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Title: The Library Magazine of Select Foreign Literature - All volumes
Author: Various
Language: English
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THE
LIBRARY MAGAZINE
OF
Select Foreign Literature.
VOLUME 1.
NEW YORK:
JOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHER,
1883.
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
About Locusts. "Chambers's Journal," 511
Alcohol: Its Action and Uses. J. R. Gasquet, 597
American View of American Competition. Edward Atkinson, 335
American Churches, The Historical Aspect of the. Dean Stanley, 641
An Imperial Pardon. F. A. S., 64
Art Education in Great Britain. Sir Coutts Lindsay, 477
Artificial Somnambulism. Richard A. Proctor, 348
Association of Local Societies, The. J. Clifton Ward, 286
Atheism and the Church. G. H. Curteis, 217
Austin, Alfred. Farmhouse Dirge, 177
Atkinson, Edward. An American View of American Competition, 335
Baker, H. Barton. Theatrical Makeshifts and Blunders, 22
Bayne, Thomas. English Men of Letters,--Shelley, 153
Besant, Walter. Froissart's Love Story, 675
Biographies of the Season. "London Society," 404
Black, Algernon. Charles Lamb, 310
Blackie, John Stuart. On a Radical Reform in the Method of Teaching
the Classical Languages, 290
Blaikie, W. G. Ferney in Voltaire's Time and Ferney To-day, 230
Buchanan, Robert. Sydney Dobell--A Personal Sketch, 538
Bunbury, Clement. A Visit to the New Zealand Geysers, 761
Calculating Boys. Richard A. Proctor, 705
Chapters on Socialism. John Stuart Mill, 257
Chances of the English Opera, The. Francis Hueffer, 626
Christmas in Morocco. C. A. P. ("Sarcelle,") 75
Classical Education, On the Worth of a. Bonamy Price, 297
Cobbett, William: A Biography. Thomas Hughes, 326
Commercial Depression and Reciprocity. Bonamy Price, 578
Contemporary Life and Thought in France. G. Monod, 186
Contemporary Life and Thought in Russia. T. S., 312
Contentment. C. C. Fraser-Tytler, 285
Cooper, Basil H. Fresh Assyrian Finds, 463
Count Fersen, 244
Coup d'Etat, A, 21
Critic on the Hearth, The. James Payn, 696
Cupid's Workshop. Somerville Gibney, 453
Curteis, G. H. Atheism and the Church, 217
Dallas, W. S. Entomology, 470
Defence of Lucknow, The. Alfred Tennyson, 385
Desprez, Frank. The Vaquero, 104
Difficulties of Socialism, The. John Stuart Mill, 385
Discoveries of Astronomers, The.--Hipparchus. Richard A. Proctor, 237
Dreamland.--A Last Sketch. Julia Kavanagh, 181
English Men of Letters.--Shelley. Thomas Bayne, 153
English Opera, The Chances of. Francis Hueffer, 626
Entomology. W. S. Dallas, 470
Ewart, Henry C. The Schoolship Shaftesbury, 204
Farmhouse Dirge, A. Alfred Austin, 177
Ferney in Voltaire's Time and Ferney To-day. W. G. Blaikie, 230
Forbes, Archibald. Plain Words About the Afghan Question, 434
Fraser-Tytler, C. C. Contentment, 285
French Novels. "Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine," 723
French Republic and the Catholic Church, The. John Morley, 561
Fresh Assyrian Finds. Basil H. Cooper, 463
Friends and Foes of Russia, The. W. E. Gladstone, 129
Froissart's Love Story. Walter Besant, 675
Future of India, The. Sir Erskine Perry, 1
Gasquet, J. R. Alcohol: Its Action and Uses, 597
Gibney, Somerville. Cupid's Workshop, 453
Gladstone, W. E. Greece and the Treaty of Berlin, 663
Gladstone, W. E. Probability as the Guide of Conduct, 513
Gladstone, W. E. The Friends and Foes of Russia, 129
Greece and the Treaty of Berlin. W. E. Gladstone, 663
Greece, The Progress of. R. C. Jebb, 366
Growth of London, The, 158
Hamlet, "Mr. Irving's." "Temple Bar," 386
Happy Valley, The. L. A., 32
Harrison, Frederic. On the Choice of Books, 414
Historical Aspect of the American Churches, The. Dean Stanley, 641
Homes and Haunts of the Italian Poets, The--Guarini. T. Adolphus
Trollope, 85
Homes and Haunts of the Italian Poets, The.--Torquato Tasso. Frances
Eleanor Trollope, 434
Hueffer, Francis. The Chances of the English Opera, 626
Hughes, Thomas. William Cobbett: A Biography, 326
Japp, Alex. H. Winter Morn in Country and Winter Morn in Town, 31
Jebb, R. C. The Progress of Greece, 366
Kavanagh, Julia. Dreamland: A Last Sketch, 181
Lamb, Charles. Algernon Black, 310
Languages, Classical, On a Radical Reform in the Method of Teaching
the. John Stuart Blackie, 290
Leicester Square, Some Gossip About, 53
Lindsay, Sir Coutts. Art Education in Great Britain, 477
Manzoni's Hymn for Whitsunday. Dean Stanley, 637
Merivale, Herman C. The Royal Wedding, 508
Mill, John Stuart. The Difficulties of Socialism, 385
Mill, John Stuart. Chapters on Socialism, 257
Mivart, St. George. On the Study of Natural History, 609
Monod, G. Contemporary Life and Thought in France, 186
Morley, John. The French Republic and the Catholic Church, 561
Musical Cultus of the Present Day, The. H. Heathcote Statham, 687
On a Radical Reform in the Method of Teaching the Classical
Languages. John Stuart Blackie, 290
On Being Knocked Down and Picked Up Again.--A Consolatory Essay, 209
On the Choice of Books, Frederic Harrison, 414
On the Study of Natural History. St. George Mivart, 609
On the Worth of a Classical Education. Bonamy Price, 297
Payn, James. The Critic on the Hearth, 696
Perry, Sir Erskine. The Future of India, 1
Philological Society's English Dictionary, The. "The Academy," 639
Phoenicians in Greece, The. A. H. Sayce, 36
Plain Words About the Afghan Question. Archibald Forbes, 454
Price, Bonamy. Commercial Depression and Reciprocity, 578
Price, Bonamy. On the Worth of a Classical Education, 297
Probability as the Guide of Conduct. W. E. Gladstone, 513
Progress of Greece, The. R. C. Jebb, 366
Proctor, Richard A. Artificial Somnambulism, 348
Proctor, Richard A. Supposed Changes in the Moon, 111
Proctor, Richard A. Calculating Boys, 705
Proctor, Richard A. The Discoveries of Astronomers--Hipparchus, 237
Recollections of Thackeray, 126
Rose, Edward. Wagner as a Dramatist, 493
Royal Wedding, The. Herman C. Merivale, 508
Russia, The Friends and Foes of. W. E. Gladstone, 129
Sayce, A. H. The Phoenicians in Greece, 36
Schoolship Shaftesbury. Henry C. Ewart, 204
Schopenhauer on Men, Books and Music. "Fraser's Magazine," 751
Some Gossip About Leicester Square, 53
Socialism, Chapters on. John Stuart Mill, 257
Socialism, Difficulties of. John Stuart Mill, 388
Stanley, Dean. Manzoni's Hymn for Whitsunday, 637
Stanley, Dean. The Historical Aspect of the American Churches, 641
Statham, H. Heathcote. The Musical Cultus of the Present Day, 687
Supposed Changes in the Moon. Richard A. Proctor, 111
Sydney Dobell: A Personal Sketch. Robert Buchanan, 538
Tasso, Torquato. The Homes and Haunts of the Italian Poets. Frances
Eleanor Trollope, 434
Tennyson, Alfred. The Defence of Lucknow, 385
Thackeray, Recollections of, 126
Theatrical Makeshifts and Blunders. H. Barton Baker, 22
Their Appointed Seasons. J. G. Wood, 603
Through the Ages: A Legend of a Stone Axe. "New Quarterly Magazine," 557
Toilers in Field and Factory. "Time," 483
Toilers in Field and Factory, No. II.--Characteristics. "Time," 549
Transvaal, About the. "Chamber's Journal," 330
Trollope, Frances Eleanor. The Homes and Haunts of the Italian
Poets.--Torquato Tasso, 434
Trollope, T. Adolphus. The Homes and Haunts of the Italian Poets, 85
Two Modern Japanese Stories, 105
Valvedere, Adrian de. A Woman's Love--A Slavonian Study, 59
Vaquero, The. Frank Desprez, 101
Visit to the New Zealand Geysers, A. Clement Bunbury, 761
Wagner as a Dramatist. Edward Rose, 493
Ward, J. Clifton. The Association of Local Societies, 286
Winter Morn in Country--Winter Morn in Town. Alex. H. Japp, 31
Woman's Love. A. A Slavonian Study. Adrian de Valvedere, 59
Wood, J. G. Their Appointed Seasons, 603
THE
LIBRARY MAGAZINE
JANUARY, 1879.
THE FUTURE OF INDIA.
Speculation as to the political future is not a very fruitful occupation.
In looking back to the prognostications of the wisest statesmen, it will
be observed that they were as little able to foresee what was to come a
generation or two after their death, as the merest dolt amongst their
contemporaries. The Whigs at the beginning of the last century thought
that the liberties of Europe would disappear if a prince of the House of
Bourbon were securely fixed on the throne of Spain. The Tories in the last
quarter of that century considered that if England lost her American
provinces she would sink into the impotence of the Dutch Republic. The
statesmen who assembled at the Congress of Vienna would have laughed any
dreamer to scorn who should have suggested that in the lifetime of many of
them Germany would become an empire in the hands of Prussia, France a
well-organized and orderly republic, and the "geographical expression" of
Italy vitalised into one of the great powers of Europe. Nevertheless, if
politics is ever to approach the dignity of a science, it must justify a
scientific character by its ability to predict events. The facts are too
complicated, probably, ever to admit the application of exact deductive
reasoning; and in the growth of civilised society new and unexpected forms
are continually springing up. But though practical statesmen will not aim
at results beyond the immediate future, it is impossible for men who pass
their lives in the study of the difficult task of government to avoid
speculations as to the future form of society to which national efforts
should be directed. Some theory or other, therefore, is always present,
consciously or unconsciously, to the mind of politicians.
With respect to British India it may be observed that very different views
of policy prevail. Native writers in the Indian press view their exclusion
from all the higher offices of Government, and the efforts of Manchester
to transfer 800,000_l._ per annum raised on cotton goods to increased
taxation in India, as a policy based on mere selfishness; and a Russian
journal, apparently in good faith, assured its readers the other day,
that India pays into the British treasury an annual tribute of twenty to
twenty-five millions sterling. On the other hand, some advanced thinkers
amongst ourselves hold that India is a burden on our resources, and the
cry of "Perish India!" so far as relates to its dependence on England, is
considered to be not unsupported by sound reasoning. One of the ablest
publicists of India, in a published letter to Sir George Campbell, has
declared his conviction, after twenty years' experience in that country,
that good government by the British in India is impossible.
It may be admitted that exaggerated notions as to the pecuniary value of
India to England prevail, and it must also be confessed that, with all our
self-complacency as to the benefits of British rule, we have to accuse
ourselves of several shortcomings. Nevertheless, it may be affirmed with
confidence that the national instinct as to the value of our possessions
in the East coincides with the views of our most enlightened statesmen. My
colleague, Colonel Yule, has pointed out, I think with entire justice,
that the task which we have proposed to ourselves in India, unlike that of
the Dutch in Java, is to improve and elevate the two hundred millions
under our charge to the utmost extent of our powers. The national
conscience is not altogether satisfied with the mode in which some of our
possessions have been acquired, but impartial inquiry demonstrates that
unless a higher morality had prevailed than has ever yet been witnessed
amongst the sons of men, the occasions for conquest and acquisition of
territory that have presented themselves to the British during the last
hundred years would not have been foregone by any nation in the world. But
the feeling I allude to quickens the sense of our obligations to the
inhabitants of India. Having undertaken the heavy task of their
government, it is our duty to demonstrate to posterity that under British
rule we have enabled them to advance in the route of civilization and
progress. We recognise that in all probability so distant and extensive an
empire cannot permanently remain in subjection to a small island in the
West, and therefore our constant task is to render the population of India
at some day or other capable of self-government. Is such a problem
susceptible of a favourable solution? I propose to discuss this question
in the following pages.
I.
The late Sir George Lewis once observed to me that in his opinion, it was
labour lost to endeavour to make anything of the Hindus. They were a race
doomed to subjection whenever they came into collision with peoples more
vigorous than themselves. They possessed, in short, none of the elements
which are requisite for self-government. Any opinion of that philosophic
observer is entitled to grave consideration, and undoubtedly there is much
in the history of the past that tends to justify the above desponding
conclusion. The Persians, the Greeks, the Parthians, the Huns, the Arabs,
the Ghaznivides, the Afghans, the Moguls, the Persians a second time, and
the British have successfully entered India and made themselves masters of
the greater part of it. But Sir George had never been called upon to make
any particular study of Indian history, nor indeed was it open to him
during the earlier period of his life, which was devoted exclusively to
study, to acquire the knowledge of India which later erudition and
research have brought to light. It is possible that a closer attention to
what has occurred in the past may enable us to regard the future in a more
favourable aspect. It will, I think, be found, after such a study, that
more intrinsic vitality and greater recuperative power exist amongst the
Hindu race than they have been generally accredited with. Unfortunately
the ancient and copious literature of the Hindus presents extremely little
of historic value. The tendency of the Indian mind to dreamy speculations
on the unseen and the unknown, to metaphysics, and to poetry, has led to a
thorough disregard of the valuable offices of history. Accordingly, we
find in their great epic poems, which date back, according to the best
orientalists, at least seven centuries before Christ, the few historical
facts which are mentioned so enveloped in legends, so encumbered with the
grossest exaggerations, that it requires assiduous scholarship to extract
a scintilla of truth from their relations.
Our distinguished countrymen, Sir William Jones and Mr. Colebrooke, led
the way in applying the resources of European learning to the elucidation
of the Sanscrit texts. And the happy identification, by the former, of the
celebrated Chandragupta of the Hindus with the monarch of Pataliputra,
Sandracottus, at whose court Megasthenes resided for seven years in the
third century before Christ, laid the first firm foundation for authentic
Indian history. Since that period the researches of oriental scholars
following up the lines laid down by their illustrious predecessors; the
rock inscriptions which have been collected from various parts of India,
the coins, extending over many ages, of different native dynasties--all
these compared together enable a student even as sceptical as Sir George
Lewis to form a more favourable idea of the Hindus in their political
capacity than he was disposed to take.
Early European inquirers into Hindu antiquity, with the natural prejudice
in favour of their studies in a hitherto unknown tongue, were disposed to
lend far too credulous an ear to the gross exaggerations and reckless
inaccuracies of the "Máhabhárat" and kindred works. James Mill on the
other hand, who was a Positivist before Auguste Comte had begun to write,
rejected with scorn all the allusions to the past in these ancient writers
as entirely fabulous. Careful scholarship, however, working on the
materials of the past which every day's discoveries are increasing,
demonstrates that much true history is to be gathered from the works of
the Sanscrit writers.
The celebrated granite rock of Girnar[1] in the peninsula of Guzerat
presents in itself an authentic record of three distinct dynasties
separated from one another by centuries. And we owe to what may be justly
called the genius of James Prinsep the decipherment of those inscriptions
of Asoka which have brought to the knowledge of Europe a Hindu monarch of
the third century before our era, who, whilst he has been equalled by few
in the extent of his dominions, may claim superiority over nearly every
king that ever lived, from his tender-hearted regard for the interests of
his people, and from the wide principles of toleration which he
inculcated.
Horace Wilson, who may be safely cited as the most calm and judicious
oriental scholar of our times, asserts that there is nothing to shock
probability in supposing that the Hindu dynasties, of whom we trace
vestiges, were spread through twelve centuries anterior to the war of the
Máhabhárat.[2] This leads us back to dates about 2600 years B.C. We have,
therefore, the astounding period of over four thousand years during which
to glean facts relating to the Hindu race and their capacity for
government, such as may form foundation for conclusions as to the future.
The characteristics which have most impressed themselves on my mind after
such study of Indian records as I have been able to bestow are, first, the
very early appearance of solicitude for the interest and welfare of the
people, as exhibited by Hindu rulers, such as has rarely or never been
exhibited in the early histories of other nations; secondly, the
successful efforts of the Hindu race to re-establish themselves in power
on the least appearance of decay in the successive foreign dynasties which
have held rule among them. It is only with the latter phenomenon that I
propose now to deal, and a rapid retrospect may be permitted.
We learn from European records that Cyrus made conquests in India in the
sixth century B.C., and the famous inscription of his successor Darius
includes Sind and the modern Afghanistan amongst his possessions. But when
Alexander entered India two centuries later he found no trace of Persian
sway, but powerful Indian princes. Taxiles, Abisares, and the celebrated
Porus ruled over large kingdoms in the Panjáb. The latter monarch, whose
family name Paura is recorded in the Máhabhárat, is described by the Greek
writers to have ruled over 300 cities, and he brought into the field
against Alexander more than 2,000 elephants, 400 chariots, 4,000 cavalry,
and 50,000 foot. Against this force Alexander was only able to bring
16,000 foot and 5,000 horse; but the bulk of the troops were Macedonians,
and the leader was the greatest general whom the world has seen. We have
full particulars of the celebrated battle which ensued, and which ended in
the complete discomfiture of Porus. The conduct of this Indian king,
however, in the battle extorted the admiration of the Greek historians. He
received nine wounds during the engagement, and was the last to leave the
field, affording, as Arrian remarks, a noble contrast to Darius the
Second, who was the first to fly amongst his host in his similar conflict
with the Greeks. Alexander, as in the Macedonian conquests generally,
left satraps in possession of his Indian acquisitions. But a very few
years ensued before we find a native of India had raised up a mighty
kingdom, and all trace of Greek rule in the Punjab disappears.
Chandragupta, or Sandracottus, is said by a Greek writer to have seen
Alexander in person on the Hydaspes. Justin relates that it was he who
raised the standard of independence before his fellow-countrymen, and
successfully drove out Alexander's satraps. He founded the Maurya dynasty,
and the vast extent of the kingdom ruled over by his grandson Asoka is
testified by the edicts which the latter caused to be engraved in various
parts of his dominions. They also record the remarkable fact of his close
alliance with the Greek rulers of Syria, Egypt, Macedon, Cyrene and
Epirus. We next find that one of the Greek princes who had established an
independent dynasty in Bactria, Euthydemus, invaded India, and made
several conquests, but he also was met in the field and overcome by
Galoka, son of Asoka, who for some time added Cashmir to his possessions.
The Bactrian dynasty was put an end to by Mithridates, 140 B.C., and
consequently the Greeks were driven eastwards, and they planted themselves
in various parts of India. We find clear traces of them in Guzerat, where
the town of Junaghur (Javanaghur) still records the name of the Greeks who
founded the city. The coins and inscriptions of the Sinha rulers of
Guzerat furnish us with some particulars as to the Greek holdings at this
period, and they seem to have extended from the Jumna on the east to
Guzerat and Kutch on the west. The Macedonians seem here, as elsewhere, to
have placed natives at the head of their district administrations, and the
Sinha rulers call themselves Satraps and Máha Rajahs, and use Greek
legends on their coins, but evidently they soon acquired complete
independence. Simultaneously or nearly so with these Indo-Greek
principalities, we find invasions of India by the race commonly called
Scythians, but more accurately Jutchi, Sacæ, and White Huns. These also
formed independent kingdoms. But again native leaders of enterprise arose
who put an end to foreign dominion. Vikramadit, who founded an era 57
B.C., and whose exploits have made a deep impression upon the native mind,
is thought to be one of the Hindu leaders who succeeded in expelling a
foreign dynasty. And it would appear that towards the middle of the third
century after Christ all foreign dominion had disappeared from the soil of
India, except perhaps some small settlements of Jutchi, on the banks of
the Indus; and except the temporary conquest of Sind by the Arabs in the
seventh century, from which they were soon expelled by the Sumea
Rajputs[3]. Thus, during a period of 600 years, we have encountered a
series of invasions and conquests of portions of India by foreign rulers,
but all successively driven out by the energy of native leaders. Thereupon
followed the establishment of native dynasties all over India. It was
chiefly during the 700 years that now ensued, up to the invasion of India
by Mahmud of Ghazni, that the great works of Sanscrit literature in
poetry, grammar, algebra, and astronomy, appeared. During this period also
the Rajputs, who have been well called the Normans of the East, seem to
have found their way to nearly every throne in India. Their acquisition of
power has never been fully traced, and probably the materials are wanting
for any full or accurate account of it; but the subject is well worthy the
attention of an Indian student.
The Mahomedan conquests which, with the fanaticism and savage intolerance
introduced by them, commenced A.D. 1001, seem to have exercised most
depressing effects on the Hindu mind. But here again we meet with the same
phenomenon. So soon as the Mussulman rule becomes enfeebled, a native
chief rises up who is enabled to rally his countrymen around him and form
a dynasty. Sivaji in 1660-80 established an independency which his
successors, as mayors of the palace, enlarged into a kingdom, out of which
arose the native powers of Sindia, of the Gaekwar, and of the Bhonslas of
Berar. Exactly the same occurrence has been witnessed in the present
century by the success of Ranjit Sing in forming an independent
principality in the Panjáb. This remarkable man, who was absolutely
illiterate, by his own energy of character raised himself from the head of
a small Sikh clan to the head of a kingdom with a revenue of two and a
half millions sterling.[4] We may be sure that, if the British had not
been in force, natives of soldierly qualities like Jung Bahádar of Nepal,
or Tantia Topi of the mutinies, would have carved out in the present day
kingdoms for themselves in other parts of India.
II.
It may be thought that in the preceding sketch I have been aiming at the
conclusion that British dominion is in danger of extinction either by
foreign invasion or internal insurrection. Nothing is more foreign from my
views. I firmly believe that British rule in the East was never so strong,
never so able to protect itself against all attacks from without or from
within, as at the present moment. In a foreign dominion such as ours,
where unforeseen contingencies may any day arise, and where a considerable
amount of disaffection must always exist, constant watchfulness on the
part of Government is no doubt required; but this position is thoroughly
recognised by all statesmen who occupy themselves with Indian affairs. I
do not for a moment delude myself with the idea that we have succeeded in
gaining the affections of the natives. No foreign rulers who have kept
themselves apart as a separate caste from the conquered nation have
succeeded in accomplishing this feat. There is something of
incompatibility between the European and Asiatic, which seems to forbid
easy amalgamation. Lord Stowell, in one of his fine judgments, has pointed
out the constant tendency of Europeans in the East to form themselves into
separate communities, and to abstain from all social intercourse with the
natives around them, and he illustrates his position with the happy
quotation--
Scyllis amara suam non intermiscuit undam.
The English perhaps are distinguishable among all European nations by the
deep-rooted notions of self-superiority which their insular position and
great success in history have engendered. The southern races of Europe,
the Spanish and Portuguese, have shown no reluctance to intermix freely
with the native races of America, India, and the Philippines, such as has
always been exhibited by inhabitants of the British Isles when expatriated
to the East or West. But where race, color, religion, prejudice intervene
to prevent social intercourse between the English in India and the
natives, what a wide gulf is placed between them!
In justice, however, it must be stated that, although the haughtiness of
demeanour and occasional brutality in manners which the _aristocratie de
peau_ sometimes engenders in our countrymen are much to be deprecated, the
estrangement which exists in India between the English and the natives is
not wholly, nor even principally, attributable to the former. A Hindu of
very humble caste would think himself polluted if he sat down to dinner
with the European governor of his Presidency. In this instance, as in so
many others, Hindu opinions have permeated the whole native community; and
other races transplanted to India, such as Mahomedans and Parsis, are
equally exclusive in their social life. When I was in Bombay I made an
attempt to break through the barrier which the latter caste had
voluntarily erected for themselves. Sir Jamshedji Jijibhai, an able,
self-raised man, was then the acknowledged head of the Parsi community,
and was distinguished for his benevolence and enlightened views. I
endeavored to persuade him to set his countrymen an example, and to come
to a dinner at which I would assemble the chief authorities of the island;
and I proposed to him as an inducement that he should send his own cook,
who should prepare for him his wonted fare. But the step was too startling
a one for him, though I was glad to find that his son, the second baronet,
was able to get over his prejudices on his visit, some years after, to
London. A ludicrous example of the same exclusive feeling has been related
in connection with a Governor-General. His lordship, desirous to break
down any notion of social inferiority on the part of a distinguished
native who was paying him a visit, placed his arm round his neck as they
walked up and down a verandah engaged in familiar conversation. The
high-bred Oriental made no sign, but as soon as he could extricate himself
from the embraces of his Excellency, he hastened home to wash away the
contamination of a Mlecha's touch.
It may also be observed that the mutual repugnance of the two races to
such close social intercourse as intermarriage, for example, would
produce, gives rise to two excellent results. First, there is every reason
to suppose, judging by what we see of the native Portuguese in India, that
the English and Hindu would make, in the language of breeders, a very bad
cross; and it is therefore satisfactory to find that English rulers in
India, unlike the Normans in England, or the Moguls in India, have never
intermarried with the natives of the country. The second result is closely
connected with the first. What has led to the downfall of previous
foreign dynasties has been that the invaders of the country had become
effeminate by their long possession of power, and had lost the original
energy and vigour which had enabled their predecessors to gain a throne.
The constant recruitment of English rulers from their fatherland wholly
prevents this cause of internal decay from making its appearance among the
British.
It is not, then, by our hold on the affections of the people that we
maintain our dominion in India. The strength and probable endurance of our
rule are based on our real power, on our endeavours to do justice, on our
toleration. The memory of the excesses committed under Mussulman rule has
probably become dim with the great bulk of the people, but it is very
vivid among educated Hindus. A strong conviction prevails among them that
if British rule were to disappear in India, the same rise of military
adventurers, the same struggles for power, and the same anarchy as
prevailed during the first half of the last century would again appear.
The latest expression of Hindu opinion on this subject which I have met
with is contained in a pamphlet published in the present year by Mr.
Dadoba Pandurang.[5] He is an aged scholar, and though not a Brahmin, well
versed in the Vedas, but, above all, he is distinguished by his devout
views and by his desire to elevate and improve his fellow-countrymen. He
writes:--
If there is a manifestation of the hand of God in history,
as I undoubtedly believe there is, nothing to my imagination
appears more vivid and replete with momentous events
calculated for the mutual welfare and good of both countries
than this political union of so large, important, rich, and
interesting a country as Hind in the further south-east with
a small but wisely governed island of Great Britain in the
further north-west.... Let us see what England has done to
India. England, besides governing India politically, has now
very wisely commenced the important duty of educating the
millions of her Indian children, and of bringing them up to
the standard of enlightenment and high civilization which
her own have obtained. She has already eradicated, I should
add here, to the great joy of Heaven, several of the most
barbarous and inhuman practices, such as Sutti,[6]
infanticide, Charak Puja,[7] and what not, which had for
ages been prevalent among a large portion of the children of
this her new acquisition. These practices, which had so long
existed at the dictation of an indigenous priesthood, except
for the powerful interference of England could not have been
abolished.
Opinions like these, I am persuaded, prevail throughout the educated
community, and the presence of British rule amongst them is recognised as
indispensable in the present state of Hindu society.
III.
With respect to a successful invasion of India, it must be confessed that
the English mind has always been keenly susceptible of alarm. The wide
plains of Hisdustan, which offer so ready an access to aggressive armies,
the absence of fortified places, and the frequency with which India has
been won and lost in a single pitched battle, all tend to encourage the
belief that some day or other British domination will be in danger from
some incursion of this sort. It may be observed that for nearly a century
past the English nation has been subjected to periodic fits of Indian
panic. Sir John Kaye, in his "History of the Afghan War," states that in
1797 the whole of India was kept "in a chronic state of unrest" from the
fears of an Afghan descent upon the plains of Hindustan. In 1800 the
Emperor Paul of Russia and Napoleon conceived "a mad and impracticable
scheme of invasion," which greatly increased local alarm. In 1809 these
fears assumed even larger proportions when an alliance between Napoleon
and Persia was on foot with a view to the proposed invasion; and the
mission to Persia under Sir John Malcolm was inaugurated. In 1838 Russia
took the place which Zeman Shah, Persia, and Napoleon had previously
occupied, and the disastrous invasion of Afghanistan was commenced by Lord
Auckland from his mountain retreat at Simla.
Since that period the suspicions of the nation have been continually
directed against Russia by a small but able party, who, from their chiefly
belonging to the Presidency of Bombay, have been termed the Bombay school.
The late General John Jacob was the originator of the anti-Russian policy
inculcated by them. He was a man of great ability and original views, and,
if he had moved in a wider sphere, he might have left a name equal to that
of the most illustrious of his countrymen in India. But he passed the
greater part of his life on the barren wastes of Sind, and rarely came in
contact with superior minds. In 1856 General Jacob addressed a singularly
able paper to Lord Canning, then Governor-General, and which Sir Lewis
Pelly afterwards published to the world.[8] This was just at the close of
the Crimean War, when England was about to undertake an expedition against
Persia to repel her aggression on Herát. It was Jacob's firm conviction
that, unless India interposed, Russia, having Persia completely under her
control, could, whenever she pleased, take possession not only of Herát,
but of Candahar, and thus find an entrance to the plains of India, on
which our dominion was to disappear. To thwart this contingency, and
render the approach of a European army towards our frontier impossible, he
would, as an ultimate measure, garrison Herát with twenty thousand troops,
but in the first instance would occupy Quetta. These proposals were
carefully considered by Lord Canning's Government, but were rejected.
The same arguments were brought forward eleven years later by Sir Bartle
Frere, whilst Governor of Bombay, and were laid before the Government of
India. That Government was then remarkably strong, consisting of Lord
Lawrence, Sir William Mansfield (Lord Sandhurst), Sir Henry Maine, Mr.
Massey, and Major-General Sir Henry Durand; but the proposals to improve
our frontier by extending our dominions westward, and by the annexation of
independent foreign territory, were unanimously disapproved of.
About the same time that Sir Bartle Frere was endeavouring to stimulate
the Government of India to occupy Quetta, my distinguished colleague and
friend, Sir Henry Rawlinson, published two articles in the "Quarterly
Review,"[9] in which he called the attention of the public to the rapidly
increasing extension of the Russian dominions in the direction of our
Indian frontier, and to the necessity of maintaining outworks such as
Herát and Candahar for the protection of our Eastern Empire. But he raised
the question in a more solemn form in the confidential memorandum which he
transmitted to the Government of India in 1868, and which he afterwards
published in 1875,[10] with additional matter, forming a complete
conspectus of the aggressive policy to be adopted to guard against a
Russian invasion. The views of the Government of India on these papers
have not, I believe, been given to the world, but it is well known in
Indian circles that the masterly activity therein advocated did not find
acceptance.
At the present moment Russophobia is raging to a greater extent than at
any previous period; but this is ground on which for the present I am
precluded from entering. It is gratifying to observe, however, that in the
great conflict of opinion which, as it will be seen, has thus been raging
for the last forty years, as to the best method of protecting our
north-western frontier from an invading foe, both schools have ultimately
agreed on one conclusion, namely, that a successful invasion of India by
Russia is in nowise probable. The one side would avert any possibility of
an attack by the occupation of Afghanistan, the Suleiman mountains, and
probably the Hindu Kush; the other would husband the resources of India,
and not waste blood and treasure in anticipation of a conflict that may
possibly never occur, and that certainly never will occur without years of
warning to the nation.
I cannot pursue this interesting question further at a moment when the
whole question of our policy on the Indian frontier is ripening for
discussion, and when the materials on which a sound conclusion can be
drawn are not yet laid before the public. It is sufficient for my present
purpose to repeat that the probability of British dominion in the East
being terminated by a Russian invasion is rejected on all sides.
IV.
If the views which have been now put forward are at all sound, we may
perhaps conclude that whilst our Indian empire requires on the part of its
rulers the utmost watchfulness to guard against dangers and contingencies
which may at any moment arise, yet that with ordinarily wise government we
may look forward to a period of indefinitely long duration during which
British dominion may flourish. That sooner or later the links which
connect England with India will be severed, all history teaches us to
expect; but when that severance occurs, if the growing spirit of
philantrophy and increasing sense of national morality which characterise
the nineteenth century continue, we may fairly hope that the Englishman
will have taught the Hindus how to govern themselves. It is England's
task, as heretofore, "to teach other nations how to live." A very long
period, however, is required before the lesson can be fully learned, and
the holders of Indian securities need not fear that the reversionary
interests of their grandchildren will be endangered. Our rule in India
dates back little more than a century; and although from the first a wise
spirit of toleration and an eminent desire to do justice have prevailed,
it is only within the last thirty or forty years that any serious attempts
to elevate the character of the nation have been manifested.
The educational movement, which is silently producing prodigious changes
in India, received its first impulse from England, and the clause in the
Act of Parliament[11] which recognised the duty of educating the masses,
enabled men like Lord Macaulay, Sir Edward Ryan, and others, to lay the
foundations of a system which has since established itself far and wide.
But the Court of Directors never took heartily to this great innovation of
modern times, and it was only under the direction of English statesmanship
that the Indian authorities were induced to act with vigour in this
momentous undertaking. Sir Charles Wood's celebrated minute on education,
in 1858, laid the foundation of a national system of education, and the
principles then inculcated have never since been departed from. Some
generations will require to pass before the Oriental mind is enabled to
substitute the accurate forms of European thought for the loose
speculations that have prevailed through long centuries. But already happy
results are appearing, and in connection with the subject of this article
it may be noticed as a most hopeful sign of the future that our English
schools are turning out native statesmen by whom all our best methods of
government are being introduced into the dominions of native princes.
The administration reports of some of these gentlemen may vie with those
of our best English officers; and the names of Sir Dinkar Rao, Sir Madava
Rao, Sir Salar Jung, and others, give full indication that among the
natives of India may be found men eminently qualified for the task of
government. Wittingly or unwittingly, English officials in India are
preparing materials which some day or other will form the groundwork for a
native empire or empires. I was thrown closely into contact with the Civil
Service whilst I was in India, for I employed all my vacations in
travelling through the country, mostly at a foot's pace. Everywhere I went
I found a cultivated English gentleman exerting himself to the best of his
ability to extend the blessings of civilisation--justice, education, the
development of all local resources. I firmly believe that no government in
the world has ever possessed a body of administrators to vie with the
Civil Service of India. Nor do I speak only of the service as it existed
under the East India Company, for, from all that I have heard and
observed, competition supplies quite as good servants of the State as did
in earlier days the patronage of the Court of Directors. The truth is,
that the excellence of the result has been attributable in nowise to the
mode of selection, but to the local circumstances which call forth in
either case, in the young Englishman of decent education and of the moral
tone belonging to the middle classes of this country, the best qualities
of his nature. But in these energetic, high-principled, and able
administrators we have a danger to good government which it is necessary
to point out. Every Englishman in office in India has great power, and
every Englishman, as the late Lord Lytton once observed to me, is in heart
a reformer. His native energy will not enable him to sit still with his
hands before him. He must be improving something. The tendency of the
English official in India is to over-reform, to introduce what he may deem
improvements, but which turn out egregious failures, and this, be it
observed, amongst the most conservative people of the world. Some of the
most carefully devised schemes for native improvement have culminated in
native deterioration. A remarkable illustration of this position is
afforded by the late inquiry into the causes of the riots among the
cultivators of the Deccan. It has been one of the pretensions of British
administration that they have instituted for the first time in India pure
and impartial courts of justice. And the boast is well founded. In the
Presidency of Bombay also the Government has substituted long leases of
thirty years on what may be called Crown Lands for the yearly holdings
formerly in vogue. They have also greatly moderated the assessment. The
result has been that land in the Bombay Presidency from being unsaleable
has acquired a value of from ten to twenty years' purchase. But the effect
of these two measures upon the holders of these lands has been disastrous.
Finding themselves possessed of property on which they could raise money
with facility, they have indulged this national propensity out of all
proportion to their means; and the money-lenders in their turn drag the
improvident borrowers before a court of justice, and obtain decrees upon
the indisputable terms of the contract, which no judge feels competent to
disregard.
Another danger of the same sort arises from the short term of office which
is allowed to officials in the highest places in India. When the
Portuguese had large dominions in India, they found that their Viceroys,
if permitted to remain a long time in the East, became insubordinate, and
too powerful for the Government at Lisbon to control. They accordingly
passed a law limiting the tenure of office to five years. This limitation
seems to have been adopted tacitly in our Eastern administrative system,
and has undoubtedly been observed for more than a century. But the period
of five years is very short to enable either a Governor-General, or
Governor, or member of Council to leave his mark on the country; and there
is a temptation to attempt something dazzling which would require for its
proper fulfilment years to elaborate, but which, if not passed at the
moment, would fail to illustrate the era.
It is needless to observe that a series of ill-considered changes, a
constant succession of new laws to be followed by amended laws in the next
session, attempts to change manners and practices (not immoral in
themselves) that have prevailed for centuries, all tend to make a
government, especially a foreign government, odious. But there is one
other rock which it is above all essential to avoid when we are
considering the problem how best to preserve the duration of British
government for the benefit of India. Every ardent administrator desires
improvements in his own department; roads, railways, canals, irrigation,
improved courts of justice, more efficient police, all find earnest
advocates in the high places of government. But improved administration is
always costly, and requires additional taxation. I fear that those in
authority too often forget that the wisest rulers of a despotic government
have always abstained from laying fresh burdens on the people. It is, in
fact, the chief merit of such a government that the taxes are ordinarily
light, and are such as are familiarised by old usage. New taxes imposed
without the will, or any appeal to the judgment, of the people create the
most dangerous kind of disaffection. But if this is true generally, it is
especially true in India, where the population is extremely poor, and
where hitherto the financier has not been enabled to make the rich
contribute their due quota to the revenue of the country.
It has been said by some that we have not yet reached the limits of
taxation in India, but to them I would oppose the memorable saying of Lord
Mayo towards the close of his career. "A feeling of discontent and
dissatisfaction existed," in his opinion, "among every class, both
European and native, on account of the constant increase of taxation that
had for years been going on;" and he added: "The continuance of that
feeling was a political danger, the magnitude of which could hardly be
over-estimated." The Earl of Northbrook quoted and fully endorsed this
opinion in his examination before the House of Commons in the present
year.[12]
But although this constant aim at improvement among our English
administrators too often leads to irritating changes, harassing
legislation, and new fiscal charges on the people, causes are at work
which tend to eliminate these obstacles to good and stable government. In
our experimental application of remedies to evils patent on the surface,
our blunders have chiefly arisen from our ignorance of the people.
