considerable fortune, and was a man of education. Beguiled by the belief that in the retirement of the American forests he would find the solitude most congenial to the pursuit of his favorite studies, he purchased an island in the Ohio River near the mouth of the Little Kanawha. He expended most of his property in building a house and adorning his grounds. The house was a plain wooden structure; and the shrubbery, in its best estate, could hardly have excited the envy of Shenstone. Men of strong character are not dependent upon certain conditions of climate and quiet for the ability to accomplish their purposes. But Blennerhassett was not a man of strong character; neither was he an exception to this rule. He was, at the best, but an idle student; and his zeal for science never carried him beyond a little desultory study of Astronomy and Botany and some absurd experiments in Chemistry. His figure was awkward, his manners were ungracious, and he was so near-sighted that he used to take a servant hunting with him, to show him the game. His credulity and want of worldly knowledge exposed him to the practices of the shrewd frontiers-men among whom he lived. He soon became involved in debt, and at the time of Burr’s visit his situation made him a ready volunteer for any enterprise which promised to repair his shattered fortunes. That the enterprise was impracticable, and that he was unfit for it, only made it more attractive to his imaginative and simple mind. The fancy of Wirt has thrown a deceptive romance around the career of Blennerhassett, yet there is enough of truth in the account of the misfortunes which Burr brought upon him and his amiable wife to justify the sympathy with which they have been regarded.
Soon after his arrival at New Orleans Burr seems to have formed bolder designs. From this time we find in his correspondence, and that of his friends, vague hints of some great undertaking. This proved to be a project for an expedition against Mexico, and the establishment there of an Empire which was to include the States west of the Alleghanies; subsidiary to this, and connected with it, was a plan for the colonization of a large tract of land upon the Washita.
It is difficult to believe that a design so absurd can have been entertained by a man of common sense; yet it is certain that it was seriously undertaken by Burr. His conduct in carrying it out furnishes the best measure of his talents and a signal exhibition of his folly and his vices. His high standing, his reputation as a soldier, attracted the vulgar, and brought him into intercourse with the most intelligent people of the Territory. The fascination of his manners, and the skill in the arts of intrigue which long discipline had given him, enabled him to sustain the impression which the prestige of his name everywhere produced. The details of his political conduct could not have been accurately known in a region so remote. The affair with Hamilton had not injured his reputation in communities where such affairs were common and often applauded. The circumstances of the time, to his superficial glance, seemed to be encouraging. A large portion of the country had lately passed under our flag;–many of the inhabitants spoke a foreign language, and retained foreign customs and predilections;–the American settlers were an adventurous race, and eager for an opportunity to indulge their martial spirit;–Mexico was uneasy under the Spanish yoke;–and some indications of a war between the United States and Spain held out a faint hope that the initiatory steps of his, enterprise might be taken with the connivance of the government. To recruit an army among the hardy citizens of Kentucky and Tennessee, to excite the jealousies of the French in Louisiana, to subdue feeble and demoralized Mexico, and create a new and stable empire, did not appear difficult to the sanguine imagination of a man who was without means or powerful friends, and who at no time had sufficient confidence in those with whom he was engaged to fully inform them of his plans. But he pursued his purposes with a tenacity which leaves no doubt of his sincerity, and an audacity and unscrupulousness seldom equalled. A few whom he thought it safe to trust were admitted to his secrets. Upon those in whom he did not dare to confide he practised every species of deception. He told some, that his intentions were approved by the government,–others, that his expedition was against Mexico only, and that he was sure of foreign aid. He represented to the honest, that he had bought lands, and wished to form a colony and institute a new and better order of society; the ignorant were deluded with a fanciful tale of Southern conquest, and a magnificent empire, of which he was to be king, and Theodosia queen after his death. So thoroughly was this deception carried out, that it is difficult to determine who were actually engaged with him. Without doubt, many acceded to his plans only because they did not knew what his plans really were. He made rapid journeys from New Orleans to Natchez, Nashville, Lexington, Louisville, and St. Louis. In the winter of 1805 he returned to Washington, and in the following summer again went down the Ohio. Wherever he went, he threw out complaints against the government,–charged it with imbecility,–boasted that with two hundred men he could drive the President and Congress into the Potomac,–freely prophesied a dissolution of the Union, and published in the local journals articles pointing out the advantages which would result from a separation of the Western from the Eastern States. Gen. Eaton had been denounced in Congress, and had a claim against the government; Burr tempted him with an opportunity to redress his wrongs and satisfy his claim. Commodore Truxton had been struck from the Navy list; he offered him a high command in the Mexican navy. He took every occasion to flatter the vanity of the people; attended militia parades, and praised the troops for their discipline and martial bearing. Large donations of land were freely promised to recruits; men were enlisted; Blennerhassett’s Island was made the rendezvous; and provisions were gathered there.
At length his movements began to cause some anxiety to the public officers. The United States District Attorney attempted to indict him at Frankfort, Kentucky, but the grand-jury refused to find a bill. Henry Clay defended him in these proceedings, and in reference to his connection with the case, Mr. Parton makes a characteristic display of the spirit in which his book is written, and of his unfitness for the ambitious task he has undertaken. He quotes the following passage from Collins’s “Historical Sketches of Kentucky”:–“Before Mr. Clay took any active part as the counsel of Burr, he required of him an explicit disavowal, [avowal,] upon his honor, that he was engaged in no design contrary to the laws and peace of the country. This pledge was promptly given by Burr, in language the most broad, comprehensive, and particular. He had no design, he said, to intermeddle with or disturb the tranquillity of the United States, nor its territories, nor any part of them. He had neither issued nor signed nor promised a commission to any person for any purpose. He did not own a single musket, nor bayonet, nor any single article of military stores,–nor did any other person for him, by his authority or knowledge. His views had been explained to several distinguished members of the administration, were well understood and approved by the government. They were such as every man of honor and every good citizen must approve.” Upon this paragraph Mr. Parton makes the following extraordinary comments:–“Mr. Clay, there is reason to believe, went to his grave in the belief that each of these assertions was an unmitigated falsehood, and the writer of the above adduces them merely as remarkable instances of cool, impudent lying. On the contrary, with one exception, all of Burr’s allegations were strictly true; and even that one was true in a _Burrian_ sense. He did _not_ own any arms or military stores: by the terms of his engagement with his recruits, every man was to join him armed, just as every backwoodsman was armed whenever he went from home. He had _not_ issued nor promised any commissions: the time had not come for that. Jefferson and his cabinet undoubtedly knew his views and intentions, up to the point where they ceased to be lawful.”
To this miserable tissue of sophistry and misrepresentation the only reply we have to make is, that Burr’s statements were the unmitigated falsehoods which Henry Clay believed them to be. For at that very time stores were collected on Blennerhassett’s Island; other persons were bringing arms for Burr’s service and with his knowledge; the winter previous he had offered commissions to Eaton and Truxton; and a month before this statement was made, his agent had arrived at Wilkinson’s camp with the direct proposition to that officer, that he should attack the Spaniards, hurry his country into a war, and enter upon a career of conquest which was to result in dismembering the Union. And yet Burr solemnly declared upon his honor that he was engaged in no design “contrary to the laws and peace of the country,” and that “his views were such as every man of honor and every good citizen must approve,”–and Parton says these averments were true. We have no wish to deal harshly with this writer; but such an impudent defence of a palpable falsehood is a disgrace to American letters.
Every well-informed person knows the miserable issue of this ill-contrived conspiracy. The only emotion which it now excites in the student is wonder that the thought of it could ever have entered a sane mind. A wilder or more chimerical scheme never disturbed the dreams of a schoolboy; yet no one has ever pressed a reasonable undertaking with more earnestness and confidence than Burr his visionary purpose. He exhibited, throughout, an infatuation and a degree of incompetency for great achievements, which would cover the enterprise with ridicule, were it not for the misfortunes which it brought upon himself and others.
We do not desire to linger over the last period of Burr’s life. His deadliest foe could not have wished for him so terrible a punishment as that which afflicted his long and ignominious old age.
In 1808 he went to Europe to obtain aid for his Mexican expedition. While in England, he made another display of his adroitness and boldness in falsehood. The English government became suspicious of him; whereupon he had the hardihood to claim, that, although he had borne arms against Great Britain and had held office in an independent state, he was still a British subject. Mr. Parton says, that this “was an amusing instance of Burr’s lawyerlike audacity.” Less partial judges will probably find a harsher term to apply to it.
After his return to this country, Burr resumed his profession in New York, but never regained his former position at the bar. The standard of legal acquirements was higher than it had been in his youth, and the obloquy which rested upon him excluded him from the respectable departments of practice. During all this time, by far the longest period of his professional life, he never displayed any signal ability. His society was shunned,–or sought only by a few personal admirers, or by the profligate and the curious. When seventy-eight years of age, he wheedled Madame Jumel, an eccentric and wealthy widow, into a marriage. On the bridal trip he obtained possession of some of her property, and squandered it in an idle speculation. A continuance of such practices led to a separation, and his wife afterwards made application for a divorce, upon a charge which Mr. Parton says is now known to have been false, but which we have reason to believe was true, and which was so disgusting that we cannot even hint at it.
It is our duty to notice one chapter in this book, which, more than anything else it contains, has given it notoriety. We refer to its defence of, or, to speak more mildly, its apology for, Burr’s libertinism. All the faults of the author which we have had occasion to notice, examples of which are scattered through the volume, are concentrated in these few pages,–his inconsistency, his inaccuracy, his disposition to draw inferences from facts which they directly contradict, and to rely on evidence which has nothing to do with the case in hand. He argues at great length upon the assumption, that Burr’s correspondence with women was unfit for publication, and then, in contradiction to Burr’s own positive declaration, asserts that there were “no letters necessarily criminating ladies.” To prove this, he publishes two letters, one of which is an apology, written by Burr in his seventy-fourth year, for having addressed a young woman in an improper manner, and the other is a letter from a female, couched in language much wanner than an innocent woman could use. Mr. Parton attacks Davis because that writer stated that Burr left his correspondence to be disposed of by him, and eulogizes his hero because he ordered that the letters should be burned. To establish this position, he quotes Burr’s will, which directed Davis “to destroy, or to deliver to all persons interested, such letters, as may, _in his estimation_, be calculated to affect injuriously the feelings of individuals against whom I have no complaint,”–thus giving Mr. Davis all the discretionary power with which he claims to have been invested, and making him the judge as to what letters should be destroyed. We have no more space to expose Mr. Parton’s blunders and sophistry. The evidence of Burr’s debauchery, of his heartless vanity, of his utter disregard of the considerations which usually govern even the worst of men, does not rest upon the admissions of Davis alone. Those who are familiar with a scandalous book called the “Secret History of St. Domingo,” which consists of a series of letters addressed to Col. Burr by Madame D’Auvergne, will need no further illustration of his influence over women, nor of the character of those with whom he was most intimately associated. The night before his duel with Hamilton, he committed all the letters of his female correspondents to the care and perusal of Theodosia, saying that she would “find in them something to amuse, much to instruct, and more to forgive.” When in Europe, he kept a journal in which he recorded his various amorous adventures. This book, as published, is one which no gentleman would place in the hands of a lady, and the editor tells us that the most improper portions of the diary have been expurgated; yet this journal was written, not to amuse a scandal-loving public, not for purposes of gain, but for the private perusal of Theodosia. What can be said of a man who could expose the lascivious expressions of abandoned females and retail his own debaucheries to a gentle and innocent woman, and that woman his own daughter? The mere statement beggars invective. It shows a mind so depraved as to be unconscious of its depravity.
