_literatim_ fidelity is, with a sailor, a point at once of religious faith and worldly honor. The close of the story was--that after, suppose, ten or twelve minutes of hacking and hewing, a horrid crash was heard, announcing that the tree, if tree it were, that never yet was made visible to daylight search, had yielded to the old woodman"s persecution. It was exactly the crash, so familiar to many ears on board the neighboring vessels, which expresses the harsh tearing asunder of the fibres, caused by the weight of the trunk in falling; beginning slowly, increasing rapidly, and terminating in one rush of rending.
This over,--one tree felled "towards his winter store,"--there was an interval; man must have rest; and the old woodman, after working for more than a century, must want repose. Time enough to begin again after a quarter of an hour"s relaxation. Sure enough, in that s.p.a.ce of time, again began, in the words of Comus, "the wonted roar amid the woods."
Again the blows became quicker, as the catastrophe drew nearer; again the final crash resounded; and again the mighty echoes travelled through the solitary forests, and were taken up by all the islands near and far, like Joanna"s laugh amongst the Westmoreland hills, to the astonishment of the silent ocean. Yet, wherefore should the ocean be astonished?--he that had heard this nightly tumult, by all accounts, for more than a century. My brother, however, poor Pink, _was_ astonished, in good earnest, being, in that respect, of the _genus attonitorum_; and as often as the gentlemen pirates steered their course for the Gallapagos, he would sink in spirit before the trials he might be summoned to face. No second person was ever put on sh.o.r.e with Pink, lest poor Pink and he might become jovial over the liquor, and the chronometers be broken or neglected; for a considerable quant.i.ty of spirits was necessarily landed, as well as of provisions, because sometimes a sudden change of weather, or the sudden appearance of a suspicious sail, might draw the ship off the island for a fortnight.
My brother could have pleaded his fears without shame; but he had a character to maintain with the sailors: he was respected equally for his seamanship and his shipmanship. [6] By the way, when it is considered that one half of a sailor"s professional science refers him to the stars, (though it is true the other half refers him to the sails and shrouds of a ship,) just as, in geodesical operations, one part is referred to heaven and one to earth, when this is considered, another argument arises for the superst.i.tion of sailors, so far as it is astrological. They who know (but know the _oti_ without knowing the _dia ti_) that the stars have much to do in guiding their own movements, which are yet so far from the stars, and, to all appearance, so little connected with them, may be excused for supposing that the stars are connected astrologically with human destinies. But this by the way. The sailors, looking to Pink"s double skill, and to his experience on sh.o.r.e, (more astonishing than all beside, being experience gathered amongst ghosts,) expressed an admiration which, to one who was also a sailor, had too genial a sound to be sacrificed, if it could be maintained at any price. Therefore it was that Pink still clung, in spite of his terrors, to his sh.o.r.e appointment. But hard was his trial; and many a time has he described to me one effect of it, when too long continued, or combined with darkness too intense.
The woodcutter would begin his operations soon after the sun had set; but uniformly, at that time, his noise was less. Three hours after sunset it had increased; and generally at midnight it was greatest, but not always. Sometimes the case varied thus far: that it greatly increased towards three or four o"clock in the morning; and, as the sound grew louder, and thereby seemed to draw nearer, poor Pink"s ghostly panic grew insupportable; and he absolutely crept from his pavilion, and its luxurious comforts, to a point of rock--a promontory--about half a mile off, from which he could see the ship.
The mere sight of a human abode, though an abode of ruffians, comforted his panic. With the approach of daylight, the mysterious sounds ceased.
c.o.c.kcrow there happened to be none, in those islands of the Gallapagos, or none in that particular island; though many c.o.c.ks are heard crowing in the woods of America, and these, perhaps, might be caught by spiritual senses; or the woodcutter may be supposed, upon Hamlet"s principle, either scenting the morning air, or catching the sounds of Christian matin bells, from some dim convent, in the depth of American forests. However, so it was; the woodcutter"s axe began to intermit about the earliest approach of dawn; and, as light strengthened, it ceased entirely. At nine, ten, or eleven o"clock in the forenoon the whole appeared to have been a delusion; but towards sunset it revived in credit; during twilight it strengthened; and, very soon afterwards, superst.i.tious panic was again seated on her throne. Such were the fluctuations of the case. Meantime, Pink, sitting on his promontory in early dawn, and consoling his terrors by looking away from the mighty woods to the tranquil ship, on board of which (in spite of her secret black flag) the whole crew, murderers and all, were sleeping peacefully--he, a beautiful English boy, chased away to the antipodes from one early home by his sense of wounded honor, and from his immediate home by superst.i.tious fear, recalled to my mind an image and a situation that had been beautifully sketched by Miss Bannerman in "Basil," one of the striking (though, to rapid readers, somewhat unintelligible) metrical tales published early in this century, ent.i.tled "Tales of Superst.i.tion and Chivalry." Basil is a "rude sea boy,"
desolate and neglected from infancy, but with feelings profound from nature, and fed by solitude. He dwells alone in a rocky cave; but, in consequence of some supernatural terrors connected with a murder, arising in some way (not very clearly made out) to trouble the repose of his home, he leaves it in horror, and rushes in the gray dawn to the seaside rocks; seated on which, he draws a sort of consolation for his terrors, or of sympathy with his wounded heart, from that mimicry of life which goes on forever amongst the raving waves.
From the Gallapagos, Pink went often to Juan (or, as he chose to call it, after Dampier and others, _John_) Fernandez. Very lately, (December, 1837,) the newspapers of America informed us, and the story was current for full nine days, that this fair island had been swallowed up by an earthquake; or, at least, that in some way or other it had disappeared.
Had that story proved true, one pleasant bower would have perished, raised by Pink as a memorial expression of his youthful feelings either towards De Foe, or his visionary creature, Robinson Crusoe--but rather, perhaps, towards the substantial Alexander Selkirk; for it was raised on some spot known or reputed by tradition to have been one of those most occupied as a home by Selkirk. I say, "rather towards Alexander Selkirk;" for there is a difficulty to the judgment in a.s.sociating Robinson Crusoe with this lovely island of the Pacific, and a difficulty even to the fancy. _Why_, it is hard to guess, or through what perverse contradiction to the facts, De Foe chose to place the shipwreck of Robinson Crusoe upon the _eastern_ side of the American continent.