Institutions that had been seen to work well in Europe might, it was
thought, be transplanted safely to India. Experience alone could teach
that this is often a grievous error; but experience is being daily
afforded by our prolonged rule, and by our increasing acquaintance with
the habits, wants, and feelings of the people. The tendency also to change
and improvement, which I have before observed upon as leading to
ill-considered measures, operates here beneficially, for there is never
any hesitation in a local government to reverse the proceedings of its
predecessors when found to work injuriously for the community.
But the most cheering symptom of future good government in India is the
increased disposition of British rulers to associate natives of character
and ability with themselves in high offices of administration. Parliament
so long ago as 1833 laid down the principle that no native shall by reason
of his religion, place of birth, or colour, be disabled from holding any
office. Her gracious Majesty also in 1858 proclaimed her will "that so far
as may be, our subjects, of whatever race or creed, be impartially
admitted to offices in our service, the duties of which they may be
qualified by their education, ability, and integrity duly to discharge."
Many obstacles have hitherto prevailed, chiefly arising out of the vested
interests of a close Civil Service, to prevent full operation being given
to a policy so solemnly laid down. But it is no breach of official
propriety to announce that Lord Cranbrook has earnestly taken up the
proposals of the present Viceroy to clear away the difficulties which have
hitherto intervened, and has sent out a despatch to India which it may be
fairly anticipated will meet the aspirations of educated natives, and will
greatly strengthen the foundations of British government in the East.
It will thus be seen that several factors are at work which cannot fail,
under the continued rule of the British Government, to have most
beneficial effects on the national character of India. A system of
education is being established which is opening a door for the
introduction of all the knowledge accumulated in Europe, and which sooner
or later must greatly dissipate that ignorance which is at the bottom of
so many obstacles to good government in the East. Equality before the law
and the supremacy of law have been fully brought home to the cognisance of
every inhabitant of India, and they form a striking contrast, fully
appreciated by the Hindus, to the arbitrary decisions and the race
prerogatives which characterised their former Mahomedan rulers. Continuous
efforts at improvement are witnessed in every zillah of India, and if they
sometimes fail in their operation it is still patent that the permanent
welfare of the people is the constant aim and object of Government.
Moreover, the ready ear tendered to any expression of a grievance, the
minute subjection of every act of authority in India, from the deputy
magistrate up to the Governor-General, to the scrutiny of the Home
Government, secure to the meanest inhabitant of India a hearing, and
inspire the consciousness that he also is a member of the State, and that
his rights and interests are fully recognised. The association of natives
with ourselves in the task of government, which has been commenced in the
lower branches of the judicial administration with the greatest success,
and which is now about to be attempted on a larger scale, as I have before
noted, is also a fact of the greatest gravity. On the whole, after very
close attention to Indian administration for nearly forty years, of which
about twelve were spent in the country itself in a position where I was
enabled to take an impartial view of what was going on around me, I am of
opinion that a bright future presents itself, and, if I could see my way
more clearly on the very important questions of caste and of the future
religion of India, I should say a brilliant future, in which perhaps for
centuries to come the supremacy of England will produce the happiest
results in India.
V.
But I must not close this article without reference to the very different
views which have been lately put forth in this Review under the
sensational title of the "Bankruptcy of India." Mr. Hyndman, after much
study of Indian statistics, has arrived at the conclusion that "India has
been frightfully impoverished under our rule, and that the process is
going on now at an increasingly rapid rate." The revenue raised by
taxation is about 36,000,000_l._, and "is taken absolutely out of the
pockets of the people," three-fourths of whom are engaged in agriculture.
The increase of 12,000,000_l._ in the revenue which has occurred between
1857 and 1876 "comes almost entirely out of the pockets of the
cultivators," and "the greater part of the increase of the salt, stamps,
and excise is derived from the same source." The cost of maintaining a
prisoner in the cheapest part of India is 56_s._ a head, or, making
allowance for children, 46_s._; but the poor cultivator has only 31_s._
6_d._, from which he must also defray the charges "for sustenance of
bullocks, the cost of clothing, repairs to implements, house, &c., and
_for taxation_."
He states the debt of India to be "enormous," amounting to 220,000,000_l._
sterling, principally accumulated in the last few years. The railways have
been constructed at ruinous cost, for which the "unfortunate ryot has had
to borrow an additional five or ten or twenty rupees of the native
money-lender at 24, 40, 60 per cent., in order to pay extra taxation."
Irrigation works "tell nearly the same sad tale. Here again millions have
been squandered--squandered needlessly." Moreover, the land is fast
becoming deteriorated or is being worse cultivated. In short, through a
long indictment of twenty-three pages, of which I omit many counts, he
cannot find a single act of British administration that meets his
approval. All is naught. It is true that the Civil Service of India is
composed of men who have gained their posts by means of the best education
that England can supply, and who from an early period of manhood have
devoted their lives to the practical solution of the many difficult
problems which Indian administration presents. But Mr. Hyndman finds fault
with them all.
The article itself is couched in such an evident spirit of philanthropy
that one feels unwilling to notice pointedly the blunders, the
exaggerations, and the inaccuracies into which the writer has fallen. But
Mr. Hyndman has entered the lists so gallantly with a challenge to all the
Anglo-Indian world, that he of course expects to encounter some hard
knocks, writing, as he does, on a subject with which he has no practical
acquaintance. He has already received "a swashing blow" respecting the
agricultural statistics on which he bases the whole of his argument. On
data supplied to him by an able native writer, whom I know intimately and
for whom I have the highest respect, he has drawn conclusions which are
so manifestly absurd, that all practically acquainted with the subject are
tempted to throw aside his article as mere rubbish. But Mr. Dádobhai, like
himself, has no knowledge of the rural life of India, or of agriculture
generally, or of the practical business of administration. He is a man who
has passed his whole life in cities, an excellent mathematician, of
unwearied industry, and distinguished, even among his countrymen, for his
patriotic endeavours to improve their condition. But the mere study of
books and of figures--especially of the imperfect ones which hitherto have
characterised the agricultural statistics of India--is not sufficient to
constitute a great administrator; and when Mr. Dádobhai, after making
himself prominent by useful work in the municipality of Bombay, was
selected to fill the high office of Prime Minister to the Gaekwar of
Baroda, he was not deemed by his countrymen to have displayed any great
aptitude in statesmanship.[13]
The alarming picture drawn by Mr. Hyndman on data thus supplied attracted
the attention of the greatest authority in England on agricultural
matters; for intrinsic evidence clearly shows that the letters signed
"C.," which appeared in the _Times_ of the 5th of October and the 9th of
October, can proceed from no other than Mr. Caird. His refutation of Mr.
Hyndman's pessimist views is so short, that I give the pith of it here:--
The conclusions arrived at are so startling that though,
like Mr. Hyndman, I have never been in India, I, as an
alarmed Englishman, have tried to test the strength of the
basis upon which they rest. The only _data_ I have at hand
are taken from the figures in the last year's report of the
Punjab. The number of cultivated acres there agrees with
those quoted by Mr. Hyndman--say 21,000,000 acres--and I
adopt his average value of 1_l._ 14_s._ per acre.
The Government assessment is 1,905,000_l._, to pay which
one-sixth of the wheat crop [the produce of 1,120,000] would
have to be sold and exported. There would remain for
consumption in the country the produce of 5,500,000 acres of
wheat and of 12,000,000 acres of other grain, the two
sufficing to yield for a year 2 lb. per head per day for the
population of 17,000,000, which is more than double the
weight of corn eaten by the people of this country. Besides
this, they would have for consumption their garden
vegetables and milk; and beyond it the money value of
845,000 acres of oil-seed, 720,000 acres of cotton and hemp,
391,000 acres of sugar-cane, 120,000 acres of indigo, 69,000
acres of tobacco, 88,000 acres of spices, drugs, and dyes,
19,000 acres of poppy, and 8,800 acres of tea; the aggregate
value of which, without touching the corn, would leave
nearly twice the Government assessment.
Mr. Hyndman has committed the error of arguing from an
English money value at the place of production upon articles
of consumption, the true value of which is their
food-sustaining power to the people who consume them.
When an argument is thus found so completely _pecher par sa base_, it is
needless to pursue it further. But I conceive that Mr. Hyndman, when
studying this overwhelming refutation, must feel somewhat
conscience-stricken when he reperuses such sentences of his own as the
following:--"In India at this time, millions of the ryots are growing
wheat, cotton, seeds, and other exhausting crops, and send them away
because these alone will enable them to pay their way at all. They are
themselves, nevertheless, eating less and less of worse food each year, in
spite, or rather by reason, of the increasing exports." Thus a farmer is
damaged by finding new markets for his produce! And he sells his wheat,
which is the main produce of his arable land in those parts of India where
it flourishes, to buy some cheaper grain which his land does not grow! The
youngest assistant in a collector's establishment could inform Mr. Hyndman
that the food of the agricultural population of India consists of the
staple most suitable to the soil of the district: in the Punjab wheat, in
Bengal and all well-watered lowlands rice, on the tablelands of the Deccan
jowári (_holcus sorghum_) and bájri (_panicum spicatum_), on the more
sterile plateau of Southern India the inferior grain rági (_eiuesyne
coracauna_).
It must have been under the dominion of the idea produced by Mr.
Dádobhai's statistics as to the thoroughly wretched state of the
agricultural population of India that Mr. Hyndman has been led into
exaggerated statements which his own article shows he knew to be
inaccurate. A dreadful case of misgovernment existed in India, and,
thoroughly to arouse his countrymen to the fact, it was necessary to pile
up the agony. Thus, in one part of his article he states that the
"enormous debt" of India amounts to 220,000,000_l._, but in a later
portion he admits that it is only 127,000,000_l._, and he knows full well
that the amount of 100,000,000_l._ of guaranteed railway debt is not only
not a present debt due from Government, but is a very valuable property,
which will probably bring in some millions of revenue when they exercise
their right of buying up the interests of the several guaranteed
companies.
Again, he speaks throughout his article of the excessive taxation imposed
on the poor, half-starved cultivators; and he gives the following table as
showing the amount "taken absolutely out of the pockets of the people:"--
Land revenue £21,500,000
Excise 2,500,000
Salt 6,240,000
Stamps 2,830,000
Customs 2,720,000
He thus maintains that the portion of the rent paid to Government for
occupation of the land is a tax upon the cultivator, which is about as
true as to state that the 67,000,000_l._ of rental in the United Kingdom
is a special tax on the farmers of this country. The amount derived from
excise is chiefly produced by the sale of intoxicating liquors, the use of
which is forbidden by the social and religious views of the natives; and
any contribution to the revenue under this head is clearly a voluntary act
on the part of the transgressor. The revenue from stamps proceeds chiefly
from what may be called taxes on justice; they are, in my opinion,
extremely objectionable, but weighty objections may be urged against
nearly every tax, and a large portion of this tax falls on the wealthier
class of suitors. The amount contributed by the population under the head
of customs, although it may take money out of the pocket of the rayat,
actually adds to his store; for, unless he could buy in the bazaar a piece
of Manchester long-cloth cheaper than an article of domestic manufacture,
it is manifest that he would select the latter. There remains only the
single article of salt on which the cultivator undoubtedly is taxed, and
which forms the sole tax from which he cannot escape. This tax also is
extremely objectionable in theory, more perhaps than in practice, for it
amounts to about 7-½_d._ per head. But even if we take the whole amount
of taxation as shown by Mr. Hyndman, excluding the land revenue or rental
of the land, the average per head is only 1_s._ 6_d._, of which more than
one-third can be avoided at the pleasure of any individual consumer. It is
not, then, a misstatement to aver that the population of India is more
lightly taxed than any population in the world living under an orderly
government.
I have thus far thought it my duty to expose what I believe to be grave
errors in Mr. Hyndman's sensational article. But I should do him great
injustice if I did not admit that he has brought out in vivid colours some
very important facts. It is true that these facts are well known to Indian
administrators, but they are facts disagreeable to contemplate, and are
therefore slurred over willingly; but they have such important bearing on
the proceedings of Government in India that they cannot be too frequently
paraded before the public eye.
The first of these truths is the undeniable poverty of the great bulk of
the population. But here Mr. Hyndman does not appear to me to have taken
full grasp of the fact, or to have ascertained its causes. The dense
population of India, amounting in its more fertile parts to six and seven
hundred per square mile, is almost exclusively occupied in agricultural
pursuits. But the land of India has been farmed from time immemorial by
men entirely without capital. A farmer in this country has little chance
of success unless he can supply a capital of 10_l._ to 20_l._ an acre. If
English farms were cultivated by men as deficient in capital as the Indian
rayats, they would be all thrown on the parish in a year or two. The
founder of a Hindu village may, by aid of his brethren and friends, have
strength enough to break up the jungle, dig a well, and with a few rupees
in his pocket he may purchase seed for the few acres he can bring under
the plough. If a favourable harvest ensue, he has a large surplus, out of
which he pays the _jamma_ or rent to Government. But on the first failure
of the periodical rains his withered crops disappear, he has no capital
wherewith to meet the Government demand, to obtain food for his family and
stock, or to purchase seed for the coming year. To meet all these wants he
must have recourse to the village money-lender, who has always formed as
indispensable a member of a Hindu agricultural community as the ploughman
himself.
From time immemorial the cultivator of the soil in India has lived from
hand to mouth, and when his hand could not supply his mouth from the
stores of the last harvest he has been driven to the local saukár or
money-lender to obtain the means of existence. This is the first great
cause of India's poverty. The second is akin to it, for it exists in the
infinite divisibility of property which arises under the Hindu system of
succession, and which throws insuperable obstructions to the growth of
capital. The rule as to property in Hindu life is that all the members of
a family, father, grandfather, children, and grandchildren, constitute an
undivided partnership, having equal shares in the property, although one
of them, generally the eldest, is recognised as the manager. It is in the
power of any member to sever himself from the family group, and the
tendency of our Government has been to encourage efforts of what may be
called individualism. But the new stock is but the commencement of another
undivided family, so strong is the Hindu feeling in favour of this
time-honoured custom. It is obvious that where the skill, foresight, and
thriftiness required for the creation of capital may be thwarted by the
extravagance or carelessness of any one of a large number of partners, its
growth must be seriously impeded.
It will be seen, if the above arguments are sound, that the obstructions
which oppose themselves to the formation of capital arise out of
immemorial usages, and are irremediable by any direct interference of
Government. But whatever may be the causes of this national poverty, the
fact is undoubted, and it cannot be too steadily contemplated by those who
desire to rely on fresh taxation for their favourite projects, whether it
be for improved administration, for magnificent public works, or for the
extension of our dominions. Mr. Hyndman also points out the great
expensiveness of a foreign government, and his remarks on this subject are
undoubtedly true. The high salaries required to tempt Englishmen of
suitable qualifications to expatriate themselves for the better part of
their lives, and the heavy dead weight of pensions and furlough charges
for such officials, form, no doubt, a heavy burden on the resources of
India. The costliness of a European army is, of course, also undoubtedly
great. But these are charges which, to a less or greater degree, are
inseparable from the dominion of a foreign government. The compensation
for them is to be found in the security they provide against a foreign
invader or against internal disturbances, and the protection they afford,
in a degree hitherto unknown in India, to life, property, and character.
But Mr. Hyndman's diatribes are useful in pointing to the conclusion that
all the efforts of Government should be directed towards the diminution of
these charges, where compatible with efficiency, and his striking contrast
of the home military charges in 1862-63, which then amounted to 28_l._
3_s._, and now have risen in the present year to 66_l._, deserves most
serious consideration.
There is only one other statement of Mr. Hyndman which I desire to notice.
He declares the general opinion of the natives to be that life, as a
whole, has become harder since the English took the country, and he adds
his own opinion that the fact is so. Mr. Hyndman, as we have seen, knows
but little of the actual life of the agricultural population, and of their
state under native rule he probably knows less. But I am inclined to think
he fairly represents a very prevailing belief amongst the natives. A vivid
indication of this native feeling is given in the most instructive work on
Hindu rural life that I have ever met with.[14] Colonel Sleeman thus
recounts a conversation he held with some natives in one of his rambles--
I got an old landowner from one of the villages to walk on
with me a mile and put me in the right road. I asked him
what had been the state of the country under the former
government of the Jâts and Mahrattas, and was told that the
greater part was a wild jungle. "I remember," said the old
man, "when you could not have got out of the road hereabouts
without a good deal of risk. I could not have ventured a
hundred yards from the village without the chance of having
my clothes stripped off my back. Now the whole country is
under cultivation, and the roads are safe. Formerly the
governments kept no faith with their landowners and
cultivators, exacting ten rupees where they had bargained
for five whenever they found their crops good. But in spite
of all this _zulm_ (oppression) there was then more _burkul_
(blessings from above) than now; the lands yielded more to
the cultivator."
Colonel Sleeman on the same day asked a respectable farmer what he thought
of the latter statement. He stated: "The diminished fertility is owing, no
doubt, to the want of those salutary fallows which the fields got under
former governments, when invasions and civil wars were things of common
occurrence, and kept at least _two-thirds of the land waste_."
The fact is that, under an orderly government like ours, the causes
alluded to above as impeding the growth of capital become very much
aggravated. Population largely increases, waste lands are brought under
the plough, grazing grounds for stock disappear, and the fallows, formerly
so beneficial in restoring fertility to the soil, can no longer be kept
free from cultivation. All these considerations form portions of the very
difficult problems in government which day by day present themselves to
the Indian administrator. But does Mr. Hyndman think they are to be solved
by recurrence to the native system of government; by the substitution of a
local ruler, sometimes paternal, more frequently the reverse, for the
courts of justice which now administer the law which can be read and
understood by all; by civil contracts being enforced by the armed servant
of the creditor, instead of by the officers of a court acting under
strict surveillance; by the land assessment being collected year by year
through the farmers of the revenue according to their arbitrary will,
instead of being payable in a small moderate[15] sum, unalterable for a
long term of years? If he thinks this--and his allusion to the system of
the non-regulation provinces favours the conclusion--he will not find, I
think, an educated native in the whole of India who will agree with him.
There are great harshnesses in our rule, there is a rigidity and
exactitude of procedure which is often distasteful to native opinion,
there are patent defects arising out of our attempts to administer
justice, there is great irritation at our constant and often ill-conceived
experiments in legislation, there is real danger in the fresh burdens we
lay upon the people in our desire to carry out apparently laudable
reforms. But with all these blemishes, which have only to be distinctly
perceived to be removed from our administrative system, the educated
native feels that he is gradually acquiring the position of a freeman, and
he would not exchange it for that which Mr. Hyndman appears to desiderate.
E. PERRY, _in Nineteenth Century_.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] This rock on its eastern face contains the decrees of Asoka, who began
to reign 263 B.C.; on the western face is the inscription of Rudradáman,
one of the Satrap-rulers under an Indian Greek dynasty, circa 90 B.C.; and
the northern face presents the inscription of Skandagupta, 240 A.D.
[2] Preface to _Vishnu Purana_.
[3] Elphinstone, _History of India_, vol. i. p. 511.
[4] See Aitcheson, _Treaties_, vol. vi. p. 18.
[5] _A Hindu Gentleman's Reflections._ Spiers, London, 1878.
[6] Widow-burning.
[7] The swing-sacrifice.
[8] _Views and Opinions of General John Jacob._ London, 1858.
[9] October 1865, and October 1866.
[10] _England and Russia in the East._ Murray.
[11] 59 Geo. III. c. 55, s. 43.
[12] _Report on East India Public Works_, p. 85.
[13] The career of Mr. Dádobhai Naoroji illustrates in a remarkable manner
the operation of the system of education introduced under our government.
A Parsi, born in Bombay of very poor parents, he received his education at
the Elphinstone College, where he displayed so much intelligence that in
1845 an English gentleman, desirous to open up a new career for educated
natives, offered to send him to England to study for the bar if any of the
wealthy merchants of his community would pay half the expenses. But in
those days the Parsis, like the Hindus, dreaded contact with England, and
the offer fell to the ground. Dádobhai continued at the College, where he
obtained employment as a teacher, and subsequently became professor of
mathematics, no native having previously filled such a post. In 1845 he
left scholastics and joined the first native mercantile house established
in London. This firm commenced with great success, and Dádobhai no sooner
found himself master of 5,000l. than he devoted it to public objects in
his native city. The house of Messrs. Cama subsequently failed, and
Dádobhai returned to Bombay, where, as above noted, he took an active part
in municipal affairs, and was subsequently appointed Dewan to the Gaekwar.
He is now carrying on business as a merchant on his own account in London.
[14] _Rambles of an Indian Official_, 1844.
[15] So long ago as the period when Colonel Sleeman wrote, the principle
was fully established as to the moderation to be observed in the
Government assessment. He says: "We may rate the Government share at
one-fifth as the maximum and one-tenth as the minimum of the gross
produce." (_Rambles of an Indian Official_, vol i. p. 251.) In the Blue
Book laid before Parliament last Session on the Deccan riots, it will be
seen that the Government share in the gross produce of those districts
where a high assessment was supposed to have created the disturbances was
only one-thirteenth.
A COUP D'ÉTAT.
If little seeds by slow degree
Put forth their leaves and flowers unheard,
Our love had grown into a tree,
And bloomed without a single word
I haply hit on six o'clock,
The hour her father came from town;
I gave his own peculiar knock,
And waited slyly, like a clown.
The door was open. There she stood,
Lifting her mouth's delicious brim.
How could I waste a thing so good!
I took the kiss she meant for him.
A moment on an awful brink--
Deep breath, a frown, a smile, a tear;
And then, "O Robert, don't you think
That that was rather--_cavalier_?" [_London Society._
THEATRICAL MAKE-SHIFTS AND BLUNDERS.
It is a generally received opinion that all stage wardrobes are made up of
tawdry rags, and that the landscapes and palaces that look so charming by
gaslight are but mere daubs by day. But there are wardrobes _and_
wardrobes, scenery and scenery. The dresses used for some great "get up"
at the opera houses, or at the principal London and provincial theatres,
are costly and magnificent; the scenery, although painted for distance and
artificial light, is really the product of artists of talent, and there is
an attention to reality in all the adjuncts that would quite startle the
believers in the tinsel and tawdry view. A millionaire might take a lesson
from the stage drawing-rooms of the Prince of Wales and the Court
theatres, and no cost is spared to procure the _real_ article, whatever it
may be, that is required for the scene. These minutiæ of realism, however,
are quite a modern idea, dating no farther back than the days of
Boucicault and Fechter. Splendid scenery and gorgeous dresses for the
legitimate dramas were introduced by John Kemble, and developed to the
utmost extent by Macready and Kean; but it was reserved for the present
decade to lavish the same attention and expenses upon the petite drama.
Half a century ago the property maker manufactured the stage furniture,
the stage books, the candelabra, curtains, cloths, pictures, &c., out of
papier mache and tinsel; and the drawing-room or library of a gentleman's
mansion thus presented bore as much resemblance to the reality as sea-side
furnished lodgings do to a ducal palace. Before the Kemble time a green
baize, a couple of chairs and a table, sufficed for all furnishing
purposes, whether for an inn or a palace.
In these days of "theatrical upholstery," we can scarcely realize the
shabbiness of the stage of the last century. There were a few handsome
suits for the principal actors, but the less important ones were
frequently dressed in costumes that had done service for fifty years,
until they were worn threadbare and frequently in rags. Endeavour to
realise upon the modern stage such a picture as this given by Tate
Wilkinson, of his appearance at Covent Garden as "The Fine Gentleman," in
"Lethe." "A very short old suit of clothes, with a black velvet ground,
and broad, gold flowers as dingy as the twenty-four letters on a piece of
gingerbread; it had not seen the light since the first year Garrick played
'Lothario,' at the theatre. Bedecked in that sable array for the modern
'Fine Gentleman,' and to make the appearance complete, I added an old red
surtout, trimmed with a dingy white fur, and a deep skinned cape of the
same hue, borrowed by old Giffard, I was informed, at Lincoln's Inn Fields
Theatre, to play 'King Lear' in." When West Digges appeared at the
Haymarket as Cardinal Wolsey, it was in the identical dress that Barton
Booth had worn in Queen Anne's time: a close-fitting habit of gilt leather
upon a black ground, black stockings, and black gauntlets. No wonder
Foote, who was in the pit, exclaimed, upon the appearance of this
extraordinary figure, "A Roman sweep on May-day!" When Quin played the
youthful fascinating Chamont, in Otway's "Orphan," he wore a long grisly
half-powdered periwig, hanging low down each side his breast and down his
back, a huge scarlet coat and waistcoat, heavily trimmed with gold, black
velvet breeches, black silk neckcloth, black stockings, a pair of
square-toed shoes, with an old-fashioned pair of stone buckles, stiff
high-topped white gloves, with a broad old scolloped lace hat. Such a
costume upon a personage not in his first youth, and more than inclined to
obesity, must have had an odd effect. But then, as is well known, Garrick
played "Macbeth" in a scarlet coat and powdered wig; John Kemble performed
"Othello" in a full suit of British scarlet regimentals, and even when he
had gone so far as to dress "Macbeth" as a highlander of 1745, wore in his
bonnet a tremendous hearse plume, until Scott plucked it out, and placed
an eagle's feather there in its stead. The costumes of the ladies were
almost more absurd. Whether they appeared as Romans, Greeks, or females of
the Middle Ages, they dressed the same--in the huge hoop, and powdered
hair raised high upon the head, heavy brocaded robes that required two
pages to hold up, without whose assistance they could scarcely have moved;
and servants were dressed quite as magnificently as their mistresses.
In scenery there was no attempt at "sets;" a drop, and a pair of "flats,"
dusty and dim with age, were all the scenic accessories; and two or three
hoops of tallow candles, suspended above the stage, were all that
represented the blaze of gas and lime-light to which we are accustomed.
The candle-snuffer was a theatrical post of some responsibility in those
days. Garrick was the first who used concealed lights. The uncouth
appearance of the stage was rendered still worse on crowded nights by
ranges of seats raised for spectators on each side. The most ridiculous
_contretemps_ frequently resulted from this incongruity. Romeo, sometimes,
when he bore out the body of Juliet from the solitary tomb of the
Capulets, had to almost force his way through a throng of beaux, and
Macbeth and his lady plotted the murder of Duncan amidst a throng of
people.
One night, Hamlet, upon the appearance of the Ghost, threw off his hat, as
usual, preparatory to the address, when a kind-hearted dame, who had heard
him just before complain of its being "very cold," picked it up and
good-naturedly clapped it upon his head again. A similar incident once
happened during the performance of Pizarro. Elvira is discovered asleep
upon a couch, gracefully covered by a rich velvet cloak; Valverde enters,
kneels and kisses her hand; Elvira awakes, rises and lets fall the
covering, and is about to indignantly repulse her unwelcome visitor, when
a timid female voice says: "Please, ma'am, you've dropped your mantle,"
and a timid hand is trying to replace it upon the tragedy queen's
shoulders. Of another kind, but very much worse, was an accident that
befell Mrs. Siddons at Edinburgh, at the hands of another person who
failed to distinguish between the real person and the counterfeit. Just
before going on for the sleep-walking-scene, she had sent a boy for some
porter, but the cue for her entrance was given before he returned. The
house was awed into shuddering silence as, in a terrible whisper, she
uttered the words "Out, out, damned spot!" and with slow mechanical action
rubbed the guilty hands; when suddenly there emerged from the wings a
small figure holding out a pewter pot, and a shrill voice broke the awful
silence with "Here's your porter, mum." Imagine the feelings of the
stately Siddons! The story is very funny to read, but depend upon it the
incident gave her the most cruel anguish.
It is not, however, to the uninitiated outsiders alone we are indebted for
ludicrous stage contretemps; the experts themselves have frequently given
rise to them. All readers of Elia will remember the name of Bensley, one
of "the old actors" upon whom he discourses so eloquently--a grave precise
man, whose composure no accident could ruffle, as the following anecdote
will prove. One night, as he was making his first entrance as Richard
III., at the Dublin Theatre, his wig caught upon a nail in the side scene,
and was dragged off. Catching his hat by the feather, however, he calmly
replaced it as he walked to the centre of the stage, but left his _hair_
still attached to the nail. Quite unmoved by the occurrence, he commenced
his soliloquy; but so rich a subject could not escape the wit of an Irish
audience. "Bensley, darlin'," shouted a voice from the gallery, "put on
your jaisey!" "Bad luck to your politics, will you suffer a _whig_ to be
hung?" shouted another. But the tragedian, deaf to all clamour, never
faltered, never betrayed the least annoyance, spoke the speech to the end,
stalked to the wing, detached the wig from the nail, and made his exit
with it in his hand.
Novices under the influence of stage fright will say and do the most
extraordinary things. Some years ago, I witnessed a laughable incident
during the performance of "Hamlet" at a theatre in the North. Although a
very small part, consisting as it does of only one speech, the "Second
Actor" is a very difficult one, the language being peculiarly cramped. In
the play scene he assassinates the player king by pouring poison into his
ear. The speech preceding the action is as follows:
Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing;
Confederate season, else no creature seeing;
Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,
With Hecate's ban thrice blasted, thrice infected,
Thy natural magic and dire property
On wholesome life usurp immediately.
Upon which follows the stage direction--"_Pours poison into his ear._"
In a play of so many characters as Hamlet, such a part, in a second-class
theatre, can be given only to a very inferior performer. The one to whom
it was entrusted on the present occasion was a novice. Muffled in a black
coat and a black slouched hat, and with a face half hidden by burnt cork,
he looked a most villainous villain, as he stole on and gazed about in the
most approved melo-dramatic fashion. Then he began, in a strong north
country brogue,--
Thoughts black, hands apt,--
then his memory failed him, and he stuck fast. The prompter whispered
"drugs fit;" but stage fright had seized him, and he could not take the
word. He tried back, but stuck again at the same place. Half-a-dozen
people were all prompting him at the same time now, but all in vain. At
length one more practical than the rest whispered angrily, "Pour the
poison in his ear and get off." The suggestion restored a glimmering of
reason to the trembling, perspiring wretch. He could not remember the
words of Shakespeare, so he improvised a line. Advancing to the sleeping
figure, he raised the vial in his hand, and in a terribly tragic tone
shouted, "Into his ear-hole this I'll _power_!"
Some extraordinary and agonising mistakes, for tragedians, have been made
in what are called the flying messages in "Richard III." and "Macbeth," by
novices in their nervousness mixing up their own parts with the context;
as when Catesby rushed on and cried, "My lord, the Duke of Buckingham's
taken." There he should have stopped while Richard replied, "Off with his
head! so much for Buckingham!" But in his flurry the shaking messenger
added, "and they've cut off his head!" With a furious look at having been
robbed of one of his finest "points," the tragedian roared out, "Then,
damn you, go and stick it on again!" Another story is told of an actor
playing one of the officers in the fifth act of "Macbeth." "My lord," he
has to say, "there are ten thousand----" "Geese, villain," interrupts
Macbeth. "Ye--es, my lord!" answered the messenger, losing his memory in
his terror.
But a far more dreadful anecdote is related of the same play. A star was
playing the guilty Thane in a very small company, where each member had to
sustain three or four different characters. During the performance the man
appointed to play the first murderer was taken ill. There was not another
to be spared, and the only resource left was to send on a supernumerary,
supposed to be intelligent, to stand for the character. "Keep close to the
wing," said the prompter; "I'll read you the words, and you can repeat
them after me." The scene was the banquet; the supper was pushed on, and
Macbeth, striding down the stage, seized his arm and said in a stage
whisper, "There's blood upon thy face." "'Tis Banquo's, then," was the
prompt. Lost and bewildered--having never spoken in his life before upon
the stage--by the tragedian's intense yet natural tones, the fellow,
imitating them in the most confidential manner, answered, "Is there, by
God?" put his hand up to his forehead, and, finding it stained with rose
pink, added, "Then the property man's served me a trick!"
Once upon a time I was present at the performance of the celebrated dog
piece, "The Forest of Bondy," in a small country theatre. The plot turns
upon a well-known story, the discovery of a murder through the sagacity of
the victim's dog. The play-bill descanted most eloquently upon the
wonderful genius of the "highly trained" animal, and was sufficient to
raise expectation on tip-toe. Yet it had evidently failed to impress the
public of this town, their experiences probably having rendered them
sceptical of such pufferies, for the house was miserably bad. The first
entrance of "the celebrated dog Cæsar," however, in attendance upon his
master, was greeted with loud applause. He was a fine young black
Newfoundland, whose features were more descriptive of good nature than
genius. He sat on his haunches and laughed at the audience, and pricked up
his ears at the sound of a boy munching a biscuit in the pit. I could
perceive he was a novice, and that he would forget all he had been taught
when he came to the test. While Aubrey, the hero, is passing through a
forest at night, he is attacked by two ruffians, and after a desperate
combat is killed; the dog is supposed to be kept out of the way. But in
the very midst of the fight, Cæsar, whose barking had been distinctly
heard all the time, rushed on the stage. Far from evincing any ferocity
towards his master's foes, he danced about with a joyous bark, evidently
considering it famous fun. Aubrey was furious, and kicked out savagely at
his faithful "dawg," thereby laying himself open to the swords of his
adversaries, who, however, in consideration that the combat had not been
long enough, generously refused the advantages. "Get off, you beast!"
growled Aubrey, who evidently desired to fight it out without canine
interference. At length, when the faltering applause from the gallery
began to show that the gods had had enough of it, the assassins buried
their swords beneath their victim's arms, and he expired in great agony;
Cæsar looking on from the respectful distance to which his master's kick
had sent him, with the unconcern of a person who had seen it all done at
rehearsal and knew it was all sham, but with a decided interest of eye and
ear in the direction of the biscuit-muncher. In the next act he was to
leap over a stile and ring the bell at a farm house, and, having awakened
the inhabitants, seize a lantern which is brought out, and lead them to
the spot where the villains have buried his master. After a little
prompting Cæsar leaped the stile and went up to the bell, round the handle
of which was twisted some red cloth to imitate meat; but there never was a
more matter-of-fact dog than this; he evidently hated all shams, even
artistic ones; and after a sniff at the red rag he walked off disgusted,
and could not be induced to go on again; so the people had to rush out
without being summoned, carry their own lantern, and find their way by a
sort of canine instinct, or scent, to the scene of the murder. But Cæsar's
delinquencies culminated in the last scene, where, after the chief
villain, in a kind of lynch law trial, has stoutly asserted his innocence,
the sagacious "dawg" suddenly bounds upon the stage, springs at his
throat, and puts an end to his infamous career. Being held by the collar,
and incited on, in the side scene, Cæsar's deep bark sounded terribly
ferocious, and seemed to foreshadow a bloody catastrophe; but his bark
proved worse than his bite, for when released he trotted on with a most
affable expression of countenance, his thoughts still evidently bent upon
biscuits; in vain did the villain show him the red pad upon his throat and
invite him to seize it. Cæsar had been deceived once, and scorned to
countenance an imposition. Furious with passion, the villain rushed at
him, drew him up on his hind legs, clasped him in his arms, then fell upon
the stage and writhed in frightful agonies, shrieking, "Mussy, mussy, take
off the dawg!" and the curtain fell amidst the howls and hisses of the
audience.
Another laughable dog story, although of a different kind, was once
related to me by a now London actor. In a certain theatre in one of the
great northern cities business had been so bad for some time that salaries
were very irregularly paid. It is a peculiarity of the actor that he is
never so jolly, so full of fun, and altogether so vivacious, as when he is
impecunious. In prosperity he is dull and melancholy; the yellow dross
seems to weigh down his spirit, to stultify it; empty his pockets, and it
etherialises him. At the theatre in question, the actors amused themselves
if they failed to amuse the audience. Attached to this house was a mongrel
cur, whom some of them had taught tricks to while away the tedium of long
waits. "Jack"--such was his name--was well known all round the
neighbourhood, and to most of the _habitues_ of the house. Among his other
accomplishments he could simulate death at command, and could only be
recalled to life by a certain piece of information to be presently
mentioned. One night the manager was performing "The Stranger" to about
half-a-dozen people. Francis was standing at the wing waiting for his cue
when his eye fell upon Jack, who was standing just off the stage on the
opposite side; an impish thought struck him--he whistled--Jack pricked up
his ears, and Francis slapped his leg and called him. Obedient to the
summons Jack trotted before the audience, but as he reached the centre of
the stage the word "dead!" struck upon his ear. The next moment he was
stretched motionless with his two hind legs sticking up at an angle of
forty-five degrees. The scene was the one in which the Stranger relates to
Baron Steinfort the story of his wrongs, and he had come to the line, "My
heart is like a close-shut sepulchre," when a burst of laughter from the
front drew his attention to Jack. He saw the trick that had been played in
an instant. "Get off, you brute!" he growled, giving the animal a kick.
But Jack was too highly trained to heed such an admonition, having learned
beforehand that the kicking was not so bad as the flogging he would get
for not performing his part correctly. "Doan't tha' kick poor Jack,"
called out a rough voice, "give un the word." "Ay, ay, give un the word,"
echoed half-a-dozen voices. The manager knew better than to disregard the
advice of his patrons, and ground out between his teeth, "Here's a
policeman coming." At that "open Sesame" Jack was up and off like a shot.
It must have been one of the finest bits of burlesque to have seen that
black-ringlet-wigged, sallow, dyspeptic, tragic-looking individual,
repeating the clown's formula over a mangy cur.
The failure or forgetfulness of stage properties is frequently a source of
ludicrous incidents. People are often killed by pistols that will not
fire, or stabbed with the butt ends. In some play an actor has to seize a
dagger from a table and stab his rival. One night the dagger was forgotten
and no substitute was there, _except a candle_, which the excited actor
wrenched from the candlestick, and madly plunged _at_ his opponent's
breast; but it effected its purpose, for the victim expired in strong
convulsions. It is strange how seldom the audience perceive such
_contretemps_, or notice the extraordinary and ludicrous slips of the
tongue that are so frequent upon the stage.
A playbill is not always the most truth-telling publication in the world.
Managers, driven to their wits' ends to draw a sluggish public, often
announce entertainments which they have no means of producing properly, or
even at all, and have to exercise an equal amount of ingenuity to find
substitutes, or satisfy a deluded audience. Looking through some
manuscript letters of R. B. Peake's the other day, I came across a capital
story of Bunn. While he was manager of the Birmingham Theatre, Power, the
celebrated Irish comedian, made a starring engagement with him. It was
about the time that the dramatic version of Mrs. Shelley's
"Frankenstein"--done, I believe, by Peake himself--was making a great
sensation, and Power announced it for his benefit, playing "the Monster"
himself. The manager, however, refused to spend a penny upon the
production. "You must do with what you can find in the theatre," he said.
There was only one difficulty. In the last scene Frankenstein is buried
beneath an avalanche, and among the stage scenery of the Theatre Royal,
Birmingham, there was nothing resembling an avalanche to be found, and the
AVALANCHE was the one prodigious line in the playbill. Power was
continually urging this difficulty, but Bunn always eluded it with, "Oh,
we shall find something or other." At length it came to the day of
performance, and the problem had not yet been solved.