The character of Burr is not difficult to analyze. His life was consistent, and at the beginning a wise man might have foretold the end. Our author complains that Burr’s reputation has suffered from the disposition to exaggerate his faults. This may be true; but it is likewise true that he has been benefited by the same disposition to exaggeration. A character is more dramatic which unites great talents with great vices, and therefore he has been represented both as a worse and a greater man than he really was. Burr cannot be called great in any sense. His successes, such as they were, never appear to have been obtained by high mental effort. He has left not a single measure, no speech, no written discussion of the various important subjects that came before him, to which one can point as an exhibition of superior talents. A certain description of ability cannot be denied to him. He did well whatever could be done by address, courage, and industry, joined to moderate talents. His chief power lay in the fascination of personal intercourse. His countenance was pleasing, and illuminated by eyes of singular beauty and vivacity; his bearing was lofty; his self-possession could not be disturbed; he had the tact of a woman, and an intellect which was active and equal to all ordinary occasions. But even in society his range was a narrow one, and he seems to have been successful mainly because he avoided positive effort It is usual to speak of him as a remarkable conversationalist; but if by that term we mean to describe, a person who is distinguished for his eloquence, grace of expression, information, force and originality of thought, Burr was not a good converser. A distinguished gentleman, who, while young, was much noticed by Burr, being asked in what his personal attraction consisted, replied, “In his manner of listening to you. He seemed to give your thought so much value by the air with which he received it, and to find so much more meaning in your words than you had intended. No flattery was equal to it.” We think that this anecdote reveals the entire power of the man. He was strong through the weakness of others, rather than in his own strength. Therefore he was most attractive to young or inferior people. He was not on terms of intimacy with any leading man of his time, unless it was Jeremy Bentham, and the precise nature of their relations is not understood. The philosopher, who could not then boast many disciples, was favorably disposed toward Burr, because the latter had ordered a London bookseller to send him Bentham’s works as fast as they were published. Upon acquaintance, he must have been pleased with a gentleman with whom he could have had no cause for dispute, who could supply him with information as to new and interesting forms of society and government, and whose adventurous and romantic career differed so widely from his own life of study and thought.
Burr’s conduct in his various public situations affords a perfect measure of his abilities. As a soldier, he was brave, a good disciplinarian, watchful of details, and an excellent executive officer. At the head of a brigade he would have been useful; but he did not possess the foresight, the breadth of mental vision, nor the magnetism of nature awakening the enthusiasm of armies, which are necessary to a great commander. He was an adroit lawyer, an adept in the fence of his profession, skilful to avail himself of the errors of an opponent, and to play upon the foibles of judge or jury; but he had not the faculty for generalization and analysis, nor the nice discrimination in the application of general principles to particular instances, which must be combined in a great lawyer. He cannot by any figure of speech be called a statesman. As a politician, he was one of the first to discover and one of the most skilful in the use of those unworthy arts which have brought the pursuit of politics into disrepute; but we doubt whether he could have succeeded upon the broader field of the present day. Perfectly competent to manage a single city, he would have failed in an attempt to govern, a party. His talents were well defined by Jefferson, who spoke of him as a great man in little things, and a small man in great things.
One of the qualities most frequently attributed to Burr is fortitude; upon this characteristic his biographer frequently dwells. And indeed, when one reads of the misfortunes which came upon him,–the disappointments which he encountered,–his poverty abroad,–his terrible afflictions, and dreary old age,–and how gallantly he bore up under all,–unblenching, unmurmuring, struggling cheerfully and patiently to the end,–one cannot repress a feeling of admiration for the courage which endured so much misery, and of pity for the faults which brought that misery upon him. Such a feeling would be justified, if we could believe that fortitude was a positive trait in his character. That is to say, if he had been properly sensible of the odium which covered his name, and had really felt the sorrows which visited him,–if these things had moved him as they do others, and he had still gone on calmly and bravely to the end, hiding the wounds which tortured him, and giving no sign of pain,–he would, indeed, have been worthy of admiration; he would have been a hero. But we think it will appear, upon a closer examination, that his fortitude was a negative, not a positive quality; it was insensibility, not courage. He did not suffer, because he did not feel. The emotional part of our nature he did not possess; at least, it did not show itself in any of the forms which it usually takes,–in love of country, or of kindred,–in the opinions which he professed, or in the subjects which occupied his thoughts. The first act of his manhood was to join in the resistance of his countrymen to foreign oppression. But it was no love of liberty that urged him to arms. He went to the camp at Cambridge from the mere love of adventure. The sacred spirit which gave nobility to so many,–which transformed mechanics, tradesmen, village lawyers, and plain country-gentlemen into statesmen, philosophers, diplomatists, and great captains,–which united the children of many races into one nation, and roused a simple people to deeds of lofty heroism,–awakened no enthusiasm in him. He was in the very flush of youth, yet to his most intimate friends he did not breathe a word of even moderate interest in the cause for which he had drawn his sword. His political life was passed during the first twenty years of our national existence, when men’s minds were exercised in the effort to adapt one government to the various and apparently conflicting interests of many communities widely separated by distance, climate, and ancient differences; but these complicated and momentous subjects, so absorbing to all thoughtful men, never weighed upon his mind. He was in Europe when Napoleon was at the height of his power, when his armies swept from the Danube to the Guadalquivir; but that strange story, which the giddiest school-girl cannot read with divided attention, drew no remark from his lips. It is said that he was fond of his daughter;–it was a fondness of the head, not of the heart. He admired her because she was beautiful and intelligent;–had she been plain and dull, he would not have cared for her. He made no return for the affection, warm and generous, which her noble heart lavished upon him, liberal as the sunlight. Had that earnest love touched, for a single instant, a responsive chord in his heart, he could never have written those foul, foul words to make her blush at the record of her father’s shame. Nowhere does he express regret for the misfortunes which he brought upon others,–the bereaved family of Hamilton,–the ruin of Blennerhassett,–the victims of his passions and his ambition. He spoke freely, as if they were indifferent matters, of things which most men would have concealed. He laughed at his trial,–alluded to Hamilton as “my friend Hamilton, whom I shot,”–and used to repeat some doggerel lines upon the duel, which he had seen in a strolling exhibition. It is said that he was courteous and amiable, and that he did many kind and generous acts. His courtesy and amiability did not restrain him from perfidy and debauchery; neither did he ever do a kind act when an unkind one would have served his purposes better.
As we have seen, Mr. Parton has described Aaron Burr as suited to many very incongruous conditions in life. If we were to select an epoch in history and a form of society for which he was best adapted, we should place him in France daring the Regency and the reign of Louis XV. There, where a successful _bon-mot_ established a claim to office, and a well-turned leg did more for a man than the best mind in Europe, Burr would have risen to distinction. He might have shone in the literary circles at Sceaux, and in the _petits soupers_ at the Palais Royal. Among the wits, the _litterateurs_, the fashionable men and women of the time, he would have found society congenial to his tastes, and sufficient employment for his talents. He would have exhibited in his own life and character their vices and their superficial virtues, their extravagance, libertinism, and impiety, their politeness, courage, and wit. He might have borne a distinguished part in the petty statesmanship, the intriguing diplomacy, and the wild speculations of that period. But here, among the stern rebels of the Revolution and the practical statesmen of the early Republic, this trickster and shallow politician, this visionary adventurer and boaster of ladies’ favors, was out of place. He has given to his country nothing except a pernicious example. The full light, which shows us that his vices may have been exaggerated, shows likewise that his talents have surely been overestimated. The contrast which gave fascination to his career is destroyed; and for a partial vindication of his character he will pay the penalty which he would most have dreaded, that of being forgotten.
* * * * *
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
EVERY MAN HIS OWN BOSWELL.
A lyric conception–my friend, the Poet, said–hits me like a bullet in the forehead. I have often had the blood drop from my checks when it struck, and felt that I turned as white as death. Then comes a creeping as of centipedes running down the spine,–then a gasp and a great jump of the heart,–then a sudden flush and a beating in the vessels of the head,–then a long sigh,–and the poem is written.
It is an impromptu, I suppose, then, if you write it so suddenly,–I replied.
No,–said he,–far from it. I said written, but I did not say _copied_. Every such poem has a soul and a body, and it is the body of it, or the copy, that men read and publishers pay for. The soul of it is born in an instant in the poet’s soul. It comes to him a thought, tangled in the meshes of a few sweet words,–words that have loved each other from the cradle of the language, but have never been wedded until now. Whether it will ever fully embody itself in a bridal train of a dozen stanzas or not is uncertain; but it exists potentially from the instant that the poet turns pale with it It is enough to stun and scare anybody, to have a hot thought come crashing into his brain, and ploughing up those parallel ruts where the wagon trains of common ideas were jogging along in their regular sequences of association. No wonder the ancients made the poetical impulse wholly external. [Greek: Maenin aeide, Thea], Goddess,–Muse,–divine afflatus,–something outside always. _I_ never wrote any verses worth reading. I can’t. I am too stupid. If I ever copied any that were worth reading, I was only a medium.
[I was talking all this time to our boarders, you understand,–telling them what this poet told me. The company listened rather attentively, I thought, considering the literary character of the remarks.]
The old gentleman opposite all at once asked me if I ever read anything better than Pope’s “Essay on Man”? Had I ever perused McFingal? He was fond of poetry when he was a boy,–his mother taught him to say many little pieces,–he remembered one beautiful hymn;–and the old gentleman began, in a clear, loud voice, for his years,–
“The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue ethereal sky,
And spangled heavens,”—-
He stopped, as if startled by our silence, and a faint flush ran up beneath the thin white hairs that fell upon his cheek. As I looked round, I was reminded of a show I once saw at the Museum,–the Sleeping Beauty, I think they called it. The old man’s sudden breaking out in this way turned every face towards him, and each kept his posture as if changed to stone. Our Celtic Bridget, or Biddy, is not a foolish fat scullion to burst out crying for a sentiment. She is of the serviceable, red-handed, broad-and-high-shouldered type; one of those imported female servants who are known in public by their amorphous style of person, their stoop forwards, and a headlong and as it were precipitous walk,–the waist plunging downwards into the rocking pelvis at every heavy footfall. Bridget, constituted for action, not for emotion, was about to deposit a plate heaped with something upon the table, when I saw the coarse arm stretched by my shoulder arrested,–motionless as the arm of a terra-cotta caryatid; she couldn’t set the plate down while the old gentleman was speaking!
He was quite silent after this, still wearing the slight flush on his cheek. Don’t ever think the poetry is dead in an old man because his forehead is wrinkled, or that his manhood has left him when his hand trembles! If they ever _were_ there, they _are_ there still!
By and by we got talking again.–Does a poet love the verses written through him, do you think, Sir?–said the divinity-student.
So long as they are warm from his mind, carry any of his animal heat about them, _I know_ he loves them,–I answered. When they have had time to cool, he is more indifferent.
A good deal as it is with buckwheat cakes,–said the young fellow whom they call John.
The last words, only, reached the ear of the economically organized female in black bombazine.–Buckwheat is skerce and high,–she remarked. [Must be a poor relation sponging on our landlady,–pays nothing,–so she must stand by the guns and be ready to repel boarders.]