Now, not only was this in direct opposition to the realities of the case upon which he built, as first reported (I believe) by Woodes Rogers, from the log book of the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess,--(a privateer fitted out, to the best of my remembrance, by the Bristol merchants, two or three years before the peace of Utrecht,) and so far the mind of any man acquainted with these circ.u.mstances was staggered, in attempting to a.s.sociate this eastern wreck of Crusoe with this western island,--but a worse obstacle than that, because a moral one, is this, that, by thus perversely transferring the scene from the Pacific to the Atlantic, De Foe has transferred it from a quiet and sequestered to a populous and troubled sea,--the Fleet Street or Cheapside of the navigating world, the great throughfare of nations,--and thus has prejudiced the moral sense and the fancy against his fiction still more inevitably than his judgment, and in a way that was perfectly needless; for the change brought along with it no shadow of compensation.
My brother"s wild adventures amongst these desperate sea rovers were afterwards communicated in long letters to a female relative; and, even as letters, apart from the fearful burden of their contents, I can bear witness that they had very extraordinary merit. This, in fact, was the happy result of writing from his heart; feeling profoundly what he communicated, and antic.i.p.ating the profoundest sympathy with all that he uttered from her whom he addressed. A man of business, who opened some of these letters, in his character of agent for my brother"s five guardians, and who had not any special interest in the affair, a.s.sured me that, throughout the whole course of his life, he had never read any thing so affecting, from the facts they contained, and from the sentiments which they expressed; above all, the yearning for that England which he remembered as the land of his youthful pleasures, but also of his youthful degradations. Three of the guardians were present at the reading of these letters, and were all affected to tears, not-withstanding they had been irritated to the uttermost by the course which both myself and my brother had pursued--a course which seemed to argue some defect of judgment, or of reasonable kindness, in themselves. These letters, I hope, are still preserved, though they have been long removed from my control. Thinking of them, and their extraordinary merit, I have often been led to believe that every post town (and many times in the course of a month) carries out numbers of beautifully-written letters, and more from women than from men; not that men are to be supposed less capable of writing good letters,--and, in fact, amongst all the celebrated letter writers of past or present times, a large overbalance happens to have been men,--but that more frequently women write from their hearts; and the very same cause operates to make female letters good which operated at one period to make the diction of Roman ladies more pure than that of orators or professional cultivators of the Roman language--and which, at another period, in the Byzantine court, operated to preserve the purity of the mother idiom within the nurseries and the female drawing rooms of the palace, whilst it was corrupted in the forensic standards and the academic--in the standards of the pulpit and the throne.
With respect to Pink"s yearning for England, that had been partially gratified in some part of his long exile: twice, as we learned long afterwards, he had landed in England; but such was his haughty adherence to his purpose, and such his consequent terror of being discovered and reclaimed by his guardians, that he never attempted to communicate with any of his brothers or sisters. There he was wrong; me they should have cut to pieces before I would have betrayed him. I, like him, had been an obstinate recusant to what I viewed as unjust pretensions of authority; and, having been the first to raise the standard of revolt, had been taxed by my guardians with having seduced Pink by my example.
But that was untrue; Pink acted for himself. However, he could know little of all this; and he traversed England twice, without making an overture towards any communication with his friends. Two circ.u.mstances of these journeys he used to mention; both were from the port of London (for he never contemplated London but as a port) to Liverpool; or, thus far I may be wrong, that one of the two might be (in the return order) from Liverpool to London. On the first of these journeys, his route lay through Coventry; on the other, through Oxford and Birmingham.
In neither case had he started with much money; and he was going to have retired from the coach at the place of supping on the first night, (the journey then occupying two entire days and two entire nights,) when the pa.s.sengers insisted on paying for him: that was a tribute to his beauty--not yet extinct. He mentioned this part of his adventures somewhat shyly, whilst going over them with a sailor"s literal accuracy; though, as a record belonging to what he viewed as childish years, he had ceased to care about it. On the other journey his experience was different, but equally testified to the spirit of kindness that is every where abroad. He had no money, on this occasion, that could purchase even a momentary lift by a stage coach: as a pedestrian, he had travelled down to Oxford, occupying two days in the fifty-four or fifty-six miles which then measured the road from London, and sleeping in a farmer"s barn, without leave asked. Wearied and depressed in spirits, he had reached Oxford, hopeless of any aid, and with a deadly shame at the thought of asking it. But, somewhere in the High Street,--and, according to his very accurate sailor"s description of that n.o.ble street, it must have been about the entrance of All Souls"
College,--he met a gentleman, a gownsman, who (at the very moment of turning into the college gate) looked at Pink earnestly, and then gave him a guinea, saying at the time, "I know what it is to be in your situation. You are a schoolboy, and you have run away from your school.
Well, I was once in your situation, and I pity you." The kind gownsman, who wore a velvet cap with a silk gown, and must, therefore, have been what in Oxford is called a gentleman commoner, gave him an address at some college or other, (Magdalen, he fancied, in after years,) where he instructed him to call before he quitted Oxford. Had Pink done this, and had he frankly communicated his whole story, very probably he would have received, not a.s.sistance merely, but the best advice for guiding his future motions. His reason for not keeping the appointment was simply that he was nervously shy, and, above all things, jealous of being entrapped by insidious kindness into revelations that might prove dangerously circ.u.mstantial. Oxford had a mayor; Oxford had a corporation; Oxford had Greek Testaments past all counting; and so, remembering past experiences, Pink held it to be the wisest counsel that he should pursue his route on foot to Liverpool. That guinea, however, he used to say, saved him from despair.