"Well, we shall have to change the piece," said Power.
"Pooh, pooh! nonsense!" answered the manager.
"There is no avalanche, and it is impossible to be finished without."
"Can't you cut it out?"
"Impossible."
The manager fell into a brown study for a few moments. Then suddenly
brightening up, he said, "I have it; but they must let the green curtain
down instantly on the extraordinary effect. Hanging up in the flies is the
large elephant made for 'Blue Beard;' we'll have it whitewashed."
"What?" exclaimed Power.
"We'll have it whitewashed," continued the manager coolly; "what is an
avalanche but a vast mass of white? When Frankenstein is to be
annihilated, the carpenters shall shove the whitened elephant over the
flies--destroy you both in a moment--and down comes the curtain."
As there was no other alternative, Power e'en submitted. The whitened
elephant was "shoved" over at the right moment, the effect was appalling
from the front, and the curtain descended amidst loud applause.
Not quite so successful was a hoax perpetrated by Elliston, during _his_
management of the Birmingham Theatre, many years previously. Then, also,
business had been very bad, and he was in great difficulties. Let us give
the managers their due. They do not, as a rule, resort to swindles except
under strong pressure; then they soothe their consciences with the
reflection that as an obtuse and ungrateful public will not support their
legitimate efforts, it deserves to be swindled. And a very good reflection
it is--from a managerial point of view. No man was more fertile in
expedients than Robert William Elliston; so after a long continuance of
empty benches, the walls and boardings of the town were one morning
covered with glaring posters announcing that the manager of the Theatre
Royal had entered into an engagement with a BOHEMIAN of extraordinary
strength and stature, who would perform some astonishing evolutions with a
stone of upwards of a ton weight, which he would toss about as easily as
another would a tennis-ball. What all the famous names of the British
drama and all the talents of its exponents had failed to accomplish, was
brought about by a stone, and on the evening announced for its appearance
the house was crammed to the ceiling. The exhibition was to take place
between the play and the farce, and scarcely had the intellectual audience
patience to listen to the piece, so eager were they for the noble
entertainment that was to follow. At length, much to their relief, the
curtain fell. The usual interval elapsed, the house became impatient,
impatience soon merged into furious clamour. At length, with a pale,
distraught countenance, Elliston rushed before the curtain. In a moment
there was a breathless silence.
"The Bohemian has deceived me!" were his first words. "_That_ I could have
pardoned; but he has deceived you, my friends, _you_;" and his voice
trembled, and he hid his face behind his handkerchief and seemed to sob.
Then, bursting forth again, he went on: "I repeat, he has deceived me; he
is not here."
A yell of disappointment burst from the house.
"The man," continued Elliston, raising his voice, "of whatever name or
nation he may be, who breaks his word, commits an offence which----" The
rest of this Joseph Surface sentiment was drowned in furious clamour, and
for some minutes he could not make himself heard, until he drew some
letters from his pocket, and held them up.
"Here is the correspondence," he said. "Does any gentleman here understand
German? If so, will he oblige me by stepping forward?"
The Birmingham public were not strong in languages in those days, it would
seem, for no gentleman stepped forward.
"Am I, then, left alone?" he exclaimed in tragic accents. "Well, I will
translate them for you."
Here there was another uproar, out of which came two or three voices, "No,
no." Like Buckingham, he chose to construe the two or three into "a
general acclaim."
"Your commands shall be obeyed," he said bowing, and pocketing the
correspondence, "I _will not_ read them. But my dear patrons, your
kindness merits some satisfaction at my hands; your consideration shall
not go unrewarded. You shall not say you have paid your money for nothing.
Thank heaven, I can satisfy you of my own integrity, and present you with
a portion of the entertainment you have paid to see. The Bohemian, the
villain, is not here. But the _stone_ is, and YOU SHALL SEE IT." He winked
at the orchestra, which struck up a lively strain, and up went the
curtain, disclosing a huge piece of sand rock, upon which was stuck a
label, bearing the legend in large letters, "THIS IS THE STONE."
It need scarcely be added that the Bohemian existed only in the manager's
brain. But it is a question whether the audience which could be only
brought together by such an exhibition did not deserve to be swindled.
An equally good story is told of his management at Worcester. For his
benefit he had announced a grand display of fireworks! No greater proof of
the gullibility of the British public could be adduced than their
swallowing such an announcement. The theatre was so small that such an
exhibition was practically impossible. A little before the night Elliston
called upon the landlord of the property, and in the course of
conversation hinted at the danger of such a display, as though the idea
had just struck him; the landlord took alarm, and, as Elliston had
anticipated, forbade it. Nevertheless the announcements remained on the
walls, and on the night the theatre was crowded. The performance proceeded
without any notice being taken by the management of the fireworks, until
murmurs swelled into clamour and loud cries. Then with his usual kingly
air, Elliston came forward and bowed. He had made, he said, the most
elaborate preparation for a magnificent pyrotechnic display; he had left
nothing undone, but at the last moment came the terrible reflection, would
it not be dangerous? Would there not be collected within the walls of the
theatre a number of lovely young tender girls, of respectable matrons, to
do him honour? What if the house should catch fire--the panic, the
struggle for life--ah, he shuddered at the thought! Then, too, he thought
of the property of that worthiest of men, the landlord--he rushed to
consult him--and he now called upon him--there he was, seated in the stage
box--to publicly state, for the satisfaction of the distinguished audience
he saw before him, that he had forbidden the performance from
considerations of safety. The landlord, a very nervous man, shrank to the
back of his box, scared by every eye in the house being fixed upon him;
but the audience, thankful for the terrible danger they had escaped, burst
into thunders of applause.
The stories are endless of the shifts and swindles to which country
managers, at their wits' end, have had to resort to attract a sluggish
public. How great singers have been advertised that never heard of such an
engagement, and even forged telegrams read to an expectant audience, to
account for their non-appearance. How prizes have been distributed on
benefit nights--to people who gave them back again. How audiences, the
victims of some false announcement, have been left waiting patiently for
the performance to commence, while the manager was on his way to another
town with their money in his pocket. But there is a great sameness about
such stories, and one or two are a specimen of all.
H. BARTON BAKER, _in Belgravia_.
I.--WINTER-MORN IN THE COUNTRY.
The Sabbath of all Nature! Stillness reigns
For snow has fallen, and all the land is white.
The cottage-roofs slant grey against the light,
And grey the sky, nor cloud nor blue obtains.
The sun is moonlike, as a maiden feigns
To veil her beauty, yet sends glances bright
That fill the eye, and make the heart delight,
Expectant of some wonder. Lengthened trains
Of birds wing high, and straight the smoke ascends.
All things are fairy-like: the trees empearled
With frosty gem-work, like to trees in dream.
Beneath the weight the slender cedar bends
And looks more ghost-like! 'Tis a wonder-world,
Wherein, indeed, things are not as they seem.
II.--WINTER-MORN IN TOWN.
Through yellow fog all things take spectral shapes:
Lamps dimly gleam, and through the window pane
The light is shed in short and broken lane;
And "darkness visible" pants, yawns, and gapes.
From roofs the water drips, as from high capes,
Half-freezes as it falls. Like cries of pain
Fog-signals faintly heard, and then again
Grave warning words to him who rashly apes
The skater, nearer. All is muffled fast
In dense dead coils of vapour, nothing clear--
The world disguised in mumming masquerade.
O'er each a dull thick clinging veil is cast,
And no one is what fain he would appear:
Nor any well-marked track on which to tread,
ALEX. H. JAPP, _in Belgravia_.
THE HAPPY VALLEY.
A REMINISCENCE OF THE HIMALAYAS.
The privilege which the families of officers in the service of the State
may be said exclusively to possess, of reproducing in Upper India--and
especially in the Himalayan stations, and valley of Dhera Dhoon--the
stately or cottage homes of England, is perhaps one, to a great extent,
unfamiliar to their relatives at home; and it is scarcely too much to say
that the general public, which, as a rule, considers the Indian climate an
insuperable barrier to all enjoyment, has but a faint idea of that
glorious beauty, which is no "fading flower," in this "Happy Valley," with
its broad belt of virgin forest, that lies between the Himalayas proper
and the sharp ridges of the wild Sewalic range. The latter forms a barrier
between the sultry plains and the cool and romantic retreats, where the
swords of our gallant defenders may be said to rest in their scabbards,
and where, surrounded by the pleasures of domestic life, health and
happiness may, in the intervals of piping times of peace, be enjoyed to
their fullest extent.
In such favoured spots the exile from home may live, seemingly, for the
present only; but, in truth, it is not so, for even under such favoured
circumstances the tie with our natal place is never relaxed, and the hope
of future return to it adds just that touch of pensiveness--scarcely
sadness--which is the delicate neutral tint that brings out more forcibly
the gorgeous colours of the picture.
The gaieties of the mountain stations of Mussoorie and Landour were now
approaching their periodical close, in the early part of October, when the
cold season commences. The attractive archery meetings on the green
plateaux of the mountain-spurs had ceased, and balls and sumptuous
dinner-parties were becoming fewer and fewer; while daily one group of
friends after another, "with lingering steps and slow," on rough
hill-ponies or in quaint jam-pans, were wending their way some six or
seven thousand feet down the umbrageous mountain-sides, watched from above
by those who still lingered behind, until they seemed like toilsome emmets
in the far distance.
Now that our summer companions were gone we used to while away many an
hour with our glasses, scanning in that clear atmosphere the vast plains
stretched out beneath us like a rich carpet of many colours, but in which
forms were scarcely to be traced at that distance. Here, twisted silver
threads represented some great river; there, a sprinkling of rice-like
grains, the white bungalows of a cantonment; while occasionally a sombre
mass denoted some forest or mango tope. Around us, and quailing under
fierce gusts of wind from the passes of the snowy range rising in peaks
to nearly twice the altitude of the Alps, the gnarled oaks, now denuded of
their earlier garniture of parasitical ferns, that used to adorn their
mossy branches with Nature's own point lace, seemed almost conscious of
approaching winter.
Landour, now deserted, save by a few invalid soldiers and one or two
resident families, had few attractions. The snow was lying deep on the
mountain-sides, and blocking up the narrow roads. But winter in the
Himalayas is a season of startling phenomena; for it is then that thunder
storms of appalling grandeur are prevalent, and to a considerable extent
destructive. During the night, amidst the wild conflict of the elements,
would, not unfrequently, be heard the bugles of the soldiers' Sanatorium,
calling to those who could sleep to arouse themselves, and hasten to the
side of residents whose houses had been struck by the electric fluid.
Still, we clung to our mountain-home to the last, although we knew that
summer awaited us in the valley below, and that in an hour and a half we
might with ease exchange an almost hyperborean climate for one where
summer is perennial, or seems so--for the rainy season is but an interlude
of refreshing showers.
At length an incident occurred which somewhat prematurely influenced our
departure.
As we were sitting at an early breakfast one morning with the children,
Khalifa, a favourite domestic, and one who rarely failed to observe that
stately decorum peculiar to Indian servants, rushed wildly into the room,
with every appearance of terror, screaming, "Janwar! Burra janwar,
sahib!"[16] at the same time pointing to the window.
We could not at first understand what the poor fellow meant; but on
looking out, were not a little disconcerted at the sight which presented
itself.
Crouched on the garden-wall was a huge spotted animal of the leopard
species. It looked, however, by no means ferocious, but, on the contrary,
to be imploring compassion and shelter from the snowstorm. Still,
notwithstanding its demure cat-like aspect, its proximity was by no means
agreeable. With a strange lack of intelligence, the brute, instead of
avoiding the cold, had evidently become bewildered, and crawled up the
mountain side. As we could scarcely be expected to extend the rites of
hospitality to such a visitor, the harmless discharge of a pistol insured
his departure at one bound, and with a terrific growl.
Wild beasts are rarely seen about European stations. Those who like them
must go out of their way to find them. But perhaps stupefied by cold while
asleep, and pinched by hunger, as on the present occasion, they may lose
their usual sagacity.
Having got rid of our unwelcome visitor, we determined at once to leave
our mountain-home.
The servants were only too glad to hasten our departure, and in the
course of an hour everything was packed up, and we were ready for the
descent into the plains.
Notwithstanding the absence of a police force, robberies of houses are
almost unknown; and therefore it was only necessary for us to draw down
the blinds and lock the main door, leaving the furniture to take care of
itself.
The jam-pans and little rough ponies were ready; the servants, although
shivering in their light clothing, more active than I had ever before seen
them; and in the course of another hour we were inhaling the balmy air of
early summer.
The pretty little hotel of Rajpore, at the base of the mountain, was now
reached; and before us lay the broad and excellent road, shaded with
trees, which, in the course of another twenty minutes, brought us to the
charming cantonment of Deyrah. All Nature seemed to be rejoicing; the
birds were singing; the sounds of bubbling and splashing waters
(mountain-streams diverted from their natural channels, and brought into
every garden), and hedges of the double pink and crimson Bareilly rose[17]
in full bloom, interspersed with the oleander, and the mehndi (henna of
Scripture) with its fragrant clusters, filling the air with the perfume of
mignonette, presented a scene of earthly beauty which cannot be surpassed.
"How stupid we were," I remarked, looking back at our late home, now a
mere black speck on the top of the snowy mountain far above--"how very
foolish and perverse to have fancied ourselves more English in the winter
up there, when we might all this time have been leading the life of Eden,
in this enchanting spot!"
"Indeed we were," replied my companion. "But it is the way with us in
India. We give a rupee for an English daisy, and cast aside the honeyed
champah."
In India there is no difficulty in housing oneself. No important agents
are necessary, and advertising is scarcely known. Accordingly, without
ceremony, we took quiet possession of the first vacant bungalow which we
came to, and our fifteen domestics did not seem to question for a moment
the propriety of the occupation. Under our somewhat despotic government,
are not the sahib lög[18] above petty social observances?
While A. was busily employed getting his guns ready and preparing for
shikari in the adjacent forest and jungles, which swarm with peafowl,
partridges, quail, pigeons, and a variety of other game, my first care was
to summon the resident mali (gardener), and ascertain how the beautiful
and extensive garden of which we had taken possession[19] might be further
stocked.
"Mem sahib,"[20] said the quiet old gardener, with his hands in a
supplicatory position, "there is abundance here of everything--aloo, lal
sag, anjir, padina, baingan, piyaz, khira, shalgham, kobs, ajmud,
kharbuza, amb, amrut, anar, narangi--"[21]
"Stay!" I interrupted; "that is enough."
But the old mali had something more to add:
"Mem sahib, all is your own, and your slave shall daily bring his
customary offering, and flowers for the table; and the protector of the
poor will not refuse bakshees for the bearer."
I promised to be liberal to the poor old man, and then proceeded to
inspect the flower-garden.
Here I was surprised to find a perfect fraternisation between the tropical
flora and our own. Amongst flowers not unfamiliar to the European were
abundance of the finest roses, superb crimson and gold poincianas, the
elegant hybiscus, graceful ipomoeas, and convolvuli of every hue, the
purple amaranth, the variegated double balsam, the richest marigolds, the
pale-blue clusters of the plantago, acacias, jasmines, oranges, and
pomegranates, intermixed with our own pansies, carnations, cinerarias,
geraniums, fuchsias, and a wealth of blossoms impossible to remember by
name.
"If there is a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this!"
Far more beautiful to the homely eye are such gardens than those of
Shalimar and Pinjore, with their costly marble terraces, geometrical
walks, fountains and cascades falling over sculptured slabs.
Nor are we in India confined to the enjoyment of Nature. Art[22] finds its
way to us from Europe, and literature here receives the warmest welcome.
Our pianos, our musical-boxes--our costly and richly bound illustrated
works, fresh from England--the most thrilling romances of fiction, and all
the periodicals of the day, are regularly accumulated in these charming
Indian retreats, and keep up the culture of the mind in a valley whose
"glorious beauty" is, as I have said, no "fading flower," but the home of
the missionary, and the resort of the war-worn soldier or truth-loving
artist.
Nor is this all. Around Deyrah is some of the most exquisitely beautiful
cave scenery, comparatively unknown even to Europeans; such, for example,
as the wondrous natural tunnel, whose sides shine with the varied beauty
of the most delicate mosaics, and are lit up by rents in the hill above;
the "dropping cave" of Sansadhara, "bosomed high in tufted trees;" and the
strange ancient shrines sculptured in the romantic glen of
Tope-Kesur-Mahadeo.
Of these, Sansadhara has lately been made the subject of a beautiful
photograph, which, however, fails to convey the exquisite charm of the
original; but the natural tunnel and Tope-Kesur-Mahadeo have never been
presented by the artist to the public, although there are unique sketches
of them in the fine collection of a lady[23] who, as the wife of a former
Indian Commander-in-Chief, had opportunities afforded to few of indulging
her taste.
One might exhaust volumes in attempting to describe such scenes, and even
then fail to do them the faintest justice. The Alps, with all their
beauty, lose much of their grandeur after one has been in daily
contemplation of the majestic snowy range of the Himalayas, while the
forests and valleys that skirt its base have no counterpart in Europe. In
these partial solitudes we lose much of our conventionality. The mind is
to a certain extent elevated by the grand scale on which Nature around is
presented. The occasional alarm of war teaches the insecurity of all
earthly happiness. Our life is subject to daily introspection, and before
the mind's eye is the sublime prospect, perhaps at no very distant period,
of a Christian India rising from the ruins of a sensuous idolatry in
immortal beauty.
L. A., _in London Society_.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] "Wild beast! Big wild beast, sir!"
L. M.--I.--2.
[17] A remarkable plant. It is in constant bloom. On every spray there is
a central crimson blossom, which only lasts one day, surrounded by five or
six pink ones, which remain for many days.
[18] Dominant class.
[19] House-rent is paid monthly in India, in arrear.
[20] My lady.
[21] Potato, spinach, fig, mint, egg-plant, onion, cucumber, turnip,
cabbage, parsley, melon, mango, guava, pomegranate, orange.
[22] There is no intention of disparaging beautiful native art.
[23] Lady Gomm.
THE PHOENICIANS IN GREECE.
Herodotus begins his history by relating how Phoenician traders brought
"Egyptian and Assyrian wares" to Argos and other parts of Greece, in those
remote days when the Greeks were still waiting to receive the elements of
their culture from the more civilized East. His account was derived from
Persian and Phoenician sources, but, it would seem, was accepted by his
contemporaries with the same unquestioning confidence as by himself. The
belief of Herodotus was shared by the scholars of Europe after the revival
of learning, and there were none among them who doubted that the
civilization of ancient Greece had been brought from Asia or Egypt, or
from both. Hebrew was regarded as the primæval language, and the Hebrew
records as the fountain-head of all history; just as the Greek vocabulary,
therefore, was traced back to the Hebrew lexicon, the legends of primitive
Greece were believed to be the echoes of Old Testament history. _Ex
Oriente lux_ was the motto of the inquirer, and the key to all that was
dark or doubtful in the mythology and history of Hellas was to be found in
the monuments of the Oriental world.
But the age of Creuzer and Bryant was succeeded by an age of scepticism
and critical investigation. A reaction sat in against the attempt to force
Greek thought and culture into an Asiatic mould. The Greek scholar was
repelled by the tasteless insipidity and barbaric exuberance of the East;
he contrasted the works of Phidias and Praxiteles, of Sophocles and Plato,
with the monstrous creations of India or Egypt, and the conviction grew
strong within him that the Greek could never have learnt his first lessons
of civilization in such a school as this. Between the East and the West a
sharp line of division was drawn, and to look for the origin of Greek
culture beyond the boundaries of Greece itself came to be regarded almost
as sacrilege. Greek mythology, so far from being an echo or caricature of
Biblical history and Oriental mysticism, was pronounced to be self-evolved
and independent, and K. O. Müller could deny without contradiction the
Asiatic origin even of the myth of Aphrodite and Adonis, where the name of
the Semitic sun-god seems of itself to indicate its source. The
Phoenician traders of Herodotus, like the royal maiden they carried away
from Argos, were banished to the nebulous region of rationalistic fable.
Along with this reaction against the Orientalizing school which could see
in Greece nothing but a deformed copy of Eastern wisdom went another
reaction against the conception of Greek mythology on which the labours of
the Orientalizing school had been based. Key after key had been applied to
Greek mythology, and all in vain; the lock had refused to turn. The light
which had been supposed to come from the East had turned out to be but a
will-o'-the-wisp; neither the Hebrew Scriptures nor the Egyptian
hieroglyphics had solved the problem presented by the Greek myths. And the
Greek scholar, in despair, had come to the conclusion that the problem was
insoluble; all that he could do was to accept the facts as they were set
before him, to classify and repeat the wondrous tales of the Greek poets,
but to leave their origin unexplained. This is practically the position of
Grote; he is content to show that all the parts of a myth hang closely
together, and that any attempt to extract history or philosophy from it
must be arbitrary and futile. To deprive a myth of its kernel and soul,
and call the dry husk that is left a historical fact, is to mistake the
conditions of the problem and the nature of mythology.
It was at this point that the science of comparative mythology stepped in.
Grote had shown that we cannot look for history in mythology, but he had
given up the discovery of the origin of this mythology as a hopeless task.
The same comparative method, however, which has forced nature to disclose
her secrets has also penetrated to the sources of mythology itself. The
Greek myths, like the myths of the other nations of the world, are the
forgotten and misinterpreted records of the beliefs of primitive man, and
of his earliest attempts to explain the phenomena of nature. Restore the
original meaning of the language wherein the myth is clothed, and the
origin of the myth is found. Myths, in fact, are the words of a dead
language to which a wrong sense has been given by a false method of
decipherment. A myth, rightly explained, will tell us the beliefs, the
feelings, and the knowledge of those among whom it first grew up; for the
evidences and monuments of history we must look elsewhere.
But there is an old proverb that "there is no smoke without fire." The war
of Troy or the beleaguerment of Thebes may be but a repetition of the
time-worn story of the battle waged by the bright powers of day round the
battlements of heaven; but there must have been some reason why this story
should have been specially localized in the Troad and at Thebes. Most of
the Greek myths have a background in space and time; and for this
background there must be some historical cause. The cause, however, if it
is to be discovered at all, must be discovered by means of those evidences
which will alone satisfy the critical historian. The localization of a
myth is merely an indication or sign-post pointing out the direction in
which he is to look for his facts. If Greek warriors had never fought in
the plains of Troy, we may be pretty sure that the poems of Homer would
not have brought Akhilles and Agamemnon under the walls of Ilium. If
Phoenician traders had exercised no influence on primæval Greece, Greek
legend would have contained no references to them.
But even the myth itself, when rightly questioned, may be made to yield
some of the facts upon which the conclusions of the historian are based.
We now know fairly well what ideas, usages, and proper names have an Aryan
stamp upon them, and what, on the other hand, belong rather to the Semitic
world. Now there is a certain portion of Greek mythology which bears but
little relationship to the mythology of the kindred Aryan tribes, while it
connects itself very closely with the beliefs and practices of the Semitic
race. Human sacrifice is very possibly one of these, and it is noticeable
that two at least of the legends which speak of human sacrifice--those of
Athamas and Busiris--are associated, the one with the Phoenicians of
Thebes, the other with the Phoenicians of the Egyptian Delta. The whole
cycle of myths grouped about the name of Herakles points as clearly to a
Semitic source as does the myth of Aphrodite and Adonis; and the
extravagant lamentations that accompanied the worship of the Akhæan
Demeter (Herod. v. 61) come as certainly from the East as the olive, the
pomegranate, and the myrtle, the sacred symbols of Athena, of Hera, and of
Aphrodite.[24]
Comparative mythology has thus given us a juster appreciation of the
historical inferences we may draw from the legends of prehistoric Greece,
and has led us back to a recognition of the important part played by the
Phoenicians in the heroic age. Greek culture, it is true, was not the
mere copy of that of Semitic Asia, as scholars once believed, but the
germs of it had come in large measure from an Oriental seed-plot. The
conclusions derived from a scientific study of the myths have been
confirmed and widened by the recent researches and discoveries of
archæology. The spade, it has been said, is the modern instrument for
reconstructing the history of the past, and in no department in history
has the spade been more active of late than in that of Greece. From all
sides light has come upon that remote epoch around which the mist of a
fabulous antiquity had already been folded in the days of Herodotus; from
the islands and shores of the Ægean, from the tombs of Asia Minor and
Palestine, nay, even from the temples and palaces of Egypt and Assyria,
have the materials been exhumed for sketching in something like clear
outline the origin and growth of Greek civilization. From nowhere,
however, have more important revelations been derived than from the
excavations at Mykenæ and Spata, near Athens, and it is with the evidence
furnished by these that I now propose mainly to deal. A personal
inspection of the sites and the objects found upon them has convinced me
of the groundlessness of the doubts which have been thrown out against
their antiquity, as well as of the intercourse and connection to which
they testify with the great empires of Babylonia and Assyria. Mr. Poole
has lately pointed out what materials are furnished by the Egyptian
monuments for determining the age and character of the antiquities of
Mykenæ.[25] I would now draw attention to the far clearer and more
tangible materials afforded by Assyrian art and history.
Two facts must first be kept well in view. One of these is the Semitic
origin of the Greek alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet, originally
derived from the alphabet of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and imported into
their mother-country by the Phoenician settlers of the Delta, was
brought to Greece, not probably by the Phoenicians of Tyre and Sidon,
but by the Aramæans of the Gulf of Antioch, whose nouns ended with the
same "emphatic aleph" that we seem to find in the Greek names of the
letters, _alpha_, _beta_, _gamma_, (_gamla_). Before the introduction of
the simpler Phoenician alphabet, the inhabitants of Asia Minor and the
neighbouring islands appear to have used a syllabary of some seventy
characters, which continued to be employed in conservative Cyprus down to
a very late date; but, so far as we know at present, the Greeks of the
mainland were unacquainted with writing before the Aramæo-Phoenicians
had taught them their phonetic symbols. The oldest Greek inscriptions are
probably those of Thera, now Santorin, where the Phoenicians had been
settled from time immemorial; and as the forms of the characters found in
them do not differ very materially from the forms used on the famous
Moabite Stone, we may infer that the alphabet of Kadmus was brought to the
West at a date not very remote from that of Mesha and Ahab, perhaps about
800 B.C. We may notice that Thera was an island and a Phoenician colony,
and it certainly seems more probable that the alphabet was carried to the
mainland from the islands of the Ægean than that it was disseminated from
the inland Phoenician settlement at Thebes, as the old legends affirmed.
In any case, the introduction of the alphabet implies a considerable
amount of civilizing force on the part of those from whom it was borrowed;
the teachers from whom an illiterate people learns the art of writing are
generally teachers from whom it has previously learnt the other elements
of social culture. A barbarous tribe will use its muscles in the service
of art before it will use its brains; the smith and engraver precede the
scribe. If, therefore, the Greeks were unacquainted with writing before
the ninth century, B.C., objects older than that period may be expected to
exhibit clear traces of Phoenician influence, though no traces of
writing.
The other fact to which I allude is the existence of pottery of the same
material and pattern on all the prehistoric sites of the Greek world,
however widely separated they may be. We find it, for instance, at Mykenæ
and Tiryns, at Tanagra and Athens, in Rhodes, in Cyprus, and in Thera,
while I picked up specimens of it in the neighbourhood of the Treasury of
Minyas and on the site of the Acropolis at Orchomenus. The clay of which
it is composed is of a drab colour, derived, perhaps in all instances,
from the volcanic soil of Thera and Melos, and it is ornamented with
geometrical and other patterns in black and maroon-red. After a time the
patterns become more complicated and artistic; flowers, animal forms, and
eventually human figures, take the place of simple lines, and the pottery
gradually passes into that known as Corinthian or Phoeniko-Greek. It
needs but little experience to distinguish at a glance this early pottery
from the red ware of the later Hellenic period.
Phoenicia, Keft as it was called by the Egyptians, had been brought into
relation with the monarchy of the Nile at a remote date, and among the
Semitic settlers in the Delta or "Isle of Caphtor" must have been natives
of Sidon and the neighbouring towns. After the expulsion of the Hyksos,
the Pharaohs of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties carried their arms
as far as Mesopotamia and placed Egyptian garrisons in Palestine. A
tomb-painting of Thothmes III. represents the Kefa or Phoenicians, clad
in richly-embroidered kilts and buskins, and bringing their tribute of
gold and silver vases and earthenware cups, some in the shape of animals
like the vases found at Mykenæ and elsewhere. Phoenicia, it would seem,
was already celebrated for its goldsmiths' and potters' work, and the
ivory the Kefa are sometimes made to carry shows that their commerce must
have extended far to the east. As early as the sixteenth century B.C.,
therefore, we may conclude that the Phoenicians were a great commercial
people, trading between Assyria and Egypt and possessed of a considerable
amount of artistic skill.
It is not likely that a people of this sort, who, as we know from other
sources, carried on a large trade in slaves and purple, would have been
still unacquainted with the seas and coasts of Greece where both slaves
and the murex or purple-fish were most easily to be obtained. Though the
Phoenician alphabet was unknown in Greece till the ninth century B.C.,
we have every reason to expect to find traces of Phoenician commerce and
Phoenician influence there at least five centuries before. And such
seems to be the case. The excavations carried on in Thera by MM. Fouqué
and Gorceix,[26] in Rhodes by Mr. Newton and Dr. Saltzmann, and in various
other places such as Megara, Athens, and Melos, have been followed by the
explorations of Dr. Schliemann at Hissarlik, Tiryns, and Mykenæ, of
General di Cesnola in Cyprus, and of the Archæological Society of Athens
at Tanagra and Spata.
The accumulations of prehistoric objects on these sites all tell the same
tale, the influence of the East, and more especially of the Phoenicians,
upon the growing civilization of early Greece. Thus in Thera, where a sort
of Greek Pompeii has been preserved under the lava which once overwhelmed
it, we find the rude stone hovels of its primitive inhabitants, with roofs
of wild olive, filled with the bones of dogs and sheep, and containing
stores of barley, spelt, and chickpea, copper and stone weapons, and
abundance of pottery. The latter is for the most part extremely coarse,
but here and there have been discovered vases of artistic workmanship,
which remind us of those carried by the Kefa, and may have been imported
from abroad. We know from the tombs found on the island that the
Phoenicians afterwards settled in Thera among a population in the same
condition of civilization as that which had been overtaken by the great
volcanic eruption. It was from these Phoenician settlers that the
embroidered dresses known as Theræan were brought to Greece; they were
adorned with animals and other figures, similar to those seen upon
Corinthian or Phoeniko-Greek ware.
Now M. Fr. Lenormant has pointed out that much of the pottery used by the
aboriginal inhabitants of Thera is almost identical in form and make with
that found by Dr. Schliemann at Hissarlik, in the Troad, and he concludes
that it must belong to the same period and the same area of civilization.
There is as yet little, if any, trace of Oriental influence; a few of the
clay vases from Thera, and some of the gold workmanship at Hissarlik, can
alone be referred, with more or less hesitation, to Phoenician artists.
We have not yet reached the age when Phoenician trade in the West ceased
to be the sporadic effort of private individuals, and when trading
colonies were established in different parts of the Greek world; Europe is
still unaffected by Eastern culture, and the beginnings of Greek art are
still free from foreign interference. It is only in certain designs on the
terra-cotta discs, believed by Dr. Schliemann to be spindle-whorls, that
we may possibly detect rude copies of Babylonian and Phoenician
intaglios.
Among all the objects discovered at Hissarlik, none have been more
discussed than the vases and clay images in which Dr. Schliemann saw a
representation of an owl-headed Athena. What Dr. Schliemann took for an
owl's head, however, is really a rude attempt to imitate the human face,
and two breasts are frequently moulded in the clay below it. In many
examples the human countenance is unmistakable, and in most of the others
the representation is less rude than in the case of the small marble
statues of Apollo (?) found in the Greek islands, or even of the early
Hellenic vases where the men seem furnished with the beaks of birds. But
we now know that these curious vases are not peculiar to the Troad.
Specimens of them have also been met with in Cyprus, and in these we can
trace the development of the owl-like head into the more perfect
portraiture of the human face.[27] In conservative Cyprus there was not
that break with the past which occurred in other portions of the Greek
world.
Cyprus, in fact, lay midway between Greece and Phoenicia, and was shared
to the last between an Aryan and a Semitic population. The Phoenician
element in the island was strong, if not preponderant; Paphos was a chief
seat of the worship of the Phoenician Astarte, and the Phoenician
Kitium, the Chittim of the Hebrews, took first rank among the Cyprian
towns. The antiquities brought to light by General di Cesnola are of all
ages and all styles--prehistoric and classical, Phoenician and Hellenic,
Assyrian and Egyptian--and the various styles are combined together in the
catholic spirit that characterized Phoenician art.
But we must pause here for a moment to define more accurately what we mean
by Phoenician art. Strictly speaking, Phoenicia had no art of its own;
its designs were borrowed from Egypt and Assyria, and its artists went to
school on the banks of the Nile and the Euphrates. The Phoenician
combined and improved upon his models; the impulse, the origination came
from abroad; the modification and elaboration were his own. He entered
into other men's labours, and made the most of his heritage. The sphinx of
Egypt became Asiatic, and in its new form was transplanted to Nineveh on
the one side and to Greece on the other. The rosettes and other patterns
of the Babylonian cylinders were introduced into the handiwork of
Phoenicia, and so passed on to the West, while the hero of the ancient
Chaldean epic became first the Tyrian Melkarth, and then the Herakles of
Hellas. It is possible, no doubt, that with all this borrowing there was
still something that was original in Phoenician work; such at any rate
seems to be the case with some of the forms given to the vases; but at
present we have no means of determining how far this originality may have
extended. In Assyria, indeed, Phoenician art exercised a great influence
in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.; but it had itself previously
drawn its first inspiration from the empire of the Tigris, and did but
give back the perfect blossom to those from whom it had received the seed.
The workmanship of the ivories and bronze bowls found at Nineveh by Mr.
Layard is thoroughly Phoenician; but it cannot be separated from that of
the purely Assyrian pavements and bas-reliefs with which the palaces were
adorned. The Phoenician art, in fact, traces of which we find from
Assyria to Italy, though based on both Egyptian and Assyrian models, owed
far more to Assyria than it did to Egypt. In art, as in mythology and
religion, Phoenicia was but a carrier and intermediary between East and
West; and just as the Greek legends of Aphrodite and Adonis, of Herakles
and his twelve labours, and of the other borrowed heroes of Oriental story
came in the first instance from Assyria, so did that art and culture which
Kadmus the Phoenician handed on to the Greek race.
But Assyria itself had been equally an adapter and intermediary. The
Semites of Assyria and Babylonia had borrowed their culture and
civilization from the older Accadian race, with its agglutinative
language, which had preceded them in the possession of Chaldea. So
slavishly observant were the Assyrians of their Chaldean models that in a
land where limestone was plentiful they continued to build their palaces
and temples of brick, and to ornament them with those columns and
pictorial representations which had been first devised on the alluvial
plains of Babylonia. To understand Assyrian art, and track it back to its
source, we must go to the engraved gems and ruined temples of primæval
Babylonia. It is true that Egypt may have had some influence on Assyrian
art, at the time when the eighteenth dynasty had pushed its conquests to
the banks of the Tigris; but that influence does not seem to have been
either deep or permanent. Now the art of Assyria is in great measure the
art of Phoenicia, and that again the art of prehistoric Greece. Modern
research has discovered the prototype of Herakles in the hero of a
Chaldean epic composed it may be, four thousand years ago; it has also
discovered the beginnings of Greek columnar architecture and the germs of
Greek art in the works of the builders and engravers of early Chaldea.
When first I saw, five years ago, the famous sculpture which has guarded
the Gate of Lions at Mykenæ for so many centuries, I was at once struck by
its Assyrian character. The lions in form and attitude belong to Assyria,
and the pillar against which they rest may be seen in the bas-reliefs
brought from Nineveh. Here, at all events, there was clear proof of
Assyrian influence; the only question was whether that influence had been
carried through the hands of the Phoenicians or had travelled along the
highroad which ran across Asia Minor, the second channel whereby the
culture of Assyria could have been brought to Greece. The existence of a
similar sculpture over a rock-tomb at Kumbet in Phrygia might seem to
favour the latter view.
The discoveries of Dr. Schliemann have gone far to settle the question.
The pottery excavated at Mykenæ is of the Phoenician type, and the clay
of which is composed has probably come from Thera. The terra-cotta figures
of animals and more especially of a goddess with long robe, crowned head,
and crescent-like arms, are spread over the whole area traversed by the
Phoenicians. The image of the goddess in one form or another has been
found in Thera and Melos, in Naxos and Paros, in Ios, in Sikinos, and in
Anaphos, and M. Lenormant has traced it back to Babylonia and to the
Babylonian representation of the goddess Artemis-Nana.[28] At Tanagra the
image has been found under two forms, both, however, made of the same clay
and in the same style as the figures from Mykenæ. In one the goddess is
upright, as at Mykenæ, with the _polos_ on her head, and the arms either
outspread or folded over the breast; in the other she is sitting with the
arms crossed. Now among the gold ornaments exhumed at Mykenæ are some
square pendants of gold which represent the goddess in this sitting
posture.[29]
The animal forms most commonly met with are those of the lion, the stag,
the bull, the cuttle-fish, and the murex. The last two point unmistakably
to a seafaring race, and more especially to those Phoenician sailors
whose pursuit of the purple-trade first brought them into Greek seas. So
far as I know, neither the polypus nor the murex, nor the butterfly which
often accompanies them have been found in Assyria or Egypt, and we may
therefore see in them original designs of Phoenician art. Mr. Newton has
pointed out that the cuttle-fish (like the dolphin) also occurs among the
prehistoric remains from Ialysos in Rhodes, where, too, pottery of the
same shape and material as that of Mykenæ has been found, as well as beads
of a curious vitreous substance, and rings in which the back of the chaton
is rounded so as to fit the finger. It is clear that the art of Ialysos
belongs to the same age and school as the art of Mykenæ; and as a scarab
of Amenophis III. has been found in one of the Ialysian tombs, it is
possible that the art may be as old as the fifteenth century B.C.