I liked the turn the conversation had taken, for I had some things I wanted to say, and so, after waiting a minute, I began again.–I don’t think the poems I read you sometimes can be fairly appreciated, given to you as they are in the green state.
—-You don’t know what I mean by the _green state?_ Well, then, I will tell you. Certain things are good for nothing until they have been kept a long while; and some are good for nothing until they have been long kept and _used_. Of the first, wine is the illustrious and immortal example. Of those which must be kept and used. I will name three,–meerschaum pipes, violins, and poems. The meerschaum is but a poor affair until it has burned a thousand offerings to the cloud-compelling deities. It comes to us without complexion or flavor, born of the sea-foam, like Aphrodite, but colorless as _pallida Mors_ herself. The fire is lighted in its central shrine, and gradually the juices which the broad leaves of the Great Vegetable had sucked up from an acre and curdled into a drachm are diffused through its thirsting pores. First a discoloration, then a stain, and at last a rich, glowing, umber tint spreading over the whole surface. Nature true to her old brown autumnal hue, you see,–as true in the fire of the meerschaum as in the sunshine of October! And then the cumulative wealth of its fragrant reminiscences! he who inhales its vapors takes a thousand whiffs in a single breath; and one cannot touch it without awakening the old joys that hang around it, as the smell of flowers clings to the dresses of the daughters of the house of Farina!
[Don’t think I use a meerschaum myself, for _I do not_, though I have owned a calumet since my childhood, which from a naked Pict (of the Mohawk species) my grandsire won, together with a tomahawk and beaded knife-sheath; paying for the lot with a bullet-mark on his right cheek. On the maternal side I inherit the loveliest silver-mounted tobacco-stopper you ever saw. It is a little box-wood Triton, carved with charming liveliness and truth; I have often compared it to a figure in Raphael’s “Triumph of Galatea.” It came to me in an ancient shagreen case,–how old it is I do not know,–but it must have been made since Sir Walter Raleigh’s time. If you are curious, you shall see it any day. Neither will I pretend that I am so unused to the more perishable smoking contrivance, that a few whiffs would make me feel as if I lay in a groundswell on the Bay of Biscay. I am not unacquainted with that fusiform, spiral-wound bundle of chopped stems and miscellaneous incombustibles, the cigar, so called, of the shops,–which to “draw” asks the suction-power of a nursling infant Hercules, and to relish, the leathery palate of an old Silenus. I do not advise you, young man, even if my illustration strikes your fancy, to consecrate the flower of your life to painting the bowl of a pipe, for, let me assure you, the stain of a reverie-breeding narcotic may strike deeper than you think for. I have seen the green leaf of early promise grow brown before its time under such Nicotian regimen, and thought the umbered meerschaum was dearly bought at the cost of a brain enfeebled and a will enslaved.]
Violins, too,–the sweet old Amati!–the divine Straduarius! Played on by ancient maestros until the bow-hand lost its power and the flying fingers stiffened. Bequeathed to the passionate young enthusiast, who made it whisper his hidden love, and cry his inarticulate longings, and scream his untold agonies, and wail his monotonous despair. Passed from his dying hand to the cold _virtuoso_, who let it slumber in its case for a generation, till, when his hoard was broken up, it came forth once more and rode the stormy symphonies of royal orchestras, beneath the rushing bow of their lord and leader. Into lonely prisons with improvident artists; into convents from which arose, day and night, the holy hymns with which its tones were blended; and back again to orgies in which it learned to howl and laugh as if a legion of devils were shut up in it; then again to the gentle _dilettante_ who calmed it down with easy melodies until it answered him softly as in the days of the old _maestros_. And so given into our hands, its pores all full of music; stained, like the meerschaum, through and through, with the concentrated hue and sweetness of all the harmonies that have kindled and faded on its strings.
Now I tell you a poem must be kept _and used_, like a meerschaum, or a violin. A poem is just as porous as the meerschaum;–the more porous it is, the better. I mean to say that a genuine poem is capable of absorbing an indefinite amount of the essence of our own humanity,–its tenderness, its heroism, its regrets, its aspirations, so as to be gradually stained through with a divine secondary color derived from ourselves. So you see it must take time to bring the sentiment of a poem into harmony with our nature, by staining ourselves through every thought and image our being can penetrate.
Then again as to the mere music of a new poem; why, who can expect anything more from that than from the music of a violin fresh from the maker’s hands? Now you know very well that there are no less than fifty-eight different pieces in a violin. These pieces are strangers to each other, and it takes a century, more or less, to make them thoroughly acquainted. At last they learn to vibrate in harmony, and the instrument becomes an organic whole, as if it were a great seed-capsule that had grown from a garden-bed in Cremona, or elsewhere. Besides, the wood is juicy and full of sap for fifty years or so, but at the end of fifty or a hundred more gets tolerably dry and comparatively resonant.
Don’t you see that all this is just as true of a poem? Counting each word as a piece, there are more pieces in an average copy of verses than in a violin. The poet has forced all these words together, and fastened them, and they don’t understand it at first But let the poem be repeated aloud and murmured over in the mind’s muffled whisper often enough, and at length the parts become knit together in such absolute solidarity that you could not change a syllable without the whole world’s crying out against you for meddling with the harmonious fabric. Observe, too, how the drying process takes place in the stuff of a poem just as in that of a violin. Here is a Tyrolese fiddle that is just coming to its hundredth birthday,–(Pedro Klauss, Tyroli, fecit, 1760,)–the sap is pretty well out of it. And here is the song of an old poet whom Neaera cheated:–
“Nox erat, et coelo fulgebat Luna sereno Inter minora sidera,
Cum tu magnorum numen laesura deorum In verba jurubas mea.”
Don’t you perceive the sonorousness of these old dead Latin phrases? Now I tell you that every word fresh from the dictionary brings with it a certain succulence; and though I cannot expect the sheets of the “Pactolian,” in which, as I told you, I sometimes print my verses, to get so dry as the crisp papyrus that held those words of Horatius Flaccus, yet you may be sure, that, while the sheets are damp, and while the lines hold their sap, you can’t fairly judge of my performances, and that, if made of the true stuff, they will ring better after a while.
[There was silence for a brief space, after my somewhat elaborate exposition of these self-evident analogies. Presently _a person_ turned towards me–I do not choose to designate the individual–and said that he rather expected my pieces had given pretty good “sahtisfahction.”–I had, up to this moment, considered this complimentary phrase as sacred to the use of secretaries of lyceums, and, as it has been usually accompanied by a small pecuniary testimonial, have acquired a certain relish for this moderately tepid and unstimulating expression of enthusiasm. But as a reward for gratuitous services, I confess I thought it a little below that blood-heat standard which a man’s breath ought to have, whether silent, or vocal and articulate. I waited for a favorable opportunity, however, before making the remarks which follow.]
—-There are single expressions, as I have told you already, that fix a man’s position for you before you have done shaking hands with him. Allow me to expand a little. There are several things, very slight in themselves, yet implying other things not so unimportant. Thus, your French servant has _devalise_ your premises and got caught. _Excusez_, says the _sergent-de-ville_, as he politely relieves him of his upper garments and displays his bust in the full daylight. Good shoulders enough,–a little marked,–traces of smallpox, perhaps,–but white….._Crac!_ from the _sergent-de-ville’s_ broad palm on the white shoulder! Now look! _Vogue la galere!_ Out comes the big red V–mark of the hot iron;–he had blistered it out pretty nearly,–hadn’t he?–the old rascal VOLEUR, branded in the galleys at Marseilles! [Don’t! What if he has got something like this? nobody supposes I _invented_ such a story.]
My man John, who used to drive two of those six equine females which I told you I had owned,–for, look you, my friends, simple though I stand here, I am one that has been driven in his “kerridge,”–not using that term, as liberal shepherds do, for any battered old shabby-genteel go-cart that has more than one wheel, but meaning thereby a four-wheeled vehicle _with a pole_,–my man John, I say, was a retired soldier. He retired unostentatiously, as many of Her Majesty’s modest servants have done before and since. John told me, that when an officer thinks he recognizes one of these retiring heroes, and would know if he has really been in the service, that he may restore him, if possible, to a grateful country, he comes suddenly upon him, and says, sharply, “Strap!” If he has ever worn the shoulder-strap, he has learned the reprimand for its ill adjustment. The old word of command flashes through his muscles, and his hand goes up in an instant to the place where the strap used to be.
[I was all the time preparing for my grand _coup_, you understand; but I saw they were not quite ready for it, and so continued,–always in illustration of the general principle I had laid down.]
Yes, odd things come out in ways that nobody thinks of. There was a legend, that, when the Danish pirates made descents upon the English coast, they caught a few Tartars occasionally, in the shape of Saxons, that would not let them go,–on the contrary, insisted on their staying, and, to make sure of it, treated them as Apollo treated Marsyas, or as Bartholinus has treated a fellow-creature in his title-page, and, having divested them of the one essential and perfectly fitting garment, indispensable in the mildest climates, nailed the same on the church-door as we do the banns of marriage, _in terrorem_.
[There was a laugh at this among some of the young folks; but as I looked at our landlady, I saw that “the water stood in her eyes,” as it did in Christiana’s when the interpreter asked her about the spider, and that the school-mistress blushed, as Mercy did in the same conversation, as you remember.]
That sounds like a cock-and-bull-story,–said the young fellow whom they call John. I abstained from making Hamlet’s remark to Horatio, and continued.
Not long since, the church-wardens were repairing and beautifying an old Saxon church in a certain English village, and among other things thought the doors should be attended to. One of them particularly, the front-door, looked very badly, crusted, as it were, and as if it would be all the better for scraping. There happened to be a microscopist in the village who had heard the old pirate story, and he took it into his head to examine the crust on this door. There was no mistake about it; it was a genuine historical document, of the Ziska drum-head pattern,–a real _cutis humarca_, stripped from some old Scandinavian filibuster,–and the legend was true.
My friend, the Professor, settled an important historical and financial question once by the aid of an exceedingly minute fragment of a similar document. Behind the pane of plate-glass which bore his name and title burned a modest lamp, signifying to the passers-by that at all hours of the night the slightest favors (or fevers) were welcome. A youth who had freely partaken of the cup which cheers and likewise inebriates, following a moth-like impulse very natural under the circumstances, dashed his fist at the light and quenched the meek luminary,–breaking through the plate-glass, of course, to reach it. Now I don’t want to go into _minutiae_ at table, you know, but a naked hand can no more go through a pane of thick glass without leaving some of its cuticle, to say the least, behind it, than a butterfly can go through a sausage-machine without looking the worse for it. The Professor gathered up the fragments of glass, and with them certain very minute but entirely satisfactory documents which would have identified and hanged any rogue in Christendom who had parted with them.–The historical question, _Who did it_? and the financial question, _Who paid for it_? were both settled before the new lamp was lighted the next evening.
You see, my friends, what immense conclusions, touching our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor, may be reached by means of very insignificant premises. This is eminently true of manners and forms of speech; a movement or a phrase often tells you all you want to know about a person. Thus, “How’s your health?” (commonly pronounced haaelth)–instead of, How do you do? or, How are you? Or calling your little dark entry a “hall,” and your old rickety one-horse wagon a “kerridge.” Or telling a person who has been trying to please you that he has given you pretty good “sahtisfahction.” Or saying that you “remember of” such a thing, or that you have been “stoppin'” at Deacon Somebody’s,–and other such expressions. One of my friends had a little marble statuette of Cupid in the parlor of his country-house,–bow, arrows, wings, and all complete. A visitor, indigenous to the region, looking pensively at the figure, asked the lady of the house “if that was a statoo of her deceased infant?” What a delicious, though somewhat voluminous biography, social, educational, and aesthetic in that brief question!