One circ.u.mstance affected me in this part of Pink"s story. I was a student in Oxford at that time. By comparing dates, there was no doubt whatever that I, who held my guardians in abhorrence, and, above all things, admired my brother for his conduct, might have rescued him at this point of his youthful trials, four years before the fortunate catastrophe of his case, from the calamities which awaited him. This is felt generally to be the most distressing form of human blindness--the case when accident brings two fraternal hearts, yearning for reunion, into almost touching neighborhood, and then, in a moment after, by the difference, perhaps, of three inches in s.p.a.ce, or three seconds in time, will separate them again, unconscious of their brief neighborhood, perhaps forever. In the present case, however, it may be doubted whether this unconscious rencontre and unconscious parting in Oxford ought to be viewed as a misfortune. Pink, it is true, endured years of suffering, four, at least, that might have been saved by this seasonable rencontre; but, on the other hand, by travelling through his misfortunes with unabated spirit, and to their natural end, he won experience and distinctions that else he would have missed. His further history was briefly this:--
Somewhere in the River of Plate he had effected his escape from the pirates; and a long time after, in 1807, I believe, (I write without books to consult,) he joined the storming party of the English at Monte Video. Here he happened fortunately to fall under the eye of Sir Home Popham; and Sir Home forthwith rated my brother as a midshipman on board his own ship, which was at that time, I think, a fifty-gun ship--the Diadem. Thus, by merits of the most appropriate kind, and without one particle of interest, my brother pa.s.sed into the royal navy. His nautical accomplishments were now of the utmost importance to him; and, as often as he shifted his ship, which (to say the truth) was far too often,--for his temper was fickle and delighting in change,--so often these accomplishments were made the basis of very earnest eulogy. I have read a vast heap of certificates vouching for Pink"s qualifications as a sailor in the highest terms, and from several of the most distinguished officers in the service. Early in his career as a midshipman, he suffered a mortifying interruption of the active life which had long since become essential to his comfort.
He had contrived to get appointed on board a fire ship, the Prometheus, (chiefly with a wish to enlarge his experience by this variety of naval warfare,) at the time of the last Copenhagen expedition, and he obtained his wish; for the Prometheus had a very distinguished station a.s.signed her on the great night of bombardment, and from her decks, I believe, was made almost the first effectual trial of the Congreve rockets.
Soon after the Danish capital had fallen, and whilst the Prometheus was still cruising in the Baltic, Pink, in company with the purser of his ship, landed on the coast of Jutland, for the purpose of a morning"s sporting. It seems strange that this should have been allowed upon a hostile sh.o.r.e; and perhaps it was _not_ allowed, but might have been a thoughtless abuse of some other mission sh.o.r.ewards. So it was, unfortunately; and one at least of the two sailors had reason to rue the sporting of that day for eighteen long months of captivity. They were perfectly unacquainted with the localities, but conceived themselves able at any time to make good their retreat to the boat, by means of fleet heels, and arms sufficient to deal with any opposition of the sort they apprehended. Venturing, however, too far into the country, they became suddenly aware of certain sentinels, posted expressly for the benefit of chance English visitors. These men did not pursue, but they did worse, for they fired signal shots; and, by the time our two thoughtless Jack tars had reached the sh.o.r.e, they saw a detachment of Danish cavalry trotting their horses pretty coolly down in a direction for the boat. Feeling confident of their power to keep ahead of the pursuit, the sailors amused themselves with various sallies of nautical wit; and Pink, in particular, was just telling them to present his dutiful respects to the crown prince, and a.s.sure him that, but for this lubberly interruption, he trusted to have improved his royal dinner by a brace of birds, when--O sight of blank confusion!--all at once they became aware that between themselves and their boat lay a perfect network of streams, deep watery holes, requiring both time and local knowledge to unravel. The purser hit upon a course which enabled him to regain the boat; but I am not sure whether he also was not captured. Poor Pink _was_, at all events; and, through seventeen or eighteen months, bewailed this boyish imprudence.
At the end of that time there was an exchange of prisoners, and he was again serving on board various and splendid frigates. Wyborg, in Jutland, was the seat of his Danish captivity; and such was the amiableness of the Danish character, that, except for the loss of his time, to one who was aspiring to distinction and professional honor, none of the prisoners who were on parole could have had much reason for complaint. The street mob, excusably irritated with England at that time, (for, without entering on the question of right or of expedience as regarded that war, it is notorious that such arguments as we had for our unannounced hostilities could not be pleaded openly by the English cabinet, for fear of compromising our private friend and informant, the King of Sweden,) the mob, therefore, were rough in their treatment of the British prisoners: at night, they would pelt them with stones; and here and there some honest burgher, who might have suffered grievously in his property, or in the person of his nearest friends, by the ruin inflicted upon the Danish commercial shipping, or by the dreadful havoc made in Zealand, would show something of the same bitter spirit. But the great body of the richer and more educated inhabitants showed the most hospitable attention to all who justified that sort of notice by their conduct. And their remembrance of these English friendships was not fugitive; for, through long years after my brother"s death, I used to receive letters, written in the Danish, (a language which I had attained in the course of my studies, and which I have since endeavored to turn to account in a public journal, for some useful purposes of research,) from young men as well as women in Jutland--letters couched in the most friendly terms, and recalling to his remembrance scenes and incidents which sufficiently proved the terms of fraternal affection upon which he had lived amongst these public enemies; and some of them I have preserved to this day, as memorials that do honor, on different considerations, to both parties alike. [7]
FOOTNOTES
[1] This poem, from great admiration of its mother English, and to ill.u.s.trate some ideas upon style, Mr. Coleridge republished in his "Biographia Literaria."
[2] From the well-known Italian epitaph--"_Stava bene; ma per star meglio, sto qui_"--I was well; but, because I would be better than well, I am--where you see.
[3] This was not meant a.s.suredly as any advertis.e.m.e.nt of an establishment, which could not by all reports need any man"s praise, but was written under a very natural impulse derived from a recent visit to the place, and under an unaffected sympathy with the spirit of freedom and enjoyment that seemed to reign amongst the young people.