Now Ialysos is not the only Rhodian town which has yielded prehistoric
antiquities. Camirus also has been explored by Messrs. Biliotti and
Saltzmann; and while objects of the same kind and character as those of
Ialysos have been discovered there, other objects have been found by their
side which belong to another and more advanced stage of art. There are
vases of clay and metal, bronze bowls, and the like, which not only
display high finish and skill, but are ornamented with the designs
characteristic of Phoenician workmanship at Nineveh and elsewhere. Thus
we have zones of trees and animals, attempts at the representation of
scenery, and a profusion of ornament, while the influence of Egypt is
traceable in the sphinxes and scarabs, which also occur plentifully. Here,
therefore, at Camirus, there is plain evidence of a sudden introduction of
finished Phoenician art among a people whose art was still rude and
backward, although springing from the same germs as the art of Phoenicia
itself. Two distinct periods in the history of the Ægean thus seem to lie
unfolded before us; one in which Eastern influence was more or less
indirect, content to communicate the seeds of civilization and culture,
and to import such objects as a barbarous race would prize; and another in
which the East was, as it were, transported into the West, and the
development of Greek art was interrupted by the introduction of foreign
workmen and foreign beliefs. This second period was the period of
Phoenician colonization as distinct from that of mere trading
voyages--the period, in fact, when Thebes was made a Phoenician
fortress, and the Phoenician alphabet diffused throughout the Greek
world. It is only in relics of the later part of this period that we can
look for inscriptions and traces of writing, at least in Greece proper; in
the islands and on the coast of Asia Minor, the Cypriote syllabary seems
to have been in use, to be superseded afterwards by the simpler alphabet
of Kadmus. For reasons presently to be stated, I would distinguish the
first period by the name of Phrygian.
Throughout the whole of it, however, the Phoenician trading ships must
have formed the chief medium of intercourse between Asia and Europe. Proof
of this has been furnished by the rock tombs of Spata, which have been
lighted on opportunely to illustrate and explain the discoveries at
Mykenæ. Spata is about nine miles from Athens, on the north-west spur of
Hymettos, and the two tombs hitherto opened are cut in the soft sandstone
rock of a small conical hill. Both are approached by long tunnel-like
entrances, and one of them contains three chambers, leading one into the
other, and each fashioned after the model of a house. No one who has seen
the objects unearthed at Spata can doubt for a moment their close
connection with the Mykenæan antiquities. The very moulds found at Mykenæ
fit the ornaments from Spata, and might easily have been used in the
manufacture of them. It is more especially with the contents of the sixth
tomb, discovered by Mr. Stamatáki in the _enceinte_ at Mykenæ after Dr.
Schliemann's departure, that the Spata remains agree so remarkably. But
there is a strong resemblance between them and the Mykenæan antiquities
generally, in both material, patterns, and character. The cuttle-fish and
the murex appear in both; the same curious spiral designs, and ornaments
in the shape of shells or rudely-formed oxheads; the same geometrical
patterns; the same class of carved work. An ivory in which a lion, of the
Assyrian type, is depicted as devouring a stag, is but a reproduction of a
similar design met with among the objects from Mykenæ, and it is
interesting to observe that the same device, in the same style of art, may
be also seen on a Phoenician gem from Sardinia.[30] Of still higher
interest are other ivories, which, like the antiquities of Camirus, belong
rather to the second than to the first period of Phoenician influence.
One of these represents a column, which, like that above the Gate of
Lions, carries us back to the architecture of Babylonia, while others
exhibit the Egyptian sphinx, as modified by Phoenician artists. Thus the
handle of a comb is divided into two compartments--the lower occupied by
three of these sphinxes, the upper by two others, which have their eyes
fixed on an Assyrian rosette in the middle. Similar sphinxes are engraved
on a silver cup lately discovered at Palestrina, bearing the Phoenician
inscription, in Phoenician letters, "Eshmun-ya'ar, son of Ashta'."[31]
Another ivory has been carved into the form of a human side face,
surmounted by a tiara of four plaits. On the one hand the arrangement of
the hair of the face, the whisker and beard forming a fringe round it, and
the two lips being closely shorn, reminds us of what we find at
Palestrina; on the other hand, the head-dress is that of the figures on
the sculptured rocks of Asia Minor, and of the Hittite princes of
Carchemish. In spite of this Phoenician colouring, however, the
treasures of Spata belong to the earlier part of the Phoenician period,
if not to that which I have called Phrygian: there is as yet no sign of
writing, no trace of the use of iron. But we seem to be approaching the
close of the bronze age in Greece--to have reached the time when the
lions were sculptured over the chief gateway of Mykenæ, and the so-called
treasuries were erected in honour of the dead.
Can any date be assigned, even approximately, to those two periods of
Phoenician influence in Greece? Can we localize the era, so to speak, of
the antiquities discovered at Mykenæ, or fix the epoch at which its kings
ceased to build its long-enduring monuments, and its glory was taken from
it? I think an answer to these questions may be found in a series of
engraved gold rings and prisms found upon its site--the prisms having
probably once served to ornament the neck. In these we can trace a gradual
development of art; which in time becomes less Oriental and more Greek,
and acquires a certain facility in the representation of the human form.
Let us first fix our attention on an engraved gold chaton found, not in
the tombs, but outside the _enceinte_ among the ruins, as it would seem,
of a house.[32] On this we have a rude representation of a figure seated
under a palm-tree, with another figure behind and three more in front, the
foremost being of small size, the remaining two considerably taller and in
flounced dresses. Above are the symbols of the sun and crescent-moon, and
at the side a row of lions' heads. Now no one who has seen this chaton,
and also had any acquaintance with the engraved gems of the archaic period
of Babylonian art, can avoid being struck by the fact that the intaglio is
a copy of one of the latter. The characteristic workmanship of the
Babylonian gems is imitated by punches made in the gold which give the
design a very curious effect. The attitude of the figures is that common
on the Chaldean cylinders; the owner stands in front of the deity, of
diminutive size, and in the act of adoration, while the priests are placed
behind him. The latter wear the flounced dresses peculiar to the early
Babylonian priests; and what has been supposed to represent female
breasts, is really a copy of the way in which the breast of a man is
frequently portrayed on the cylinders.[33] The palm-tree, with its single
fruit hanging on the left side, is characteristically Babylonian; so also
are the symbols that encircle the engraving, the sun and moon and lions'
heads. The chaton of another gold ring, found on the same spot, is covered
with similar animal heads. This, again, is a copy of early Babylonian art,
in which such designs were not unfrequent, though, as they were afterwards
imitated by both Assyrian and Cyprian engravers, too much stress must not
be laid on the agreement.[34] The artistic position and age of the other
ring, however, admits of little doubt. The archaic period of Babylonian
art may be said to close with the rise of Assyria in the fourteenth
century B.C.; and though archaic Babylonian intaglios continued to be
imported into the West down to the time of the Romans, it is not likely
that they were imitated by Western artists after the latter had become
acquainted with better and more attractive models. I think, therefore,
that the two rings may be assigned to the period of archaic Babylonian
power in western Asia, a period that begins with the victories of
Naram-Sin in Palestine in the seventeenth century B.C. or earlier, and
ends with the conquest of Babylon by the Assyrians and the establishment
of Assyrian supremacy. This is also the period to which I am inclined to
refer the introduction among the Phoenicians and Greeks of the column
and of certain geometrical patterns, which had their first home in
Babylonia.[35] The lentoid gems with their rude intaglios, found in the
islands, on the site of Heræum, in the tombs of Mykenæ and elsewhere,
belong to the same age, and point back to the loamy plain of Babylonia
where stone was rare and precious, and whence, consequently, the art of
gem-cutting was spread through the ancient world. We can thus understand
the existence of artistic designs and other evidences of civilizing
influence among a people who were not yet acquainted with the use of iron.
The early Chaldean Empire, in spite of the culture to which it had
attained, was still in the bronze age; iron was almost unknown, and its
tools and weapons were fashioned of stone, bone, and bronze. Had the
Greeks and the Phoenicians before them received their first lessons in
culture from Egypt or from Asia Minor, where the Khalybes and other allied
tribes had worked in iron from time immemorial, they would probably have
received this metal at the same time. But neither at Hissarlik nor at
Mykenæ is there any trace of an iron age.
The second period of Western art and civilization is represented by some
of the objects found at Mykenæ in the tombs themselves. The intaglios have
ceased to be Babylonian, and have become markedly Assyrian. First of all
we have a hunting scene, a favourite subject with Assyrian artists, but
quite unknown to genuine Hellenic art. The disposition of the figures is
that usual in Assyrian sculpture, and, like the Assyrian king, the
huntsman is represented as riding in a chariot. A comparison of this
hunting scene with the bas-reliefs on the tombstones which stood over the
graves shows that they belong to the same age, while the spiral
ornamentation of the stones is essentially Assyrian. Equally Assyrian,
though better engraved, is a lion on one of the gold prisms, which might
have been cut by an Assyrian workman, so true is it to its Oriental model,
and after this I would place the representation of a struggle between a
man (perhaps Herakles) and a lion, in which, though the lion and attitude
of the combatants are Assyrian, the man is no longer the Assyrian hero
Gisdhubar, but a figure of more Western type. In another intaglio,
representing a fight between armed warriors, the art has ceased to be
Assyrian, and is struggling to become native. We seem to be approaching
the period when Greece gave over walking in Eastern leading-strings, and
began to step forward firmly without help. As I believe, however, that the
tombs within the _enceinte_ are of older date than the Treasuries outside
the Acropolis, or the Gate of Lions which belongs to the same age, it is
plain that we have not yet reached the time when Assyro-Phoenician
influence began to decline in Greece. The lions above the gate would alone
be proof to the contrary.
But, in fact, Phoenician influence continued to be felt up to the end of
the seventh century B.C. Passing by the so-called Corinthian vases, or the
antiquities exhumed by General di Cesnola in Cyprus, where the
Phoenician element was strong, we have numerous evidences of the fact
from all parts of Greece. Two objects of bronze discovered at Olympia may
be specially signalized. One of these is an oblong plate, narrower at one
end than at the other, ornamented with _repousse_ work, and divided into
four compartments. In the first compartment are figures of the nondescript
birds so often seen on the "Corinthian" pottery; in the next come two
Assyrian gryphons standing, as usual, face to face; while the third
represents the contest of Herakles with the Kentaur, thoroughly Oriental
in design. The Kentaur has a human forefront, covered, however, with hair;
his tail is abnormally long, and a three-branched tree rises behind him.
The fourth and largest compartment contains the figure of the Asiatic
goddess with the four wings at the back, and a lion, held by the hind leg,
in either hand. The face of the goddess is in profile. The whole design is
Assyro-Phoenician, and is exactly reproduced on some square gold plates,
intended probably to adorn the breast, presented to the Louvre by the Duc
de Luynes. The other object to which I referred is a bronze dish,
ornamented on the inside with _repousse_ work, which at first sight looks
Egyptian, but is really that Phoenician modification of Egyptian art so
common in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. An inscription in the
Aramaic characters of the so-called Sidonian branch of the Phoenician
alphabet is cut on the outside, and reads: "Belonging to Neger, son of
Miga."[36] As the word used for "son" is the Aramaic _bar_ and not the
Phoenician _ben_, we may conclude that the owner of the dish had come
from northern Syria. It is interesting to find a silver cup embossed with
precisely the same kind of design, and also bearing an inscription in
Phoenician letters, among the treasures discovered in a tomb at
Palestrina, the ancient Præneste, more than a year ago. This inscription
is even briefer than the other: "Eshmunya'ar son of 'Ashtâ,"[37] where,
though _ben_ is employed, the father's name has an Aramaic form. Helbig
would refer these Italian specimens of Phoenician skill to the
Carthaginian epoch, partly on the ground that an African species of ape
seems sometimes represented on them;[38] in this case they might be as
late as the fifth century before the Christian era.
During the earlier part of the second period of Phoenician influence,
Phoenicia and the Phoenician colonies were not the only channel by
which the elements of Assyrian culture found their way into the West. The
monuments and religious beliefs of Asia Minor enable us to trace their
progress from the banks of the Euphrates and the ranges of the Taurus,
through Cappadocia and Phrygia, to the coasts and islands of the Ægean.
The near affinity of Greek and Phrygian is recognized even by Plato;[39]
the legends of Midas and Gordius formed part of Greek mythology, and the
royal house of Mykenæ was made to come with all its wealth from the golden
sands of the Paktolus; while on the other hand the cult of Mâ, of Attys,
or of the Ephesian Artemis points back to an Assyrian origin. The
sculptures found by Perrot[40] and Texier constitute a link between the
prehistoric art of Greece and that of Asia Minor; the spiral ornaments
that mark the antiquities of Mykenæ are repeated on the royal tombs of
Asia Minor; and the ruins of Sardis, where once ruled a dynasty derived by
Greek writers from Ninus or Nineveh, "the son of Bell," the grandson of
the Assyrian Herakles,[41] may yet pour a flood of light on the earlier
history of Greece. But it was rather in the first period, which I have
termed Phrygian, than in the second, that the influence of Asia Minor was
strongest. The figure of the goddess riding on a leopard, with mural crown
and peaked shoes, on the rock-tablets of Pterium,[42] is borrowed rather
from the cylinders of early Babylonia than from the sculptures of Assyria;
and the Hissarlik collection connects itself more with the primitive
antiquities of Santorin than with the later art of Mykenæ and Cyprus. We
have already seen, however, the close relationship that exists between
some of the objects excavated at Mykenæ and what we may call the
pre-Phoenician art of Ialysos,--that is to say, the objects in which the
influence of the East is indirect, and not direct. The discovery of
metallurgy is associated with Dodona, where the oracle long continued to
be heard in the ring of a copper chaldron, and where M. Karapanos has
found bronze plates with the geometrical and circular patterns which
distinguish the earliest art of Greece; now Dodona is the seat of primæval
Greek civilization, the land of the Selloi or Helloi, of the Graioi
themselves, and of Pelasgian Zeus, while it is to the north that the
legends of Orpheus, of Musæus, and of other early civilizers looked back.
But even at Dodona we may detect traces of Asiatic influence in the part
played there by the doves, as well as in the story of Deucalion's deluge,
and it may, perhaps, be not too rash to conjecture that even before the
days of Phoenician enterprise and barter, an echo of Babylonian
civilization had reached Greece through the medium of Asia Minor, whence
it was carried, partly across the bridge formed by the islands of the
Archipelago, partly through the mainland of Thrace and Epirus. The
Hittites, with their capital at Carchemish, seem to have been the centre
from which this borrowed civilization was spread northward and westward.
Here was the home of the art which characterizes Asia Minor, and we have
only to compare the bas-relief of Pterium with the rock sculptures found
by Mr. Davis associated with "Hamathite" hieroglyphics at Ibreer, in
Lycaonia,[43] to see how intimate is the connection between the two. These
hieroglyphics were the still undeciphered writing of the Hittite tribes
and if, as seems possible, the Cypriote syllabary were derived from them,
they would be a testimony to the western spread of Hittite influence at a
very early epoch. The Cypriote characters adopted into the alphabets of
Lycia and Karia, as well as the occurrence of the same characters on a
hone and some of the terra-cotta discs found by Dr. Schliemann at
Hissarlik, go to show that this influence would have extended, at any
rate, to the coasts of the sea.
The traces of Egyptian influence, on the contrary, are few and faint. No
doubt the Phoenician alphabet was ultimately of Egyptian origin, no
doubt, too, that certain elements of Phoenician art were borrowed from
Egypt, but before these were handed on to the West, they had first been
profoundly modified by the Phoenician settlers in the Delta and in
Canaan. The influence exercised immediately by Egypt upon Greece belongs
to the historic period; the legends which saw an Egyptian emigrant in
Kekrops or an Egyptian colony in the inhabitants of Argos were fables of a
late date. Whatever intercourse existed between Egypt and Greece in the
prehistoric period was carried on, not by the Egyptians, but by the
Phoenicians of the Delta; it was they who brought the scarabs of a
Thothmes or an Amenophis to the islands of the Ægean, like their
descendants afterwards in Italy, and the proper names found on the
Egyptian monuments of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, which
certain Egyptologists have identified with those of Greece and Asia Minor,
belong rather, I believe, to Libyan and Semitic tribes.[44] Like the
sphinxes at Spata, the indications of intercourse with Egypt met with at
Mykenæ prove nothing more than the wide extent of Phoenician commerce
and the existence of Phoenician colonies at the mouths of the Nile.
Ostrich-eggs covered with stucco dolphins have been found not only at
Mykenæ, but also in the grotto of Polledrara near Vulci in Italy; the
Egyptian porcelain excavated at Mykenæ is painted to represent the fringed
dress of an Assyrian or a Phoenician, not of an Egyptian; and though a
gold mask belonging to Prince Kha-em-Uas, and resembling the famous masks
of Mykenæ, has brought to the Louvre from an Apis chamber, a similar mask
of size was discovered last year in a tomb on the site of Aradus. Such
intercourse, however, as existed between Greece and the Delta must have
been very restricted; otherwise we should surely have some specimens of
writing, some traces of the Phoenician alphabet. It would not have been
left to the Aramæans of Syria to introduce the "Kadmeian letters" into
Greece, and Mykenæ, rather than Thebes, would have been made the centre
from which they were disseminated. Indeed, we may perhaps infer that even
the coast of Asia Minor, near as it was to the Phoenician settlements at
Kamirus and elsewhere, could have held but little intercourse with the
Phoenicians of Egypt from the fact that the Cypriote syllabary was so
long in use upon it, and that the alphabets afterwards employed were
derived only indirectly from the Phoenician through the medium of the
Greek.
One point more now alone needs to be noticed. The long-continued influence
upon early Greek culture which we ascribe to the Phoenicians cannot but
have left its mark upon the Greek vocabulary also. Some at least of the
names given by the Phoenicians to the objects of luxury they brought
with them must have been adopted by the natives of Hellas. We know that
this is the case with the letters of the alphabet; is it also the case
with other words? If not, analogy would almost compel us to treat the
evidences that have been enumerated of Phoenician influence as illusory,
and to fall back upon the position of O. K. Müller and his school. By way
of answer I would refer to the list of Greek words, the Semitic origin of
which admits of no doubt, lately given by Dr. August Müller in
Bezzenberger's "Beitrage zur Kunde der indogermanischen Sprachen."[45]
Amongst these we find articles of luxury like "linen," "shirt,"
"sackcloth," "myrrh," and "frankincense," "galbanum" and "cassia,"
"cinnamon" and "soap," "lyres" and "wine-jars," "balsam" and "cosmetics,"
as well, possibly, as "fine linen" and "gold," along with such evidences
of trade and literature as the "pledge," "the writing tablet," and the
"shekel." If these were the only instances of Semitic tincture, they would
be enough to prove the early presence of the Semitic Phoenicians in
Greece. But we must remember that they are but samples of a class, and
that many words borrowed during the heroic age may have dropped out of use
or been conformed to the native part of the vocabulary long before the
beginning of the written literature, while it would be in the lesser known
dialects of the islands that the Semitic element was strongest. We know
that the dialect of Cyprus was full of importations from the East.
In what precedes I have made no reference to the Homeric poems, and the
omission may be thought strange. But Homeric illustrations of the presence
of the Phoenicians in Greece will occur to every one, while both the
Iliad and the Odyssey in their existing form are too modern to be quoted
without extreme caution. A close investigation of their language shows
that it is the slow growth of generations; Æolic formulæ from the lays
first recited in the towns of the Troad are embodied in Ionic poems where
old Ionic, new Ionic, and even Attic jostle against one another, and
traditional words and phrases are furnished with mistaken meanings or new
forms coined by false analogy. It is difficult to separate the old from
the new, to say with certainty that this allusion belongs to the heroic
past, this to the Homer of Theopompus and Euphorion, the contemporary of
the Lydian Gyges. The art of Homer is not the art of Mykenæ and of the
early age of Phoenician influence; iron is already taking the place of
bronze, and the shield of Akhilles or the palace of Alkinous bear witness
to a developed art which has freed itself from its foreign bonds. Six
times are Phoenicia and the Phoenicians mentioned in the Odyssey, once
in the Iliad;[46] elsewhere it is Sidon and the Sidonians that represented
them, never Tyre.[47] Such passages, therefore, cannot belong to the epoch
of Tyrian supremacy, which goes back, at all events, to the age of David,
but rather to the brief period when the Assyrian king Shalmaneser laid
siege to Tyre, and his successor Sargon made Sidon powerful at its
expense. This, too, was the period when Sargon set up his record in
Cyprus, "the isle of Yavnan" or the Ionians, when Assyria first came into
immediate contact with the Greeks, and when Phoenician artists worked at
the court of Nineveh and carried their wares to Italy and Sardinia. But it
was not the age to which the relics of Mykenæ, in spite of paradoxical
doubts, reach back, nor that in which the sacred bull of Astarte carried
the Phoenician maiden Europa to her new home in the west.
A. H. SAYCE, in _Contemporary Review_.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] See E. Curtins: Die griechische Götterlehre vom geschichtlichen
Standpunkt, in _Preussische Jahrbucher_, xxxvi. pp. 1-17. 1875.
[25] _Contemporary Review_, January, 1878.
[26] See Fouqué's Mission Scientifique á l'île de Santorin (Archives des
Missions 2e série, iv. 1867); Gorceix in the Bulletin de l'Ecole francaise
d'Athènes, i.
[27] See, for example, Di Cesnola's _Cyprus_, pp. 401, 402.
[28] _Gazette Archéologique_, ii-. 1, 3.
[29] See Schliemann's Mycenæ and Tiryns, pl. 273.
[30] Given by La Marmora in the Memorie della Reale Academia delle Scienze
di Torino (1854), vol. xiv., pl. 2, fig. 63.
[31] Given in the Monumenti d. Instituto Romano, 1876.
[32] Schliemann: Mycenæ and Tiryns, p. 530.
[33] See, for instance, the example given in Rawlinson's Ancient
Monarchies (1st edit.), i. p. 118, where the flounced priest has what
looks like a woman's breast. Dancing boys and men in the East still wear
these flounces, which are variously coloured (see Loftus: Chaldea and
Susiana, p. 22; George Smith: Assyrian Discoveries, p. 130).
[34] See, for example, Layard: Nineveh and Babylon, pp. 604, 606; Di
Cesnola: Cyprus, pl. 31, No. 7; pl. 32, No. 19. A copy of the Mykenæan
engraving is given in Schliemann's Mycenæ and Tiryns, pl. 531.
[35] More especially the examples in Rawlinson's Ancient Monarchies, iii.
p. 403, and i. 413. For Mykenæan examples see Schliemann's Mykenæ and
Tiryns, ppl. 149, 152, &c. Some of the more peculiar patterns from Mykenæ
resemble the forms assumed by the "Hamathite" hieroglyphics in the
unpublished inscription copied by Mr. George Smith from the back of a
mutilated statue at Jerablûs (Carchemish).
[36] LNGR. BR. MIGA'.
[37] ASHMNYA'R. BNA' SHTA.
[38] Annali d. Istituto Romano, 1876.
[39] Kratylus, 410 A.D.
[40] Exploration Archéologique de la Galatie et de la Bithynie.
[41] See Herodotus, i.7.
[42] Texier: Description de l'Asie Mineure, i. 1, pl. 78.
[43] Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology, iv. 2, 1876.
[44] I have given the reasons of my scepticism in the _Academy_, of May
30, 1874. Brugsch Bey, the leading authority on the geography of the
Egyptian monuments, would now identify those names with those tribes in
Kolkhis, and its neighbourhood.
[45] i. pp. 273-301 (1877).
[46] _Phoenicia_, Od. iv. 83; xiv. 291. _Phoenicians_, Od. xiii. 272; xv.
415. _A Phoenician_, Od. xiv. 288. _A Phoenician woman_, Od. xiv. 288; Il.
xiv. 321.
[47] _Sidon_, _Sidonia_, Il. vi. 291; Od. xiii. 285; xv. 425. _Sidonians_,
Il. vi. 290; Od. iv. 84, 618; xv. 118.
SOME GOSSIP ABOUT LEICESTER SQUARE.
In old-world London, Leicester Square played a much more important part
than it does to-day. It was then the chosen refuge of royalty and the home
of wit and genius. Time was when it glittered with throngs of
lace-bedizened gallants; when it trembled beneath the chariot-wheels of
Beauty and Fashion; when it re-echoed with the cries of jostling chairmen
and link-boys; when it was trodden by the feet of the greatest men of a
great epoch--Newton and Swift, Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and a host of
others more or less distinguished. Mr. Tom Taylor, in his interesting work
entitled "Leicester Square," tells us that the vicissitudes of a London
quarter generally tend downwards through a regular series of decades. It
is first fashionable; then it is professional; then it becomes a favourite
locality for hotels and lodging-houses; then the industrial element
predominates, and then not infrequently a still lower depth is reached.
Leicester Square has been no exception to this rule. Its reputation in
fact was becoming very shady indeed, when the improvement of its central
inclosure gave it somewhat of a start upwards and turned attention to its
early history.
Of old, many of these grand doings took place at Leicester House, which
was the first house in the Square. It was built by Robert Sidney, Earl of
Leicester, a staunch Royalist, somewhere about 1636. His sons, Viscount
Lisle and the famous Algernon Sidney, grew up less of Royalists than he
was; and to Leicester House, with the sanction and welcome of its head,
came many of the more prominent Republicans of the day, Vane and Neville,
Milton and Bradshaw, Ludlow and Lambert. The cream of history lies not so
much in a bare notation of facts as in the little touches of nature and
manners which reproduce for us the actual human life of a former age, and
much of this may be gleaned from the history of the Sidneys. They were an
interesting family, alike from their rank, their talents, their personal
beauty, and the vicissitudes of their fortunes. The Countess was a clever
managing woman; and her letters to her absent lord when ambassador in
France convey to us many pleasant details of the home-life at Leicester
House. Still more charming is it to read the pretty little billets
addressed to the Earl by his elder girls. Of these six beautiful daughters
of the house of Sidney, four were married and two died in the dawn of
early womanhood. Of the younger of these, Lady Elizabeth, the father has a
touching entry in his journal. After narrating her death, he adds: "She
had to the last the most angelical countenance and beauty, and the most
heavenly disposition and temper of mind that I think were ever seen in so
young a creature."
With her death the merry happy family life at Leicester House drew to a
close. The active bustling mother, whose influence had brought the
different jarring chords into harmony, died a few mouths afterwards; and
the busy years as they sped onwards, while consummating the fall of
Charles and consolidating the power of Cromwell, also put great and
growing disunion between the Sidney brothers. At the Restoration, Algernon
was in exile; Lord Lisle's stormy temper had alienated him from his
father; the Earl's favourite son-in-law was dead; of the three who
remained he was neither proud nor fond; and lonely and sick at heart, he
grew weary of the splendid home from which the fair faces of his handsome
children had gone for ever, and made preparations to leave it. He was
presented to Charles II.; and immediately afterwards retired to Penshurst
in Kent; and Leicester House was let, first to the ambassadors of the
United Provinces; and then to a more remarkable tenant, Elizabeth Stewart,
the ill-fated Princess and Queen of Bohemia. She had left England in 1613
a lovely happy girl, the bride of the man she loved, life stretching all
rainbow-hued before her. She returned to it a weary haggard woman of
sixty-five, who had drunk to the dregs of every possible cup of
disappointment and sorrow. Her presence was very unwelcome, as that of the
unfortunate often is. Charles II., her nephew, was very loath indeed to
have the pleasure of receiving her as a guest; but she returned to London
whether he would or not, and Leicester house was taken for her. There she
languished for a few months in feeble and broken health, and there, on the
anniversary of her wedding-day, she died.
The house immediately to the west of Leicester House belonged to the
Marquis of Aylesbury; but in 1698 it was occupied by the Marquis of
Caermarthen, who was appointed by King William III. cicerone and guide to
Peter the Great when he came in the January of that year to visit England.
Peter's great qualities have long been done full justice to; but in the
far-off January of 1698 he appeared to the English as by no means a very
august-looking potentate; he had the manners and appearance of an unkempt
barbarian, and his pastimes were those of a coal-heaver. His favourite
exercise in the mornings was to run a barrow through and through Evelyn's
trim holly-hedges at Deptford; and the state in which he left his pretty
house there is not to be described. His chief pleasure, when the duties of
the day were over, was to drink all night with the Marquis in his house at
Leicester Fields, the favourite tipple of the two distinguished topers
being brandy spiced with pepper; or sack, of which the Czar is reported to
have drunk eight bottles one day after dinner. Among other sights in
London, the Marquis took him to see Westminster Hall in full term. "Who
are all these men in wigs and gowns?" he asked. "Lawyers," was the answer.
"Lawyers!" he exclaimed. "Why, I have only two in my dominions, and when I
get back, I intend to hang one of them."
In January 1712 Leicester House, which was then occupied by the imperial
resident, received another distinguished visitor in the person of Prince
Eugene, one of the greatest captains of the age. In appearance he was a
little sallow wizened old man, with one shoulder higher than the other. A
soldier of fortune, whose origin was so humble as to be unknown, his
laurels were stained neither by rapacity nor self-seeking; and in all the
vicissitudes of his eventful life he bore himself like a hero, and a
gentleman in the truest and fullest acceptation of the word. Dean Swift
was also at this time in lodgings in Leicester Fields, noting with clear
acute unpitying vision the foibles and failings of all around him, and
writing to Stella from time to time after his cynical fashion, "how the
world is going mad after Prince Eugene, and how he went to court also, but
could not see him, the crowd was so great."
A labyrinth of courts, inns, and stable-yards had gradually filled up the
space between the royal mews and Leicester Fields; and between 1680 and
1700 several new streets were opened through these; one reason for the
opening of them being the great influx of French refugees into London, on
the occasion of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Many of
these exiles settled in and around Leicester Fields, and for their use
several chapels were built. The neighbourhood has ever since been a resort
of French immigrants.
In one of these streets opening into Leicester Square, St. Martin's
Street, Sir Isaac Newton lived for the last sixteen years of his life. The
house in which he lived looks dingy enough now; but in those days it was
considered a very good residence indeed, and Like Leicester House was
frequented by the best company in the fashionable world. The genius and
reputation of its master attracted scientific and learned visitors; and
the beauty of his niece, Mrs. Catharine Barton, drew to her feet all the
more distinguished wits and beaux of the time.
Between 1717 and 1760 Leicester House became what Pennant calls "the
pouting-place of princes," being for almost all that time in the
occupation of a Prince of Wales who was living in fierce opposition to the
reigning king. In 1718 the Prince of Wales having had a furious quarrel
with his father George I., on the occasion of the christening of the
Prince's son George William, left St. James's, and took Leicester House at
a yearly rent of five hundred pounds; and until he succeeded to the throne
in 1727, it was his town residence.
Here he held his court--a court not by any means strait-laced; a gay
little court at first; a court whose selfish intrigues and wild frolics
and madcap adventures and humdrum monotony live for us still in the
sparkling pages of Horace Walpole; or are painted in with vivid clearness
of touch and execution, but with a darker brush, by Hervey, Pope's Lord
Fanny, who was a favourite with his mistress the handsome accomplished
Caroline, Princess of Wales. Piloted by one or other of these exact
historians, we enter the chamber of the gentlewomen-in-waiting, and are
introduced to the maids-of-honour, to fair Mary Lepell, to charming Mrs.
Bellenden, to pensive, gentle Mrs. Howard. We see them eat Westphalia ham
of a morning, and then set out with their royal master for a
helter-skelter ride over hedges and ditches, on borrowed hacks. No wonder
Pope pitied them; and on their return, who should they fall in with but
that great poet himself! They are good to him in their way, these saucy
charming maids-of-honour, and so they take the frail little man under
their protection and give him his dinner; and then he finishes off the
day, he tells us, by walking three hours in the moonlight with Mary
Lepell. We can imagine the affected compliments he paid her and the
burlesque love he made to her; and the fun she and her sister
maids-of-honour would have laughing over it all, when she went back to
Leicester House and he returned to his pretty villa at Twickenham.
As the Prince grew older his court became more and more dull, till at last
it was almost deserted, when on the 14th of June 1727 the loungers in its
half-empty chambers were roused by sudden news--George I. was dead; and
Leicester House was thronged by a sudden rush of obsequious courtiers,
among whom was the late king's prime-minister, bluff, jolly, coarse Sir
Robert Walpole. No one paid any attention to him, for every one knew that
his disgrace was sealed; the new king had never been at any pains to
conceal his dislike to him. Sir Robert, however, knew better; he was quite
well aware who was to be the real ruler of England now; and he knew that
the Princess Caroline had already accepted him, just as she accepted La
Walmoden and her good Howard; and so all alone in his corner he chuckled
to himself as he saw the crowd of sycophants elbow and jostle and push
poor Lady Walpole as she tried to make her way to the royal feet. Caroline
saw it too, and with a flash of half-scornful mischief lighting up her
shrewd eyes, said with a smile: "Sure, there I see a friend." Instantly
the human stream parted, and made way for her Ladyship.
In 1728 Frederick, the eldest son of George and Caroline, arrived from
Hanover, where he had remained since his birth in 1707. It was a fatal
mistake; he came to England a stranger to his parents, and with his place
in their hearts already filled by his brother. It was inevitable that
where there was no mutual love, distrust and alienation should come, as in
no long time they did, with the result that the same pitiful drama was
played out again on the same stage. In 1743 Frederick Prince of Wales took
Leicester House and held his receptions there. He was fond of gaiety, and
had a succession of balls, masques, plays, and supper-parties. His tastes,
as was natural considering his rearing, were foreign, and Leicester House
was much frequented by foreigners of every grade. Desnoyers the
dancing-master was a favourite habitué, as was also the charlatan
St-Germain. In the midst of all this fiddling and buffoonery the Prince
fell ill; but not so seriously as to cause uneasiness to any one around
him; consequently all the world was taken by surprise when he suddenly
died one morning in the arms of his friend the dancing-master. After his
death his widow remained at Leicester House, and like a sensible woman as
she was, made her peace with the king her father-in-law, who ever
afterwards shewed himself very kind and friendly to her.
In October 1760 George III. was proclaimed king; and again a crowd of
courtiers thronged to Leicester House to kiss the hand of the new
sovereign. For six years longer the Princess of Wales continued to live at
Leicester House; and there in 1765 her youngest son died, and the
following year she removed to Carlton House.
While the quarrel between George II. and Frederick was at its fiercest,
the central inclosure of Leicester Square was re-arranged very elegantly
according to the taste of the day; and an equestrian statue of George I.,
which had belonged to the first Duke of Chandos and had been bought at the
sale of his effects, was set up in front of Leicester House, where it
remained, a dazzling object at first, in all the glory of gilding, which
passed with the populace for gold; but latterly a most wretched relic of
the past, an eyesore, which was removed in 1874 in the course of Baron
Grant's improvements.
Leicester Square had other tenants beside Sir Isaac Newton, compared with
whom courtiers and gallants and fine gentlemen and ladies look very small
indeed. Hogarth lived in this street, and so did Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Hogarth's house was the last but two on the east side of the Square. Here
he established himself, a young struggling man, with Jane Thornhill, the
wife with whom he had made a stolen love-match. In this house, with the
quaint sign of the Golden Head over the door, he worked, not as painters
generally do, at a multitude of detached pieces, but depicting with his
vivid brush a whole series of popular allegories on canvas. When he became
rich, as in process of time he did, he had a house at Chiswick; but he
still retained the Golden Head as his town-house, and in 1764 returned to
it to die.
In No. 47 Sir Joshua Reynolds lived, and painted those charming portraits
which have immortalised for us all that was most beautiful and famous in
his epoch. He was a kindly genial lovable man, fond of society, and with a
liking for display. He had a wonderful carriage, with the four seasons
curiously painted in on the panels, and the wheels ornamented with carved
foliage and gilding. The servants in attendance on this chariot wore
silver-laced liveries; and as he had no time to drive in it himself, he
made his sister take a daily airing in it, much to her discomfort, for she
was a homely little lady with very simple tastes. He was a great dinner
giver; and as it was his custom to ask every pleasant person he met
without any regard to the preparation made to receive them, it may be
conjectured that there was often a want of the commonest requisites of the
dinner-table. Even knives, forks, and glasses could not always be procured
at first. But although his dinners partook very much of the nature of
unceremonious scrambles, they were thoroughly enjoyable. Whatever was
awanting, there was always cheerfulness and the pleasant kindly
interchange of thought. In July 1792 Sir Joshua died in his own house in
Leicester Square; and within a few hours of his death, an obituary notice
of him was written by Burke, the manuscript of which was blotted with his
tears.
In No. 28, on the eastern side of the Square, the celebrated anatomist
John Hunter lived. Like most distinguished men of the day, he sat to Sir
Joshua Reynolds for his portrait; but was so restless and preoccupied that
he made a very bad sitter. At last one day he fell into a reverie. The
happy moment had come; Sir Joshua, with his instinctive tact, caught the
expression and presented to us the great surgeon in one of his most
characteristic attitudes. The other celebrated surgeons, Cruickshank and
Charles Bell, also lived in this Square. The house in which Bell resided
for many years was large and ruinous, and had once been inhabited by
Speaker Onslow. Here he set up his Museum, and began to lecture on
anatomy, having for a long time, he writes, scarcely forty pupils to
lecture to.
During all the later portion of its history Leicester Square has been
famous for shows. In 1771 Sir Ashton Lever exhibited a large and curious
Museum in Leicester House. In 1796 Charles Dibdin built at Nos. 2 and 3,
on the east side of Leicester Square, a small theatre in which he gave an
entertainment consisting of an interesting medley of anecdote and song. In
1787 Miss Linwood opened her gallery of pictures in needlework, an
exhibition which lasted forty-seven years, for the last thirty-five of
which it was exhibited at Savile House, a building which was destroyed by
fire in 1865.
After Miss Linwood's, one of the best shows in Leicester Square was
Burford's Panorama, which is now numbered with the things that were, its
site being occupied by a French chapel and school. In 1851 a new show was
inaugurated by Mr. Wylde the geographer. It consisted of a monster globe
sixty feet in diameter, which occupied the central dome of a building
erected in the garden of the Square. The world was figured in relief on
the inside of it, and it was viewed from several galleries at different
elevations. It was exhibited for ten years, and was then taken down by its
proprietor, owing to a dispute concerning the ownership of the garden. Out
of this case, which was decided in 1867, the proceedings originated which
resulted in the purchase and renovation of the garden by Baron Grant, who
having once more made it trim and neat, handed it over to the Board of
Works.--_Chambers's Journal._
A WOMAN'S LOVE.
A SLAVONIAN STUDY.
Those races that have not undergone the beneficial and domesticating
influences of civilisation, and that are isolated from the more cultured
nations, possess to an excess the different qualities or impulses inherent
to our nature. Amongst the emotions that move the heart of man, love is
certainly the one that has the greatest empire over him; it rules the soul
so imperiously that all the other passions are crushed by it. It makes
cowards of the bravest men, and gives courage to the timid. Love is,
indeed, the great motive-power of life.
Our passions and our emotions are, however, more subdued than those of the
semi-civilised nations; for, in the first place, we undergo the softening
influences of education, and secondly, we are more or less under the
restraint of the rules which govern society. Besides this, our mind is
usually engrossed by the numerous cares which our state of living
necessitates; for we are not like them, contented with little; on the
contrary, instead of being satisfied with what is necessary, we require
luxuries and superfluities, the procurement of which takes up a
considerable portion of our energy and our mental activity.