[Please observe with what Machiavellian astuteness I smuggled in the particular offence which it was my object to hold up to my fellow-boarders, without too personal an attack on the individual at whose door it lay.]
That was an exceedingly dull person who made the remark, _Ex pede Herculem_. He might as well have said, “From a peck of apples you may judge of the barrel.” _Ex_ PEDE, to be sure! Read, instead, _Ex ungue minimi digiti pedis, Herculem, ejusque patrem, matrem, avos et proavos, filios, nepotes et pronepotes!_ Talk to me about your [Greek: dos pou sto]! Tell me about Cuvier’s getting up a megatherium from a tooth, or Agassiz’s drawing a portrait of an undiscovered fish from a single scale! As the “O” revealed Giotto,–as the one word “moi” betrayed the Stratford-atte-Bowe-taught Anglais,–so all a man’s antecedents and possibilities are summed up in a single utterance which gives at once the gauge of his education and his mental organization.
Possibilities, Sir?–said the divinity-student; can’t a man who says _Haoew?_ arrive at distinction?
Sir,–I replied,–in a republic all things are possible. But the man _with a future_ has almost of necessity sense enough to see that any odious trick of speech or manners must be got rid of. Doesn’t Sidney Smith say that a public man in England never gets over a false quantity uttered in early life? _Our_ public men are in little danger of this fatal misstep, as few of them are in the habit of introducing Latin into their speeches,–for good and sufficient reasons. But they are bound to speak decent English,–unless, indeed, they are rough old campaigners, like General Jackson or General Taylor; in which case, a few scars on Priscian’s head are pardoned to old fellows that have quite as many on their own, and a constituency of thirty empires is not at all particular, provided they do not swear in their Presidential Messages.
However, it is not for me to talk. I have made mistakes enough in conversation and print. “Don’t” for doesn’t,–base misspelling of Clos Vougeot, (I wish I saw the label on the bottle a little oftener,)–and I don’t know how many more. I never find them out until they are stereotyped, and then I think they rarely escape me. I have no doubt I shall make half a dozen slips before this breakfast is over, and remember them all before another. How one does tremble with rage at his own intense momentary stupidity about things he knows perfectly well, and to think how he lays himself open to the impertinences of the _captatores verborum_, those useful but humble scavengers of the language, whose business it is to pick up what might offend or injure, and remove it, hugging and feeding on it as they go! I don’t want to speak too slightingly of these verbal critics;–how can I, who am so fond of talking about errors and vulgarisms of speech? Only there is a difference between those clerical blunders which almost every man commits, knowing better, and that habitual grossness or meanness of speech which is unendurable to educated persons, from anybody that wears silk or broadcloth.
[I write down the above remarks this morning, January 26th, making this record of the date that nobody may think it was written in wrath, on account of any particular grievance suffered from the invasion of any individual _scarabaeus grammaticus_.]
—-I wonder if anybody ever finds fault with anything I say at this table when it is repeated? I hope they do, I am sure. I should be very certain that I had said nothing of much significance, if they did not.
Did you never, in walking in the fields, come across a large flat stone, which had lain, nobody knows how long, just where you found it, with the grass forming a little hedge, as it were, all round it, close to its edges,–and have you not, in obedience to a kind of feeling that told you it had been lying there long enough, insinuated your stick or your foot or your fingers under its edge and turned it over as a housewife turns a cake, when she says to herself, “It’s done brown enough by this time”? What an odd revelation, and what an unforeseen and unpleasant surprise to a small community, the very existence of which you had not suspected, until the sudden dismay and scattering among its members produced by your turning the old stone over! Blades of grass flattened down, colorless, matted together, as if they had been bleached and ironed; hideous crawling creatures, some of them coleopterous or horny-shelled,–turtle-bugs one wants to call them; some of them softer, but cunningly spread out and compressed like Lepine watches; (Nature never loses a crack or a crevice, mind you, or a joint in a tavern bedstead, but she always has one of her flat-pattern live timekeepers to slide into it;) black, glossy crickets, with their long filaments sticking out like the whips of four-horse stage-coaches; motionless, slug-like creatures, larvae, perhaps, more horrible in their pulpy stillness than even in the infernal wriggle of maturity! But no sooner is the stone turned and the wholesome light of day let upon this compressed and blinded community of creeping things, than all of them that enjoy the luxury of legs–and some of them have a good many–rush round wildly, butting each other and everything in their way, and end in a general stampede for underground retreats from the region poisoned by sunshine. _Next year_ you will find the grass growing tall and green where the stone lay; the ground-bird builds her nest where the beetle had his hole; the dandelion and the buttercup are growing there, and the broad fans of insect-angels open and shut over their golden disks, as the rhythmic waves of blissful consciousness pulsate through their glorified being.
—-The young fellow whom they call John saw fit to say, in his very familiar way,–at which I do not choose to take offence, but which I sometimes think it necessary to repress,–that I was coming it rather strong on the butterflies.
No, I replied; there is meaning in each of those images,–the butterfly as well as the others. The stone is ancient error. The grass is human nature borne down and bleached of all its color by it. The shapes that are found beneath are the crafty beings that thrive in darkness, and the weaker organisms kept helpless by it. He who turns the stone over is whosoever puts the staff of truth to the old lying incubus, no matter whether he do it with a serious face or a laughing one. The next year stands for the coming time. Then shall the nature which had lain blanched and broken rise in its full stature and native hues in the sunshine. Then shall God’s minstrels build their nests in the hearts of a new-born humanity. Then shall beauty–Divinity taking outlines and color–light upon the souls of men as the butterfly, image of the beatified spirit rising from the dust, soars from the shell that held a poor grub, which would never have found wings, had not the stone been lifted.
You never need think you can turn over any old falsehood without a terrible squirming and scattering of the horrid little population that dwells under it.
—-Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other. As soon as his breath comes back, he very probably begins to expend it in hard words. These are the best evidence a man can have that he has said something it was time to say. Dr. Johnson was disappointed in the effect of one of his pamphlets. “I think I have not been attacked enough for it,” he said;–“attack is the reaction; I never think I have hit hard unless it rebounds.”
—-If a fellow attacked my opinions in print, would I reply? Not I. Do you think I don’t understand what my friend, the Professor, long ago called _the hydrostatic paradox of controversy?_
Don’t know what that means?–Well, I will tell you. You know, that, if you had a bent tube, one arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would stand at the same height in one as in the other. Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way,–_and the fools know it._
—-No, but I often read what they say about other people. There are about a dozen phrases that all come tumbling along together, like the tongs, and the shovel, and the poker, and the brush, and the bellows, in one of those domestic avalanches that everybody knows. If you get one, you get the whole lot.
What are they?–Oh, that depends a good deal on latitude and longitude. Epithets follow the isothermal lines pretty accurately. Grouping them in two families, one finds himself a clever, genial, witty, wise, brilliant, sparkling, thoughtful, distinguished, celebrated, illustrious scholar and perfect gentleman, and first writer of the age; or a dull, foolish, wicked, pert, shallow, ignorant, insolent, traitorous, black-hearted outcast, and disgrace to civilization.
What do I think determines the set of phrases a man gets?–Well, I should say a set of influences something like these:–1st. Relationships, political, religious, social, domestic. 2d. Oysters; in the form of suppers given to gentlemen connected with criticism. I believe in the school, the college, and the clergy; but my sovereign logic for regulating public opinion–which means commonly the opinion of half a dozen of the critical gentry–is the following: _Major proposition._ Oysters _au naturel. Minor proposition._ The same “scalloped.” _Conclusion._ That —- (here insert entertainer’s name) is clever, witty, wise, brilliant,–and the rest.
—-No, it isn’t exactly bribery. One man has oysters, and another epithets. It is an exchange of hospitalities; one gives a “spread” on linen, and the other on paper,–that is all. Don’t you think you and I should be apt to do just so, if we were in the critical line? I am sure I couldn’t resist the softening influences of hospitality. I don’t like to dine out, you know,–I dine so well at our own table, [our landlady looked radiant,] and the company is so pleasant [a rustling movement of satisfaction among the boarders]; but if I did partake of a man’s salt, with such additions as that article of food requires to make it palatable, I could never abuse him, and if I had to speak of him, I suppose I should hang my set of jingling epithets round him like a string of sleigh-bells. Good feeling helps society to make liars of most of us,–not absolute liars, but such careless handlers of truth that its sharp corners get terribly rounded. I love truth as chiefest among the virtues; I trust it runs in my blood; but I would never be a critic, because I know I could not always tell it. I might write a criticism of a book that happened to please me; that is another matter.
—-Listen, Benjamin Franklin! This is for you, and such others of tender age as you may tell it to.
When we are as yet small children, long before the time when those two grown ladies offer us the choice of Hercules, there comes up to us a youthful angel, holding in his right hand cubes like dice, and in his left spheres like marbles. The cubes are of stainless ivory, and on each is written in letters of gold–TRUTH. The spheres are veined and streaked and spotted beneath, with a dark crimson flush above, where the light falls on them, and in a certain aspect you can make out upon every one of them the three letters L, I, E. The child to whom they are offered very probably clutches at both. The spheres are the most convenient things in the world; they roll with the least possible impulse just where the child would have them. The cubes will not roll at all; they have a great talent for standing still, and always keep right side up. But very soon the young philosopher finds that things which roll so easily are very apt to roll into the wrong corner, and to get out of his way when he most wants them, while he always knows where to find the others, which stay where they are left. Thus he learns–thus we learn–to drop the streaked and speckled globes of falsehood and to hold fast the white angular blocks of truth. But then comes Timidity, and after her Good-nature, and last of all Polite-behavior, all insisting that truth must _roll_ or nobody can do anything with it; and so the first with her coarse rasp, and the second with her broad file, and the third with her silken sleeve, do so round off and smooth and polish the snow-white cubes of truth, that, when they have got a little dingy by use, it becomes hard to tell them from the rolling spheres of falsehood.
The schoolmistress was polite enough to say that she was pleased with this, and that she would read it to her little flock the next day. But she should tell the children, she said, that there were better reasons for truth than could be found in mere experience of its convenience and the inconvenience of lying.
Yes,–I said,–but education always begins through the senses, and works up to the idea of absolute right and wrong. The first thing the child has to learn about this matter is, that lying is unprofitable,–afterwards, that it is against the peace and dignity of the universe.
—-Do I think that the particular form of lying often seen in newspapers, under the title, “From our Foreign Correspondent,” does any harm?–Why, no,–I don’t know that it does. I suppose it doesn’t really deceive people any more than the “Arabian Nights” or “Gulliver’s Travels” do. Sometimes the writers compile too carelessly, though, and mix up facts out of geographies, and stories out of the penny papers, so as to mislead those who are desirous of information. I cut a piece out of one of the papers, the other day, that contains a number of improbabilities, and, I suspect, misstatements. I will send up and get it for you, if you would like to hear it.–Ah, this is it; it is headed
“OUR SUMATRA CORRESPONDENCE.