[4] To those who are open to the impression of omens, there is a most striking one on record with respect to the birth of this ill-fated prince, not less so than the falling off of the head from the cane of Charles I. at his trial, or the same king"s striking a medal, bearing an oak tress, (prefiguring the oak of _Boscobel_,) with this prophetic inscription, "_Seris nepotibus umbram_." At the very moment when (according to immemorial usage) the birth of a child was in the act of annunciation to the great officers of state a.s.sembled in the queen"s bed chamber, and when a private signal from a lady had made known the glad tidings that it was a dauphin, (the first child having been a princess, to the signal disappointment of the nation; and the second, who was a boy, having died,) the whole frame of carved woodwork at the back of the queen"s bed, representing the crown and other regalia of France, with the Bourbon lilies, came rattling down in ruins. There is another and more direct ill omen connected, apparently, with the birth of this prince; in fact, a distinct prophecy of his ruin,--a prophecy that he should survive his father, and yet no reign,--which is so obscurely told, that one knows not in what light to view it; and especially since Louis XVIII., who is the original authority for it, obviously confounds the first dauphin, who died before the calamities of his family commenced, with the second. As to this second, who is of course the prince concerned in the references of the text, a new and most extraordinary interest has begun to invest his tragical story in this very month of April, 1853; at least, it is now first brought before universal Christendom. In the monthly journal of Putnam, (published in New York,) the No. for April contains a most interesting memoir upon the subject, signed T. H. Hanson. Naturally, it indisposed most readers to put faith in any fresh pretensions of this nature, that at least one false dauphin had been p.r.o.nounced such by so undeniable a judge of the d.u.c.h.esse d"Angouleme. Meantime, it is made probably enough by Mr Hanson that the true dauphin did not die in the year 1795 at the Temple, but was personated by a boy unknown; that two separate parties had an equal interest in sustaining the fraud, and _did_ sustain it; but one would hesitate to believe whether at the price of murdering a celebrated physician; that they had the prince conveyed secretly to an Indian settlement in Lower Canada, as a situation in which French, being the prevailing language, would attract no attention, as it must have done in most other parts of North America; that the boy was educated and trained as a missionary clergyman; and finally, that he is now acting in that capacity under the name of Eleazar Williams-- perfectly aware of the royal pretensions put forward on his behalf, but equally, through age (being about 69) and through absorption in spiritual views, indifferent to these pretensions. It is admitted on all hands that the Prince de Joinville had an interview with Eleazar Williams a dozen years since--the prince alleges through mere accident; but this seems improbable; and Mr Hanson is likely to be right in supposing this visit to have been a pre-concerted one, growing out of some anxiety to test the reports current, so far as they were grounded upon resemblances in Mr.
Williams"s features to those of the Bourbon and Austrian families. The most pathetic fact is that of the idiocy common to the dauphin and Mr.
Eleazar Williams. It is clear from all the most authentic accounts of the young prince that idiocy was in reality stealing over him--due, doubtless, to the stunning nature of the calamities that overwhelmed his family; to the removal from him by tragical deaths, in so rapid a succession, of the Princesse de Lamballe, of his aunt, of his father, of his mother, and others whom most he had loved; to his cruel separation from his sister; and to the astounding (for him naturally incomprehensible) change that had come over the demeanor and the language of nearly all the people placed about the persons of himself and his family. An idiocy resulting from what must have seemed a causeless and demoniac conspiracy would be more likely to melt away under the sudden transfer to kindness and the gayety of forest life than any idiocy belonging to original organic imbecility. Mr. Williams describes his own confusion of mind as continuing up to his fourteenth year, and all things which had happened in earlier years as gleaming through clouds of oblivion, and as painfully perplexing; but otherwise he shows no desire to strengthen the pretensions made for himself by any reminiscences piercing these clouds that could point specially to France or to royal experiences.
[5] "_Flibustiers_."--This word, which is just now revolving upon us in connection with the attempts on Cuba, &c., is constantly spelt by our own and the American journals as _fillibustiers_ and fillibusteros. But the true word of nearly two centuries back amongst the old original race of sea robbers (French and English) that made irregular war upon the Spanish shipping and maritime towns was that which I have here retained.
[6] "_Seamanship and shipmanship_"--These are two functions of a sailor seldom, separated in the mind of a landsman. The conducting a ship (causing her to _choose_ a right path) through the ocean; that is one thing. Then there is the management of the ship within herself, the tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of her sails, &c., (causing her to _keep_ the line chosen;) that is another thing. The first is called seamanship; the second might be called shipmanship, but is, I believe, called navigation. They are perfectly distinct; one man rarely has both in perfection. Both may be ill.u.s.trated from the rudder. The question is, suppose at the Cape of Good Hope, to steer for India: trust the rudder to him, as a seaman, who knows the pa.s.sage whether within or without Madagascar. The question is to avoid a sunk rock: trust the rudder to him, as a navigator, who understands the art of steering to a nicety.
[7] For this little parenthetical record of my brother"s early history the exact chronology of the several items in the case may possible be now irrecoverable; but any error must be of trivial importance. His two pedestrian journeys between London and Liverpool occurred, I believe, in the same year--viz., after the death of the friendly captain, and during the last visit of his ship to England. The capture of Pink by the pirates took place after the ship"s return to the Pacific.
CHAPTER XIII.
PREMATURE MANHOOD.
My last two chapters, very slenderly connected with Birmingham, are yet made to rise out of it; the one out of Birmingham"s own relation to the topic concerned, (viz., _Travelling_,) and the other (viz., _My Brother_) out of its relation to all possible times in my earlier life, and, therefore, why not to all possible places? _Any where_ introduced, the chapter was partially out of its place; as well then to introduce it in Birmingham as elsewhere. Somewhat arbitrary episodes, therefore, are these two last chapters; yet still endurable as occurring in a work confessedly rambling, and whose very duty lies in the pleasant paths of vagrancy. Pretending only to amuse my reader, or pretending chiefly to _that_, however much I may have sought, or _shall_ seek, to interest him occasionally through his profounder affections, I enjoy a privilege of neglecting harsher logic, and connecting the separate sections of these sketches, not by ropes and cables, but by threads of aerial gossamer.
This present chapter, it may seem, promises something of the same episodical or parenthetic character. But in reality it does not. I am now returning into the main current of my narrative, although I may need to linger for a moment upon a past anecdote. I have mentioned already, that, on inquiring at the Birmingham post office for a letter addressed to myself, I found one directing me to join my sister Mary at Laxton, a seat of Lord Carbery"s in Northamptonshire, and giving me to understand, that, during my residence at this place, some fixed resolution would be taken and announced to me in regard to the future disposal of my time, during the two or three years before I should be old enough on the English system for matriculating at Oxford or Cambridge. In the poor countries of Europe, where they cannot afford double sets of scholastic establishments,--having, therefore, no splendid schools, such as are, in fact, peculiar to England,--they are compelled to throw the duties of such schools upon their universities; and consequently you see boys of thirteen and fourteen, or even younger, crowding such inst.i.tutions, which, in fact, they ruin for all higher functions. But England, whose regal establishments of both cla.s.ses emanc.i.p.ate her from this dependency, sends her young men to college not until they have ceased to be boys--not earlier, therefore, than eighteen.