The Slavonians, and more especially those belonging to the southern
regions, such as the Dalmatians and Montenegrins, are, as a general rule,
very passionate; ardent in their affections, they are likewise given to
anger, resentment, and hatred, the generic sister passion of love.
The Slavonian women are, however, not indolent, nor do they ever indulge
in idle dreams; for they are not only occupied with the household cares,
but they also take a share, and not the smallest or the slightest, of
those toils which in other countries devolve upon the men alone. They
therefore, in the manly labours of the field, not only get prematurely
old, but they hardly ever possess much grace, slenderness, or delicate
complexions. No Slavonian woman, for instance, is ever _mignonne_. They,
in compensation, acquire in health, and perhaps in real æsthetic beauty of
proportions, what they lose in prettiness or delicacy of appearance,
consequently they never suffer from vapours or from the numerous nervous
complaints to which the generality of our ladies are subjected; the
natural result of this state of things is _mens sana in corpore sano_;
this is doubtless the reason why Slavonian women are, as a general rule,
fond mothers and faithful wives.
They are certainly not endowed with that charming refinement, the
_morbidezza_ of manners which but too often is but a mask covering a
morbid selfish disposition, a hypocritical and false nature. Though
ignorant, they are neither void of natural good sense nor wit; they only
want that smattering of worldly knowledge which the contact of society
imparts, and which but too often covers nothing but frivolity, gross
ignorance, and conceit. Their conversation is, perhaps, not peculiarly
attractive; for being simple and artless, speech was not given to them as
a means of disguising their thoughts; their lips only disclose the
fullness of their hearts. Conversation is, besides, a gift conferred to
few; and even in our polite circles not many persons can converse in an
interesting manner, and fewer can be witty without backbiting; moreover,
if man were suddenly to become transparent, would he not have to blush for
the frivolous demonstrations of friendship daily interchanged in our
artificial state of society?
The different amusements that absorb so much of our time and occupy our
minds are unknown in Slavonian countries; the daily occupations and the
details of the toilet do not captivate the whole attention; so that when a
simple affection is awakening in the heart of a man or of a woman, it by
degrees pervades the whole soul and the whole mind, and a strong and
ardent passion usually ensues. Moreover, amongst those simple-minded
sincere people flirtations are generally unknown; yet when they do love,
their affections are genuine; they never exchange amongst each other those
false coins bearing Cupid's effigy, and known as coquetry; for their lips
only utter what their hearts really feel. People there do not delight in
playing with the fire of love, or trying how far they can with impunity
make game of sentiments which should be held sacred. Amongst the virile
maidens of Slavonia many of them therefore have virgin hearts, that is to
say, artless souls, fresh to all the tender sentiments; the reason of this
is, that from the age of fifteen they do not trifle with their affections
until they have become so callous and sceptical that marriage is merely
wealth or a position in life. Men do not first waste away all the tender
emotions which the human heart is capable of, and then settle down into a
_mariage de raison_.
The following story, which happened about a century ago, will serve as an
illustration of the power of love amongst the Slavonians; it is, indeed, a
kind of repetition of the fate which attended the lovers of Sestos and
Abydos. This, however, is no legend, but an historical fact; the place
where this tragedy happened was the island of St. Andrea, situated between
those of Malfi and Stagno, not far from the town of Ragusa.
Though no Musæus has immortalised this story by his verses, it is,
however, recorded in the "Revista Dalmata" (1859), in the "Annuario
Spalatino" of the same year, as well as other Slavonian periodicals.
The hero of this story, whose Christian name was Teodoro, belonged to one
of the wealthiest patrician families of Ragusa, his father being, it is
said, Rector of the Republic. He was a young man of a grave character, but
withal of a gentle and tender disposition; he not only possessed great
talents, but also great culture, for his time was entirely given up to
study.
One day, the young patrician having gone from the island of St. Andrea,
where he had been staying at the Benedictine convent, to one of the other
two neighboring islands, he in the evening wished to return to his abode.
He met upon the beach a young girl who was carrying home some baskets of
fish. Having asked her if she knew of anybody who would take him across to
the island of St. Andrea, the young girl proffered her services, which the
young and bashful patrician reluctantly accepted.
The young girl was as beautiful, as chaste, and as proud as the Arrabiata
of Paul Heyse; and for the first time Teodoro felt a new and vague feeling
awake in his bosom. He began to talk to the girl, asking her a thousand
questions about herself, about her home; and the young girl doubtless told
him that she was an orphan, and that she lived with her brothers. Instead
of returning to his family, the young nobleman remained at the Benedictine
convent, with the purpose of studying in retirement; his mind, however,
was not entirely engrossed by his books, and his visits to the island
where Margherita lived daily became more frequent.
The love which had kindled in his heart found an echo in the young girl's
bosom, and instead of endeavouring to suppress their feelings they yielded
to the charms of this saintly affection, to the rapture of loving and
being loved. In a few days their mutual feelings had made such progress
that the young man promised the _barcarinola_ to marry her. His noble
character and his brave spirit made him forget that he could not with
impunity break the laws of the society amongst which he lived; for that
society, which would have smiled had he seduced the young girl and made
her his mistress, would nevertheless have been scandalised had he taken
her for his lawful wife.
Peccadilloes are overlooked, and it is almost better in high life to be a
knave than a fool; it was, indeed, a quixotic notion for a patrician to
marry a plebeian, an unheard of event in the annals of the aristocratic
republic of Ragusa. The difficulties which our hero was to encounter were
therefore insurmountable.
In the midst of his thoughtless happiness our young lover was suddenly
summoned back to his home; for whilst Teodoro was supposed to be deeply
engaged in his studies his father, without the young man's knowledge, and
not anticipating any opposition, promised his son in marriage to the
daughter of one of his friends, a young lady of great wealth and beauty.
This union had, it is true, been concerted when the children were mere
babes, and it had until then been a bond between the two families. The
young lady being now of a marriageable age, and having concentrated all
her affections on the young man she had always been taught to regard as
her future husband, she now looked forward with joy for the anticipated
event.
Teodoro was therefore summoned back home to assist at a great festivity
given in honour of his betrothal; he at once hastened back to Ragusa, in
order to break off the engagement contracted for him. Vainly, however, did
he try to remonstrate, first with his father and then with his mother. He
avowed that he had no inclination for matrimony, that he felt no love for
this young lady, nothing but a mere brotherly affection, and that he could
not cherish her as his wife; he found, nevertheless, both his parents
inexorable. It was too late; the father had given his word to his friend;
a refusal would prove an insult, which would provoke a rupture between
these two families; no option was left but to obey.
Teodoro thereupon retired to his own room, where he remained in the
strictest confinement, refusing to see any one. The evening of that
eventful day, the guests were assembled; the bride and her family had
already arrived; the bridegroom, nevertheless, was missing. This was
indeed a strange breach of good manners, and numerous comments were
whispered from ear to ear. The father sent at last a peremptory order to
his undutiful son to come at once to him. The young man ultimately made
his appearance, attired like Hamlet at his stepfather's court, in a suit
of deep mourning, whilst his long hair, which formerly fell in ringlets
over his shoulders, was all clipped short. In this strange accoutrement he
came to acquaint his father before the whole assembly that he had decided
to forego the pleasure, the pomp and vanity of this world, to renounce
society, and take up his abode in a convent, where he intended passing his
days in study and meditation.
The scene of confusion which followed this unexpected declaration can be
imagined. The guests all wished to retire: the first person, however, to
leave the house was Teodoro, expelled by his father and bearing with him
the paternal malediction. Thus this day of anticipated joy ended in
disappointment and humiliation. The discarded bride was borne away by her
parents, and it is said that her delicate health never recovered from this
unexpected blow.
That very night the young man retired to the Benedictine convent upon the
island of St. Andrea, with the firm resolution of passing his life in holy
seclusion. When a few days had passed, his love proved, nevertheless,
stronger than his will, and he could not refrain from going to see his
Margherita, and informing her of all that had happened, telling her that
he had been driven from home, and that he had taken refuge at the convent,
where he intended passing his life in a state of holy celibacy.
Notwithstanding all his good intentions, the sight of the young girl
proved too great a temptation, her beauty overcame his resolutions, and he
swore to her that he would brave his parents' opposition, as well as the
anger of his caste, and that he would marry her in spite of his family and
of the whole world.
He thus continued seeing this young girl, till at last the fishermen, her
brothers, having found out why this young patrician visited the island so
often, severe and jealous like all their countrymen, they waylaid him, and
threatened to kill him if he were once more caught upon these shores. The
prior of the Benedictines, finding besides that his _protege_, far from
coming to seek peace and tranquillity within the walls of his convent,
was, on the contrary, an object of scandal, expressed his intention to
expel him, should he not discontinue his visits to the neighbouring
island, and reform.
Every new difficulty seemed to give fresh courage to the lovers; they
would have fled from their native country and their persecutors, but they
knew that they would be overtaken, brought back, and punished; so they
decided to wait some time until the wrath of their enemies had abated, and
the storm had blown over.
As Teodoro could not go any more to see the young girl, it was Margherita
who now came to visit her lover; to evade, however, the suspicion of her
brothers, and that of the friars, they only met in the middle of the
night, and as they always changed their place of meeting, a lighted torch
was the signal where the young girl was to direct her bark. There were
nights, nevertheless, when she could not obtain a boat; yet this was no
obstacle to her brave spirit, for upon those nights, she, like Leander,
swam across the channel, for nothing could daunt this heroic woman's
heart.
These ill-fated lovers were happy notwithstanding their adverse fortune,
for the sacred fire of love which burnt within them was bliss enough to
compensate for all their woes. Their days were passed in anxious
expectation for the hour which was to unite them on the sea-shore, amidst
the darkness of the night. There clasped in one another's arms, the world
and its inhabitants existed no longer for them; those were moments of
ineffable rapture, in which it seemed impossible to drain the whole
chalice of happiness; moments in which time and eternity are confounded,
instants only to be appreciated by those who have known the infinite bliss
of loving and being loved. Their souls seemed to leave their bodies, blend
together and soar into the empyreal spaces, the regions of infinite
happiness; for them all other sentiments passed away, and nothing was felt
but an unmitigated love.
The dangers which encompassed them, their loneliness upon the rocky
shores, the stillness of the night, only served to heighten their joy and
exultation, for a pleasure dearly bought is always more keenly felt.
Their happiness was, however, not to be of long duration; such felicity is
celestial; on this earth,
"Les plus belles choses
Ont le pire destin."
Margherita's brothers, knowing the power of love, watched their sister,
and at last found out that when the young nobleman had ceased coming, it
was she who by night visited the Island of St. Andrea, and they resolved
to be revenged upon her. They bided their time, and upon a dark and stormy
night, the fishermen, knowing that their sister would not be intimidated
by the heavy sea, went off with the boat and left her to the mercy of the
waves. The young girl, unable to resist the impulse of her love,
recommended herself to the Almighty, and bravely plunged into the waters.
Her treacherous brothers, having watched her movements, plied their oars
and directed their course towards the island; they landed, went and took
the lighted torch from the place where it was burning, and fastened it to
the prow of their boat; having done this, they slowly rowed away into the
open sea.
Margherita, as usual, swam towards the beacon-light of love, but that
night all her efforts were useless--the faster she swam, the greater was
the distance that separated her from that _ignis-fatuus_ light; doubtless
she attributed this to the roughness of the sea, and took courage, hoping
soon to reach that blessed goal.
A flash of lightning, which illumined the dark expanse of the waters, made
her at last perceive her mistake; she saw the boat towards which she had
been swimming, and also the island of St. Andrea far behind her. She at
once directed her course towards it, but there, in the midst of darkness,
she struggled with the wild waves, until, overpowered by fatigue, she gave
up all hopes of rejoining her beloved one, and sank down in the briny
deep.
The cruel sea that separated the lovers was, however, more merciful than
man, for upon the morrow the waves themselves softly deposited the
lifeless body of the young girl upon the sand of the beach.
The nobleman, who had passed a night of most terrible anxiety, found at
daybreak the corpse of the girl he loved. He caused it to be committed to
the earth, after which he re-entered within the walls of the convent, took
the Benedictine dress, and spent the rest of his life pining in grief.
ADRIAN DE VALVEDERE, in _Tinsley's Magazine_.
AN IMPERIAL PARDON.
During a journey through some parts of Russia a few years ago, we engaged,
in preference to the imperial post-chaise, a private conveyance for a
considerable distance, the driver being a Jew--generally preferred in the
East on account of their sobriety and general trustworthiness. On the road
my companion became communicative, and entered into philosophic-religious
discussion--a topic of frequent occurrence among these bilingual
populations. After a somewhat desultory harangue, he suddenly became
silent and sad, having just uttered the words: "If a Chassid goes astray,
what does he become? A meschumed, _i.e._ an apostate."--"To what class of
people do you allude?" I inquired.--"Well, it just entered my head,
because we have to pass the house of one of them--I mean the 'forced
ones.'"--"Forced!" I thought of a religious sect. "Are they Christians or
Jews?"--"Neither the one nor the other," was the reply, "but simply
'forced.' Oh, sir, it is a great misery and a great crime! Our children at
least will not know anything of it, because new victims do not arise, and
on the marriage of these parties rests a curse--they remain sterile! But
what am I saying? It is rather a blessing--a mercy! Should thus a
terrible misery be perpetuated? These forced people are childless. Well,
God knows best. I am a fool, a sinner to speak about it." No entreaty of
mine would induce my Jewish companion to afford further information
concerning this peculiar people. But before the end of our journey I heard
unexpectedly more about this unfortunate class of Russian subjects. We
travelled westward through the valley of the Dniester, a district but
thinly peopled, and rested at an inn on the borders of an extensive
forest.
Amidst the raillery going on in the principal room of this hostelry
between guests of different nationalities, we had not heard the noise of
wheels which slowly moved towards the house. It was a very poor
conveyance, containing a small cask and a basket. The young hostess arose
hastily, and, approaching the owner, said in a whisper, "What is it you
want?" A slight paleness overspread her countenance, and stranger still
was the demeanour of my coachman. "Sir, sir!" he exclaimed loudly, turning
towards me, stretching out his hands as if seeking support, or warding off
some impending danger. "What is the matter?" I rejoined, greatly
surprised: but he merely shook his head, and stared at the new comer.
He was an elderly peasant, attired in the usual garb of the
country-people; only at a more close inspection I noticed that he wore a
fine white shirt. Of his face I could see but little, it being hidden
behind the broad brim of his straw hat.
"Hostess," he said, addressing the young woman, "will you purchase
something of me? I have some old brandy, wooden spoons and plates,
pepper-boxes, needle-cases, &c., all made of good hard wood, and very
cheap." In an almost supplicating tone he uttered these words very slowly,
with downcast eyes. From his pronunciation he appeared to be a Pole.
The hostess looked shyly up to him.
"You know my brother-in-law has forbidden me to have dealings with you,"
she said hesitatingly, "on account of your wife; but to-day he is not at
home." After a momentary silence, turning towards the driver, she
continued, "Reb Rüssan, will you betray me? You come frequently this way."
In reply he merely shrugged his shoulders and moved away. Turning again
with some impatience to the peasant, she said, "Bring me a dish and two
spoons." When he had gone to fetch these articles, the woman once more
accosted my coachman.
"You must not blame me; they are very poor people!"
"Certainly they are very poor"--he replied in a milder tone. "During life,
hunger and misery, and after death--hell! and all undeserved!" But the man
stood already, at this utterance, with his basket in the room. The bargain
was soon concluded, and the few copeks paid. Curiosity prompted me to step
forward and examine the merchandise.
"I have also cigar-cases," said the peasant, humbly raising his hat. But
his face was far more interesting than his wares. You rarely see such
features! However great the misery on earth, this pale, pain-stricken
countenance was unique in its kind, revealing yet traces of sullen
defiance, and the glance of his eyes moved instantly the heart of the
beholder--a weary, almost fixed gaze, and yet full of passionate mourning.
"You are a Pole!" I observed after a pause.
"Yes," he replied.
"And do you live in this neighbourhood?"
"At the inn eight werst from here. I am the keeper."
"And besides wood-carver?"
"We must do the best we can," was his reply. "We have but rarely any
guests at our house."
"Does your hostelry lie outside the main road?"
"No, close to the high road, sir. It was at one time the best inn between
the Bug and the Dniester. But now carriers do not like to stay at our
house."
"And why not?"
"Because they consider it a sin--especially the Jews." Suddenly, with
seeming uneasiness and haste, he asked, "Will you purchase anything? This
box, perhaps. Upon the lid is engraved a fine country-house."
Attracted by the delicate execution, I inquired, "And is this your own
workmanship?"
"Yes," was his reply.
"You are an artist! And pray where did you learn wood-engraving?"
"At Kamieniec-Poddski."
"At the fortress?"
"Yes, during the insurrection of 1863."
"Were you among the insurgents?"
"No, but the authorities feared I might join them--hence I and the other
forced ones were incarcerated in the fortress when the insurrection broke
out, and again set free when it was suppressed."
"Without any cause?"
"Without the slightest. I was already at that time a crushed man. When yet
a youth the marrow of my bones had been poisoned in the mines of Siberia.
During the whole time of my settlement, I have been since 1858 keeper of
that inn; I gave the authorities no cause for suspicion, but I was a
'forced man,' and that sufficed for pouncing upon me."
"Forced! what does it mean?"
"Well, a person forced to accept, when to others free choice is
left--domicile, trade or calling, wife and religion."
"Terrible!" I exclaimed. "And you submitted?" A little smile played around
his thin lips.
"Are you so much moved at my fate? We generally bear very easily the most
severe pains endured by others."
"That is a saying of Larochefoucauld," I said, somewhat surprised. "Have
you read him?"
"I was at one time very fond of French literature. But pardon my acrimony.
I am but little accustomed to sympathy, and indeed of what avail would it
be to me now!" He stared painfully at the ground, and I also became
silent, convinced that any superficial expression of sympathy would, under
the circumstances, be downright mockery.
A painful pause ensued, which I broke with the question, if he had worked
the engraving upon the lid of the box after a pattern.
"No, from memory," was his rejoinder.
"It is a peculiar kind of architecture!"
"It is like all gentlemen's houses in Littauen; only the old tree is very
striking. It was a very old house."
"Has been? Does it exist no longer?"
"It was burnt down seven years ago by the Russians, after they had first
ransacked it. They evidently were not aware that they destroyed their own
property. It had been confiscated years before, and had been Crown
property since 1848."
"And have you yet the outlines of the building so firmly engraved on your
memory?"
"Of course! it was my birth-place, which I had rarely left until I was
eighteen years old. Such things are not easily forgotten. And although
more than twenty years have passed since this sad affair, hardly a day
passed on which I did not think of my paternal home. I was aware of the
death of my mother, and that my cousin was worse than dead--perhaps I
ought to have rejoiced when the old mansion was burnt to the ground; but
yet I could not suppress a tear when the news reached me. There is hardly
anything on earth which can now move me." I record literally what the
unfortunate man related. My Jewish coachman, not easily impressed, had
during the conversation crept gradually nearer, and shook his head
seriously and sorrowfully.
"Excuse me, Pani Walerian," he interrupted: "upon my honour, yours is a
sad story!" He launched out into practical politics, and concluded thus:
"A Pole is not as clever as I am. If he (the Pole) was the equal of the
Russian, well and good, fight it out; but the Russian is a hundred times
stronger; therefore, Pani Walerian, why irritate him, why confront him?"
I could not help laughing at these remarks; but the poor "forced one"
remained unmoved; and only after some silence, he observed, turning
towards me:
"I have never even confronted the Russians. I merely received the
punishment of the criminal, without being one, or venturing my all in my
people's cause. I was very young, when I was transported to
Siberia--little more than nineteen years old. My father had died early. I
managed our small property, and a cousin of mine, a pretty girl, sixteen
years old, lived at our house. Indeed, I had no thoughts of politics. It
is true I wore the national costume, perused our poets, especially
Mickiewicz and Slowaski, and had on the wall of my bedroom a portrait of
Kosciuszko. For such kind of high treason even the Russian Government
would not have crushed me in ordinary times--but it was the year 1848.
'Nicolai Pawlowitch' had not sworn in vain that if the whole of Europe was
in flames, no spark should arise in his empire--and by streams of blood
and tears, he achieved his object. Wherever a young Polish noble lived who
was suspected of revolutionary tendencies, repeated domiciliary searches
were made; and if only a single prohibited book was found, the dread fiat
went forth, 'To Siberia with him!'
"In my own case it came like a thunderbolt. I was already in Siberia, and
could not yet realize my misery. During the whole long journey I was more
or less delirious. I hoped for a speedy liberation, for I was altogether
innocent, and at that time," he continued with a bitter smile, "I yet
believed in God. When all hope became extinct, I began madly to rave, but
finally settled down utterly crushed and callous. It was a fearful
state--for weeks together, all my past life seemed a complete blank, at
most I still remembered my name. This, sir, is literally true: Siberia is
a very peculiar place."
The poor fellow had sunk down upon a bench, his hands rested powerless in
his lap. I never have seen a face so utterly worn and pain-stricken. After
a while he continued:
"Ten years had thus passed away; at least, I was told so--I had long
ceased to count the days of my misery. For what purpose should I have done
so?
"I had sunk so low that I felt no pity even for my terrible condition. One
day I was brought before the Inspector, together with some of my
companions. This official informed us that we had been pardoned on
condition of becoming colonists in New Russia. The mercy of the Czar would
assign to each of us a place of residence, a trade, and a lawful wife, who
would be also a pardoned convict. We must of course, in addition, be
converted to the Orthodox Greek Church. This latter stipulation did but
little concern us. We readily accepted the conditions, for the people are
glad of leaving Siberia, no matter whither, even to meet death itself. And
had we not been pardoned? Alexander Nikolajewitch is a gracious lord. In
Siberia the mines are over-crowded, and in South Russia the steppes are
empty! Oh, he is a philanthropist! decus et deliciæ generis humani! But
perhaps I wrong him. We entered upon our long journey, and proceeded
slowly south-west. In about eight months we reached Mohilew. Here we were
only kept in easy confinement, and above all, brought under the influence
of the pope. This was a rapid proceeding. One morning we were driven
together into a large room, about one hundred men, and an equal number of
women. Presently the priest entered; a powerful and dirty fellow, who
appeared to have invigorated himself for his holy work with a considerable
dose of gin, for we could smell it at least ten paces off, and he had some
difficulty in keeping upon his legs.
"'You ragamuffins!' he stammered; 'you vermin of humanity! you are to
become Orthodox Christians; but surely I shall not take much trouble with
you. For, what do you think I get per head? Ten copeks, you vermin! ten
copeks per head. Who will be a missionary at such pay? I certainly do it
to-day for the last time! Indeed, our good father Alexander Nikolajewitch
caused one rouble to be set in the tariff; but that rascal, the director,
pockets ninety copeks, and leaves only ten for me. To-day, however, I have
undertaken your conversion, because I am told there are many of you. Now
listen! you are now Catholics, Protestants, Jews! That is sad mistake; for
every Jew is a blood-sucker, every Protestant a dog, and every Catholic a
pig. Such is their lot in life--but after death? carrion, my good people,
carrion! And will Christ have mercy on them at the last day? Verily no! He
will not dream of such a thing! And until then? Hell-fire! Therefore, good
people, why should you suffer such torments? Be converted! Those who agree
to become Orthodox Christians, keep silent; those who demur, receive the
knout and go back to Siberia. Wherefore, my dear brothers and sisters, I
ask, will you become Orthodox Christians?'
"We remained silent.
"'Well,' continued the priest, 'now pay attention! Those who are already
Christians need only to lift up the right hand, and repeat after me the
creed. That will soon be done. But with the damned Jews one has always a
special trouble--the Jews I must first baptise. Jews, step forward!--the
other vermin can remain where they now are.' In this solemn manner the
ceremony was brought to a conclusion.
"On the day following," M. Walerian continued, "the second act was
performed: the selection of a trade. This act was as spontaneous as our
religious conversion; only, some individual regard became here
indispensable. Three young Government officials were deputed to record our
wishes, and to comply with them as far as the exigencies of the case
admitted. The official before whom I appeared was very juvenile. Though
externally very polished, he was in reality a frightfully coarse and cruel
youth, without a spark of human feeling, so far as we were concerned. We
afforded him no small amount of merriment. This youth inquired carefully
concerning our wishes, and invariably ordered the very opposite. Among us
was a noble lady from Poland, of very ancient lineage, very feeble and
miserable, whose utter helplessness might well inspire the most callous
heart with respect and compassion. The lady was too old to be married to
one of the 'forced ones,' and was therefore asked to state what kind of
occupation she desired. She entreated to be employed in some school for
daughters of military officers, there being a demand for such service; but
the young gentleman ordered her to go as laundress to the barracks at
Mohilew! An aged Jew had been sent to Siberia for having smuggled
prohibited books across the frontiers. He had been the owner of a printing
establishment, and was well acquainted with the business. 'Could he not be
employed in one of the Imperial printing offices; and if possible,' urged
the aged man, 'be permitted to reside in a place where few or no Jews
lived?' He had under compulsion changed his religion; to which he was yet
fervently attached, and trembled at the thought that his former
co-religionists would none the less avoid him as an apostate. The young
official noted down his request, and made him a police agent at Miaskowka,
a small town in the government district of Podolien, almost exclusively
inhabited by Jews. Another, a former schoolmaster, in the last stages of
consumption, begged on his knees to be permitted to die quietly in some
country village. 'That is certainly a modest request!' observed this
worthless youth; and sent him as a waiter to a hospital. Need I tell how I
fared? Being misled, like the rest, by the hypocritical air and seeming
concern of this rascal, I made known to him my desire to obtain the post
of under-steward at some remote Crown estate, where I might have as little
intercourse as possible with my fellow-men. And thus, sir, I became the
keeper of the small inn on a much-frequented highway!"
The unfortunate man arose suddenly, and paced the room in a state of great
excitement.
"But now comes the best of all," he exclaimed, with a desperate
effort--"the last act, the choice of a wife." Again an internal struggle
overpowered the unhappy narrator--a sudden and heavy tear rolled down his
care-worn cheek, evidently caused by the remembrance of this abominable
transaction. "It was a terrible ordeal," he said. "Sir, sir," he continued
after a momentary pause, "since the sun has risen in our horizon, he has
shone on many a cruel game which the mighty of the earth have played with
the helpless, but a more abominable farce has hardly ever been enacted
than the one I am now relating--the manner in which we unfortunate people
were coupled together. In my youth I read how Carrier at Nantes murdered
the Royalists; how he caused the first best man to be tied with a rope to
a woman, and carried down the Loire in a boat. In the middle of the river
a trap-door was suddenly opened, and the unfortunate couple disappeared in
the waves. But that monster was an angel compared with the officials of
the Czar; and these republican marriages were a benevolent act in
comparison with those we were forced to conclude. At Nantes, the victims
were tied together for a mutual death; we for our mutual lives!... On a
subsequent morning we were once more ushered into the room where our
conversion had taken place. There were present about thirty men and an
equal number of women. Together with the latter entered the official who
had so considerately ordered our lot as regards a livelihood.
"'Ladies and gentlemen,' he commenced with a nasal twang, 'his Majesty has
graciously pardoned you, and desires to see you all happy. Now, the lonely
man is seldom a happy man; and hence you are to marry. Every gentleman is
free to select a partner, provided of course the lady accepts the choice.
And in order that none of you gentlemen may be placed in the invidious
position of having to select a partner unworthy of him, supreme
benevolence has ordered that an adequate number of ladies, partly from
penal settlements and partly from houses of correction, should be now
offered you. As his Majesty's solicitude for your welfare has already
assigned you an occupation, you may now follow unhesitatingly the
promptings of your own hearts in the choice of a wife. Ladies and
gentlemen, yours is the happy privilege to realise the dream of a purely
socialistic marriage. Make, then, your selection without delay; and as
"all genuine love is instantaneous, sudden as a lightning flash, and soft
as the breezes of spring"--to use the words of our poet Lermontoff--I
consider one hour sufficient. Bear also in mind that marriages are
ratified in heaven, and trust implicitly to your own heart. I offer you
beforehand, ladies and gentlemen, my congratulations.'
"After this address, the young rascal placed his watch in front of him on
the table, sat down, and grinned maliciously at our helpless condition.
The full measure of scorn implied in this speech but few of us entirely
realised, for we were in truth a curious assembly. The most extravagant
imagination could hardly picture more glaring contrasts! Side by side with
the bestial Bessarabian herdsman, who in a fit of intoxication had slain
the whole of his family, stood the highly cultivated professor from Wilna,
whom the love of his country and of freedom had consigned to the mines of
Siberia; the most desperate thief and shoplifter from Moscow, and the
Polish nobleman who at the height of his misfortunes still regarded his
honour as the most precious treasure, the ex-professor from Charkow, and
the Cossac-robber from the Don; the forger from Odessa, &c. On my own
right hand stood a thief and deserter from Lipkany, and on the left a
Baschkire, who had been pardoned at the foot of the gallows, though he had
once assisted in roasting alive a Jewish family in a village inn. A madly
assorted medley of human beings! And the women! The dissolute female
gladly released from the house of correction, because she still more
depraved her already degraded companions, associated with the unfortunate
Polish lady, whose pure mind had never been poisoned by a vulgar word, and
whose quiet happiness had not been disturbed by any prospect of
misfortune, until a single letter, or act of charity to an exiled
countryman, brought her into misery. Pressing against the young girl whose
sole offence consisted in being the unfortunate offspring of a mother sent
to Siberia, might be seen the infamous hag who had habitually decoyed
young girls to ruin, in whose soul every spark of womanhood had long been
extinguished. And these people were called upon to marry; and one hour was
granted them in which to become acquainted and assorted! Sir, you will now
perhaps comprehend my emotion in relating this shocking business!
"I consider it the most shocking and at the same time the most curious
outrage which has ever been committed." The "forced" man paused, a deadly
pallor suffused his countenance, and his agitation was great. The young
hostess appeared perfectly stunned, whilst Reb Rüssan, the coachman, bent
his head in evident compassion.
After a while M. Walerian continued in a calmer mood. "It must certainly
have been an entertaining spectacle to notice the behaviour of this
ill-assorted people at that trying hour. Even the barefaced monster on his
raised daïs betrayed a feverish excitement: he would suddenly jump from
his chair, and again recline, playing the while nervously with his
fingers. I am hardly able to describe the details, being not altogether
unbiassed at this dreadful hour.
"I only know we stood at first in two distinct groups, and for the first
few moments after the official announcement, not a glance was exchanged
between the two sexes, much less a word spoken. A deep silence reigned in
the room, a death-like stillness, varied only by an occasional deep sigh,
or a nervous movement. The minutes passed, certainly not many, but they
seemed to me an eternity!
"Suddenly a loud hoarse voice exclaimed, 'Up, my lads! here are some very
pretty mates!' We all recognised the notorious thief from Moscow, a
haggard withered fellow, with the ugliest face I ever beheld. He crossed
over to the women and examined in his way which would be the most
desirable partner. Here he received an indignant push, and there an
impudent alluring glance. Others, again--the better part--recoiled from
the approach of the brute. He was followed by the Baschkire, who like a
clumsy beast of prey drew nigh, muttering incoherently, 'I will have a fat
woman, the fattest among them.' From his approach even the ugliest and
most impudent instinctively recoiled--this wooer was really too hideous,
at best only suited to a monkey. The third in order who came forward was
the Don-Cossac, a pretty slender youth. An impudent lass jauntily met him
and fell on his neck; but he pushed her aside, and walked towards the girl
who had murdered her child. The discarded female muttered some insulting
words, and hung the next moment on my own neck. I shook her off, and she
repeated the attempt with my neighbour, and again unsuccessfully.
"Her example became contagious: presently the more shameless of the women
made an onslaught on the men. Ten minutes later the scene had changed. In
the centre of the room stood a number of men and women engaged in eager
negotiation--shouting and scolding. The parties who had already agreed
retired to the window-niches, and here and there a man pulled an
unfortunate woman, making desperate efforts to escape from him. The
females who yet retained a spark of womanhood crept into a corner of the
room; and in another recess were three of us--the ex-professor, Count S.,
and myself. We had instinctively come together, watching with painful
emotion this frantic spectacle, not inclined to participate in it. To me
at least the thought of selecting a wife here never occurred.
* * * * *
"'Another half an hour at your disposal, ladies and gentlemen,' exclaimed
our official tormentor; 'twenty minutes--yet fifteen minutes!'
"I stood as if rooted to the ground, my knees trembled, my agitation
increased, but I remained motionless. Indeed, as often as I heard the
unpleasant voice of the official, the blood rushed to my head, but I
advanced not one step. My excitement increased--profound disgust, bitter
despair--the wildest indignation which perhaps ever pierced a poor human
heart. 'No,' I said; 'I must assert the dignity of my manhood!' I was
determined not to make the selection of a wife under the eyes of this man.
Another impulse I could hardly suppress--viz. to throw myself upon this
imperial delegate and strangle him. And if I finally abstained from an act
of violence, it was because I yet loved life, and wished not to end it on
the gallows. Sir," continued M. Walerian, "the source of great misery on
earth is this overpowering instinct of self-preservation; without it, I
should be freed this day from all my misery. Thus I stood, so to speak, at
bay in my corner, using all my efforts to subdue the evil spirit within
me. My looks most probably betrayed me--for when my eyes met those of the
official, I noticed an involuntary shudder. A moment afterwards he
regarded me with a sly and malignant glance. I turned aside and closed my
eyes on this harassing scene.
"'Yet five minutes, ladies and gentlemen! Those as yet undecided must
speed themselves, and unburden their heart, or I shall be compelled by
virtue of my office to tie them together. And although I shall do so
conscientiously, and to the best of my knowledge, there is this risk--that
you engage in a marriage of mere convenience, instead of one of free
choice and inclination.'
"Though my agitation reached its climax, I made no move. I considered
myself an accomplice in this disgraceful outrage, if I within the allotted
five minutes declared my heart and made a choice. But another thought
flashed across my mind: 'I may still be able to prevent the worst. Who
knows with whom that rascal may couple me if I remain altogether passive?
Choose for yourself!'--I made a step forward--a mist seemed before my
eyes--my heart beat wildly--I staggered, I sought figures in order to
distinguish and recognise myself.
"Sir," exclaimed the narrator with a sudden yell, "what scenes did I see
there? I am no coward, but I--I dare not venture to speak of it. Thus I
moved forward; hardly two minutes passed, but days would not suffice to
relate what passed during these terrible moments through my heart and
brain. I noticed in a corner a fainting woman, a young and delicate
creature. I learnt afterwards that she was an orphan child, born of a
dissolute woman in a penal settlement. A coarse fellow with cunning eyes
bent over her, endeavouring to raise her from the ground. I suddenly
pounced upon the fellow, struck him a heavy blow, and carried the
unconscious woman away as if a mere child. I determined to defend her to
the last. But no rescue was attempted, though the forger shook his fists
at me, but had seemingly not the courage to approach nearer. Gazing about
him, another female embraced him, a repulsive woman. He looked at her
somewhat abashed, but soon submitted to her caresses.
"'Ladies and gentlemen! the allotted hour has passed,' said the official.
'I must beg the parties to come forward and make known to me their choice.
This may be repugnant to some of you, but my duties prescribe it. I
especially request the gentlemen in yonder corner to advance'--pointing to
myself and the forger. I clenched my fists involuntarily, but stepped
forward with the fainting woman. 'Cossacks, keep your "Kantschu" in
readiness,' said the official to the guard which surrounded him. Turning
first to me, he said: "And are you, sir, resolved to carry the woman you
now hold in your arms, not only in this room, but through life?' I nodded
assent. 'And what have you to say, damsel?' The poor creature was as yet
unconscious. 'She is in a swoon,' I replied. 'In that case I am sorry,'
continued the official, 'to have to refuse in his Majesty's name my
consent to your union. In the interests of humanity, I require an audible
yes from all parties. I have watched attentively the whole proceedings,'
continued the official--'not from mere curiosity, but partly as a duty,
and partly out of pure sympathy--and I can assure you, sir, without
disparagement to your claims, that the choice of the young lady you now
hold in your arms fell not upon you, but upon the gentleman yonder,'
pointing to the forger. 'It was probably the excess of happiness at this
selection which caused her fainting. For you there is waiting an adequate
recompense--that ripe, desirable beauty who now only reluctantly holds the
arm of your rival. Therefore, changez, Messieurs!' 'Scoundrel!' I
exclaimed, and advanced to seize him. But ere I could lay hold of him, a
fearful blow on my head stretched me stunned and bleeding to the ground.
When I had somewhat recovered, our marriage procession was in progress of
formation. The woman whom the official had assigned to me knelt at my
side, bathing my head, endeavouring to revive me. 'I like you,' she
observed, 'and will treat you well.' She raised me to my feet, placed her
arm in mine, and pushed me in the ranks of the procession, which moved
slowly towards the church. On our road a heavy hand seized me suddenly by
the collar. 'Brother,' grunted a coarse voice in my ear, 'your stout woman
takes my fancy. Will you change with me? Mine is certainly less corpulent,
but younger in years.'
"It was the man behind me--the Baschkire. The female whom he dragged along
was a lean, ugly, dark-complexioned woman, swooning or near a swoon. An
expression of unutterable despair overspread her features, rendering them,
if possible, yet more ugly. 'A woman who can suffer so intensely as this
one unquestionably does, cannot be without a heart--is not altogether
depraved, no matter what cause brought her here.' These reflections
determined me. 'She is preferable to the woman at my side. Done!' I
whispered to the Baschkire. Just crossing the threshold of the church, a
momentary pause ensued, during which we effected the exchange; not without
a murmur, however, on the part of my intended wife. But the Baschkire kept
her quiet; and a closer inspection of her new partner seemed to satisfy
her. The poor woman I led forward seemed hardly aware of the exchange, she
was so entirely absorbed in her grief. We were married. The official only
afterwards became aware of what had happened, but could not now undo it.
But I had to suffer for it--terrible was the punishment."
Not another word was uttered by the unfortunate man. Quite overcome by the
recital of his cruel fate, he suddenly arose and left the house.
On account of the approach of the Jewish Sabbath, my coachman urged on our
journey. Half an hour later, we passed the lonely and desolate hostelry of
poor M. Walerian, the exile of Siberia, who owed so much to imperial
clemency.--F. A. S., _in Belgravia_.
CHRISTMAS IN MOROCCO.
"To-morrow Christmas for Moros!" said the gentle Hamed, our Moorish
servant, entering the room soon after the bang of the last sunset gun of
Ramadan had shaken our windows, and the thick smoke of the coarse Moorish
powder had floated away, temporarily obscuring the gorgeous hues bestowed
by the retiring luminary on the restless waters of the South Atlantic.