“This island is now the property of the Stamford family,–having been won, it is said, in a raffle, by Sir —- Stamford, during the stock-gambling mania of the South-Sea Scheme. The history of this gentleman may be found in an interesting series of questions (unfortunately not yet answered) contained in the ‘Notes and Queries.’ This island is entirely surrounded by the ocean, which here contains a large amount of saline substance, crystallizing in cubes remarkable for their symmetry, and frequently displays on its surface, during calm weather, the rainbow tints of the celebrated South-Sea bubbles. The summers are oppressively hot, and the winters very probably cold; but this fact cannot be ascertained precisely, as, for some peculiar reason, the mercury in these latitudes never shrinks, as in more northern regions, and thus the thermometer is rendered useless in winter.
“The principal vegetable productions of the island are the pepper tree and the bread-fruit tree. Pepper being very abundantly produced, a benevolent society was organized in London during the last century for supplying the natives with vinegar and oysters, as an addition to that delightful condiment. [Note received from Dr. D.P.] It is said, however that, as the oysters were of the kind called _natives_ in England, the natives of Sumatra, in obedience to a natural instinct refused to touch them, and confined themselves entirely to the crew of the vessel in which they were brought over. This information was received from one of the oldest inhabitants, a native himself, and exceedingly fond of missionaries. He is said also to be very skilful in the _cuisine_ peculiar to the island.
“During the season of gathering the pepper, the persons employed are subject to various incommodities, the chief of which is violent and long-continued sternutation or sneezing. Such is the vehemence of these attacks, that the unfortunate subjects of them are often driven backwards for great distances at immense speed, on the well-known principle of the aeolipile. Not being able to see where they are going, these poor creatures dash themselves to pieces against the rocks or are precipitated over the cliffs, and thus many valuable lives are lost annually. As, during the whole pepper-harvest, they feed exclusively on this stimulant, they become exceedingly irritable The smallest injury is resented with ungovernable rage. A young man suffering from the _pepper-fever_, as it is called, cudgelled another most severely for appropriating a superannuated relative of trifling value, and was only pacified by having a present made him of a pig of that peculiar species of swine called the _Peccavi_ by the Catholic Jews, who, it is well known, abstain from swine’s flesh in imitation of the Mahometan Buddhists.
“The bread tree grows abundantly. Its branches are well known to Europe and America under the familiar name of _maccaroni_ The smaller twigs are called _vermicelli_. They have a decided animal flavor, as may be observed in the soups containing them. Maccaroni, being tubular is the favorite habitat of a very dangerous insect, which is rendered peculiarly ferocious by being boiled. The government of the island, therefore, never allows a stick of it to be exported without being accompanied by a piston with which its cavity may at any time be thoroughly swept out. These are commonly lost or stolen before the maccaroni arrives among us. It therefore always contains many of these insects, which, however, generally die of old age in the shops, so that accidents from this source are comparatively rare.
“The fruit of the bread-tree consists principally of hot rolls. The buttered-muffin variety is supposed to be a hybrid with the cocoa-nut palm, the cream found on the milk of the cocoa-nut exuding from the hybrid in the shape of butter, just as the ripe fruit is splitting, so as to fit it for the tea-table, where it is commonly served up with cold”—-
—-There,–I don’t want to read any more of it. You see that many of these statements are highly improbable.–No, I shall not mention the paper.–No, neither of them wrote it, though it reminds me of the style of these popular writers. I think the fellow that wrote it must have been reading some of their stories, and got them mixed up with his history and geography. I don’t suppose _he_ lies;–he sells it to the editor, who knows how many squares off “Sumatra” is. The editor, who sells it to the public—-By the way, the papers have been very civil–haven’t they?–to the–the–what d’ye call it?–“Northern Magazine”–isn’t it?–got up by some of those Come-outers, down East, as an organ for their local peculiarities.
—-The Professor has been to see me. Came in, glorious, at about twelve o’clock, last night. Said he had been with “the boys.” On inquiry, found that “the boys” were certain baldish and grayish old gentlemen that one sees or hears of in various important stations of society. The Professor is one of the same set, but he always talks as if he had been out of college about ten years, whereas….. …. [Each of these dots was a little nod, which the company understood, as the reader will, no doubt.] He calls them sometimes “the boys,” and sometimes “the old fellows.” Call him by the latter title, and see how he likes it.–Well, he came in last night, glorious, as I was saying. Of course I don’t mean vinously exalted; he drinks little wine on such occasions, and is well known to all the Johns and Patricks as the gentleman that always has indefinite quantities of black tea to kill any extra glass of red claret he may have swallowed. But the Professor says he always gets tipsy on old memories at these gatherings. He was, I forget how many years old when he went to the meeting; just turned of twenty now,–he said. He made various youthful proposals to me, including a duet under the landlady’s daughter’s window. He had just learned a trick, he said, of one of “the boys,” of getting a splendid bass out of a door-panel by rubbing it with the palm of his hand,–offered to sing “The sky is bright,” accompanying himself on the front-door, if I would go down and help in the chorus. Said there never was such a set of fellows as the old boys of the set he has been with. Judges, mayors, Congress-men, Mr. Speakers, leaders in science, clergymen better than famous, and famous too, poets by the half-dozen, singers with voices like angels, financiers, wits, three of the best laughers in the Commonwealth, engineers, agriculturists,–all forms of talent and knowledge he pretended were represented in that meeting. Then he began to quote Byron about Santa Croce, and maintained that he could “furnish out creation” in all its details from that set of his. He would like to have the whole boodle of them, (I remonstrated against this word, but the Professor said it was a diabolish good word, and he would have no other,) with their wives and children, shipwrecked on a remote island, just to see how splendidly they would reorganize society. They could build a city,–they have done it; make constitutions and laws; establish churches and lyceums; teach and practise the healing art; instruct in every department; found observatories; create commerce and manufactures; write songs and hymns, and sing ’em, and make instruments to accompany the songs with; lastly, publish a journal almost as good as the “Northern Magazine,” edited by the Come-outers. There was nothing they were not up to, from a christening to a hanging; the last, to be sure, could never be called for, unless some stranger got in among them.
—-I let the Professor talk as long as he liked; it didn’t make much difference to me whether it was all truth, or partly made up of pale Sherry and similar elements. All at once he jumped up and said,–
Don’t you want to hear what I just read to the boys?
I have had questions of a similar character asked me before, occasionally. A man of iron mould might perhaps say, No! I am not a man of iron mould, and said that I should be delighted.
The Professor then read–with that slightly sing-song cadence which is observed to be common in poets reading their own verses–the following stanzas; holding them at a focal distance of about two feet and a half, with an occasional movement back or forward for better adjustment, the appearance of which has been likened by some impertinent young folks to that of the act of playing on the trombone. His eyesight was never better; I have his word for it.
MARE RUBRUM.
Flash out a stream of blood-red wine!– For I would drink to other days;
And brighter shall their memory shine, Seen flaming through its crimson blaze. The roses die, the summers fade;
But every ghost of boyhood’s dream By Nature’s magic power is laid
To sleep beneath this blood-red stream.
It filled the purple grapes that lay And drank the splendors of the sun
Where the long summer’s cloudless day Is mirrored in the broad Garonne;
It pictures still the bacchant shapes That saw their hoarded sunlight shed,– The maidens dancing on the grapes,–
Their milk-white ankles splashed with red.
Beneath these waves of crimson lie,
In rosy fetters prisoned fast,
Those flitting shapes that never die, The swift-winged visions of the past.
Kiss but the crystal’s mystic rim, Each shadow rends its flowery chain,
Springs in a bubble from its brim, And walks the chambers of the brain.
Poor Beauty! time and fortune’s wrong No form nor feature may withstand,–
Thy wrecks are scattered all along, Like emptied sea-shells on the sand;– Yet, sprinkled with this blushing rain, The dust restores each blooming girl,
As if the sea-shells moved again
Their glistening lips of pink and pearl.
Here lies the home of school-boy life, With creaking stair and wind-swept hall, And, scarred by many a truant knife,
Our old initials on the wall;
Here rest–their keen vibrations mute– The shout of voices known so well,
The ringing laugh, the wailing flute, The chiding of the sharp-tongued bell.
Here, clad in burning robes, are laid Life’s blossomed joys, untimely shed;
And here those cherished forms have strayed We miss awhile, and call them dead.
What wizard fills the maddening glass? What soil the enchanted clusters grew, That buried passions wake and pass
In beaded drops of fiery dew?
Nay, take the cup of blood-red wine,– Our hearts can boast a warmer glow,
Filled from a vintage more divine,– Calmed, but not chilled by winter’s snow! To-night the palest wave we sip
Rich as the priceless draught shall be That wet the bride of Cana’s lip,–
The wedding wine of Galilee!
CHILD-LIFE BY THE GANGES.
We are told–and, being philosophers, we will amuse ourselves by believing–that there are towns in India, somewhere between Cape Comorin and the Himalayas, wherein everything is _butcha_,–that is, “a little chap”; where inhabitants and inhabited are alike in the estate of urchins; where little Brahmins extort little offerings from little dupes at the foot of little altars, and ring little bells, and blow little horns, and pound little gongs, and mutter little rigmaroles before stupid little Krishnas and Sivas and Vishnus, doing their little wooden best to look solemn, mounted on little bulls or snakes, under little canopies; where little Brahminee bulls, in all the little insolence of their little sacred privileges, poke their little noses into the little rice-baskets of pious little maidens in little bazaars, and help their little selves to their little hearts’ content, without “begging your little pardons,” or “by your little leaves”; where dirty little fakirs and yogees hold their dirty little arms above their dirty little heads, until their dirty little muscles are shrunk to dirty little rags, and their dirty little finger-nails grow through the backs of their dirty little hands,–or wear little ten-penny nails thrust through their little tongues till they acquire little chronic impediments in their decidedly dirty little speech,–or, by means of little hooks through the little smalls-of-their-backs, circumgyrate from little _churruck_-posts for the edification of infatuated little crowds and the honor of horrid little goddesses; where plucky little widows perform their little suttees for defunct little husbands, grilling on little funeral piles; where mangy little Pariah dogs defile the little dinners of little high-caste folks, by stealing hungry little sniffs from sacred little pots; where omnivorous little adjutant-birds gobble up little glass bottles, and bones, and little dead cats, and little old slippers, and bits of little bricks, in front of little shops in little bazaars; where vociferous little _circars_ are driving little bargains with obese little _banyans_, and consequential little _chowkedars_–that is, policemen–are bullying inoffensive little poor people, and calling them _sooa-logue_,–that is, pigs;–where–where, in fine, everything in heathen human-nature happens _butcha_, and the very fables with which the little story-tellers entertain the little loafers on the corners of the little streets, are full of _little_ giants and _little_ dwarfs. Let us pursue the little idea, and talk _butcha_ to the end of this chapter.
When, in Calcutta, you have smitten the dry rock of your lonely life with the magic rod of connubial love, and that well-spring of pleasure, a new baby, has leaped up in the midst of your wilderness of exile, the demonstration, if any, with which your servants will receive the glad tidings, will depend wholly on the “denomination of the imbecile offspring,” as our eleemosynary widow, Mrs. Diana Theodosia Comfort Green, would call it. If it happen to be only a girl, there will be a trace of pity in the silent salaam with which the grim _durwan_ salutes you as you roll into your _palkee_ at the gate to proceed to the _godowns_ where they are weighing the saltpetre and the gunny bags. As he touches his forehead with his joined palms, he thinks of the difference that color makes to the babivorous crocodiles of Ganges. Perhaps your gray-beard circar, privileged by virtue of high caste and faithful service, will take upon himself to condole with you: “_Khodabund_” he will say, “better luck next time; Heaven is not always with one’s paternal hopes; let us trust that my lord may live to say it might have been worse; let us pray that the _baba’s_ bridal necklace may be as gay as rubies and as light as lilies, and that she may die before her husband.”