But when, by what test, by what indication, does manhood commence?
Physically by one criterion, legally by another, morally by a third, intellectually by a fourth--and all indefinite. Equator, absolute equator, there is none. Between the two spheres of youth and age, perfect and imperfect manhood, as in all a.n.a.logous cases, there is no strict line of bisection. The change is a large process, accomplished within a large and corresponding s.p.a.ce; having, perhaps, some central or equatorial line, but lying, like that of our earth, between certain tropics, or limits widely separated. This _intertropical_ region may, and generally does, cover a number of years; and, therefore, it is hard to say, even for an a.s.signed case, by any tolerable approximation, at what precise era it would be reasonable to describe the individual as having ceased to be a boy, and as having attained his inauguration as a man. Physically, we know that there is a very large lat.i.tude of differences, in the periods of human maturity, not merely between individual and individual, but also between nation and nation; differences so great, that, in some southern regions of Asia, we hear of matrons at the age of twelve. And though, as Mr. Sadler rightly insists, a romance of exaggeration has been built upon the facts, enough remains behind of real marvel to irritate the curiosity of the physiologist as to its efficient, and, perhaps, of the philosopher as to its final cause. Legally and politically, that is, conventionally, the differences are even greater on a comparison of nations and eras.
In England we have seen senators of mark and authority, nay, even a prime minister, the haughtiest, [1] the most despotic, and the most irresponsible of his times, at an age which, in many states, both ancient and modern, would have operated as a ground of absolute challenge to the candidate for offices the meanest. Intellectually speaking, again, a very large proportion of men _never_ attain maturity.
Nonage is their final destiny; and manhood, in this respect, is for them a pure idea. Finally, as regards the moral development,--by which I mean the whole system and economy of their love and hatred, of their admirations and contempts, the total organization of their pleasures and their pains,--hardly any of our species ever attain manhood. It would be unphilosophic to say that intellects of the _highest_ order were, or could be, developed fully without a corresponding development of the whole nature. But of such intellects there do not appear above two or three in a thousand years. It is a fact, forced upon one by the whole experience of life, that almost all men are children, more or less, in their tastes and admirations. Were it not for man"s latent tendencies,--were it not for that imperishable grandeur which exists by way of germ and ultimate possibility in his nature, hidden though it is, and often all but effaced,--how unlimited would be the contempt amongst all the wise for his species! and misanthropy would, but for the angelic ideal buried and imbruted in man"s sordid race, become amongst the n.o.ble fixed, absolute, and deliberately cherished.
But, to resume my question, how, under so variable a standard, both natural and conventional, of every thing almost that can be received for a test or a presumption of manhood, shall we seize upon any characteristic feature, sufficiently universal to serve a _practical_ use, as a criterion of the transition from the childish mind to the dignity (relative dignity at least) of that mind which belongs to conscious maturity? One such criterion, and one only, as I believe, there is--all others are variable and uncertain. It lies in the reverential feeling, sometimes suddenly developed, towards woman, and the idea of woman. From that moment when women cease to be regarded with carelessness, and when the ideal of womanhood, in its total pomp of loveliness and purity, dawns like some vast aurora upon the mind, boyhood has ended; childish thoughts and inclinations have pa.s.sed away forever; and the gravity of manhood, with the self-respecting views of manhood, have commenced.
"Mentemque priorem Expulit, atque hominem toto sibi cedere jussit Pectore."--_Lucan_.
These feelings, no doubt, depend for their development in part upon physical causes; but they are also determined by the many r.e.t.a.r.ding or accelerating forces enveloped in circ.u.mstances of position, and sometimes in pure accident. For myself, I remember most distinctly the very day-- the scene and its accidents--when that mysterious awe fell upon me which belongs to woman in her ideal portrait; and from that hour a profounder gravity colored all my thoughts, and a "beauty still more beauteous" was lit up for me in this agitating world. Lord Westport and myself had been on a visit to a n.o.ble family about fifty miles from Dublin; and we were returning from Tullamore by a public pa.s.sage boat, on the splendid ca.n.a.l which connects that place with the metropolis. To avoid attracting an unpleasant attention to ourselves in public situations, I observed a rule of never addressing Lord Westport by his t.i.tle: but it so happened that the ca.n.a.l carried us along the margin of an estate belonging to the Earl (now Marquis) of Westmeath; and, on turning an angle, we came suddenly in view of this n.o.bleman taking his morning lounge in the sun. Somewhat loftily he reconnoitred the miscellaneous party of clean and unclean beasts, crowded on the deck of our ark, ourselves amongst the number, whom he challenged gayly as young acquaintances from Dublin; and my friend he saluted more than once as "My lord." This accident made known to the a.s.sembled mob of our fellow-travellers Lord Westport"s rank, and led to a scene rather too broadly exposing the spirit of this world.