"To-morrow Christmas for Moros! In the morning Hamed clean house, go for
_soko_; then all day no _trabally_; have new _haik_, new slippers, walk
about all same _tejjer_."
By which little speech our faithful attendant meant to convey that
to-morrow's rejoicing at the termination of the long and irksome fast of
Ramadan was equivalent to the "Ingleez's" Christmas, and that, after
putting the house in order and bringing the provisions from the _soko_, or
market, he would do no more _trabally_, or work--the word being a
corruption of the Spanish _trabajo_--but would don the new _haik_ and
bright yellow slippers for which he had long been saving up, and to the
purchase of which certain little presents from the children of our
household had materially contributed; and would be entitled, by
prescriptive holiday right, to "take his walks abroad" with the _dolce far
niente_ dignity of a _tejjer_, or merchant.
I think we members of the little English community of Mogador--or, as the
Moors fondly call this pleasantest town of the Morocco seaboard, "El
Souerah," or The Beautiful--had almost as good reason as the Moslem
population to rejoice at the termination of the great fast. The Moors not
being allowed, during the holy month, to eat, drink, or smoke betwixt the
rising and the setting of the sun--the more sternly orthodox even closing
their nostrils against any pleasant odour that might casually perfume the
air in their vicinity, and their ears against even the faintest sound of
music--debarring themselves, in fact, from whatever could give the
slightest pleasure to any of the senses, a considerable amount of gloom
and listlessness was the inevitable result.
The servants in the various households, not over active and intelligent at
the best of times, became, as the weary days of prayer and fasting wore
on, appallingly idiotic, sleepy, and sullen, would do but little work, and
that little never promptly nor well. Meals could not be relied on within
an hour or two, rooms were left long untidy, essential little errands and
messages unperformed, and a general gloomy confusion prevailed.
Did I, tempted by the smoothness of the sea, desire a little fishing
cruise, and send a youthful Moor to the neighbouring rocks to get me a
basket of mussels for bait, he would probably, directly he got outside the
town-gates, deposit the basket and himself in the shade of the first wall
he came to, and slumber sweetly till the tide had risen and covered all
the rocky ledges where it was possible to collect bait. Had I told the
youngster over night that he must come out to sea with me in the morning,
and take care that my boat was put outside the dock, so that she would be
afloat at a certain hour, I would find, on going down at daybreak with
rods and tackle, that the boat was high and dry upon the mud, and it would
take the united efforts of half a dozen Moors and myself to get her afloat
at the end of nearly an hour's frantic struggling and pushing through mud
and water, necessitating on my part the expenditure of a great amount of
perspiration, not a little invective, and sundry silver coins.
And when we were fairly afloat my Mahometan youth would be so weak from
fasting that his oar would be almost useless; and when we did, after an
hour or so of the most ignominious zigzaging, reach our anchorage on one
of the fishing-grounds, then would he speedily become sea-sick, and
instead of helping me by preparing bait and landing fish, he would lean
despairingly over the side in abject misery, and implore me to go home
promptly--a piteous illustration of the anguish caused by an empty stomach
contracting on itself.
Nor were these the only discomforts under which we groaned and grumbled.
From the evening when the eager lookers-out from minarets of mosques and
towers of the fortifications first descried the new moon which ushered in
the holy month of fasting, every sunset, as it flushed the far-off waves
with purple and crimson and gold, and turned the fleecy cloudlets in the
western sky to brightest jewels, and suffused the white houses and towers
of Mogador with sweetest glow of pink, and gilded the green-tiled top of
each tall minaret, had been accompanied by the roar of a cannon from the
battery just below our windows.
"What the deuce is that?" asked a friend of mine, lately arrived from
England, as we strolled homewards one evening through the dusty streets,
and the boom of the big gun suddenly fell upon his astonished ear.
"Only sunset," I replied.
"Queer place this," said J. "Does the sun always set with a bang?"
"Always during Ramadan."
"Does it rise with a bang too? I hate to be roused up early in the
morning!"
"No, there is no gun at sunrise; but there is a very loud one at about
three in the morning, or sometimes half-past, or four, or later."
"Shocking nuisance!" remarked J. "My bedroom window's just over that
abominable battery."
The early morning gun was a great trial, certainly. I would not have
minded being _reveille en sursaut_, as a Frenchman would say, and then
turning comfortably over on the other side, and going to sleep again.
But somehow or other I always found myself awake half an hour or an hour
before the time, and then I _could not_ get to sleep again, but lay
tossing about and fidgettily listening for the well-known din. At length I
would hear a sound like the hum of an enormous fiendish nightmarish
mosquito, caused by a hideous long tin trumpet, the shrill whistle of a
fife or two, and the occasional tom-tomming of a Moorish drum. "Ha, the
soldiers coming along the ramparts; they will soon fire now."
But the sound of the discordant instruments with which the soldiery
solaced themselves in the night for their enforced abstinence from such
"sweet sounds" in the day would continue for a long time before the red
flash through my wide-open door would momentarily illumine my little
chamber on the white flat roof, and then the horrid bang would rend the
air, followed by a dense cloud of foul-smelling smoke; and then would my
big dog Cæsar for several minutes rush frantically to and fro upon the
roof in hot indignation, and utter deep-mouthed barks of defiance at the
white figures of the "Maghaseni," as they flitted ghost-like along the
ramparts below, and snort and pant and chafe and refuse to be pacified for
a long time.
At the firing of the sunset gun the Moors were allowed to take a slight
refection, which generally consisted of a kind of gruel. I have seen a
Moorish soldier squatting in the street with a brass porringer in his lap,
eagerly awaiting the boom of the cannon to dip his well-washed fingers in
the mess.
At about 9 P.M. another slight meal was allowed to the true believers, and
they might eat again at morning gun-fire, after which their mouths were
closed against all "fixings, solid and liquid," even against the smallest
draught of water or the lightest puff at the darling little pipe of
dream-inducing _kief_.
On the twenty-seventh day of Ramadan we were informed that twenty-seven
guns would be fired that night, and that we had better leave all our
windows open, or they would certainly be broken by the violence of the
discharge. This was pleasant; still more delightful was the glorious
uncertainty which prevailed in the minds of our informants as to the time
at which we might expect the infliction.
Some said that the twenty-seven guns would be fired before midnight;
Hamed opined that the cannonade would not take place till 3 or 4 A.M. Many
of the guns on the battery in close proximity to our abode were in a
fearfully rusty and honeycombed condition, so that apprehensions as to
some of them bursting were not unnatural, and I thought it extremely
probable that a few stray fragments might "drop in" on me.
That night I burned the "midnight oil," and lay reading till nearly two,
when sweet sleep took possession of me, from which I was awakened about
four in the morning by a terrific bang that fairly shook the house.
A minute more, and there came a red flash and another bang, presently
another. Thought I, "I will go out and see the show;" so I went on to the
flat white roof in my airy nocturnal costume, and leaning over the parapet
looked down on to the platform of the battery below. A group of dim white
figures, a flickering lantern, a glowing match, a touch at the breech of a
rusty old gun, a swift skurry of the white figures round a corner, a
squib-like fountain of sparks from the touch-hole, a red flash from the
mouth, momentarily illumining the dark violet sea, a bang, and a cloud of
smoke.
Then the white figures and the lantern appeared again; another squib,
another flash, another bang, Cæsar galloping up and down over the roof,
snorting his indignation, but not barking, probably because he felt
"unable to do justice to the subject;" and at length, after the eleventh
gun had belched forth crimson flames and foul smoke, all was peace, save a
distant discord of tin trumpets, _gouals_ and _gimbris_, and I returned to
my mosquito-haunted couch with a sigh of relief.
Pass we now to the eve of "Christmas for Moros," and let ethnologist and
hagiologist derive some satisfaction from the evidences I collected in
this far-away Moorish town that the gladness of the Mahometan festival
does, similarly to the purer joy of the Christian, though in a less degree
perhaps, incline towards "peace and good-will to men," charity and
kindliness.
As we sat chatting that evening round the tea-table, to us entered Hamed,
bearing, with honest pride illumining his brown features, a great tray of
richly engraved brass, heaped up with curious but tempting-looking cakes.
Gracefully presenting them to "the senora," he intimated that this was his
humble offering or Christmas token of good-will towards the family, and
that his mother (whom the good fellow maintains out of his modest wages)
had made them with her own hands.
The cakes were made of long thin strips of the finest paste, plentifully
sweetened with delicious honey, twisted into quaint shapes, and fried in
the purest of oil. I need hardly say that the children were delighted, and
immediately commenced to court indigestion by a vigorous onslaught on the
new and tempting sweets. Nay, why should I blush to confess that I myself
have a very sweet tooth in my head, and such a liking for all things
saccharine that my friends say jokingly that I must be getting into my
second childhood?--an imputation which, as I am only a little on the
wrong side of thirty, I can bear with equanimity. However, I firmly
decline to inform an inquisitive public how many of those delightful
Moorish cakes I ate: truth to tell, I do not remember; but I enjoyed them
heartily, nor found my digestion impaired thereby.
We had a little chat with Hamed--whose face was lighted up with the
broadest of grins as we praised his mother's pastry and showed our
appreciation of it in the most satisfactory manner--on certain matters of
the Mahometan religion and the position of women in the future life. Some
of the sterner Muslims believe that women have no souls; others opine that
while good men go to "_Eljannah_," or heaven, and bad ones to
"_Eljehannam_," or hell, women and mediocre characters are deported to a
vague kind of limbo which they designate as "_Bab Maroksh_," or the
Morocco Gate.
But the gentle, liberal, and gallant Hamed informed us, in reply to an
individual query with regard to our Moorish housemaid, that "if Lanniya
plenty good, no _tiefem_ (steal), no drinkum _sharab_ (wine), and go for
_scula_ ("school," or religious instruction in the mosque, or in a
schoolhouse adjoining it), by and by she go for "_Eljannah_."
I am hardly correct, by the way, in speaking of Lanniya as "house-_maid_,"
for Moorish maidens and wives never go in the service of European
families, being prohibited by their religion from showing their faces; it
is only widows and divorced women who may go about unveiled, and mingle
with Christians.
The next morning, soon after the last gun of Ramadan had sounded its
joyous boom in my ear, I was up and stirring, donning my shooting apparel
and preparing for an early country walk with my faithful four-footed
comrade. I had no fear of exciting the fanaticism of the Muslim population
by going out shooting on their holy day, for there is not much bigotry in
Mogador,--Moors, Christians, and Jews observing their several religions
peacefully side by side, so that three Sundays come in every week, the
Mahometan on Friday, the Jewish on Saturday, and then ours.
The sun, just rising from behind the eastern sand-hills, was gilding all
the house-tops and minarets, till our white town looked like a rich
assemblage of fairy palaces of gold and ivory; the smiling sea, serene and
azure, came rippling peacefully up to the base of the rugged brown rocks,
enlivened to-day by no statuesque figures of Moorish fishermen; nor did a
single boat dot the broad blue expanse of the unusually smooth South
Atlantic, of which the fish and the sea-fowl were for once left in
undisturbed possession.
As I gazed from the flat roof away over the great town, I heard from many
quarters loud sounds of music and merriment. As I passed presently through
the narrow streets, with their dead white walls and cool dark arches,
scarcely a camel was to be seen at the accustomed corners by the stores of
the merchants, where usually whole fleets of the "ships of the desert" lay
moored, unloading almonds, and rich gums, and hides, and all the varied
produce of the distant interior.
Outside the town-gates the very hordes of semi-wild scavenger dogs seemed
to know that the day was one of peace, for they lay in the sunshine, nor
barked and snapped at the infidel intruder as he walked over the golden
sands, along the edge of the marshy pool, past the pleasant-looking
Moorish cemetery with its graceful verdant palm-trees, a calm oasis in the
sandy plain, and out across the shallow lagoon formed by overflows of high
tides, by which a few late trains of homeward-bound camels went softly
stepping, looking wonderfully picturesque as they marched through shallow
waters so beautifully gilded by the morning sun, their drivers doubtless
eager to reach their own home or the shelter of some friendly village to
participate in the modest revelries of the joyous season. How I wandered
along the shore of the "many-sounding sea," enjoying a little rough sport,
and the blithe companionship of the big doggie; how I saw never a Moor
upon the rocks, but many Jews with long bamboo rods, busily engaged in
fishing for bream and bass and rock-fish, it boots not to describe with a
minuteness which might be wearisome to my readers, for I am not now
writing "of sport, for sportsmen."
So let us turn homewards, as the sun is getting high in the heavens, and
note the scenes by the way.
Yonder, near the marshy corner of the plain, haunted by wild-fowl, and
carrion crows, and mongrel jackal-like dogs, is the rough cemetery of the
despised "Jehoud," the Israelites who form so large and so wealthy a
portion of the population of Mogador. Among the long flat stones that mark
the graves of the exiled sons and daughters of Israel there is a winding
crowd of white-draped figures, a funeral procession. Unwilling to intrude
upon their grief, I pass on, casting an involuntary glance at the
picturesque garb and wild gesticulations of the mourners as the women's
loud and bitter cry of "Ai, Ai, Ai, Ai!" sounds weirdly through the air,
just as it may have done in the old scriptural times, when "the mourners
went about the streets" and gave unchecked vent to their grief in public,
even as they do to this day.
But as I neared Morocco Gate, from the neighbouring "Running Ground" came
very different sounds--a din of many drums, a squeaking of merry fifes,
the firing of many long Moorish guns, the shouting of men and boys, and
the eerie shrill _taghariet_ of the Moorish women.
And as I passed in front of the round battery, out from the great gate of
the New Kasbah came the crowd of men, women, and children who had been
clamouring joyfully in the Running-Ground, a bright throng of brown faces
and white raiment, interspersed with the gay colours worn by the little
children, and dotted here and there by the blood-red of the national flag.
Suddenly from a cannon just behind me came a cloud of smoke enveloping me
and the dog, and a bang which fairly shook us, and then another and
another. The firing of the guns from this battery was the spectacle the
Moorish populace had come out to see.
It was an uncomfortable sensation to have big guns going off just behind
one; they were only loaded with blank cartridge, of course, but we were
quite near enough to be knocked down by a stray piece of wadding, and
something did once whistle past my ear suggestively.
But it would never do for an "Ingleez" to run away in the presence of a
lot of Moors; so I walked calmly across the sands while the whole battery
of guns--twelve, I think--were fired, Cæsar meanwhile prancing about
majestically, and loudly giving vent to his indignation at a proceeding
which he evidently considered, as he always does the firing of any gun or
pistol by any one but me, an express insult to his master, and an
infringement of his peculiar privileges.
I went home by way of the Water-Port, where there was no movement of
lighters or fishing-craft, no stir of bare-legged porters and fishermen,
no bustle of Jewish and European merchants; nearly all the boats were
drawn up on the shore, and those which remained afloat, slumbered
tenantless on the broad blue bosom of the sea. On rocks, and in the
pleasant shade of walls and arches, a few figures, in bright and gauzy
_haiks_ and gorgeous new slippers, lounged and dozed, perchance tired with
the revelries they had gone through since daybreak, and recruiting their
energies for fresh rejoicings towards evening. Reaching home about eleven,
I rested a while, deposited my birds in the larder, and then proceeded to
stroll about the streets and see how the populace comported themselves on
this festive occasion. I was sorry to learn that some of the younger and
more fanatical of the Moors had been relieving their feelings by abusing
the Jews, some of whom had had stones thrown at them, and their heads
slightly broken. But this temporary riot was over, and now all was "peace
and good-will," except that perhaps there may have lurked a little not
unnatural ill-feeling in the minds of the broken-headed Israelites, who
could not help feeling rather disgusted at the manner in which the Muslim
youths had celebrated "Christmas for Moros."
As I passed along the narrow lane wherein the soldiers of the Kaid or
Governor, in the snowiest of _haiks_ and tallest and reddest of
_tarbooshes_, squatted against the wall, chatting blithely as they awaited
the advent of their master, a grave and venerable-looking Moorish
grandpapa, hurrying along with a great armful of cakes in one of the folds
of his _haik_, stumbled against a loose stone and dropped several of the
cakes.
I hastily stooped and picked them up; the old man muttered a few words of
blessing upon me, insisted on my accepting the dainties I had rescued from
the dust, utterly refused to receive them back, pressed my hand, and
hurried on, leaving me in a state of embarrassment, from which I was
opportunely relieved by the arrival of a bright-eyed little Moor of seven
or eight summers, who was perfectly willing to relieve me from all trouble
connected with the handful of cakes. Passing into the busy streets of the
Moorish quarter, I found the population coming out of the various mosques,
where they had been to morning service, and now going in for a systematic
course of "greetings in the market-place," and purchasing of presents. O,
for an artist's pencil and colours to depict the gorgeous costumes of the
town Moors, the quaint, wild garb of their country cousins; the gauzy
cream-tinted _haiks_ from Morocco; the rich silken _caftans_ of purple, or
crimson, or yellow, or green, or azure, or pink, sweetly half-veiled by a
fold or two of snowy gauze thrown over them; the bright red fez caps, and
voluminous snowy turbans of the patriarchal-looking old men; the broad
silken sashes from Fez, heavy and stiff with rich embroidery of gold; the
great curved daggers in their richly chased silver or brass sheaths,
suspended amid the folds of the _haik_ by thick woolen cords of gay
colours; the handsome brown faces, the flashing black eyes, the wonderful
white teeth, the sinewy brown bare legs, the brand-new yellow slippers of
the merry Moors of Mogador!
And the negroes, or, as old Fuller would quaintly have called them, "the
images of God cut in ebony," how their honest black features glistened,
and how their bright teeth grinned beneath turban or fez, or gaudy
handkerchief of many colours!
The negro servant of one of the European residents, a good-humoured giant
of nearly seven feet, whom his master is wont to describe as "his nigger
and a half," came stalking down amongst the little shops and stalls with a
flaunting bandanna round his head, a purple jacket, a most gorgeous sash,
a pair of green baggy breeches, a glittering silver-sheathed dagger, and a
most imposing _haik_, thrown in toga-like folds over all.
Negro women, unveiled, white-clad, adorned as to their shiny black arms
with rude heavy bracelets of silver or brass, sat at street-corners with
baskets of sweet cakes and little loaves for sale. Veiled Moorish women,
perchance showing just one bright black eye to tantalise the beholder,
glided along like substantial ghosts in the white raiment which enveloped
them from their heads down to the little feet shod with red or yellow
slippers embroidered with gold thread or bright-coloured silks. Women
leading tiny toddlers of children, little bright-eyed boys with crowns
shaven all but one queer little tufted ridge in the middle, deftly curled
this morning by mamma's loving fingers; foreheads adorned with quaint
frontlets, from which hung curious ornaments of gold and coral and silver,
spells against the evil eye, talismans, and what not.
Little boys in beautiful cloth or silken cloaks of pale blue, or delicate
purple, or crimson, or rich green, or golden yellow, trotting along as
proud as peacocks, holding by the hand some tiny brother who can barely
toddle. Children who have just had new slippers purchased for them, and
are carrying them home in triumph; children who, with funny little copper
coins in their hand, are congregating round the stall of the swarthy
seller of sweetstuffs, who is ejaculating loudly, "_Heloua_, _Heloua_!"
busily brandishing a feathery branch of green _artim_ the while, to keep
the vagrom flies off his stores of rich dainties composed of walnut and
almond toffee, pastes made of almonds and honey and sugar, little brown
sugar balls thickly strewn with cummin-seeds, long sticks of peppermint,
and other delicacies difficult to describe.
As to the grown-up Moors, never was seen such a hand-shaking as is going
on amongst them. Everybody is shaking hands with everybody else, each
wishing the other the Arabic substitute for "A merry Christmas," and after
each handshaking each of the participants puts his hand to his lips and
proceeds, to be stopped two yards farther on for a repetition of the
performance.
On we go through the meat-market, and note pityingly the leanness of the
Moors' Christmas beef, which has just been butchered, and of which an
eager good-humored crowd are buying small pieces amid much vociferation,
chaff, and "compliments of the season" generally.
Then we come to the green-grocers' shops, where we see huge radishes,
great pomegranates, sweet potatoes, and bunches of fragrant mint for the
flavouring of the Moors' passionately loved beverage, green tea; then to
the grocers' quarter, where, asking a grave and portly Moor for a
pennyworth _fakea_ (dried fruit), he puts into half a gourd-shell a
pleasant collection of dates, almonds, figs, and raisins, hands them to us
with benign politeness. Opposite his store is a low table covered with
queer bottles of all shapes and sizes, filled with a dubious-looking pink
fluid, resembling the most delicious hair oil, but apparently highly
appreciated by the Moorish and Jewish youth who crowd around.
In the centre is a burly brandy-bottle, bearing the well-known label of
"J. and F. Martell," now filled with a fluid presumably more innocuous
than the choicest cognac; the big bottle is flanked by rows of little
medicine-vials and long thin bottles such as are used for attar of roses
and other Eastern scents; for the vendor of this bright-coloured liquor
does not possess cups or tumblers, but dispenses it in the little bottles.
A bare-headed youth, with shaven crown, tenders a _mozouna_, receives a
two-ounce vial, empties it solemnly amid the envious looks of his
comrades, sets it down, and walks gravely away.
Away we go too, Cæsar and I, and I note that there is hardly a Jew to be
seen in the streets; they are afraid of stone-throwing, and outbursts of
the slumbering hatred and contempt with which they are regarded by the
orthodox Muslim.
As for Christians, Englishmen especially, they are much more tolerated and
respected; and I know that I may walk the town all day without fear of
molestation, and get plenty of kindly greetings and many a smile and shake
of the hand.
Out of the busy market, up the narrow and shady streets, hearing sounds of
the fearsome trumpet, which I have already compared to an exaggerated
mosquito, meeting that instrument presently at a corner--a horrid tin
thing about two yards long, wielded by a sinewy little man in a blue
tunic, accompanying a gaily-dressed boy on a sleek and patient donkey.
Fifing and drumming and firing of guns going on all around.
Fierce-looking Moors and Arabs from the country leaning on their long
silver-mounted guns, scowling at the "Kaffer," whom they have perchance
not seen until they came to El Souërah. A veiled, but evidently portly,
dame, leading by the hand a pretty little girl, in a red skirt below a
rich garment of lace or embroidery, with a crimson hooded cloak or
_djelab_ over it, rich ornaments on her smooth brown forehead, enormous
silver anklets, little bare feet, dyed, like her hands and those of most
of the little girls and many of the big ones, a bright red with henna.
Little girl shrinks behind her mother, afraid of the Giaour or of his big
dog; the Giaour slips by with a smile, doggie with a friendly wag of his
tail, and we go homeward for a while; Cæsar to make a hearty meal of the
biscuits which have come all the way from England for him; his master to
partake of lunch, then smoke a pipe on the roof, and look wistfully out
over the bright blue sky, and let his thoughts wander far, far away to
many a pleasant Christmas in a pleasant corner of the fair Western land:
"Where is now the merry party
I remember long ago,
Laughing round the Christmas fireside,
Brightened by its ruddy glow?"
But the Moor's Christmas has come early in October; there is time yet, and
plenty of English steamers going backwards and forwards; who knows whether
the wanderer may not yet spend the next Christmas by a genial English
fireside, and recount to prattling children on his knee (others' children,
alas!) the curious sights, sounds, and scenes of "Christmas for Moros?"
But I have not quite done with you yet, kindly reader. I must just briefly
tell you how I went out again in the afternoon with Cæsar and a two-legged
friend, and found more shopping going on and more handshaking, and found
the more festive spirits getting hilarious over green tea and coffee and
_kief_; how we strolled down to the Water-Port and sat on the quay,
surrounded by merry young Moors in their "Sunday best;" how my friend
essayed to sketch one or two of them, and they did not like it, but
thought some evil spell would be put upon them thereby; how they asked us
many questions about England, and particularly wanted to know how many
dollars we possessed; how my companion won the hearts of some of the
younger members of the party by teaching them how to whistle between their
thumbs, and how to make a certain very loud and direfully discordant
screech; and how J. and I finished the afternoon by partaking of a
delightful bottle of English ale in the courtyard of a cool store, leaning
our chairs against massive stone pillars, and smoking the pipe of peace.
But I fear the stern Editor will not grant me any more space, and I must
leave at present the recital of all that I saw on the ensuing day, which
the gentle Hamed, if he were a _little_ more closely acquainted with our
institutions, would call "Boxing-day for Moros."
C. A. P. ("SARCELLE"), _in London Society_,
MOGADOR.
THE HOMES AND HAUNTS OF THE ITALIAN POETS.
GUARINI.
Pastoral poetry had in Italy a tendency to a rapid degeneration from the
first. "Decipit exemplum vitiis imitabile." The earliest "pastorals" were
far from being without merit, and merit of a high order. But they were
eminently "vitiis imitabiles." Two specimens of Italian Arcadian poetry
stand out, from the incredibly huge mass of such productions still extant,
superior to all the innumerable imitations to which they gave rise in a
more marked degree even than "originals" usually surpass imitations in
value. These are the "Aminta" of Tasso, and the "Pastor Fido" of the poet
with whom it is the object of these pages to make the English nineteenth
century reader, who never will find the time to read him, in some degree
acquainted--Batista Guarini. It would be difficult to say which of these
two celebrated pastoral dramas was received with the greater amount of
delight and enthusiasm by the world of their contemporaries, or even which
of them is the better performance. The almost simultaneous production of
these two masterpieces in their kind is a striking instance of the, one
may almost say, epidemic nature of the influences which rule the
production of the human intellect; influences which certainly did not
cease to operate for many generations after that of the authors of the
"Aminta" and the "Pastor Fido," although the servile imitation of those
greatly admired works unquestionably went for much in causing the
overwhelming flood of pastorals which deluged Italy immediately subsequent
to their enormous success.
I have said that it would be difficult to assign a preëminence to either
of these poems. But it must not be supposed that it is intended thence to
insinuate an equality between the authors of them. Tasso would occupy no
lower place on the Italian Parnassus if he had never written the "Aminta."
His fame rests upon a very much larger and firmer basis. But Guarini would
be nowhere--would not be heard of at all--had he not written the "Pastor
Fido." Having, however, produced that work--a work of which forty editions
are said to have been printed in his lifetime, and which has been
translated into almost every civilised language, including Latin, Greek,
and Hebrew--he has always filled a space in the eyes of his countrymen,
and occupied a position in the roll of fame, which render his admission as
one of our select band here imperative. He is, besides, a representative
poet; the head and captain of the pastoral school, which attained
everywhere so considerable a vogue, and in Italy such colossal
proportions.
Guarini was born in the year 1537 in Ferrara,--desolate, dreary, shrunken,
grass-grown, tumble-down Ferrara, which in the course of one half-century
gave to the world, besides a host of lesser names, three such poets as
Tasso, Ariosto and Guarini. Ariosto died four years before Guarini was
born; but Tasso was nearly his contemporary, being but seven years his
junior.
In very few cases in all the world and in all ages has it happened that
intellectual distinction has been the appanage of one family for as many
generations as in that of the Guarini. They came originally from Verona,
where Guarino, the first of the family on record, who was born in 1370,
taught the learned languages, and was one of the most notable of the band
of scholars who laboured at the restoration of classical literature. He
lived to be ninety years old, and is recorded to have had twenty-three
sons. It is certain that he had twelve living in 1438. One of them,
Giovanni Batista, succeeded his father in his professorship at Ferrara, to
which city the old scholar had been invited by Duke Hercules I. It would
seem that another of his sons must also have shared the work of teaching
in the University of Ferrara: for Batista the poet was educated by his
great-uncle Alessandro, and succeeded him in his professorship. Of the
poet's father we only learn that he was a mighty hunter, and further, that
he and his poet-son were engaged in litigation respecting the inheritance
of the poet's grandfather and great-uncle. It is probable that the two old
scholars wished to bequeath their property, which included a landed
estate, to their grandson and great-nephew, who already was manifesting
tastes and capacities quite in accordance with their own, rather than to
that exceptional member of the race who cared for nothing but dogs and
horses.
Nor was Batista the last of his race who distinguished himself in the same
career. His son succeeded him in his chair at the university; and we have
thus at least four generations of scholars and professors following the
same course in the same university, which was in their day one of the most
renowned in Europe.
All this sounds very stable, very prosperous, very full of the element of
contentment. And there is every reason to believe that the
great-grandfather, the grandfather, the great-uncle, the son, were all as
tranquil and contented and happy as well-to-do scholars in a prosperous
university city should be. But not so the poet. His life was anything but
tranquil, or happy, or contented. The lives of few men, it may be hoped,
have been less so.
Yet his morning was brilliant enough. He distinguished himself so
remarkably by his success in his early studies that, on the death of his
great-uncle Alexander when he was only nineteen, he was appointed to
succeed him. This was in 1556, when Hercules II. was Duke of Ferrara, and
when that court of the Este princes was at the apogee of its splendour,
renown, and magnificence. The young professor remained working at the
proper labours of his profession for ten years; and they were in all
probability the best and happiest, the only happy ones of his life. Happy
is the nation, it has been said, which has no history; and much the same
probably may be said of an individual. Respecting these ten years of
Guarini's life but little has been recorded. No doubt the chronicle of
them would have been monotonous enough. The same quiet duties quietly and
successfully discharged; the same morning walk to his school, the same
evening return from it, through the same streets, with salutations to the
same friends, and leisurely pauses by the way to chat, Italian fashion,
with one and another, as they were met in the streets, not then, as now,
deserted, grass-grown, and almost weird in their pale sun-baked
desolation, but thronged with bustling citizens, mingled with gay
courtiers, and a very unusually large proportion of men whose names were
known from one end of Italy to the other. Those school haunts in the
Ferrarese University were haunts which the world-weary ex-professor must
often throughout the years of his remaining life--some forty-five of them,
for he did not die till 1612, when he was seventy-five--have looked back
on as the best and happiest of his storm-tossed existence.
There is, however, one record belonging to this happy time which must not
be forgotten. It was at Padua, _Padova la dotta_, as she has been in all
ages and is still called, Padua the learned, in the year 1565. Guarini was
then in his twenty-eighth year, and had been a professor at Ferrara for
the last eight years. Probably it was due to the circumstance that his
friend and fellow-townsman, Torquato Tasso, was then pursuing his studies
at Padua, that the young Ferrarese professor turned his steps in that
direction, bound "on a long vacation ramble." Tasso was only
one-and-twenty at the time; but he was already a member of the famous
Paduan Academy of the "Etherials," which Guarini was not. And we may
readily fancy the pride and pleasure with which the younger man, doing the
honours of the place to his learned friend, procured him to be elected a
member of the "Etherials." Guarini (so called _nel secolo_--in the world),
was _Il Costante_--the "Constant One" among the "Etherials." Scipio
Gonzaga, who became subsequently the famous Cardinal, spoke an oration of
welcome to him on his election. Then what congratulations, what
anticipations of fame, what loving protestations of eternal friendship,
what naïve acceptance of the importance and serious value of their
Etherial Academic play, as the two youths strolling at the evening hour
among the crowds of gravely clad but in no wise gravely speaking students
who thronged the colonnades in deep shadow under their low-browed arches,
sally forth from beneath them as the sun nears the west, on to the vast
open space which lies around the great church of St. Antony! Advancing in
close talk they come up to Donatello's superb equestrian statue of the
Venetian General Gattamelata, and lean awhile against the tall pedestal,
finishing their chat before entering the church for the evening prayer.
The "Etherials" of Padua constituted one of the innumerable "Academies"
which existed at that day and for a couple of centuries subsequently in
every one of the hundred cities of Italy. The "Arcadian" craze was the
generating cause of all of them. All the members were "shepherds;" all
assumed a fancy name on becoming a member, by which they were known in
literary circles; and every Academy printed all the rhymes its members
strung together!
Those must have been pleasant days in old Padua, before the young
Professor returned to his work in the neighbouring university of Ferrara.
The two young men were then, and for some time afterwards, loving friends;
for they had not yet become rival poets.
At the end of those ten years of university life he may be said to have
entered on a new existence--to have begun life afresh--so entirely
dis-severed was his old life from the new that then opened on him.
Alphonso II., who had succeeded his father, Hercules II., as Duke of
Ferrara in 1559, "called him to the court" in 1567, and he began life as a
courtier, or a "servant" of the Duke, in the language of the country and
time.
Well, in 1567 he entered into the service of the Duke, his sovereign, and
never had another happy or contented hour!
The first service on which the Duke employed him, and for the performance
of which he seems specially to have taken him from his professional chair,
was an embassy to Venice, to congratulate the new Doge, Pietro Loredano,
on his elevation to the ducal throne, to which he had been elected on the
previous 19th of June. On this occasion the Professor was created
Cavaliere, a title to which his landed estate of Guarina, so called from
the ancestor on whom it had been originally bestowed by a former duke,
fairly entitled him.
Shortly afterwards he was sent as ambassador to the court of Turin; and
then to that of the Emperor Maximilian at Innspruck. Then he was twice
sent to Poland; the first time on the occasion of the election of Henry
the Third of France to the throne of that kingdom; and the second time
when Henry quitted it to ascend that of France on the death of his brother
Charles IX. The object of this second embassy was to intrigue for the
election to the Polish crown of Alphonso. But, as it is hardly necessary
to say, his mission was unsuccessful.
It seems, too, to have been well-nigh fatal to the ambassador. There is
extant a letter written from Warsaw to his wife, which gives a curious and
interesting account of the sufferings he endured on the journey and at the
place of his destination. He tells his wife not to be discontented that
his silence has been so long, but to be thankful that it was not eternal,
as it was very near being! "I started, as you know, more in the fashion of
a courier than of an ambassador. And that would have been more tolerable
if bodily fatigue had been all. But the same hand that had to flog the
horses by day, had to hold the pen by night. Nature could not bear up
against this double labour of body and mind; especially after I had
travelled by Serravelles and Ampez,[48] which is more disagreeable and
difficult than I can tell you, from the ruggedness no less of the country
than of the people, from the scarcity of horses, the miserable mode of
living, and the want of every necessary. So much so that on reaching
Hala[49] I had a violent fever. I embarked, however, for Vienna
notwithstanding. What with fever, discouragement, an intense thirst,
scarcity of remedies and of medical assistance, bad lodging, generally far
to seek,[50] and often infected with disease, food disgusting, even to
persons in health, bed where you are smothered in feathers, in a word,
none of the necessaries or comforts of life! I leave you to imagine what I
have suffered. The evil increased; my strength grew less. I lost my
appetite for everything save wine. In a word, little hope remained to me
of life, and that little was odious to me. There is on the Danube, which I
was navigating, a vast whirlpool, so rapid that if the boatmen did not
avail themselves of the assistance of a great number of men belonging to
the locality, strong and powerful and well acquainted with the danger, who
are there constantly for the purpose, and who struggle with their oars
against the rapacious gulf, there is not a vessel in that great river
which would not be engulfed! The place is worthy of the name of "the Door
of Death," which with a notoriety of evil fame it has gained for itself.
There is no passenger so bold as not to pass that bit of the course of the
river on foot; for the thing is truly formidable and terrible. But I was
so overcome by illness, that having lost all sense of danger or desire to
live, I did not care to leave the boat, but remained in it, with those
strong men, I hardly know whether to say stupidly or intrepidly--but I
will say intrepidly, since at one point, where I was within an ace of
destruction, I felt no fear."
He goes on to tell how at Vienna a physician treated him amiss, and made
him worse; how every kind of consideration, and his own desire to save his
life, counselled him to delay there; but how the honour, the
responsibility of the embassy wholly on his shoulders, his duty to his
sovereign prevailed to drive him onwards. He feared, too, lest it should
be supposed at Warsaw that he preferred his life to the business on which
he came, an accusation which might have been made use of by suspicious and
malignant adversaries to deprive him of all the credit of his labours, and
"to snatch from my Prince the crown which we are striving to place on his
head. It is impossible to imagine," he continues, "what I suffered in that
journey of more than six hundred miles from Vienna to Warsaw, dragged
rather than carried in carts, broken and knocked to pieces. I wonder that
I am still alive! The obstinate fever, the want of rest, of food, and of
medicine, the excessive cold, the infinite hardships, the uninhabited
deserts, were killing me. More often than not it was a much lesser evil to
crouch by night in the cart, which dislocated my bones by day, rather than
to be suffocated in the foulness of those dens, or stables rather, where
the dogs and cats, the cocks and hens, and the geese, the pigs and the
calves, and sometimes the children, kept me waiting."
He proceeds to tell how the country was overrun, in that time of
interregnum, by lawless bands of Cossacks; how he was obliged to travel
with a strong escort, but nevertheless was obliged several times to
deviate from the direct road to avoid the Cossacks, but on two occasions
had very narrow escapes from falling into their hands. When he reached
Warsaw at last, more dead than alive, the only improvement of his position
was that he was stationary instead of in motion. "The cart no more
lacerates my limbs!" But there was no rest to be got. "The place, the
season, the food, the drink, the water, the servants, the medicines, the
doctors, mental trouble, and a thousand other ills make up my torment.
Figure to yourself all the kingdom lodged in one little town, and my room
in the midst of it! There is no place from the top to the bottom, on the
right or on the left, by day or by night, that is not full of tumult and
noise. There is no special time here destined for business. Negotiation is
going on always, because drinking is going on always; and business is dry
work without wine. When business is over, visits begin; and when these are
at an end, drums, trumpets, bombs, uproar, cries, quarrels, fighting,
split one's head in a manner piteous to think of. Ah! if I suffered all
this labour and this torment for the love and the glory of God, I should
be a martyr!" (one thinks of Wolsey!) "But is he not worthy of the name
who serves without hope of recompense?"
He concludes his letter, bidding his wife not to weep for him, but to live
and care for her children, in a manner which indicates that he had even
then but little hope of returning alive.
We are nevertheless assured by his biographers that he acquitted himself
upon all these occasions in such sort as to give satisfaction to his
sovereign and to acquire for himself the reputation of an upright and able
minister. The Italian practice of entrusting embassies especially to men
of letters, which we first had occasion to note when tracing the
vicissitudes of the life of Dante in the thirteenth century, which we saw
subsequently exemplified in the cases of Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Ariosto,
and which might be further exemplified in the persons of many other
Italian scholars and men of letters, still, as we see, prevailed in the
sixteenth century, and continued to do so for some little time longer.
But in no one instance, of all those I have mentioned, does the poet thus
employed in functions which in other lands and other times have usually
led to honours and abundant recognition of a more solid kind, appear to
have reaped any advantage in return for the service performed, or to have
been otherwise than dissatisfied and discontented with the treatment
accorded to him.