But if to the existing number of your _suntoshums_–the jewels that hang on the Mem Sahib’s bosom–a man-child is added, ah, then there is merry-making in the verandas, and happy salaaming on the stairs; and in the fulness of his Hindoo Sary-Gampness, which counts the Sahib blessed that hath “his quiver full of sich,” he says, _Ap-ki kullejee kaisa burri ho-jaga! Khoda rukho ki beebi-ka kullejee bhee itni burri hoga,–Gurreeb-purwan!_ “How large my lord’s liver is about to grow! God grant to the Mem Sahib, my exalted lady, a liver likewise large,–O favored protector of the poor!” The happiness and honors which should follow upon the birth of a male child being figuratively comprehended in that enlargement of the liver whence comes the good digestion for which alone life is worth the living.
Many and grievous perils do environ baby-life by the Ganges,–perils of _dry_ nurses, perils by wolves, perils by crocodiles, perils by the Evil Eye, perils by kidnappers, perils by cobras, perils by devils.
You are living at one of the up-country stations, where the freer air of the jungle imparts to babes and sucklings a voracious appetite. Besides your own _dhye_, brought from Calcutta, there is not another wet-nurse to be had, for love or money. Immediately Dhye strikes for higher wages. The Baba Sahib, she says, has defiled her rice; yesterday he put his foot into her curry; to-day he washes the monkey’s tail in her consecrated lotah. What shall she do? she has lost caste; the presents to the Brahmins, that her reinstatement will cost her, will consume all her earnings from the beginning. _Gurreeb-purwan_, O munificent and merciful! what shall she do? She strikes for higher wages.–But you are hard-hearted and hard-headed; you will not pay,–by Gunga, not another pice! by Latchtmee, not one cowry more!–Oh, then she will leave; with a heavy heart she will turn her back on the blessed baby; she will pour dust upon her head before the Mem Sahib, at whose door her disgrace shall lie, and she will return to her kindred.–Not she! the durwan, grim and incorruptible, has his orders; she cannot pass the gate. Oho! then immediately she dries up; no “fount,” and Baby famishing. You try ass’s milk; it does not agree with Baby; besides, it costs a rupee a pint. You try a goat; she does not agree with Baby, for she butts him treacherously, and, leaping over his prostrate body, scampers, like Leigh Hunt’s pig in Smithfield Market, up all manner of figurative streets. Then you send for Dhye, and say, “Milk, or I shave your head!” Milk or death! And, lo, a miracle!–the “fount” again!–Baby is saved.
What was, then, the conjuration and the mighty magic? In the folds of her _saree_ the _dhye_ conceals leaves of _chambeli_, the Indian jessamine, roots of _dhallapee_, the jungle radish. She chews the _chambeli_, and hungry Baby, struggling for the “fount,” is insulted with apples of Sodom; she swallows a portion of _dhallapee_, and he is regaled as with the melting melons of Ceylon.
* * * * *
Some fine afternoon your _ayah_ takes your little Johnny to stroll by the river’s bank,–to watch the green budgerows, as they glide, pulled by singing _dandees_ (so the boatmen of Ganges are called) up to Patna,–to watch the brown corpses, as they float silently down from Benares. At night the ayah returns, wringing her hands. Where is your merry darling? She knows not. _O Khodabund_, go ask the evil spirits! O Sahib, go cry unto Gunga,–go accuse the greedy river, and say to the envious waters, “Give back my boy!” She had left him sitting on a stone, she says, counting the sailing corpses, while she went to find him a blue-jay’s nest among the rocks; when she returned to the stone,–no Jonnee Sahib! “My golden image, who hath snatched him away? He that skipped and hummed like a singing-top, where is he gone?”–A month after that, your dandees capture a crocodile, and from his heathen maw recover a familiar coral necklace with an inscription on the clasp,–“To Johnny, on his birth-day.” A pair of little silver bangles, whose jocund jingling had once been happy household music to some poor Hindoo mother, have kept the necklace company.
* * * * *
Over against the gate of our compound the Baboo’s walks are bright with roses, and ixoras, and the creeping nagatallis; the Baboo’s park is shady with banians, and fragrant with sandal-trees, and imposing with tall peepuls, and cool with sparkling fountains; and Chinna Tumbe, the Little Brother, the brown apple of the Baboo’s eye, plays among the bamboos by the tank, just within the gate, and pelts the gold-fishes with mango-seeds. Presently comes along a pleasant peddler, all the way from Cabool, with a pretty bushy-tailed kitten of Persia in the hollow of his arm, and a cunning little mungooz cracking nuts on his shoulder. A score of tiny silver bells tinkle from a silken cord around Chinna Tumbe’s loins, and the silver whistle with which he calls his cockatoos is suspended from his neck by a chain of gold. So the pleasant peddler all the way from Cabool greets Chinna Tumbe merrily, saying, “See my pretty kitten, that knows a hundred tricks! and see my brave mungooz, that can kill cobras in fair fight! My Persian kitten for your silver bells, Chinna Tumbe, and my cunning mungooz for your golden chain!” And Chinna Tumbe laughs, and claps his hands, and dances for delight, and all his silver bells jingle gleefully. And the pleasant peddler all the way from Cabool says, “Step without the gate, Little Brother, if you would see my pretty kitten play tricks; if you would stroke my cunning mungooz, step without the gate; for I dare not pass within, lest my lord, the Baboo of many lacs, should be angry.” So Chinna Tumbe steps out into the road, and the pleasant peddler all the way from Cabool sets the Persian kitten on the ground, and rattles off some strange words, that sound very funnily to the Little Brother; and immediately the Persian kitten begins to run round after its bushy tail, faster and faster, faster and faster, a ring of yellow light. And Chinna Tumbe claps his hands, and cries, _Wah, wah!_ and he dances for delight, and all his silver bells jingle gleefully. So the pleasant peddler addresses other strange and funny words to the ring of yellow light, and instantly it stands still, and quivers its bushy tail, and pants. Then the peddler speaks to the cunning mungooz, which immediately leaps to the ground, and sitting quite erect, with its broad tail curled over its back, like a marabout feather, holds its paws together in the quaint manner of a squirrel, and looks attentive. More of the peddler’s funny conjuration, and up springs the mungooz into the air, like a Birman’s wicker football, and, alighting on the kitten’s back, clings close and fast. Away fly kitten and mungooz,–away from the gate,–away from the Baboo’s walks, bright with ixoras and creeping nagatallis,–away from the Baboo’s park, shady with banians, and fragrant with sandal-trees, and imposing with tall peepuls, and cool with sparkling fountains,–away from the Baboo’s home, away from the Baboo’s heart, bereft thenceforth forever! For Chinna Tumbe follows fast, crying, _Wah, wah!_ and clapping his hands, and jingling gleefully all his silver bells,–follows across the road, and through the bamboo hedge, and into the darkness and the danger of the jungle; and the pleasant peddler all the way from Cabool goes smiling after,–but, as he goes, what is it that he draws from the breast of his dusty _coortee_? Only a slender, smooth cord, with a slip-knot at the end of it.
Within the twelvemonth, in a stony nullah, hard by a clump of crooked saul-trees, a mile away from the Baboo’s gate, some jackals brought to light the bones of a little child; and the deep grave from which they dug them with their sharp, busy claws, bore marks of the mystic pick-axe of Thuggee. But there were no tinkling bells, no chain of gold, no silver whistle; and the cockatoos and the goldfishes knew Chinna Tumbe no more.
When a name was bestowed on the Little Brother, the Brahmins wrote a score of pretty words in rice, and set over each a lamp freshly trimmed, and the name whose light burned brightest, with happy augury, was “Chinna Tumbe.” And when they had likewise inscribed the day of his birth, and the name of his natal star, the proud and happy Baboo cried, with a loud voice, three times, “Chinna Tumbe,” and all the Brahmins stretched forth their hands and pronounced _Asowadam_,–benediction. Then they performed _arati_ about the child’s head, to avert the Evil Eye, describing mystic circles with lamps of rice-paste set on copper salvers, with many pious incantations. But, spite of all, the Evil Eye overtook Chinna Tumbe, when the pleasant peddler came all the way from Cabool, with his bushy-tailed kitten, and his mungooz cracking nuts.
They do say the ghost of Chinna Tumbe walks,–that always at midnight, when the Indian nightingale fills the Baboo’s banian topes with her lugubrious song, and the weird ulus hoot from the peepul tops, a child, girt with silver bells, and followed by a Persian kitten and a mungooz, shakes the Baboo’s gate, blows upon a silver whistle, and cries, so piteously, “Ayah! Ayah!”
* * * * *
At Hurdwar, in the great fair, among jugglers and tumblers, horse-tamers and snake-charmers, fakirs and pilgrims, I saw a small boy possessed of a devil,–an authentic devil, as of yore, meet for miraculous driving-out. In the midst of dire din, heathenish and horrible,–dissonant jangle of zogees’ bells, brain-rending blasts from Brahmins’ shells, strepent howling of opium-drunk devotees, delirious pounding of tom-toms, brazen clangor of gongs,–a child of seven years, that might, unpossessed, have been beautiful, sat under the shed of a sort of curiosity-shop, among bangles and armlets, mouthpieces for pipes, leaden idols, and Brahminical cords, and made infernal faces,–his mouth foaming epileptically, his hair dishevelled and matted with sudden sweat, his eyes blood-shot, his whole aspect diabolic. And on the ground before the miserable lad were set dishes of rice mixed with blood, carcasses of rams and cocks, handfuls of red flowers, and ragged locks of human hair, wherewith the more miserable people sought to appease the fell _bhuta_ that had set up his throne in that fair soul. _Sack bat?_ It was even so. And as the possessed made spasmy fists with his feet, clinching his toes strangely, and grinned, with his chin between his knees, I solemnly wished for the presence of One who might cry with the voice of authority, as erst in the land of the Gadarenes, “Come out of the lad, thou unclean spirit!”
At the Hurdwar fair pretty little naked girls are exposed for sale, and in their soft brown innocence appeal at once to the purity of your mind and the tenderness of your heart. They come from Cashmere with the shawls, or from Cabool with the kittens, or from the Punjaub with the arms and shields.
* * * * *
Very quaint are the little Miriams, Ruths, and Hannahs of the Jewish houses in Bombay,–with their full trousers of blue satin and gold, their boyish Fez caps of spangled red velvet, bound round with party-colored turbans, their chin-bands of pearls, their coin chains, their great gold bangles, and the jingling tassels of their long plaits.
Less interesting, because formal and inanimate, even to sulkiness, are the prim little Parsee maidens, who often wear an “exercised” expression, of a settled sort, as though they were weary of reflecting on the hollowness of the world, and how their dolls are stuffed with sawdust, and that Dakhma, the Tower of Silence, is the end of all things.