Herded together on the deck (or roof of that den denominated the "_state_ cabin") stood a party of young ladies, headed by their governess. In the cabin below was mamma, who as yet had not condescended to illuminate our circle, for she was an awful personage--a wit, a bluestocking, (I call her by the name then current,) and a leader of _ton_ in Dublin and Belfast. The fact, however, that a young lord, and one of great expectations, was on board, brought her up. A short cross examination of Lord Westport"s French valet had confirmed the flying report, and at the same time (I suppose) put her in possession of my defect in all those advantages of t.i.tle, fortune, and expectation which so brilliantly distinguished my friend. Her admiration of him, and her contempt for myself, were equally undisguised. And in the ring which she soon cleared out for public exhibition, she made us both fully sensible of the very equitable stations which she a.s.signed to us in her regard. She was neither very brilliant, nor altogether a pretender, but might be described as a showy woman, of slight but popular accomplishments. Any woman, however has the advantage of possessing the ear of any company; and a woman of forty, with such tact and experience as she will naturally have gathered in a talking practice of such duration, can find little difficulty in mortifying a boy, or sometimes, perhaps, in tempting him to unfortunate sallies of irritation. Me it was clear that she viewed in the light of a humble friend, or what is known in fashionable life by the humiliating name of a "toad-eater." Lord Westport, full of generosity in what regarded his own pretensions, and who never had violated the perfect equality which reigned in our deportment to each other, colored with as much confusion as myself at her coa.r.s.e insinuations. And, in reality, our ages scarcely allowed of that relation which she supposed to exist between us. Possibly she did _not_ suppose it; but it is essential to the wit and the display of some people that it should have a foundation in malice. A victim and a sacrifice are indispensable conditions in every exhibition. In such a case, my natural sense of justice would generally have armed me a hundred fold for retaliation; but at present, chiefly, perhaps, because I had no effectual ally, and could count upon no sympathy in my audience, I was mortified beyond the power of retort, and became a pa.s.sive b.u.t.t to the lady"s stinging contumely and the arrowy sleet of her gay rhetoric. The narrow bounds of our deck made it not easy to get beyond talking range; and thus it happened, that for two hours I stood the worst of this bright lady"s feud. At length the tables turned.
Two ladies appeared slowly ascending from the cabin, both in deepest mourning, but else as different in aspect as summer and winter. The elder was the Countess of Errol, then mourning an affliction which had laid her life desolate, and admitted of no human consolation. Heavier grief--grief more self-occupied and deaf to all voice of sympathy--I have not happened to witness. She seemed scarcely aware of our presence, except it were by placing herself as far as was possible from the annoyance of our odious conversation. The circ.u.mstances of her loss are now forgotten; at that time they were known to a large circle in Bath and London, and I violate no confidence in reviewing them. Lord Errol had been privately intrusted by Mr. Pitt with an official secret, viz., the outline and princ.i.p.al details of a foreign expedition; in which, according to Mr. Pitt"s original purpose, his lordship was to have held a high command. In a moment of intoxication, the earl confided this secret to some false friend, who published the communication and its author. Upon this, the unhappy n.o.bleman, under too keen a sense of wounded honor, and perhaps with an exaggerated notion of the evils attached to his indiscretion, destroyed himself. Months had pa.s.sed since that calamity when we met his widow; but time appeared to have done nothing in mitigating her sorrow.
The younger lady, on the other hand, who was Lady Errol"s sister,-- Heavens! what a spirit of joy and festal pleasure radiated from her eyes, her step, her voice, her manner! She was Irish, and the very impersonation of innocent gayety, such as we find oftener, perhaps, amongst Irish women than those of any other country. Mourning, I have said, she wore; from sisterly consideration, the deepest mourning; that sole expression there was about her of gloom or solemn feeling,--
"But all things else about her drawn From May time and the cheerful dawn."
Odious bluestocking [2] of Belfast and Dublin! as some would call you, how I hated you up to that moment! half an hour after, how grateful I felt for the hostility which had procured me such an alliance! One minute sufficed to put the quick-witted young Irish woman in possession of our little drama and the several parts we were playing. To look was to understand, to wish was to execute, with this ardent child of nature.
Like Spenser"s Bradamant, with martial scorn she couched her lance on the side of the party suffering wrong. Her rank, as sister-in-law to the constable of Scotland, gave her some advantage for winning a favorable audience; and throwing her aegis over me, she extended that benefit to myself. Road was now made perforce for me also; my replies were no longer stifled in noise and laughter. Personalities were banished; literature was extensively discussed; and that is a subject which, offering little room to argument, offers the widest to eloquent display. I had immense reading; vast command of words, which somewhat diminished as ideas and doubts multiplied; and, speaking no longer to a deaf audience, but to a generous and indulgent protectress, I threw out, as from a cornucopia, my ill.u.s.trative details and recollections; trivial enough, perhaps, as I might now think, but the more intelligible to my present circle. It might seem too much the case of a storm in a slop basin, if I were to spend any words upon the revolution which ensued. Suffice it, that I remained the lion of that company which had previously been most insultingly facetious at my expense; and the intellectual lady finally declared the air of the deck unpleasant.
Never, until this hour, had I thought of women as objects of a possible interest or of a reverential love. I had known them either in their infirmities and their unamiable aspects, or else in those sterner relations which made them objects of ungenial and uncompanionable feelings. Now first it struck me that life might owe half its attractions and all its graces to female companionship. Gazing, perhaps, with too earnest an admiration at this generous and spirited young daughter of Ireland, and in that way making her those acknowledgments for her goodness which I could not properly clothe in words, I was aroused to a sense of my indecorum by seeing her suddenly blush. I believe that Miss Bl---- interpreted my admiration rightly; for she was not offended, but, on the contrary, for the rest of the day, when not attending to her sister, conversed almost exclusively, and in a confidential way, with Lord Westport and myself. The whole, in fact, of this conversation must have convinced her that I, mere boy as I was, (viz., about fifteen,) could not have presumed to direct my admiration to _her_, a fine young woman of twenty, in any other character than that of a generous champion, and a very adroit mistress in the dazzling fence of colloquial skirmish. My admiration had, in reality, been addressed to her moral qualities, her enthusiasm, her spirit, and her generosity. Yet that blush, evanescent as it was,--the mere possibility that I, so very a child, should have called up the most transitory sense of bashfulness or confusion upon any female cheek, first,--and suddenly, as with a flash of lightning, penetrating some utter darkness, illuminated to my own startled consciousness, never again to be obscured, the pure and powerful ideal of womanhood and womanly excellence. This was, in a proper sense, a _revelation_; it fixed a great era of change in my life; and this new-born idea, being agreeable to the uniform tendencies of my own nature,--that is, lofty and aspiring,--it governed my life with great power, and with most salutary effects. Ever after, throughout the period of youth, I was jealous of my own demeanor, reserved and awe-struck, in the presence of women; reverencing, often, not so much _them_ as my own ideal of woman latent in them. For I carried about with me the idea, to which often I seemed to see an approximation, of
"A perfect woman, n.o.bly planned, To warn, to comfort, to command."
And from this day I was an altered creature, never again relapsing into the careless, irreflective mind of childhood.