It would have been very interesting to learn somewhat of the impression
made upon an Italian scholar of the sixteenth century by the places
visited, and persons with whom he must have come in contact in those
transalpine lands, which were then so far off, so contrasted in all
respects with the home scenes among which his life had been passed in the
low-lying, fat, and fertile valley of the Po. Of all this his various
biographers and contemporaries tell us no word! But there is a volume of
his letters, a little square quarto volume, now somewhat rare, printed at
Venice in the year 1595.[51] These letters have somewhat unaccountably not
been included in any of the editions of his works, and they are but little
known. But turning to this little volume, and looking over the dates of
the letters (many of them, however, are undated), I found three written
"Di Spruch," and eagerly turned to them, thinking that I should certainly
find there what I was seeking. The letters belong to a later period of
Guarini's life, having been written in 1592, when he was again sent on an
embassy to the German Emperor. This circumstance, however, is of no
importance as regards the purpose for which I wanted the letters. I was
disappointed. But I must nevertheless give one of these letters, not
wantonly to compel my reader to share my disappointment, but because it is
a curiosity in its way. The person to whom he writes is a lady, the
Contessa Pia di Sala, with whom he was evidently intimate. He is at
Innspruck at the Court of the Emperor Maximilian. The lady is at Mantua,
and this is what he writes to her:
"Di Spruch, Nov. 29, 1592.
"The letter of your Illustrious Ladyship, together with
which you send me that of your most excellent brother,
written at the end of August, reached me yesterday, at first
to my very great anger at having been for so long a time
deprived of so precious a thing, while I appeared in fault
towards so distinguished a lady; but finally to my very
great good fortune. For if a letter written by the most
lovely flame[52] in the world had arrived, while the skies
were burning, what would have become of me, when, now that
winter is beginning, I can scarcely prevent myself from
falling into ashes? And in truth, when I think that those so
courteous thoughts come from the mind which informs so
lovely a person, that those characters have been traced by a
hand of such excellent beauty, I am all ablaze, no less than
if the paper were fire, the words flames, and all the
syllables sparks. But God grant that, while I am set on fire
by the letter of your Illustrious Ladyship, you may not be
inflamed by anger against me, from thinking that the terms
in which I write are too bold. Have no such doubt, my
honoured mistress! I want nothing from the flaming of my
letter, but to have made by the light of it more vivid and
more brilliant in you, the natural purity of your beautiful
face, even as it seems to me that I can see it at this
distance. My love is nothing else save honour; my flame is
reverence; my fire is ardent desire to serve you. And only
so long will the appointment in his service, which it has
pleased my Lord His Serene Highness the Duke of Mantua to
give me, and on which your Illustrious Ladyship has been
kind enough to congratulate me so cordially, be dear to me,
as you shall know that I am fit for it, and more worthy and
more ready to receive the favour of your commands, which
will always be to me a most sure testimony that you esteem
me, not for my own worth, as you too courteously say, but
for the worth which you confer on me, since I am not worthy
of such esteem for any other merit than that which comes to
me from being honoured by so noble and beautiful a lady. I
kiss the hand of your Illustrious Ladyship, wishing the
culmination of every felicity."
Now, this letter I consider to be a very great curiosity! The other two
written from the same place, one to a Signor Bulgarini at Siena, the other
to a lady, the Marchesa di Grana, at Mantua, are of an entirely similar
description. I turned to them in the hope of finding how Innspruck, its
stupendous scenery, its court, its manners so widely different from those
to which the writer and his correspondents were used, its streets, its
people, impressed a sixteenth century Italian from the valley of the Po. I
find instead a psychological phenomenon! The writer is a grave, austere
man (Guarini was notably such), celebrated throughout Italy for his
intellectual attainments, in the fifty-seventh year of his age, with a
wife and family; he is amidst scenes which must, one would have thought,
have impressed in the very highest degree the imagination of a poet, and
must, it might have been supposed, have interested those he was writing to
in an only somewhat less degree, and he writes the stuff the reader has
just waded through. It is clear that this Italian sixteenth century
scholar, poet and of cultivated intellect as he was, saw nothing amid the
strange scenes to which a hard and irksome duty called him, which he
thought worthy of being mentioned even by a passing word to his friends!
Surely this is a curious trait of national character.
He remained in the service of the court for fourteen years, employed
mainly, as it should seem, in a variety of embassies; an employment which
seems to have left him a disappointed, soured, and embittered man. He
considered that he had not been remunerated as his labour deserved, that
the heavy expenses to which he had been put in his long journeys had not
been satisfactorily made up to him, and that he had not been treated in
any of the foreign countries to which his embassies had carried him with
the respect due to his own character and to his office.
He determined therefore to leave the court and retire to Padua, a
residence in which city, it being not far distant from his estate of
Guarina, would offer him, he thought, a convenient opportunity of
overlooking his property and restoring order to his finances, which had
suffered much during his travels. This was in the year 1582, when Guarini
was in the forty-fifth year of his age. It is not clear, however, that
this retirement was wholly spontaneous; and the probability is that the
Duke and his ambassador were equally out of humour with each other. And it
is probable that the faults were not all on the side of the Duke. There is
sufficient evidence that the author of the "Pastor Fido" must have been a
difficult man to live with.
The old friendship of happier days with Tasso had not survived the wear
and tear of life at court. It was known that they no longer saw or spoke
with each other. And everybody--if not of their contemporaries, at least
of subsequent writers--jumped to the conclusion that the writer of the
"Aminta" and the writer of the "Pastor Fido" must be jealous of each
other. Jealousy there certainly was. But some frailer and more mortal
female than the Muse was the cause of it. The Abate Serassi in his life of
Tasso admits that Tasso first gave offence to Guarini by a sonnet in which
he endeavoured to alienate the affections of a lady from him, by
representing him as a faithless and fickle lover. The lines in which Tasso
attacked his brother poet are, it must be admitted, sharp enough!
Si muove e si raggira
Instabil più che arida fronde ai venti;
Nulla fè, null' amor, falsi i tormenti
Sono, e falso l'affeto ond' ei sospira.
Insidioso amante, ama e disprezza
Quasi in un punto, e trionfando spiega
Di femminile spoglie empi trofei.[53]...
The attack was savage enough, it must be admitted, and well calculated to
leave a lasting wound. Guarini immediately answered the cruel sonnet by
another, the comparative weakness of which is undeniable.
Questi che indarno ad alta mira aspira
Con altrui biasmi, e con bugiardi accenti,
Vedi come in se stesso arruota i denti,
Mentre contra ragion meco s'adira.
Di due fiamme si vanta, e stringe e spezza
Più volte un nodo; e con quest' arti piega
(Chi 'l crederebbe!) a suo favore i Dei.[54]...
There is reason to think that the accusation of many times binding and
loosing the same knot, may have hit home. The sneer about bending the gods
to favour him, alludes to Tasso's favour at court, then in the ascendant,
and may well have been as offensive to the Duke and the ladies of his
court as to the object of his satire. Both angry poets show themselves
somewhat earth-stained members of the Paduan "Etherials." But the sequel
of the estrangement was all in favour of the greater bard. Tasso, in
desiring a friend to show his poems in manuscript to certain friends, two
or three in number, on whose opinion he set a high value, named Guarini
among the number. And upon another occasion wishing to have Guarini's
opinion as to the best of two proposed, methods of terminating a sonnet,
and not venturing to communicate directly with him, he employed a common
friend to obtain his brother-poet's criticism. Tasso had also in his
dialogue entitled the "Messagero" given public testimony to Guarini's high
intellectual and civil merits. But Guarini appears never to have forgiven
the offence. He never once went to see Tasso in his miserable confinement
in the hospital of St. Anne; nor, as has been seen, would hold any
communication with him.
He must have been a stern and unforgiving man. And indeed all the
available testimony represents him as having been so,--upright, honest,
and honourable, but haughty, punctilious, litigious, quick to take
offence, slow to forget or forgive it, and cursed with a thin-skinned
_amour propre_ easily wounded and propense to credit others with the
intention of wounding where no such intention existed. The remainder of
the story of his life offers an almost unbroken series of testimonies to
the truth of such an estimate of his character.
It was after fourteen years' service in the court of Duke Alphonso, as has
been said, that he retired disgusted and weary to live in independence and
nurse his estate in the neighbourhood of Padua. But the part of
Cincinnatus is not for every man! It was in 1582 that he retired from the
court intending to bid it and its splendours, its disappointments and its
jealousies, an eternal adieu. In 1585, on an offer from the Duke to make
him his secretary, he returned and put himself into harness again!
But this second attempt to submit himself to the service, to the caprices
and exigencies of a master and of a court ended in a quicker and more
damaging catastrophe than the first. In a diary kept by the poet's nephew,
Marcantonio Guarini, under the date of July 13, 1587, we find it written
that "the Cavalier Batista Guarini, Secretary of the Duke, considering
that his services did not meet with sufficient consideration in proportion
to his worth, released himself from that servitude." The phrase here
translated "released himself" is a peculiar one--_si licenzio_--"dismissed
himself." To receive _licenza_, or to be _licenziato_, is to be dismissed,
or at least parted with in accordance with the will of the employer. But
the phrase used by the diarist seems intended to express exactly what
happened when the poet, once more discontented, took himself off from
Ferrara and its Duke. He seems to have done so in a manner which gave deep
and lasting offence. In a subsequent passage of the above-quoted diary we
read, "the Cavaliere Batista Guarini having absented himself from Ferrara,
disgusted with the Duke, betook himself to Florence, and then, by the
intermedium of Guido Coccapani the agent, asked for his dismissal in form
and obtained it." We happen, however, to have a letter written by this
Coccapani, who seems to have been the Duke's private secretary and
managing man, in which he gives his version of the matter. He was
"stupefied," he says, "when he received the extravagant letter of the
Cavaliere Guarini, and began to think that it would be with him as it had
been with Tasso," who by that time had fallen into disgrace. There is
reason to think that he left Ferrara secretly, without taking leave of the
Duke, or letting anybody at court know where he had gone. He did,
however, obtain his formal dismissal, as has been said, but the Duke by no
means forgave him.
Though it would appear that on leaving Ferrara in this irregular manner he
went in the first instance to Florence, it seems that he had had hopes
given him of a comfortable position and honourable provision at Turin. He
was to have been made a Counsellor of State, and entrusted with the task
of remodelling the course of study at the university, with a stipend of
six hundred crowns annually. But on arriving at Turin he found
difficulties in the way. In fact, the angry Duke of Ferrara had used his
influence with the Duke of Savoy to prevent anything being done for his
contumacious Secretary of State. Guarini, extremely mortified, had to
leave Turin, and betook himself to Venice.
His adventure, however, was of a nature to cause great scandal in that
clime and time. As usual, the Italians were offended at the "imprudence"
of which Guarini's temper had led him to be guilty, more than they would
have been by many a fault which among ourselves would be deemed a very
much worse one. A violence of temper or indignation shown in such a manner
as to injure _one's own_ interests is, and in a yet greater degree was, a
spectacle extremely disgusting to Italian moral sentiment.
The outcry against Guarini on this occasion was so great that he found
himself obliged to put forth an exculpatory statement.
"If human actions, my most kind readers," he begins, "always bore marked
on the front of them the aims and motives which have produced them, or if
those who talk about them were always well informed enough to be able to
judge of them without injury to the persons of whom they speak, I should
not be compelled, at my age, and after so many years of a life led in the
eyes of the world, and often busied in defending the honour of others, to
defend this day my own, which has always been dearer to me than my life.
Having heard, then, that my having left the service of His Serene Highness
the Duke of Ferrara and entered that of the Duke of Savoy has given
occasion to some persons, ignorant probably of the real state of the case,
to make various remarks, and form various opinions, I have determined to
publish the truth, and at the same time to declare my own sentiments in
the matter.
"I declare, then, that previously to my said departure I consigned to the
proper person everything, small as it was, which was in my hands regarding
my office, which had always been exercised by me uprightly and without any
other object in view than the service of my sovereign and the public
welfare. Further, that I, by a written paper under my own hand (as the
press of time and my need rendered necessary), requested a free and
decorous dismissal from the Duke in question, and also, that I set forth
in all humility the causes which led me to that determination; and I added
(some of the circumstances in which I was compelling me to do so) that if
His Serene Highness did not please to give me any other answer, I would
take his silence as a consent to my request of dismissal. I declare
further that the paper was delivered to the principal Minister of his
Serene Highness, and lastly, that my salary was, without any further
communication with me, stopped, and cancelled from the roll of payments.
And as this is the truth, so it is equally true that my appointment as
reformer of the University of Turin, and Counsellor of State with six
hundred crowns yearly, was settled and concluded with His Serene Highness
the Duke of Savoy, and that I declined to bind myself, and did not bind
myself, to ask any other dismissal from His Serene Highness the Duke of
Ferrara than that which I have already spoken. And, finally, it is true
that, as I should not have gone to Turin if I had not been engaged for
that service and invited thither, so I should not have left, or wished to
leave this place,[55] had I not known that I received my dismissal in the
manner above related. Now, as to the cause which may have retarded and may
still retard the fulfillment of the engagement above mentioned, I have
neither object, nor obligation, nor need to declare it. Suffice it that it
is not retarded by any fault of mine, or difficulty on my side. In
justification of which I offered myself, and by these presents now again
offer myself, to present myself wheresoever, whensoever, and in whatsoever
manner, and under whatsoever conditions and penalties, as may be seen more
clearly set forth in the instrument of agreement sent by me to His
Highness. From all which, I would have the world to know, while these
affairs of mine are still in suspension, that I am a man of honour, and am
always ready to maintain the same in whatsoever manner may be fitting to
my condition and duty. And as I do not at all doubt that some decision of
some kind not unworthy of so just and so magnanimous a prince will be
forthcoming; so, let it be what it may, it will be received by me with
composure and contentment; since, by God's grace, and that of the serene
and exalted power under the most just and happy dominion of which I am now
living, and whose subject, if not by birth, yet by origin and family, I
am,[56] I have a comfortable and honoured existence. And may you, my
honoured readers, live in happiness and contentment. Venice, February 1,
1589."
We must, I think, nevertheless be permitted to doubt the contentment and
happiness of the life he led, as it should seem, for the next four years,
at Venice. No such decision of any kind, as he hoped from the Duke of
Savoy, was forthcoming. He was shunted! He had quarrelled with his own
sovereign, and evidently the other would have none of him. The Italians of
one city were in those days to a wonderful degree foreigners in another
ruled by a different government; and there can be little doubt that
Guarini wandered among the quays and "calle" of Venice, or paced the great
piazza at the evening hour, a moody and discontented man!
At last, after nearly four years of this sad life, there came an
invitation from the Duke of Mantua proposing that Guarini should come to
Mantua together with his son Alessandro, to occupy honourable positions in
that court. The poet, heartily sick of "retirement," accepted at once, and
went to Mantua. But there, too, another disappointment awaited him. The
"magnanimous" Duke Alphonso would not tolerate that the man who had so
cavalierly left his service should find employment elsewhere. It is
probable that this position was obtained for him by the influence of his
old friend and fellow-member of the "Etherials" at Padua, Scipione
Gonzaga; and it would seem that he occupied it for a while, and went on
behalf of the Duke of Mantua to Innspruck, whence he wrote the wonderful
letters which have been quoted.
The Cardinal's influence, however, was not strong enough to prevail
against the spite of a neighbouring sovereign. There are two letters
extant from the Duke, or his private secretary, to that same Coccapani
whom we saw so scandalized at Guarini's hurried and informal departure
from Ferrara, and who was residing as Alphonso's representative at Mantua,
in which the Minister is instructed to represent to the Duke of Mantua
that his brother of Ferrara "did not think it well that the former should
take any of the Guarini family into his service, and when they should see
each other he would tell him his reasons. For the present he would only
say that he wished the Duke to know that it would be excessively pleasing
to him if the Duke would have nothing to say to any of them."
This was in 1593; and the world-weary poet found himself at fifty-six once
again cast adrift upon the world. The extremity of his disgust and
weariness of all things may be measured by the nature of the next step he
took. He conceived, says his biographer Barotti, that "God called him by
internal voices, and by promise of a more tranquil life, to accept the
tonsure." His wife had died some little time before; and it was therefore
open to him to do so. He went to Rome accordingly for the purpose of there
taking orders. But during the short delay which intervened between the
manifestation of his purpose and the fulfilment of it, news reached him
that his friend and protectress the Duchess of Urbino, Alphonso's sister,
had interceded for him with the Duke, and that he was forgiven! It was
open to him to return to his former employment! And no sooner did the news
reach him than he perceived that "the internal voices" were altogether a
mistake. God had never called him at all, and Alphonso had! All thoughts
of the Church were abandoned on the instant, and he hastened to Ferrara,
arriving there on the 15th of April, 1595.
But neither on this occasion was he destined to find the tranquillity
which he seemed fated never to attain! And this time the break-up was a
greater and more final one than the last. Duke Alphonso died in 1597; and
the Pontificial Court, which had long had its eye on the possibility of
enforcing certain pretended claims to the Duchy of Ferrara, found the
means at Alphonso's death of ousting his successor the Duke Cesare, who
remained thenceforward Duke of Modena only, but no longer of Ferrara.
Guarini was once more adrift! Nor were the political changes in Ferrara
the only thing which rendered the place no longer a home for him. Other
misfortunes combined to render a residence in the city odious to him. His
daughter Anna had married a noble gentleman of Ferrara, the Count Ercole
Trotti, by whom she was on the 3rd of May, 1598, murdered at his villa of
Zanzalino near Ferrara. Some attempt was made to assert that the husband
had reason to suspect that his wife was plotting against his life. But
there seems to have been no foundation for any accusation of the sort; and
the crime was prompted probably by jealousy. Guarini, always on bad terms
with his sons, and constantly involved in litigation with them, as he had
been with his father, was exceedingly attached to this unfortunate
daughter.
But even this terrible loss was not the only bitterness which resulted
from this crime. Guarini composed a long Latin epitaph, in which he
strongly affirms her absolute innocence of everything that had been laid
to her charge, and speaks with reprobation of the husband's[57] crime. But
scarcely had the stone bearing the inscription been erected than the
indignant father was required by the authorities of the city to remove it.
A declaration, which he published on the subject, dated June 15, 1598, is
still extant. "On that day," he writes, "the Vice-legate of Ferrara spoke
with me, in the name of the Holy Father, as to the removing of the epitaph
written by me on Anna my daughter in the church of Sta. Catherina. He said
that there were things in it that might provoke other persons to
resentment, and occasion much scandal; and that, besides that, there were
in the inscription words of Sacred Scripture, which ought not to be used
in such a place. I defended my cause, and transmitted a memorial to his
Holiness, having good reason to know that these objections were the mere
malignity of those who favour the opposite party, and of those who caused
the death of my innocent child. But at last, on the 22nd, I caused the
epitaph to be removed, intimating that it was my intention to take up the
body, and inter it elsewhere. On which it is worthy of remark, that having
made my demand to that effect, I was forbidden to do so." He further adds:
"Note! news was brought to me here that my son Girolamo, who was evidently
discovered to be the accomplice, and principal atrocious author of the
death of his sister Anna, received from the Potesta of Rovigo licence to
come into the Polisina with twelve men armed with arquebuses."
All this is very sad; and whether these terrible suspicions may or may not
have had any foundation other than the envenomed temper generated by the
family litigations, it must equally have had the effect of making the life
of Guarini a very miserable one, and contributing to his determination to
abandon finally his native city.
More surprising is it that, after so many disgusts and disappointments, he
should once again have been tempted to seek, what he had never yet been
able to find there, in a court. In a letter written in November, 1598, he
informs the Duke Cesare (Duke of Modena, though no longer of Ferrara) that
the Grand Duke of Florence had offered him a position at Florence. And his
Serene Highness, more kindly and forgiving than the late Duke, wrote him
an obliging and congratulatory letter in the following month.
At Florence everything at first seemed to be going well with him, and he
seemed to stand high in favour with the Grand Duke Ferdinand. But very
shortly he quitted Florence in anger and disgust on the discovery of the
secret marriage of his third son, Guarini, with a woman of low condition
at Pisa, with at least the connivance, as the poet thought, whether justly
or not there is nothing to show, of the Grand Duke.
After that his old friend the Duchess of Urbino once again stood his
friend, and he obtained a position in the court of Urbino, then one of the
most widely famed centres of cultivation and letters in Italy. And for a
while everything seemed at last to be well with him there. On the 23rd of
February, 1603, he writes to his sister, who apparently had been pressing
him to come home to Ferrara:--"I should like to come home, my sister. I
have great need and a great desire for home; but I am treated so well
here, and with so much distinction and so much kindness, that I cannot
come. I must tell you that all expenses for myself and my servants are
supplied, so that I have not to spend a farthing for anything in the world
that I need. The orders are that anything I ask for should be furnished to
me. Besides all which, they give me three hundred crowns a year; so that,
what with money and expenses, the position is worth six hundred crowns a
year to me. You may judge, then, if I can throw it up. May God grant you
every happiness!
Your brother,
B. GUARINI."
But all would not do. He had been but a very little time in this little
Umbrian Athens among the Apennines before he once again threw up his
position in anger and disgust, because he did not obtain all the marks of
distinction to which he thought that he was entitled. This was in 1603. He
was now sixty-six, and seems at length to have made no further attempt to
haunt at court. Once again he was at Rome in 1605, having undertaken, at
the request of the citizens of Ferrara, to carry their felicitations to
the new Pope, Paul the Fifth. And with the exception of that short
expedition his last years were spent in the retirement of his ancestral
estate of Guarina.
The property is situated in the district of Lendinara, on the fat and
fertile low-lying region between Rovigo and Padua, and belongs to the
commune--parish, as we should say--of St. Bellino. The house, dating
probably from the latter part of the fifteenth century, is not much more
than a hundred yards or so from the _piazza_ of the village, which boasts
two thousand inhabitants. The road between the two is bordered with trees.
The whole district is as flat as a billiard table, and as prosaical in its
well-to-do fertility as can be imagined. It is intersected by a variety of
streams, natural and artificial. About a couple of miles from the house to
the south is the Canalbianco; and a little farther to the north the
Adigetto. To the east runs the Scortico. St. Bellino, from whom the
village is named, was, it seems, enrolled among the martyrs by Pope
Eugenius the Third in 1152. He has a great specialty for curing the bite
of mad dogs. There is a grand cenotaph in his honour in the village
church, which was raised by some of the Guarini family. But this, too,
like all else, became a subject of trouble and litigation to our poet. A
certain Baldassare Bonifaccio of Rovigo wanted to transport the saint to
that city. Guarini would not hear of this; litigated the matter before the
tribunals of Venice, and prevailed. So the saint still resides at St.
Bellino to the comfort of all those bitten by mad dogs in those parts. The
house and estate have passed through several hands since that time; but a
number of old family portraits may still be seen on the walls, together
with the family arms, and the motto, "Fortis est in asperis non turbari."
The armchair and writing table of the poet are also still preserved in the
house, and a fig-tree is pointed out close by it, under the shade of which
the poet, as tradition tells, wrote on that table and in that chair his
"Pastor Fido." There is an inscription on the chair as follows: "Guarin
sedendo qui canto, che vale al paragon seggio reale."[58]
It was not, however, during this his last residence here that the "Pastor
Fido" was written, but long previously. It was doubtless his habit to
escape from the cares of official life in Ferrara from time to time as he
could; and it must have been in such moments that the celebrated pastoral
was written.[59]
The idea of a scholar and a poet, full of years and honours, passing the
quiet evening of his life in a tranquil retirement in his own house on his
own land, is a pleasing one. But it is to be feared that in the case of
the author of the "Pastor Fido" it would be a fallacious one. Guarini
would not have come to live on his estate if he could have lived
contentedly in any city. We may picture him to ourselves sitting under his
fig-tree, or pacing at evening under the trees of the straight avenue
between his house and the village, or on the banks of one of the sluggish
streams slowly finding their way through the flat fields towards the Po;
but I am afraid the picture must be of one "Remote, unfriended,
melancholy, slow," with eyes bent earthwards, and discontented mind:
"remote," because to the Italian mind all places beyond the easy reach of
a city are so; "unfriended," because he had quarrelled with everybody;
"melancholy," because all had gone amiss with him, and his life had been a
failure; "slow," because no spring of hope in the mind gave any elasticity
to his step.
One other "haunt" of the aged poet must, however, be mentioned, because it
is a very characteristic one. During this last residence at Guarina, he
hired an apartment at Ferrara, selecting it in a crowded part of the
centre of the city, especially frequented by the lawyers, that he might be
in the midst of them, when he went into the city on the various business
connected with his interminable lawsuits. The most crowded part of the
heart of the city of Ferrara! It would be difficult to find any such part
now. But the picture offered to the imagination, of the aged poet,
professor, courtier, haunting the courts, the lawyers' chambers, leaving
his, at least, tranquil retreat at St. Bellino, to drag weary feet through
the lanes of the city in which he had in earlier days played so different
a part, is a sad one. But there are people who like contention so much
that such work is a labour of love to them. And certainly, if the
inference may be drawn from the fact of his never having been free from
lawsuits in one quarrel or another, Guarini must have been one of these.
But it is passing strange that the same man should have been the author of
the "Pastor Fido."
They pursued him to the end, these litigations; or he pursued them! And at
last he died, not at Guarina, but at Venice, on the 7th of October, 1612,
where, characteristically enough, he chanced to be on business connected
with some lawsuit.
And now a few words must be said about his great work, the "Pastor Fido."
It is one of the strangest things in the range of literary history that
such a man should have written such a poem. He was, one would have said,
the last man in the world to produce such a work. The first ten years of
his working life were spent in the labour of a pedagogue; the rest of it
in the inexpressibly dry, frivolous, and ungenial routine of a small
Italian court, or in wandering from one to the other of them in the vain
and always disappointed search for such employment. We are told that he
was a punctilious, stiff, unbending, angular man; upright and honourable,
but unforgiving and wont to nurse his enmities. He was soured,
disappointed, discontented with everybody and everything, involved in
litigation first with his father, and then with his own children. And this
was the man who wrote the "Pastor Fido," of all poems comparable to it in
reputation the lightest, the airiest, and the most fantastic! The argument
of it is as follows:
The Arcadians, suffering in various ways from the anger of Diana, were at
last informed by the oracle that the evils which afflicted them would
cease when a youth and a maiden, both descended from the Immortals, as it
should seem the _creme de la creme_ of Arcadian society mostly was, should
be joined together in faithful love. Thereupon Montano, a priest of the
goddess who was descended from Hercules, arranged that his only son Silvio
should be betrothed to Amaryllis, the only daughter of Tytirus, who was
descended from Pan. The arrangement seemed all that could be desired, only
that a difficulty arose from the fact that Silvio, whose sole passion was
the chase, could not be brought to care the least in the world for
Amaryllis. Meantime Mirtillo, the son, as was supposed, of the shepherd
Carino, fell desperately in love with Amaryllis. She was equally attached
to him, but dared not in the smallest degree confess her love, because the
law of Arcadia would have punished with death her infidelity to her
betrothed vows. A certain Corisca, however, who had conceived a violent
but unrequited passion for Mirtillo, perceiving or guessing the love of
Amaryllis for him, hating her accordingly, and hoping that, if she could
be got out of the way, she might win Mirtillo's love, schemes by deceit
and lies to induce Mirtillo and Amaryllis to enter together a cave, which
they do in perfect innocence, and without any thought of harm. Then he
contrives that they should be caught there, and denounced by a satyr; and
Amaryllis is condemned to die. The law, however, permits that her life may
be saved by any Arcadian who will voluntarily die in her stead; and this
Mirtillo determines to do, although he believes that Amaryllis cares
nothing for him, and also is led by the false Corisca to believe that she
had gone into the cave for the purpose of meeting with another lover. The
duty of sacrificing him devolves on Montano the priest; and he is about to
carry out the law, when Carino, who has been seeking his reputed son
Mirtillo, comes in, and while attempting to make out that he is a
foreigner, and therefore not capable of satisfying the law by his death,
brings unwittingly to light circumstances that prove that he is in truth a
son of Montano, and therefore a descendant of the god Hercules. It thus
appears that a marriage between Mirtillo and Amaryllis will exactly
satisfy the conditions demanded by the oracle. There is an under-plot,
which consists in providing a lover and a marriage for the woman-hater
Silvio. He is loved in vain by the nymph Dorinda, whom he unintentionally
wounds with an arrow while out hunting. The pity he feels for her wound
softens his heart towards her, and all parties are made happy by this
second marriage.
Such is a skeleton of the story of the "Pastor Fido." It will be observed
that there is more approach to a plot and to human interest than in any
previous production of this kind, and some of the situations are well
conceived for dramatic effect. And accordingly the success which it
achieved was immediate and immense. Nor, much as the taste of the world
has been changed since that day, has it ever lost its place in the
estimation of cultivated Italians.
It would be wholly uninteresting to attempt any account of the
wide-spreading literary controversies to which the publication of the
"Pastor Fido" gave rise. The author terms it a tragi-comedy; and this
title was violently attacked. The poet himself, as may well be imagined
from the idiosyncrasy of the man, was not slow to reply to his critics,
and did so in two lengthy treatises entitled from the name of a
contemporary celebrated actor, "Verato primo," and "Verato secondo," which
are printed in the four-quarto-volume edition of his works, but which
probably no mortal eye has read for the last two hundred years!
The question of the rivalry between the "Aminta" of Tasso and the "Pastor
Fido" has an element of greater interest in it. It is certain that the
former preceded the latter, and doubtless suggested it. It seems probable
that Ginguené is right in his suggestion, that Guarini, fully conscious
that no hope was open to him of rivalling his greater contemporary and
townsman in epic poetry, strove to surpass him in pastoral. It must be
admitted that he has at least equalled him. Yet, while it is impossible to
deny that almost every page of the "Pastor Fido" indicates not so much
plagiarism as an open and avowed purpose of doing the same thing better,
if possible, than his rival has done it, the very diverse natural
character of the two poets is also, at every page, curiously indicated.
Specially the reader may be recommended to compare the passages in the two
poems where Tasso under the name of Thyrsis, and Guarini under the name of
Carino (Act 5, scene 1), represent the sufferings both underwent at the
court of Alphonso II. The lines of Guarini are perhaps the most vigorous
in their biting satire. But the gentler and nobler nature of Tasso is
unmistakable.
It is strange that the Italian critics, who are for the most part so
lenient to the licentiousness of most of the authors of this period, blame
Guarini for the too great warmth, amounting to indecency, of his poem. The
writer of his life in the French "Biographie Universelle" refers to
certain scenes as highly indecent. I can only say that, on examining the
passages indicated carefully, I could find no indecency at all. It is
probable that the writer referred to had never read the pages in question.
But it is odd that those whose criticism he is no doubt reflecting should
have said so. No doubt there are passages, not those mentioned by the
writer in the "Biographie," but for instance the first scene of the second
act, when a young man in a female disguise is one among a party of girls,
who propose a prize for her who can give to one of them, the judge, the
sweetest kiss, which prize he wins, which might be deemed somewhat on the
sunny side of the hedge that divides the permissible from the
unpermissible. But in comparison with others of that age Guarini is pure
as snow.
It has been said in speaking of the sad story of his daughter Anna, that
she was accused of having given her husband cause for jealousy. It would
seem very clear that there was no ground for any such accusation. But it
was said that the misconduct on her part had been due to the corruption of
her mind by the reading of her father's verses. The utter groundlessness
of such an assertion might be shown in many ways. But the savage and
malignant cruelty of it points with considerable evidence to the sources
of the current talk about the courtier poet's licentiousness.
It is impossible to find room here for a detailed comparison between these
two celebrated pastorals; and it is the less needed inasmuch as Ginguené
has done it very completely and at great length in the twenty-fifth
chapter of the second part of his work.
Guarini also produced a comedy, the "Idropica," which was acted with much
success at the court of Mantua, and is printed among his works, as well as
some prose pieces of small importance, the principal of which is "Il
Secretario," a treatise on the duties of a secretary, not printed among
his works, but of which an edition exists in pot quarto (186 pages)
printed at Venice in 1594. Neither have his letters been printed among his
works. They exist, printed without index or order of any kind, in a volume
of the same size as the "Secretario," printed at Venice also in 1595, but
by a different printer.
The name, however, of Batista Guarini would have long since been
forgotten, had he not written the "Pastor Fido."
T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE, in Belgravia.
FOOTNOTES:
[48] The now celebrated pass of the Ampezzo between Venice and Innspruck.
[49] This must probably be Hall on the Inn, a little below Innspruck.
Certainly any boat which he got there for the descent of the river must
have been a sufficiently miserable mode of travelling.
[50] Far, that is, from the bank of the river, where he left his boat at
night.
[51] Lettere del Signor Cavaliere Battista Guarini, Nobile Ferrarese, di
nuovo in questa seconda impressione di alcune altre accrescinte, e dall'
Autore stesso corrette, di Agostino Michele raccolte, et al Sereniss.
Signore il Duca d'Urbino dedicate. Con Privilegio. In Venetia, MDXCV.
Appresso Gio. Battista Ciotti Senese al segno della Minerva.
[52] I translate literally. Old-fashioned people will remember a somewhat
similar use of the word "Flame" in English.
[53] I subjoin a literal prose translation in preference to borrowing a
rhymed one from any of Tasso's translators. This fellow "flits and circles
around more unstable than dry leaves in the wind. Without faith, without
love, false are his pretended torments, and false the affection which
prompts his sighs. A traitorous lover, he loves and despises almost at the
same moment, and in triumph displays the spoils of women as impious
trophies."
[54] "See how this fellow, who in vain aims at a lofty goal, by blaming
others, and by lying accents, sharpens against himself his teeth, while
without reason he is enraged with me.... Of two flames he boasts, and ties
and breaks over and over again the same knot; and by these arts (who would
believe it!) bends in his favour the Gods!" ...
[55] It is odd that he should so write in a paper dated, as the present
is, from Venice. I suppose the expression came from his feeling that he
was addressing parsons at Ferrara.
[56] Seeing that, as has been said, his ancestors were of Verona, which
belonged to Venice.
[57] Barotti gives it at length; but it is hardly worth while to occupy
space by reproducing it here.
[58] "Guarini sitting here, sang, that which renders the seat the equal of
a royal throne."
[59] It is very doubtful and very difficult to determine at what period of
his life the "Pastor Fido" was written. Ginguené (Hist. Ital. Lit. Part
II. ch. xxv.) has sufficiently shown that the statements of the Italian
biographers on this point are inaccurate. Probably it was planned and, in
part, written many years before it was finished. It was first printed in
1590.
THE VAQUERO.[60]
Oh, who is so free as a gallant _vaquero_?
With his beauty of bronze 'neath his shady _sombrero_:
He smiles at his love, and he laughs at his fate,
For he knows he is lord of a noble estate:
The prairie's his own, and he mocks at the great.
"Ho-ho! Hai! Ho-ho!
Head 'em off! Turn 'em back!
Keep 'em up to the track!
Ho-hillo! Ho-hillo!
Cric--crac!"
Oh, Donna Luisa is proud as she's fair;
But she parted last night with a lock of her hair.
And under the stars she roams, seeking for rest,
While she thinks of the stranger that came from the West;
And Juan bears something wrapped up in his breast--
"Ho-ho! Hai! Ho-ho!
Head 'em off! Turn 'em back!
Keep 'em up to the track!
Ho-hillo! Ho-hillo!
Cric--crac!'"
His proudest possessions are prettily placed,
His love at his heart, and his life at his waist.
And if in a quarrel he happen to fall,
Why, the prairie's his grave, and his _poncho's_[61] his pall,
And Donna Luisa--gets over it all!
"Ho-ho! Hai! Ho-ho!
Head 'em off! Turn 'em back!
Keep 'em up to the track!
Ho-hillo! Ho-hillo!
Cric--crac!"
The Padrè may preach, and the Notary frown,
But the _poblanas_[62] smile as he rides through the town:
And the Padrè, he knows, likes a kiss on the sly,
And the Notary oft has a "drop in his eye,"
But all that he does is to love and to die--
"Ho-ho! Hai! Ho-ho!
Head 'em off! Turn 'em back!
Keep 'em up to the track!
Ho-hillo! Ho-hillo!
Cric--crac!"
FRANK DESPREZ, _in Temple Bar_.
FOOTNOTES:
[60] A California cattle-driver. Furnished with revolver, lasso, and
long-lashed whip, these adventurous gentry conduct the half-wild cattle of
the plains over miles of their surface; and, with their gay sashes, high
boots, gilded and belled spurs, and dark, broad hats (_sombreros_),
present a very picturesque appearance.
[61] Cloak.
[62] Peasant girls.
TWO MODERN JAPANESE STORIES.
The two stories which follow were circulated in the city of Yedo some
years back, and show that the better educated classes of Japanese are
keenly alive to the absurdity of the figure cut by their countrymen when
they attempt to jump over five hundred years in five hundred days.
I. A REGULAR MESS.
Some six years back lived in the beautiful village of Minoge an old lady
who kept the big tea-house of the place known as the "White Pine." Minoge
is situated at the base of the holy mountain Oyama, and during the months
of August and September trade in Minoge was always brisk, on account of
the influx of pilgrims from all parts of Japan, who came hither to perform
the holy duty of ascending the mountain, and of paying their devoirs at
the shrine of the Thunder-God, previous to making the grand pilgrimage of
Fuji-Yama.
The old lady was well off, and her inn bore an unblemished reputation for
possessing the prettiest serving-girls, the gayest guest-chambers, and the
primest stewed eels--the dish _par excellence_ of Japanese _gourmets_--of
any hostelry in the country side. One of her daughters was married in
Yedo, and a son was studying in one of the European colleges of that city;
still she was as completely rustic and unacquainted with the march of
affairs outside as if she had never heard of Yedo, much less of
foreigners. At that time it was a very rare thing indeed for a foreigner
to be seen in Minoge, and the stray artists and explorers who had wandered
there were regarded much in the same way as would have been so many white
elephants.
It caused, therefore, no little excitement in the village when, one fine
autumn evening, the rumour came along that a foreigner was making his way
towards the "White Pine." Every one tried to get a glimpse of him. The
chubby-cheeked boys and girls at the school threw down their books and
pens, and crowded to the door and windows; the bath-house was soon empty
of its patrons and patronesses, who, red as lobsters with boiling water,
with dishevelled locks and garments hastily bound round them, formed line
outside; the very Yakunin, or mayor, sentenced a prisoner he was judging
straight off, without bothering himself to inquire into evidence, so as
not to be balked of the sight, and every wine and barber's shop sent forth
its quota of starers into the little street.
Meanwhile the foreigner was leisurely striding along. He was taller by far
than the tallest man in Minoge, his hair was fair, and even his bronzed
face and hands were fair compared to those of the natives. On the back of
his head was a felt wide-awake, he wore a blue jacket and blue half
trousers (Anglicè, knickerbockers), thick hose, and big boots. In his
mouth was a pipe--being much shorter than Japanese smoking tubes--in his
hand a stick, and on his back a satchel.