Then there are the regimental _babalogue_, the soldiers’ children, sturdiest and toughest of Anglo-Indian urchins,–affording, in their brown cheeks and crisp muscles and boisterous ways, a consoling contrast to the oh-call-it-pale-not-fairness, and the frailness, and premature pensiveness of the little Civil Service.
And there is the half-caste child, the lisping chee-chee, or Eurasian, grandiloquently so called, much given to sentimental minstrelsy, juvenile polkas, early coquetry, and early beer, hot curries, loud clothes, bad English, and fast pertness. I never think of them without recalling a precocious ballad-screamer of eight years who was flourished indispensably at every chee-chee hop in Chandernagore:
“O lay me in a little pit,
With a marvle thtone to cover it,
And keearve thereon a turkle-dove, That the world may know I died for love!”
I left India in consequence of that child.
But for the true Anglo-Indian type of brat, at all points a complete “torn-down,” “dislikeable and rod-worthy,” as Mrs. Mackenzie describes it, there is nothing among nursery nuisances comparable to the Civil-Service child of eight or ten years, whose father, a “Company’s Bad Bargain,” in the Mint, or the Supreme Court, or the Marine Office, draws _per mensem_ enough to set his brat up in the usual servile surroundings of such small despots. Deriving the only education it ever gets directly from its personal attendants, this young monster of bad temper, bad manners, and bad language becomes precociously proficient in overbearing ways, and voluble in Hindostanee Billingsgate, before it has acquired enough of its ancestral tongue to frame the simplest sentence. It bullies its _bhearer_; it bangs distractingly on the tom-tom; it surfeits itself to an apoplectic point with pish-pash; it burns its mouth with hot curry, and bawls; it indulges in horrid Hindostanee songs, whereof the burden will not bear translation; it insults whatever is most sacred to the caste attachments of its attendants; the Moab of ayahs is its wash-pot, over an Edom of bhearers will it cast out its shoe; it slaps the mouth of a gray-haired _khansaman_ with its slipper, and dips its poodle’s paws in a Mohammedan _kitmudgar’s_ rice; it calls a learned Pundit an _asal ulu_, an egregious owl; it says to a high-caste _circar_, “Shut up, you pig!” and to an illustrious _moonshee_, “_Hi, toom junglee-wallah!_” Whereat its fond mamma, to whom Bengalee, Hindostanee, and Sanscrit are alike sealed books of Babel, claps the hands of her heart, and crying, _Wah, wah!_ in all the innocence of her philological deficiency, blesses the fine animal spirits of her darling Hastings Clive.
“_Soono_, you _sooa_, _loom kis-wasti omara bukri_ not bring?” says Hastings Clive, whose English is apt to figure among his Hindostanee like Brahmins in a regiment of Sepoys,–that is, one Brahmin to every twenty low-caste fellows.
_The Hon. Mrs. Wellesley Gough_.–Wellesley dear, _do_ listen to that darling Hastings Clive, how sweetly he prattles! What _did_ he say then? If one could _only_ learn that delightful Hindostanee, so that one could converse with one’s dear Hastings Clive! _Do_ tell me what he said.
_The Hon. Wellesley Gough, of the Company’s Bad Bargains_.–Literally interpreted, my dearest Maud, our darling Hastings Clive sweetly remarked, “I say, you pig, why in thunder don’t you fetch my goat into the parlor?”
_The Hon. Mrs. Wellesley Gough, of the Hon. Mr. Wellesley Gough’s Bad Bargains_.–Oh, _isn’t_ he clever?
_Hastings Clive_.–_Jou_, you _haremzeada_! _Bukri na munkta, nimuk-aram_!
_The Hon. Wellesley Gough_.–My love, he says now, “Get out, you good-for-nothing rascal! I don’t want that goat here.”
_The Hon. Mrs. Wellesley Gough_.–Oh, _isn’t_ he clever?
What dreadful crime did you commit in another life, O illustrious Moonshee, that you should fall now among such thieves as this horrid Hastings Clive?
“Sahib, I know not. _Hum kia kurrenge? kismut hi_: What can I do? it is my fate.”
Hastings Clive has a queer assortment of pets, first of which are the bushy-tailed Persian kittens, hereinbefore mentioned. “When, in Yankee-land, some lovelorn Zeekle is notoriously sweet upon any Huldy of the rural maids,–when
“His heart keeps goin’ pitypat,
And hern goes pity Zeekle,”–
when she is
“All kind o’ smily round the lips,
And teary round the lashes,”–
it is usual to describe his condition by a feline figure; he is said to “cuddle up to her like a sick kitten to a hot brick.” But the sick Oriental kitten, reversing the Occidental order of kitten things, cuddles up to a water-monkey, and fondly embraces the refreshing evaporation of its beaded bulb with all her paws and all her bushy tail. The Persian kitten stands high in the favor of Hastings Clive.
Hastings Clive has a whole array of parroquets and hill-mainahs, which, as they learned their small language from his peculiar scurrilous practice, are but blackguard birds at best. He also rejoices in many blue-jays, rescued from the Ganges, whereinto they were thrown as offerings to the vengeful Doorga during the barbarous _pooja_ celebrated in her name. Very proud, too, is Hastings Clive of his pigeons,–his many-colored pigeons from Lucknow, Delhi, and Benares; an Oudean bird-boy has trained them to the pretty sport of the Mohammedan princes, and every afternoon he flies them from the house-top in flashing flocks, for Hastings Clive’s entertainment.
Hastings Clive has toys, the wooden and earthen toys for which Benares was ever famous among Indian children,–nondescript animals, and as non-descript idols,–little Brahminee bulls with bells, and artillery camels, like those at Rohilcund and Agra,–Sahibs taking the air in buggies, country-folk in hackeries, baba-logue in gig-topped ton-jons. But much more various and entertaining, though frailer, are his Calcutta toys, of paper, clay, and wax,–hunting-parties in bamboo howdahs, on elephants a foot high, that move their trunks very cunningly,–avadavats of clay, which flutter so naturally, suspended by hairs in bamboo cages, that the cats destroy them quickly,–miniature palanquins, budgerows, bungalows, and pagodas, all of paper,–figures in clay of the different castes and callings, baboos, kitmudgars, washermen, barbers, tailors, street-waterers, box-wallahs, (as the peddlers are called,) nautch-girls, jugglers, sepoys, policemen, doorkeepers, dog-boys,–all true to the life, in costume, attitude, and expression.
Statedly, on his birth-day, the Anglo-Indian child is treated to a _kat-pootlee nautch_, and Hastings Clive has a birth-day every time he conceives a longing for a puppet-show; so that our wilful young friend may be said to be nine years, and about nineteen kat-pootlee nautches, old.
To make a birth-day for Hastings Clive, three or four _tamasha-wallahs_, or show-fellows, are required; these, hired for a few rupees, come from the nearest bazaar, bringing with them all the fantastic apparatus of a kat-pootlee nautch, with its interludes of story-telling and jugglery. A sheet, or table-cloth, or perhaps a painted drop-curtain, expressly prepared, is hung between two pillars in the drawing-room, and reaches, not to the floor, but to the tops of the miniature towers of a silver palace, where some splendid Rajah, of fabulous wealth and power, is about to hold a grand _durbar_, or levee. All the people, be they illustrious personages or the common herd, who assist in the ceremony, are puppets a span long, rudely constructed and coarsely painted, but very faithful as to costume and manners, and most dexterously played upon by the invisible tamasha-wallahs, whom the curtain conceals.
A silver throne having been, wheeled out on the portico by manikin bhearers, the manikin Rajah, attended by his manikin moonshee, and as many manikin courtiers as the tamasha property-man can supply, comes forth in his wooden way, and seats himself on the throne in wooden state; a manikin _hookah-badar_, or pipe-server, and a manikin _chattah-wallah_, or umbrella-bearer, take up their wooden position behind, while a manikin _punkah-wallah fans_, woodenly, his manikin Highness, and the manikin courtiers dance wooden attendance around. Then manikin ladies and gentlemen come on manikin elephants and horses and camels, or in manikin palanquins, and alight with wooden dignity at the foot of the palace stairs, taking their respective orders of wooden precedence with wooden pomposities and humilities, and all the manikin forms of the customary bore. The manikin courtiers trip woodenly down the grand stairs to meet the manikin guests with little wooden Orientalisms of compliment, and all the little wooden delicacies of the season; and they conduct the manikin Sahibs and Beebees into the presence of the manikin Rajah, who receives them with wooden condescension and affability, and graciously reciprocates their wooden salaams, inquiring woodenly into the health of all their manikin friends, and hoping, with the utmost ligneous solicitude, that they have had a pleasant wooden journey: and so on, manikin by manikin, to the wooden end. Of course, much desultory tomtomry and wild troubadouring behind the curtain make the occasion musical.
The audience is complete in all the picturesqueness of mixed baba-logue. In the front row, chattering brown ayahs, gay with red sarees and nose-rings, sit on the floor, holding in their laps pale, tender babies, fair-haired and blue-eyed, lace-swaddled, coral-clasped, and amber-studded. Behind these, on high chairs, are the striplings of three years and upward, vociferous and kicking under the hand-punkahs of their patient bhearers. Tall fellows are these bhearers, with fierce moustaches, but gentle eyes,–a sort of nursery lions whom a little child can lead. On each side are small chocolate-colored heathens, in a sort of short chemises, silver-bangled as to their wrists and ankles, and already with the caste-mark on the foreheads of some of them,–shy, demure younglings, just learning all the awful significance of the word _Sahib_, who have been brought from mysterious homes by fond ayahs, and smuggled in through back-stairs influence, or boldly introduced by the durwan under the glorifying patronage of that terrible Hastings Clive.
Back of all are Dhobee, the washerman, and Dirzce, the tailor, and Mehter, the sweeper, and Mussalehee, the torch-boy, and Metranee, the scullion,–and all the rest of the household riff-raffry. There is much clapping of hands, and happy wah-wah-ing, wherefrom you conclude that Hastings Clive’s birth-day is at least one good result of his being born at all.
The Sahib baba-logue have a lively share in several of the native festivals. The Hoolee, for instance, is their high carnival of fun, when they pelt their elders and each other with the red powder of the _mhindee_, and repel laughing assaults with smart charges of rose-water fired from busy little squirts. During the illumination of the Duwallee, they receive from the servants presents of fantastic toys, and search in the compounds by moonlight for the flower of the tree that never blossoms, and for the soul of a snake, whence comes to the finder good luck for the rest of his life.
These are the traditional sports of the baba-logue; but they are ingenious in inventing others, wherein, from time to time, the imitative faculty, of the native child especially, is tragically manifested.
When the Nawab, Shumsh-ud-deen, was hung at Delhi for hiring a _sowar_ to assassinate Mr. Fraser, the British Commissioner, the country population round about were seized with the news as with the coming of a dragon or a destroying army; and the British Lion was the Bogy, the Black Douglas, in whose name poor _ryots’_ wives scared refractory brats into trembling obedience. Not far from Delhi was a village school, where were many small boys,–so many Asiatic frogs-in-a-well,–to whom “the news of the day” was full of terrible portent. Once, when they were tired of foot-ball, and the shuttlecock had grown heavy on their hands, the cry was, “What shall we play next?” And one daring little fellow–whose father had been to Delhi with his rent, and had told how the Nawab met his _kismut_ (his fate) so quietly, that the gold-embroidered slippers did not fall from his feet–cried, “Let us play hanging the Nawab! and I will be the Nawab; and Kama, here, shall be Kurreim Khan, the sowar; and Joota shall be Metcalfe Sahib, the magistrate; and the rest of you shall be the sahibs, and the sepoys, and the priests.”