At the same time I do not wish, in paying my homage to the other s.e.x, and in glorifying its possible power over ours, to be confounded with those thoughtless and trivial rhetoricians who flatter woman with a false lip worship; and, like Lord Byron"s buccaneers, hold out to them a picture of their own empire, built only upon sensual or upon shadowy excellences. We find continually a false enthusiasm, a mere baccha.n.a.lian inebriation, on behalf of woman, put forth by modern verse writers, expressly at the expense of the other s.e.x, as though woman could be of porcelain, whilst man was of common earthern ware. Even the testimonies of Ledyard and Park are partly false (though amiable) tributes to female excellence; at least they are merely one-sided truths--aspects of one phasis, and under a peculiar angle. For, though the s.e.xes differ characteristically, yet they never fail to reflect each other; nor can they differ as to the general amount of development; never yet was woman in one stage of elevation, and man (of the same community) in another. Thou, therefore, daughter of G.o.d and man, all-potent woman! reverence thy own ideal; and in the wildest of the homage which is paid to thee, as also in the most real aspects of thy wide dominion, read no trophy of idle vanity, but a silent indication of the possible grandeur enshrined in thy nature; which realize to the extent of thy power,--
"And show us how divine a thing A woman may become."
For what purpose have I repeated this story? The reader may, perhaps, suppose it introductory to some tale of boyish romantic pa.s.sion for some female idol clothed with imaginary perfections. But in that case he will be mistaken. Nothing of the kind was possible to me. I was preoccupied by other pa.s.sions. Under the disease--for disease it was--which at that time mastered me, one solitary desire, one frenzy, one demoniac fascination, stronger than the fascinations of calenture, brooded over me as the moon over the tides--forcing me day and night into speculations upon great intellectual problems, many times beyond my strength, as indeed often beyond all human strength, but not the less provoking me to pursue them. As a prophet in days of old had no power to resist the voice which, from hidden worlds, called him to a mission, sometimes, perhaps, revolting to his human sensibilities, as he must deliver, was under a coercion to deliver the burning word that spoke within his heart,--or as a ship on the Indian Ocean cannot seek rest by anchoring, but _must_ run before the wrath of the monsoon,--such in its fury, such in its unrelentingness, was the persecution that overmastered me. School tasks under these circ.u.mstances, it may well be supposed, had become a torment to me. For a long time they had lost even that slight power of stimulation which belongs to the irritation of difficulty. Easy and simple they had now become as the elementary lessons of childhood. Not that it is possible for Greek studies, if pursued with unflinching sincerity, ever to fall so far into the rear as a _palaestra_ for exercising both strength and skill; but, in a school where the exercises are pursued, in common by large cla.s.ses, the burden must be adapted to the powers of the weakest, and not of the strongest. And, apart from that objection, at this period, the hasty unfolding of far different intellectual interests than such as belong to mere literature had, for a time, dimmed in my eyes the l.u.s.tre of cla.s.sical studies, pursued at whatsoever depth and on whatsoever scale. For more than a year, every thing connected with schools and the business of schools had been growing more and more hateful to me.
At first, however, my disgust had been merely the disgust of weariness and pride. But now, at this crisis, (for crisis it was virtually to me,) when a premature development of my whole mind was rushing in like a cataract, forcing channels for itself and for the new tastes which it introduced, my disgust was no longer simply intellectual, but had deepened into a _moral_ sense as of some inner dignity continually violated. Once the petty round of school tasks had been felt as a molestation; but now, at last, as a degradation. Constant conversation with grown-up men for the last half year, and upon topics oftentimes of the gravest order,--the responsibility that had always in some slight degree settled upon myself since I had become the eldest surviving son of my family, but of late much more so when circ.u.mstances had thrown me as an English stranger upon the society of distinguished Irishmen,--more, however, than all beside, the inevitable rebound and counter-growth of internal dignity from the everlasting commerce with lofty speculations, these agencies in constant operation had imbittered my school disgust, until it was travelling fast into a mania. Precisely at this culminating point of my self-conflict did that scene occur which I have described with Miss Bl----. In that hour another element, which a.s.suredly was not wanted, fell into the seething caldron of new-born impulses, that, like the magic caldron of Medea, was now transforming me into a new creature. Then first and suddenly I brought powerfully before myself the change which was worked in the aspects of society by the presence of woman--woman, pure, thoughtful, n.o.ble, coming before me as a Pandora crowned with perfections. Right over against this enn.o.bling spectacle, with equal suddenness, I placed the odious spectacle of schoolboy society--no matter in what region of the earth; schoolboy society, so frivolous in the matter of its disputes, often so brutal in the manner; so foolishly careless, and yet so revoltingly selfish; dedicated ostensibly to learning, and yet beyond any section of human beings so conspicuously ignorant. Was it indeed _that_ heavenly which I was soon to exchange for _this_ earthly? It seemed to me, when contemplating the possibility that I could yet have nearly three years to pa.s.s in such society as this, that I heard some irresistible voice saying, Lay aside thy fleshly robes of humanity, and enter for a season into some brutal incarnation. But what connection had this painful prospect with Laxton? Why should it press upon my anxieties in approaching that mansion, more than it had done at Westport? Naturally enough, in part, because every day brought me nearer to the horror from which I recoiled: my return to England would recall the attention of my guardians to the question, which as yet had slumbered; and the knowledge that I had reached Northamptonshire would precipitate their decision. Obscurely, besides, through a hint which had reached me, I guessed what this decision was likely to be, and it took the very worst shape it could have taken. All this increased my agitation from hour to hour. But all this was quickened and barbed by the certainty of so immediately meeting Lady Carbery. To her it was, and to her only, that I could look for any useful advice or any effectual aid. She over my mother, as in turn my mother over _her_, exercised considerable influence; whilst my mother"s power was very seldom disturbed by the other guardians. The mistress of Laxton it was, therefore, whose opinion upon the case would virtually be decisive; since, if _she_ saw no reasonable encouragement to any contest with my guardians, I felt too surely that my own uncountenanced and unaided energies drooped too much for such an effort. Who Lady Carbery was, I will explain in my next chapter, ent.i.tled _Laxton_. Meantime, to me, individually, she was the one sole friend that ever I could regard as entirely fulfilling the offices of an honorable friendship. She had known me from infancy: when I was in my first year of life, she, an orphan and a great heiress, was in her tenth or eleventh; and on her occasional visits to "the Farm," (a rustic old house then occupied by my father,) I, a household pet, suffering under an ague, which lasted from my first year to my third, naturally fell into her hands as a sort of superior toy, a toy that could breathe and talk. Every year our intimacy had been renewed, until her marriage interrupted it. But, after no very long interval, when my mother had transferred her household to Bath, in that city we frequently met again; Lord Carbery liking Bath for itself, as well as for its easy connection with London, whilst Lady Carbery"s health was supposed to benefit by the waters.
Her understanding was justly reputed a fine one; but, in general, it was calculated to win respect rather than love, for it was masculine and austere, with very little toleration for sentiment or romance. But to myself she had always been indulgently kind; I was protected in her regard, beyond any body"s power to dislodge me, by her childish remembrances; and of late years she had begun to entertain the highest opinion of my intellectual promises. Whatever could be done to a.s.sist my views, I most certainly might count upon her doing; that is to say, within the limits of her conscientious judgment upon the propriety of my own plans. Having, besides, so much more knowledge of the world than myself, she might see cause to dissent widely from my own view of what was expedient as well as what was right; in which case I was well a.s.sured that, in the midst of kindness and unaffected sympathy, she would firmly adhere to the views of my guardians. In any circ.u.mstances she would have done so. But at present a new element had begun to mix with the ordinary influences which governed her estimates of things: she had, as I knew from my sister"s report, become religious; and her new opinions were of a gloomy cast, Calvinistic, in fact, and tending to what is _now_ technically known in England as "Low Church,"
or "Evangelical Christianity." These views, being adopted in a great measure from my mother, were naturally the same as my mother"s; so that I could form some guess as to the general spirit, if not the exact direction, in which her counsels would flow. It is singular that, until this time, I had never regarded Lady Carbery under any relation whatever to female intellectual society. My early childish knowledge of her had shut out that mode of viewing her. But now, suddenly, under the new-born sympathies awakened by the scene with Miss Bl----, I became aware of the distinguished place she was qualified to fill in such society. In that Eden--for such it had now consciously become to me--I had no necessity to cultivate an interest or solicit an admission; already, through Lady Carbery"s too flattering estimate of my own pretensions, and through old, childish memories, I held the most distinguished place. This Eden, she it was that lighted up suddenly to my new-born powers of appreciation in all its dreadful points of contrast with the killing society of schoolboys. She it was, fitted to be the glory of such an Eden, who probably would a.s.sist in banishing me for the present to the wilderness outside. My distress of mind was inexpressible. And, in the midst of glittering saloons, at times also in the midst of society the most fascinating, I--contemplating the idea of that gloomy academic dungeon to which for three long years I antic.i.p.ated too certainly a sentence of exile--felt very much as in the middle ages must have felt some victim of evil destiny, inheritor of a false, fleeting prosperity, that suddenly, in a moment of time, by signs blazing out past all concealment on his forehead, was detected as a leper; and in that character, as a public nuisance and universal horror, was summoned instantly to withdraw from society; prince or peasant, was indulged with no time for preparation or evasion; and, from the midst of any society, the sweetest or the most dazzling, was driven violently to take up his abode amid the sorrow-haunted chambers of a lazar house.
FOOTNOTES
[1] "_The haughtiest_."--Which, however, is very doubtful. Such, certainly, was the popular impression. But people who knew Mr. Pitt intimately have always ascribed to him a nature the most amiable and social, under an unfortunate reserve of manner. Whilst, on the contrary, Mr. Fox, ultra democratic in his principles and frank in his address, was repulsively aristocratic in his temper and sympathies.
[2] I have sometimes had occasion to remark, as a noticeable phenomenon of our present times, that the order of ladies called _bluestockings,_ by way of reproach, has become totally extinct amongst us, except only here and there with superannuated clingers to obsolete remembrances. The reason of this change is interesting; and I do not scruple to call it honorable to our intellectual progress. In the last (but still more in the penultimate) generation, any tincture of literature, of liberal curiosity about science, or of enn.o.bling interest in books, carried with it an air of something uns.e.xual, mannish, and (as it was treated by the sycophantish satirists that for ever humor the prevailing folly) of something ludicrous. This mode of treatment was possible so long as the literary cla.s.s of ladies formed a feeble minority. But now, when two vast peoples, English and American, counting between them forty-nine millions, when the leaders of transcendent civilization (to say nothing of Germany and France) behold their entire educated cla.s.s, male and female alike, calling out, not for _Panem et circenses_, (Give us this day our daily bread and our games of the circus,) but for _Panem et literas_, (Give us this day our daily bread and literature,) the universality of the call has swept away the very name of _bluestocking_; the very possibility of the ridicule has been undermined by stern realities; and the verbal expression of the reproach is fast becoming, not simply obsolete, but even unintelligible to our juniors. By the way, the origin of this term _bluestocking_ has never been satisfactorily accounted for, unless the reader should incline to think _my_ account satisfactory. I incline to that opinion myself. Dr. Bisset (in his Life of Burke) traces it idly to a _sobriquet_ imposed by Mrs. Montagu, and the literary ladies of her circle, upon a certain obscure Dr. Stillingfleet, who was the sole masculine a.s.sistant at their literary sittings in Portman Square, and chose, upon some inexplicable craze, to wear blue stockings. The translation, however, of this name from the doctor"s legs to the ladies"
legs is still unsolved. That great _hiatus _needs filling up. I, therefore, whether erroneously or not, in reviewing a German historical work of some pretensions, where this problem emerges, rejected the Portman Square doctor altogether, and traced the term to an old Oxford statute--one of the many which meddle with dress, and which charges it as a point of conscience upon loyal scholastic students that they shall wear cerulean socks. Such socks, therefore, indicated scholasticism: worn by females, they would indicate a self-dedication to what for them would be regarded as pedantic studies. But, says an objector, no rational _female_ would wear cerulean socks. Perhaps not, female taste being too good. But as such socks would symbolize such a profession of pedantry, so, inversely, any profession of pedantry, by whatever signs expressed, would be symbolized reproachfully by the imputation of wearing cerulean socks.