_Acha, acha!_–“Good, good!” they all cried. “Let us play the Nawab’s kismut! let us hang the Nawab! And Mungloo–he that is more clever than all of us–he that is cunning as a Thug–Mungloo shall be the Nawab!”
So they began with the murder of the Commissioner; and he who personated Kurreim Khan, the assassin, played so naturally, that he sent the Commissioner screaming to his mother, with an arrow sticking in his arm. Then they arrested Kurreim Khan, and his accomplice, Unnia, a _mehwatti_, who turned king’s evidence, and betrayed the sowar; and having tried and condemned Kurreim Khan, they would have hung him on the spot; but, being but a little fellow, he became alarmed at the serious turn the sport was taking, although he had himself set so sharp an example; so he took nimbly to his heels, and followed his young friend, the Commissioner.
Then Unnia told how the Nawab had paid Kurreim Khan blood-money, because Shumsh-ud-deen did so hate Fraser Sahib. Whereupon Metcalfe Sahib, a little naked fellow, just the color of an old mahogany table, sent his sepoys and had the Nawab dragged, in all his ragged breech-cloth glory, to the bar of Sahib justice. In about three minutes, the Nawab was condemned to die,–condemned to be hung by an outcast sweeper. But, in consideration of his exalted rank, they consented that he should wear his slippers, and ride to the place of execution, smoking his hookah; and Mungloo acknowledged the Sahib’s magnanimity by proudly inclining his head, like a true Nawab, with a dignified “_Acha!”_ Then two members of the court-martial, who lived nearest at hand, ran home, and quickly returned, one with his father’s slippers, the other with his mother’s hubble-bubble; and having tied the slippers, that were a world too big, on Mungloo’s little feet, and lighted the hubble-bubble, that he might smoke, they mounted him on a buffalo, captured from the village _hurkaru_, who happened, just in the nick of time, to come riding by, on his way to Delhi, with the mail. And they led out the prisoner, smoking his hubble-bubble,–and looking, as Metcalfe Sahib said of the real Nawab, “as if he had been accustomed to be hanged every day of his life,”–to the place of execution, an old saul-tree with low limbs. Then, having taken the rope with which the hurkaru’s mail-bag was lashed to his buffalo, they slipped a noose over the Nawab’s head, made the other end fast to the lower limb of the saul-tree, and led away the buffalo.
Little Mungloo, who was cunning as a Thug, acted with surprising talent; in fact, some of the Sahibs thought he rather overdid his part, for he dropped his hubble-bubble almost awkwardly, and even kicked,–which the real Nawab had too much self-respect to do,–so that he sent one of his slippers flying one way, and the other another. But he choked, and gasped, and showed the whites of his eyes, and turned black in the face, and shivered through all his frame, so very naturally, that his admiring companions clapped their hands vehemently, and cried, _Wah, wah!_ with all their little lungs. _Wah, wah!_ they screamed,–_Wah khoob tamasha kurta hi! Phir kello, Mungloo! Bahoot ucchi-turri nuhkul, kurte ho toom!_ “Bravo! Bravo! Such fun! Do it again, Mungloo,–do it again! it takes you!” Certainly Mungloo did it to the life,–for he was dead.
* * * * *
To conclude now with a specimen of the tales with which the native story-tellers entertain little heathens on street-corners.
There was once a bastard boy, the son of a Brahmin’s widow; and he was excluded from a merry wedding-feast on account of his disgraceful birth. With a heart full of bitterness, he prayed to Siva for comfort or revenge; and Siva, taking pity on him, taught him the mystic _mantra_, or incantation, called Bijaksharam,–_Shrum, hrim, craoom, hroom, hroo_. So the boy went to the door of the apartment where the wedding guests were regaling themselves and making merry; and he pronounced the mantra backwards,–_Hroo, hroom, craoom, hrim, shrum_. Immediately the fish, and the cucumbers, and the mangoes, and the pumplenoses took the shape of toads, and jumped into the faces of the guests, and into their bosoms and laps, and on the floor. Then the boy laughed so loud, that the astonished guests knew it was he who had conjured them; so they went to the door and let him in, and set him at the head of the table. Then the boy was satisfied, and uttering the mantra aright, he conjured the toads back into the dishes again; and they all lay down in their places, and became fish, and cucumbers, and mangoes, and pumplenoses, just as if nothing had happened.
Glory to Siva!
MUSIC.
The promise of the autumn has not been fulfilled; instead of the anticipated feasts, we have had but few concerts, and, as yet, no opera. Some few noteworthy incidents have occurred, however, which we desire to record. We pass over the ever welcome orchestral concerts, the quiet pleasures of our delightful chamber music, and the inspiring four-part singing of the Orpheus Club. Neither can we give the space to notice fully the _debut_ of a young singer,–a singer with a rare voice, full, flexible, and sympathetic, and who, with culture in a _larger_ style, and with maturity of power and feeling, will be a real acquisition to our musical public. Few young performers know
“How much grace, strength, and dignity lie in repose.”
They dazzle us with pyrotechnics in the finale of _Com’ e bello_ or _Qui la voce_, but the simple feeling of _Vedrai carino_ is beyond their grasp. Firmly sustained tones, careful phrasing, flowing grace in the melody, and just, dramatic expression, are the great requisites; without them the brilliant flourishes of a modern cadenza astonish only for a brief period.
The appearance of Carl Formes in oratorio was something to be long remembered. The Handel and Haydn Society brought out “Elijah” and “The Creation” before immense audiences at the Music Hall. For the first time we heard “Elijah” represented by a great artist, and not by a sentimental, mock-heroic singer. He infused into the performance his own intense personality. Every phrase was charged with his own feeling. He thundered out the curses of Heaven upon idolaters; he prayed with all-absorbing devotion to the “Lord God of Abraham”; he taunted the baffled priests of Baal in grim and terrible scorn; he gently soothed the anguish of the widow; and when his career was finished, he reverently said, “It is enough; now take away my life!” The _music_ we had heard before; we had been rapt many a time while hearing the magnificent choruses; but we never had known the dramatic power of the composer as shown in the principal role.
“The Creation” was performed on the following evening. Its ever fresh and cheerful melodies presented a fine contrast to the severely intellectual style of “Elijah.” In rendering purely melodic phrases, Herr Formes was not so preeminent as in declamatory passages. Not always strictly in tune, not specially graceful, slow in delivery, even beyond the requirements of a dignified style, he impressed the audience rather by the volume and richness of his tones and by a certain reserved force, than by any unusual excellence in execution. Some one has said, that it makes a great difference in the force of a sentence whether or not there is a man behind it. This impression of a fulness of resources always accompanied the efforts of Herr Formes; every phrase had meaning or beauty, as he delivered it. Perhaps it is as idle to lament his deficiencies, in comparison with artists like Belletti, for instance, as to complain because the grand figures of Michel Angelo have not the delicacy of finish that marks the sweetly insipid Venus de Medici. Of the other solo performers in the oratorios it is not necessary for us to speak, save to commend the fine voice and good style of Mrs. Harwood, a rising singer, well known here, and whom the country, we hope, will know in due time.
Another concert demands our attention, in which portions of a work by an American composer were submitted to the test of public judgment. This we must consider the most important musical event of the season; for great singers, though surely not common among our English race, have not been unknown; the ability to interpret God gives freely,–the power to create, rarely. In any generation, probably not ten men arise who write new melodies; of these, only a small proportion have either the intellectual power or the aesthetic feeling to combine the subtile elements of music into forms of lasting beauty. Most of them are influenced by prevailing mannerisms, and their music is therefore ephemeral, like the taste to which it ministers. Of all the composers that have lived, probably not more than six or eight have attained to an absolutely classic rank. These few are not in relations with any temporary taste; their music might have been written to-day or a century ago, and it will be as fresh a century hence. No one of the arts has had fewer great masters. A new composer, therefore, has a right to claim our attention. If, perchance, we discover that he has the gift of genius, and is not merely a clever imitator, we cannot rejoice too much.
The work to which we allude is the opera “Omano,”–the libretto in Italian by Signor Manetta, the music by Mr. L. H. Southard. We shall not stop now to consider the question, whether American Art is to be benefited by the production of operas in the Italian tongue; it is enough to say, that, until we have native singers capable of rendering a great dramatic work, singers who can give us in English the effects which Grisi, Badiali, Mario, and Alboni produce in their own language, we must be content with the existing state of things, and allow our composers to write for those artists who can do justice to their conceptions. We hope to live to hear operas in English; but meanwhile we must have music, and, at present, the Italian stage is the only common ground.
Mr. Southard’s opera is founded upon Beckford’s Oriental tale, “Vathek,” with such alterations as are necessary to adapt it for representation. We are told that the plot is full of dramatic situations, full of human interest, and that its scenes appeal to all the faculties, ranging through comedy, ballet, and melodrama, and leading to the awful Hall of Eblis at last. The principal characters are the Caliph Omano, _baritone_; Carathis, his mother, _mezzo soprano_; Hinda, a slave in his harem, _soprano_; Rustam, her lover, _tenor_; and Albatros, _basso_, a Mephistophelean spirit who tempts the Caliph on to his destruction. Selections were made from this opera, and were performed by resident artists, without the aid of stage effects or orchestral accompaniments. Only the music was given, with as much of the harmony as could be played on the grand piano by one pair of hands. There could be no severer test than this. The music is generally Italian in form, especially in the flowing grace of the _cantabile_ passages, and in the working up of the climaxes. But we did not heat one of the stereotyped Italian cadenzas, nor did we fall into old _ruts_ in following the harmonic progressions. The orchestral figures–the framework on which the melodies are supported–are new, ingenious, and beautiful. The duets, quartette, and quintette show great command of resources and the utmost skill in construction; we can hardly remember any concerted pieces in the modern opera where the “working up” is more satisfactory, or the effect more brilliant. How far the music exhibits an absolutely original vein of melody, it is perhaps premature to say. No composer has ever been free at first from the influence of the masters whom he most admired. To mention no later instances, it is well known that Beethoven’s early works are all colored by his recollections of Mozart, and that his own peculiar qualities were not clearly brought out until he had reached the maturity of his powers. This seems to be the law in all the arts; imitation first, self-development and originality afterwards. Happy are those who do not stop in the first stage! It is certain that Mr. Southard’s music _pleased_, and that some of the most critical of the audience were roused to a real enthusiasm. And it is to be borne in mind that the music is cast in a grand mould; it has no prettiness; it is either great in itself, or wears the semblance of greatness. On the whole, we are inclined to think that the “Diarist” in Dwight’s “Journal of Music” was not extravagant in saying that no _first_ work since the time of Beethoven has had so much of promise as the opera “Omano.” We shall look with great interest for its production upon the stage with the proper accompaniments and scenic effects. It is due to the composer that this should be done. If the music we heard had been performed by a company of great artists in the Boston Theatre or in the Academy of Music, it would have been received with tumultuous applause. The singers on this occasion gained to themselves great credit by their conscientious endeavors. They generously offered their services, and sang with a heartiness that showed a warm interest in the work. One of them, at least, Mrs. J. H. Long, would have established her reputation as an accomplished artist, even if she had never appeared in public