As he passed, one or two urchins, bolder than the rest, shouted out,
"Tojin baka" ("Foreign beast") and instantly fled indoors, or behind their
mothers' skirts; but the majority of the villagers simply stared, with an
occasional interjection expressive of wonder at his height, fair hair, and
costume.
At the door of the "White Pine" he halted, unstrapped his bundle, took off
his boots, and in very fair Japanese requested to be shown his room. The
old lady, after a full ten minutes' posturing, complimenting, bowing, and
scraping, ushered him into her best guest-chamber. "For," said she, "being
a foreigner, he must be rich, and wouldn't like ordinary pilgrim
accommodation." And she drew to the sliding screens, and went off to
superintend his repast. Although nothing but the foreigner's boots were to
be seen outside, a gaping crowd had collected, striving to peer through
the cracks in the doors, and regarding the boots as if they were infernal
machines. One, more enterprising than the rest, took a boot up, passed it
to his neighbour, and in a short time it had circulated from hand to hand
throughout the population of Minoge, and was even felt and pinched by the
mayor himself, who replaced it with the reverence due to some religious
emblem or relic.
Then the hostess served up her banquet--seaweed, sweets, raw "tighe"--the
salmon of Japan--in slices, garnished with turnips and horse-radish, egg
soup with pork lumps floating in it, chicken delicately broiled, together
with a steaming bottle of her choicest "San Toku Shiu," or wine of the
Three Virtues (which keeps out the cold, appeases hunger, and induces
sleep).
The foreigner made an excellent meal, eked out by his own white bread, and
wine from a flask of pure silver, then, lighting his pipe, reclined at
full length on the mats, talking to the old lady and her three damsels, O
Hana, O Kiku, and O Riu (Miss Flower, Miss Chrysanthemum, and Miss
Dragon). He was walking about the country simply for pleasure, he
said--which astonished the women greatly--he had been away from Yokohama
three weeks, and was now on his road to the big mountain. The party were
soon screaming with laughter at his quaint remarks and at his occasional
colloquial slips, and in a short time all were such good friends that the
old lady begged him to display the contents of his satchel. "Certainly,"
said the stranger, pulling it towards him and opening it. A dirty flannel
shirt or two didn't produce much impression--perhaps wares of a similar
nature had been imported before into Minoge--nor did a hair-brush,
tooth-brush, and comb; but when he pulled out a pistol, which was
warranted to go off six times in as many seconds, and proceeded to
exemplify the same in the air, popular excitement began to assert itself
in a series of "naruhodo's" ("really!"). Then he pulled out a portable
kerosine lamp--(kerosine lamps are now as common in Japan as shrines by
the road-side)--and the light it made, throwing entirely into the shade
the native "andon," or oil wick, burning close by, raised the enthusiasm
still higher. Lastly he showed a small box of medicines, "certain cures,"
said he, "for every disease known amongst the sons of men."
The old lady and the maids were enchanted, and matters ended, after much
haggling and disputation, in the foreigner allowing them to keep the three
articles for the very reasonable sum of fifty dollars--about fifteen
pounds sterling--which was handed over to the foreigner, who called for
his bedding and went fast asleep.
The first thing for the old lady to do the next day was to present herself
and maids in full holiday costume with their recent purchases at the house
of the mayor. The great man received them and their goods with the dignity
befitting his rank, and promised that a public trial should be made of the
pistol, lamp, and medicines, at an early date, in order to determine
whether they were worthy to be adopted as institutions in the village.
Accordingly, by proclamation, at a fixed date and hour, all Minoge
assembled in the open space facing the mayor's house, and the articles
were brought forth. The pistol was first taken and loaded, as directed by
the foreigner, by the boldest and strongest man in the village. The first
shot was fired--it wounded a pack-horse, standing some twenty yards away,
in the leg; he took fright and bolted with a heavy load of wine tubs down
the street into the fields: the second shot went through a temple roof
opposite, and shattered the head of the deity in the shrine: the third
shot perforated the bamboo hat of a pilgrim; and it was decided not to
test the remaining three barrels.
Then the lamp was brought forth: the wick was turned up full, and the
village strong man applied a light. The blaze of light was glorious, and
drew forth the acclamations of the crowd; but the wick had been turned up
too high, the glass burst with a tremendous report, the strong man
dropped the lamp, the oil ignited, ran about and set fire to the matting.
In ten minutes, however, the local fire brigade got the flames under, and
the experiments proceeded.
The medicine packets were brought forth. The first was a grey powder. A
man who had been lame from youth upwards was made to limp out. The powder
mixed with water, according to directions, was given him. He hobbled away
in frightful convulsions, and nearly injured his whole limb in so doing.
The second packet was then unsealed--it contained pills. A blind man was
called out--six pills were rammed down his throat, and he was left
wallowing in a ditch. The third packet, a small book containing sticking
plaster, was then introduced. A burly peasant, victim to fearful
toothache, was made to stand forth. The interior of his mouth was lined
with the plaster, and when he attempted in his disgust to pull it off,
away came his skin also.
The medicines were condemned _nem. con._
The foreigner returned, asked how matters had gone, and was told in polite
but firm terms that his machines were not suited to the people of Minoge.
Whereupon he returned the fifty dollars to the old lady of the "White
Pine," and went away laughing. Minoge subsided into its ordinary every-day
groove of life, and it was not till some years after that the inhabitants
became better used to pistols, lamps, and European medicines.
II. PADDLING HIS OWN CANOE.
Takezawa was the head of a large silk and rice house in Yedo. His father
had been head, his grandfather had been head, his great-grandfather had
been head: in fact, the date when the first of the name affixed his seal
to the documents of the house was lost in the mists of antiquity. So, when
foreigners were first allowed a foot-hold on the sacred soil of Japan,
none were so jealous of their advance, none so ardent in their wishes to
see the white barbarians ousted, as the members of the firm of Takezawa
and Co.
But times changed. Up to the last, Takezawa held out against the
introduction of foreign innovations in the mode and manner of conducting
the affairs of the firm; other houses might employ foreign steamboat
companies as carriers for their produce from port to port, might import
foreign goods, and even go so far as to allow the better paid of their
clerks to dress themselves as they liked in foreign costume; but Takezawa
and Co. were patriotic Japanese merchants, and resolved to run on in the
old groove of their ancestors.
But times still changed, and the great house, running on in its solid
old-fashioned manner, found itself left in the lurch by younger and more
enterprising firms. This would never do. So Takezawa consulted with his
partners, patrons, clients, and friends, and after much worthy discussion,
and much vehement opposition on the part of the old man, it was resolved
to keep pace with the times, as much as possible, without absolutely
overturning the old status of the house.
Well, Takezawa and Co. had still a very fair share of the export rice and
silk business; but their slow, heavy-sterned junks were no match for the
swift, foreign-built steamers employed by other firms; so, with a
tremendous wince, and not without a side thought at "Hara Kiri"--(the
"Happy Despatch")--Takezawa consented to the sale of all his junks, and
the purchase with the proceeds of a big foreign steamer.
The steamer was bought--a fine three-masted, double-funnelled boat,
complete with every appliance, newly engined, and manned by European
officers and leading seamen. From the dock at Yokoska, where she was
lying, a preliminary trip was made; and so smoothly did everything work,
and so easily did everything seem to act, under the guidance of the
Europeans, that Takezawa considered his own mariners perfectly competent
to handle the vessel after an hour's experience on board. So the Europeans
were discharged with six months' salaries--about six times as much as they
would have received at home--and Takezawa fixed a day when the ship should
be rechristened, and should make her trial trip under Japanese management.
It was a beautiful day in autumn--the most glorious period of the year in
Japan--when Takezawa and a distinguished company assembled on board the
steamer, to give her a new name, and to send her forth finally as a
Japanese steamer. The ship looked brave enough as she lay in the
dock--ports newly painted, brass-work shining, yards squared, and half
buried in bunting. At the mizen floated the empire flag of Japan--a red
sun on a white ground--and as Takezawa gazed fore and aft, and his eyes
rested on brightness, cleanliness, and order everywhere, he wondered to
himself how he could have been such a fool as to stand out so long against
the possession of such a treasure, merely on the grounds of its not being
Japanese. A fair daughter of one of his partners dashed a cup of "sake"
against the bows of the vessel, and the newly named "Lightning Bird"
dashed forward into the ocean. Her head was made straight for Yokohama
(Takezawa had seen the Englishmen at the wheel manipulate her in that
course on her trial trip, so he knew she couldn't go wrong). And straight
she went. Every one was delighted; sweetmeats and wine were served round,
whilst on the quarterdeck a troupe of the best "Geyshas" or singing-girls
in Yedo mingled their shrill voices and their guitar notes with the sound
of the fresh morning breeze through the rigging.
The engines worked magnificently: coals were poured into the furnaces by
the hundredweight, so as to keep a good uniform thick cloud of smoke
coming from the funnels--if the smoke lacked intensity for a minute,
Takezawa, fearful that something was wrong, bellowed forth orders for more
coal to be heaped on, so that in a quarter of an hour's time the
"Lightning Bird" consumed as much fuel as would have served a P. and O.
steamer for half a day. On she went, everybody pleased and smiling,
everything taut and satisfactory. Straight ahead was Treaty Point--a bold
bluff running out into the sea. The "Lightning Bird" was bound for
Yokohama--Yokohama lies well behind Treaty Point--but at the pace she was
going it was very apparent that, unless a sudden and rapid turn to
starboard was made, she would run, not into Yokohama, but into Treaty
Point.
The singing and feasting proceeded merrily on deck, but Takezawa was
uneasy and undecided on the bridge. The helm was put hard a-port, the
brave vessel obeyed, and leapt on straight for the line of rocks at the
foot of the Point, over which the waves were breaking in cascades of foam.
But the gods would not see a vessel, making her first run under Japanese
auspices, maltreated and destroyed by simple waves and rocks; so, just in
time to save an ignominious run aground, the helm was put hard over, fresh
fuel was piled on to the furnaces, and by barely half a ship's length the
"Lightning Bird" shaved the Point, and stood in straight for Yokohama bay.
Takezawa breathed freely for the moment; but, as he saw ahead the crowd of
European ships and native junks through which he would have to thread his
way, he would have given a very large sum to have had a couple of
Europeans at the wheel in the place of his own half-witted, scared
mariners.
However, there was no help for it; the ship sped on, and the guests on
board, many of whom were thorough rustics, were in raptures at the distant
views of the white houses on the Yokohama Bund, at the big steamers and
the graceful sailing vessels on all sides. To avoid the chance of a
collision, Takezawa managed to keep his steamer well outside; they nearly
ran down a fishing junk or two, and all but sunk the lightship; still,
they had not as yet come to absolute grief. Round they went for a long
half-hour; many of the guests were suffering from sickness, and Takezawa
thought that he might bring the trip to an end. So he bellowed forth
orders to stop the engines, and anchor. The anchor was promptly let go,
but stopping the engines was another matter, for nobody on board knew how
to do so--there was nothing to be done but to allow the vessel to pursue a
circular course until steam was exhausted; and she could go no farther. It
was idle to explain to the distinguished company that this was the course
invariably adopted by Europeans, for under their noses was the graceful P.
and O. steamer, a moment since ploughing along at full steam, now riding
at anchor by her buoy. So round and round went the "Lightning Bird," to
the amazement of the crews of the ships in harbour and of a large crowd
gathered on the "Bund;" the brave company on board were now assured that
the judgment of the gods was overtaking them for having ventured to sea in
a foreign vessel, and poor Takezawa was half resolved to despatch himself,
and wholly resolved never to make such an experiment as this again. He
cursed the day when he was finally led to forsake the groove so honourably
and profitably grubbed along by his fathers, and strode with hasty steps
up and down the bridge, refusing to be comforted, and terrifying out of
their few remaining wits the two poor fellows at the wheel. After a few
circles, an English man-of-war sent a steam launch after the "Lightning
Bird," and to the intense disgust of the great Japanese people on board,
who preferred to see eccentricity on the part of their countrymen, to
interference by foreigners, but to the great delight of the women and
rustics, who began to be rather tired of the fun, the engines were
stopped. Takezawa did not hear the last of this for a long, long time;
caricatures and verses were constantly being circulated bearing upon the
fiasco, although it would have been as much as any man's life was worth to
have taunted him openly with it. But it was a salutary lesson; and
although he still kept the "Lightning Bird," he engaged Europeans to man
her, until his men proved themselves adepts, and she afterwards became one
of the smartest and fastest craft on the coast.--_Belgravia._
SUPPOSED CHANGES IN THE MOON.
In this Magazine for August last I considered the moon's multitudinous
small craters with special reference to the theory that some among those
small craters may have been produced by the downfall of aerolithic or
meteoric masses upon the moon's once plastic surface. Whether it be
considered probable that this is really the case or not with regard to
actually existent lunar craters, it cannot be doubted that during one
period of the moon's history, a period probably lasting many millions of
years, many crater-shaped depressions must have been produced in this way.
As I showed in that essay, it is absolutely certain that thousands of
meteoric masses, large enough to form visible depressions where they fell,
must have fallen during the moon's plastic era. It is certain also that
that era must have been very long-lasting. Nevertheless, it remains
possible (many will consider it extremely probable, if not absolutely
certain) that during sequent periods all such traces were removed. There
is certainly nothing in the aspect of the present lunar craters, even the
smallest and most numerous, to preclude the possibility that they, like
the larger ones, were the results of purely volcanic action; and to many
minds it seems preferable to adopt one general theory respecting all such
objects as may be classed in a regular series, than to consider that some
members of the series are to be explained in one way and others in a
different way. We can form a series extending without break or
interruption from the largest lunar craters, more than a hundred miles in
diameter, to the smallest visible craters, less than a quarter of a mile
across, or even to far smaller craters, if increase of telescopic power
should reveal such. And therefore many object to adopt any theory in
explanation of the smaller craters (or some of them) which could
manifestly not be extended to the largest. Albeit we must remember that
certainly if any small craters had been formed during the plastic era by
meteoric downfall, and had remained unchanged after the moon solidified,
it would now be quite impossible to distinguish these from craters formed
in the ordinary manner.
While we thus recognise the possibility, at any rate, that multitudes of
small lunar craters, say from a quarter of a mile to two miles in
diameter, may have been formed by falling meteoric masses hundreds of
millions of years ago, and may have remained unchanged even until now, we
perceive that on the moon later processes must have formed many small
craters, precisely as such small craters have been formed on our own
earth. I consider, at the close of the essay above mentioned, the two
stages of the moon's development which must have followed the period
during which her surface was wholly or in great part plastic. First, there
was the stage during which the crust contracted more rapidly than the
nucleus, and was rent from time to time as though the nucleus were
expanding within it. Secondly, there came the era when the nucleus, having
retained a greater share of heat, began to cool, and therefore to contract
more quickly than the crust, so that the crust became wrinkled or
corrugated, as it followed up (so to speak) the retreating nucleus.
It would be in the later part of this second great era that the moon (if
ever) would have resembled the earth. The forms of volcanic activity still
existing on the earth seem most probably referable to the gradual
contraction of the nucleus, and the steady resulting contraction of the
rocky crust. As Mallet and Dana have shown, the heat resulting from the
contraction, or in reality from the slow downfall of the crust, is amply
sufficient to account for the whole observed volcanian energy of the
earth. It has indeed been objected, that if this theory (which is
considered more fully in my "Pleasant Ways in Science") were correct, we
ought to find volcanoes occurring indifferently, or at any rate volcanic
phenomena of various kinds so occurring, in all parts of the earth's
surface, and not prevalent in special regions and scarcely ever noticed
elsewhere. But this objection is based on erroneous ideas as to the length
of time necessary for the development of subterranean changes, and also as
to the extent of regions which at present find in certain volcanic craters
a sufficient outlet for their subterranean fires. It is natural that, if a
region of wide extent has at any time been relieved at some point, that
spot should long afterwards remain as an outlet, a sort of safety-valve,
which, by yielding somewhat more quickly than any neighbouring part of the
crust, would save the whole region from destructive earthquakes; and
though in the course of time a crater which had acted such a part would
cease to do so, yet the period required for such a change would be very
long indeed compared with those periods by which men ordinarily measure
time. Moreover, it by no means follows that every part of the earth's
crust would even require an outlet for heat developed beneath it. Over
wide tracts of the earth's surface the rate of contraction may be such, or
may be so related to the thickness of the crust, that the heat developed
can find ready escape by conduction to the surface, and by radiation
thence into space. Nay, from the part which water is known to play in
producing volcanic phenomena, it may well be that in every region where
water does not find its way in large quantities to the parts in which the
subterranean heat is great, no volcanic action results. Mallet, following
other experienced vulcanologists, lays down the law, "Without water there
can be no volcano;" so that the neighbourhood of large oceans, as well as
special conditions of the crust, must be regarded as probably essential to
the existence of such outlets as Vesuvius, Etna, Hecla, and the rest.
So much premised, let us enquire whether it is antecedently likely that in
the moon volcanic action may still be in progress, and afterwards consider
the recent announcement of a lunar disturbance, which, if really volcanic,
certainly indicates volcanic action far more intense than any which is at
present taking place in our own earth. I have already, I may remark,
considered the evidence respecting this new lunar crater which some
suppose to have been formed during the last two years. But I am not here
going over the same ground as in my former paper ("Contemporary Review"
for August, 1878). Moreover, since that paper was written, new evidence
has been obtained, and I am now able to speak with considerable confidence
about points which were in some degree doubtful three months ago.
Let us consider, in the first place, what is the moon's probable age, not
in years, but in development. Here we have only probable evidence to guide
us, evidence chiefly derived from the analogy of our own earth. At least,
we have only such evidence when we are enquiring into the moon's age as a
preliminary to the consideration of her actual aspect and its meaning. No
doubt many features revealed by telescopic scrutiny are full of
significance in this respect. No one who has ever looked at the moon,
indeed, with a telescope of great power has failed to be struck by the
appearance of deadness which her surface presents, or to be impressed (at
a first view, in any case), with the idea that he is looking at a world
whose period of life must be set in a very remote antiquity. But we must
not take such considerations into account in discussing the _a priori_
probabilities that the moon is a very aged world. Thus we have only
evidence from analogy to guide us in this part of our enquiry. I note the
point at starting, because the indicative mood is so much more convenient
than the conditional, that I may frequently in this part of my enquiry use
the former where the actual nature of the evidence would only justify the
latter. Let it be understood that the force of the reasoning here depends
entirely on the weight we are disposed to allow to arguments from analogy.
Assuming the planets and satellites of the solar system to be formed in
some such manner as Laplace suggested in his "Nebular Hypothesis," the
moon, as an orb travelling round the earth, must be regarded as very much
older than she is, even in years. Even if we accept the theory of
accretion which has been recently suggested as better according with known
facts, it would still follow that probably the moon had existence, as a
globe of matter nearly of her present size, long before the earth had
gathered in the major portion of her substance. Necessarily, therefore, if
we assume as far more probable than either theory that the earth and moon
attained their present condition by combined processes of condensation and
accretion, we should infer that the moon is far the older of the two
bodies in years.
But if we even suppose that the earth and moon began their career as
companion planets at about the same epoch, we should still have reason to
believe that these planets, equal though they were in age so far as mere
years are concerned, must be very unequally advanced so far as development
is concerned, and must therefore in that respect be of very unequal age.
It was, I believe, Sir Isaac Newton who first called attention to the
circumstance that the larger a planet is, the longer will be the various
stages of its existence. He used the same reasoning which was afterwards
urged by Buffon, and suggested an experiment which Buffon was the first to
carry out. If two globes of iron, of unequal size, be heated to the same
degree, and then left to cool side by side, it will be found that the
larger glows with a ruddy light after the smaller has become quite dark,
and that the larger remains intensely hot long after the smaller has
become cool enough to be handled. The reason of the difference is very
readily recognised. Indeed, Newton perceived that there would be such a
difference before the matter had been experimentally tested. The quantity
of heat in the unequal globes is proportional to the volume, the substance
of each being the same. The heat is emitted from the surface, and at a
rate depending on the extent of surface. But the volume of the larger
exceeds that of the smaller in greater degree than the surface of the
larger exceeds the surface of the other. Suppose, for instance, the larger
has a diameter twice as great as that of the smaller, its surface is four
times as great as that of the smaller, its volume eight times as great.
Having, then, eight times as much heat as the smaller at the beginning,
and parting with that heat only four times as fast as the smaller, the
supply necessarily lasts twice as long; or, more exactly, each stage in
the cooling of the larger lasts twice as long as the corresponding stage
in the cooling of the smaller. We see that the duration of the heat is
greater for the larger in the same degree that the diameter is greater.
And we should have obtained the same result whatever diameters we had
considered. Suppose, for instance, we heat two globes of iron, one an inch
in diameter, the other seven inches, to a white heat. The surface of the
larger is forty-nine times that of the smaller, and thus it gives out at
the beginning, and at each corresponding stage of cooling, forty-nine
times as much heat as the smaller. But it possesses at the beginning three
hundred and forty-three (seven times seven times seven) times as much
heat. Consequently, the supply will last seven times as long, precisely as
a stock of three hundred and forty-three thousand pounds, expended
forty-nine times as fast as a stock of one thousand pounds only, would
last seven times as long. In every case we find that the duration of the
heat-emission for globes of the same material equally heated at the outset
is proportional to their diameters.
Now, before applying this result to the case of the moon, we must take
into account two considerations:--First, the probability that when the
moon was formed she was not nearly so hot as the earth when it first took
planetary shape; and secondly, the different densities of the earth and
moon.
The original heat of every member of the solar system, including the sun,
depended on the gravitating energy of its own mass. The greater that
energy, the greater the heat generated either by the process of steady
contraction imagined in Laplace's theory, or by the process of meteoric
indraught imagined in the aggregation theory. To show how very different
are the heat-generating powers of two very unequal masses, consider what
would happen if the earth drew down to its own surface a meteoric mass
which had approached the earth under her own attraction only. (The case is
of course purely imaginary, because no meteor can approach the earth which
has not been subjected to the far greater attractive energy of the sun,
and does not possess a velocity far greater than any which the earth
herself could impart). In this case such a mass would strike the earth
with a velocity of about seven miles per second, and the heat generated
would be that due to this velocity only. Now, when a meteor strikes the
sun full tilt after a journey from the star depths under his attraction,
it reaches his surface with a velocity of nearly three hundred and sixty
miles per second. The heat generated is nearly fifty times greater than in
the imagined case of the earth. The moon being very much less than the
earth, the velocity she can impart to meteoric bodies is still less. It
amounts, in fact, to only about a mile per second. The condensing energy
of the moon in her vaporous era was in like manner far less than that of
the earth, and consequently far less heat was then generated. Thus,
although we might well believe on _a priori_ grounds, even if not assured
by actual study of the lunar features, that the moon when first formed as
a planet had a surface far hotter than molten iron, we must yet believe
that, when first formed, the moon had a temperature very much below that
of our earth at the corresponding stage of her existence.
On this account, then, we must consider that the moon started in planetary
existence in a condition as to heat which our earth did not attain till
many millions, probably hundreds of millions of years after the epoch of
her first formation as a planet.
As regards the moon's substance, we have no means of forming a
satisfactory opinion. But we shall be safe in regarding quantity of matter
in the moon as a safer basis of calculation than volume, in comparing the
duration of her various stages of development with those of our own earth.
When, in the August number of this Magazine, I adopted a relation derived
from the latter and less correct method, it was because the more correct
method gave the result most favourable to the argument I was then
considering. The same is indeed the case now. Yet it will be better to
adopt the more exact method, because the consideration relates no longer
to a mere side issue, but belongs to the very essence of my reasoning.
The moon has a mass equal to about one eighty-first part of the earth's.
Her diameter being less than the earth's, about as two to seven, the
duration of each stage of her cooling would be in this degree less than
the corresponding duration for the earth, if her density were the same as
the earth's, in which case her mass would be only one forty-ninth part of
the earth's. But her mass being so much less, we must assume that her
amount of heat at any given stage of cooling was less in similar degree
than it would have been had her density been the same as the earth's. We
may, in fact, assume that the moon's total supply of heat would be only
one eighty-first of the earth's if the two bodies were at the same
temperature throughout.[63] But the surface of the moon is between
one-thirteenth and one-fourteenth of the earth's. Since, then, the earth
at any given stage of cooling parted with her heat between thirteen and
fourteen times as fast as the moon, but had about eighty-one times as much
heat to part with (for that stage), it follows that she would take about
six times as long (six times thirteen and a-half is equal to eighty-one)
to cool through that particular stage as the moon would.
If we take this relation as the basis of our estimate of the moon's age,
we shall find that, even if the moon's existence as a planet began
simultaneously with the earth's instead of many millions of years earlier,
even if the moon was then as hot as the earth instead of being so much
cooler that many millions of years would be required for the earth to cool
to the same temperature--making, I say, these assumptions, which probably
correspond to the omission of hundreds of millions of years in our
estimate of the moon's age, we shall still find the moon to be hundreds of
millions of years older than the earth.
Nay, we may even take a position still less favourable to my argument. Let
us overlook the long ages during which the two orbs were in the vaporous
state, and suppose the earth and moon to be simultaneously in that stage
of planetary existence when the surface has a temperature of two thousand
degrees Centigrade.
From Bischoff's experiments on the cooling of rocks, it appears to follow
that some three hundred and twenty millions of years must have elapsed
between the time when the earth's surface was at this temperature and the
time when the surface temperature was reduced to two hundred degrees
Centigrade, or one hundred and eighty degrees Fahrenheit above the
boiling point. The earth was for that enormous period a mass (in the main)
of molten rock. In the moon's case this period lasted only one-sixth of
three hundred and twenty million years, or about fifty-three million
years, leaving two hundred and sixty-seven million years' interval between
the time when the moon's surface had cooled down to two hundred degrees
Centigrade and the later epoch when the earth's surface had attained that
temperature.
I would not, however, insist on these numerical details. It has always
seemed to me unsafe to base calculations respecting suns and planets on
experiments conducted in the laboratory. The circumstances under which the
heavenly bodies exist, regarding these bodies as wholes, are utterly
unlike any which can be produced in the laboratory, no matter on what
scale the experimenter may carry on his researches. I have often been
amused to see even mathematicians of repute employing a formula based on
terrestrial experiments, physical, optical, and otherwise, as though the
formula were an eternal omnipresent reality, without noting that, if
similarly applied to obtain other determinations, the most stupendously
absurd results would be deduced. It is as though, having found that a
child grows three inches in the fifth year of his age, one should infer
not only that that person but every other person in every age and in every
planet, nay, in the whole universe, would be thirty inches taller at the
age of fifteen than at the age of five, without noticing that the same
method of computation would show everyone to be more than fifteen feet
taller at the age of sixty-five. It may well be that, instead of three
hundred and twenty millions of years, the era considered by Bischoff
lasted less than a hundred millions of years. Or quite as probably it may
have lasted five or six hundred millions of years. And again, instead of
the corresponding era of the moon's past history having lasted one sixth
of the time required to produce the same change in the earth's condition,
it may have lasted a quarter, or a third, or even half that time, though
quite as probably it may have lasted much less than a sixth. But in any
case we cannot reasonably doubt that the moon reached the stage of cooling
through which the earth is now passing many millions of years ago. We
shall not probably err very greatly in taking the interval as at least two
hundred millions of years.
But I could point out that in reality it is a matter of small importance,
so far as my present argument is concerned, whether we adopt Bischoff's
period or a period differing greatly from it. For if instead of about
three hundred millions the earth required only thirty millions of years to
cool from a surface temperature of two thousand degrees Centigrade to a
temperature of two hundred degrees, we must assume that the rate of
cooling is ten times greater than Bischoff supposed. And we must of course
extend the same assumption to the moon. Now, since the sole question
before us is to what degree the moon has cooled, it matters nothing
whether we suppose the moon has been cooling very slowly during many
millions of years since she was in the same condition as the earth at
present, or that the moon has been cooling ten times as quickly during a
tenth part of the time, or a hundred times as quickly during one-hundredth
part of the time.
We may, therefore, continue to use the numbers resulting from Bischoff's
calculation, even though we admit the probability that they differ widely
from the true values of the periods we are considering.
Setting the moon, then, as about two hundred and fifty millions of years
in advance of the earth in development, even when we overlook all the eras
preceding that considered by Bischoff, and the entire sequent interval
(which must be long, for the earth has no longer a surface one hundred
degrees Centigrade hotter than boiling water), let us consider what is
suggested by this enormous time-difference.
In the first place, it corresponds to a much greater interval in our
earth's history. During the two hundred and fifty millions of years the
moon has been cooling at her rate, not at the earth's. According to the
conclusion we deduced from the moon's relative mass and surface, she has
aged as much during those two hundred and fifty million years as the earth
will during the next fifteen hundred million years.
Now, however slowly we suppose the earth's crust to be changing, it must
be admitted that in the course of the next fifteen hundred millions of
years the earth will have parted with far the greater part, if not with
the whole, of that inherent heat on which the present movements of her
surface depend. We know that these movements at once depend upon and
indicate processes of contraction. We know that such processes cannot
continue at their present rate for many millions of years. If we assume
that the rate of contraction will steadily diminish--which is equivalent,
be it noticed, to the assumption that the earth's vulcanian or
subterranean energies will be diminished--the duration of the process will
be greater. But even on such an assumption, controlled by consideration of
the evidence we have respecting the rate at which terrestrial contraction
is diminishing, it is certain that long before a period of fifteen hundred
millions of years has elapsed, the process of contraction will to all
intents and purposes be completed.
We must assume, then, as altogether the most probable view, that the moon
has reached this stage of planetary decrepitude, even if she has not
become an absolutely dead world. We can hardly reject the reasoning which
would show that the moon is far older than has been assumed when long
stages of her history and our earth's have been neglected. Still less
reasonable would it be to reject the conclusion that at the very least she
has reached the hoar antiquity thus inferred. Assuming her to be no older,
we yet cannot escape the conviction that her state is that of utter
decrepitude. To suppose that volcanic action can now be in progress on the
moon, even to as great a degree as on the earth, would be to assume that
measurable sources of energy can produce practically immeasurable results.
But no volcanic changes now in process on the earth could possibly be
discernible at the moon's distance. How utterly unlikely does it seem,
then, that any volcanic changes can be now taking place on the moon which
could be recognized from the earth! It seems safe to assume that no
volcanic changes at all can be in progress; but most certainly the
evidence which should convince us that volcanic changes of so tremendous a
character are in progress that at a distance of two hundred and sixty
thousand miles terrestrial telescopists can discern them, must be of the
strongest and most satisfactory character.
Evidence of change may indeed be discovered which can be otherwise
explained. The moon is exposed to the action of heat other than that which
pervaded her own frame at the time of her first formation. The sun's heat
is poured upon the moon during the long lunar day of more than a
fortnight, while during the long lunar night a cold prevails which must
far exceed that of our bitterest arctic winters. We know from the
heat-measurements made by the present Lord Rosse, that any part of the
moon's surface at lunar mid-day is fully five hundred degrees Fahrenheit
hotter than the same part two weeks later at lunar midnight. The alternate
expansions and contractions resulting from these changes of temperature
cannot but produce changes, however slowly, in the contour of the moon's
surface. Professor Newcomb, indeed, considers that all such changes must
long since have been completed. But I cannot see how they can be completed
so long as the moon's surface is uneven, and at present there are regions
where that surface is altogether rugged. Mighty peaks and walls exist
which must one day be thrown down, so unstable is their form; deep ravines
can be seen which must one day be the scene of tremendous landslips, so
steep and precipitous are their sides. Changes such as these may still
occur on so vast a scale that telescopists may hope from time to time to
recognise them. But changes such as these are not volcanic; they attest no
lunar vitality. They are antecedently so probable, indeed, while volcanic
changes are antecedently so unlikely, that when any change is clearly
recognised in the moon's surface, nothing but the most convincing evidence
could be accepted as demonstrating that the change was of volcanic origin
and not due to the continued expansion and contraction of the lunar crust.
And now let us see how stands the evidence in the few cases which seem
most to favour the idea that a real change has taken place.
We may dismiss, in the first place, without any hesitation, the assertion
that regular changes take place in the floor of the great lunar crater
Plato. According to statements very confidently advanced a few years ago,
this wide circular plain, some sixty miles in diameter, grows darker and
darker as the lunar day advances there until the time corresponding to
about two o'clock in the afternoon, and then grows gradually lighter again
till eventide. The idea seems to have been at first that some sort of
vegetation exists on the floor of this mighty ring-shaped mountain, and
that, as the sun's heat falls during the long lunar day upon the great
plain, the vegetation flourishes, darkening the whole region just as we
might imagine that some far-extending forest on the earth would appear
darker as seen from the moon when fully clothed with vegetation than when
the trees were bare and the lighter tints of the ground could be seen
through them. Another idea was that the ground undergoes some change under
the sun's heat corresponding to those which are produced in certain
substances employed in photography; though it was not explained why the
solar rays should produce no permanent change, as in the terrestrial cases
adduced in illustration. Yet another and, if possible, an even stranger
explanation, suggested that, though the moon has no seas, there may be
large quantities of water beneath her crust, which may evaporate when that
crust becomes heated, rising in the form of vapour to moisten and so
darken the crust. Certainly, the idea of a moistening of the lunar crust,
or of portions thereof, as the sun's rays fall more strongly upon it, is
so daring that one could almost wish it were admissible, instead of being
altogether inconsistent, as unfortunately it is, with physical
possibilities.
But still more unfortunately, the fact supposed to have been observed, on
which these ingenious speculations were based, has not only been called in
question, but has been altogether negatived. More exact observations have
shown that the supposed darkening of the floor of Plato is a mere optical
illusion. When the sun has lately risen at that part of the moon, the
ringed wall surrounding this great plain throws long shadows across the
level surface. These shadows are absolutely black, like all the shadows on
the moon. By contrast, therefore, the unshadowed part of the floor appears
lighter than it really is; but the mountain ring which surrounds this dark
grey plain is of light tint. So soon as the sun has passed high above the
horizon of this region, the ring appears very brilliant compared with the
dark plain which it surrounds; thus the plain appears by comparison even
darker than it really is. As the long lunar afternoon advances, however,
black shadows are again thrown athwart the floor, which therefore again
appears by contrast lighter than it really is. All the apparent changes
are such as might have been anticipated by anyone who considered how
readily the eye is misled by effects of contrast.
To base any argument in favour of a regular change in the floor of Plato
on evidence such as this, would be as unwise as it would be to deduce
inferences as to changes in the heat of water from experiments in which
the heat was determined by the sensations experienced when the hands were
successively immersed, one hand having previously been in water as hot as
could be borne, the other in water as cold as could be borne. We know how
readily these sensations would deceive us (if we trusted them) into the
belief that the water had warmed notably during the short interval of time
which had elapsed between the two immersions; for we know that if both
hands were immersed at the same moment in lukewarm water, the water would
appear cold to one hand and warm to the other.
Precisely as in such a case as we have just considered, if we were obliged
to test the water by so inexact a method, we should make experiments with
one hand only, and carefully consider the condition of that hand during
the progress of the experiments, so in the case of the floor of Plato, we
must exclude as far as possible all effects due to mere contrast. We must
examine the tint of the plain, at lunar morning, mid-day, and evening,
with an eye not affected either by the darkness or brightness of adjacent
regions, or adjacent parts of the same region. This is very readily done.
All we have to do is to reduce the telescopic field of view to such an
extent that, instead of the whole floor, only a small portion can be seen.
It will then be found, as I can myself certify (the more apparently
because the experience of others confirms my own), that the supposed
change of tint does not take place. One or two who were and are strong
believers in the reality of the change do indeed assert that they have
tried this experiment, and have obtained an entirely different result. But
this may fairly be regarded as showing how apt an observer is to be
self-deceived when he is entirely persuaded of the truth of some favourite
theory. For those who carried out the experiment successfully had no views
one way or the other; those only failed who were certainly assured
beforehand that the experiment would confirm their theory.
The case of the lunar crater Linné, which somewhere about November 1865
attracted the attention of astronomers, belongs to a very different
category. In my article on the moon in the "Contemporary Review" I have
fully presented the evidence in the case of this remarkable object. I need
not therefore consider here the various arguments which have been urged
for and against the occurrence of change. I may mention, however, that, in
my anxiety to do full justice to the theory that change has really
occurred, I took Mädler's description of the crater's interior as "very
deep," to mean more than Mädler probably intended. There is now a
depression several hundred yards in depth. If Mädler's description be
interpreted, as I interpreted it for the occasion in the above article, to
mean a depth of two or three miles, it is of course certain that there has
been a very remarkable change. But some of the observers who have devoted
themselves utterly, it would seem, to the lively occupation of measuring,
counting, and describing the tens of thousands of lunar craters already
known, assert that Mädler and Lohrman (who uses the same description)
meant nothing like so great a depth. Probably Mädler only meant about half
a mile, or even less. In this case their favourite theory no longer seems
so strongly supported by the evidence. In some old drawings by the
well-known observer Schröter, the crater is drawn very much as it now
appears. Thus, I think we must adopt as most probable the opinion which
is, I see, advanced by Prof. Newcomb in his excellent "Popular Astronomy,"
that there has been no actual change in the crater. I must indeed remark
that, after comparing several drawings of the same regions by Schröter,
Mädler, Lohrman, and Schmidt, with each other and with the moon's surface,
I find myself by no means very strongly impressed by the artistic skill of
any of these observers. I scarcely know a single region in the moon where
change might not be inferred to have taken place if any one of the
above-named observers could be implicitly relied upon. As, fortunately,
their views differ even more widely _inter se_ than from the moon's own
surface, we are not driven to so startling a conclusion.
However, if we assume even that Linné has undergone change, we still have
no reason to believe that the change is volcanic. A steep wall, say half a
mile in height, surrounding a crater four or five miles in diameter, no
longer stands at this height above the enclosed space, if the believers in
a real change are to be trusted. But, as Dr. Huggins well remarked long
ago, if volcanic forces competent to produce disturbance of this kind are
at work in the moon, we ought more frequently to recognize signs of
change, for they could scarcely be at work in one part only of the moon's
surface, or only at long intervals of time. It is so easy to explain the
overthrow of such a wall as surrounded Linné (always assuming we can rely
upon former accounts) without imagining volcanic action, that, considering
the overwhelming weight of _a priori_ probability against such action at
the present time, it would be very rash to adopt the volcanic theory. The
expansions and contractions described above would not only be able to
throw down walls of the kind, but they would be sure to do so from time to
time. Indeed, as a mere matter of probabilities, it may be truly said that
it would be exceedingly unlikely that catastrophes such as the one which
may have occurred in this case would fail to happen at comparatively short
intervals of time. It would be so unlikely, that I am almost disposed to
adopt the theory that there really has been a change in Linné, for the
reason that on that theory we get rid of the difficulty arising from the
apparent fixity of even the steepest lunar rocks. However, after all, the
time during which men have studied the moon with the telescope--only two
hundred and sixty-nine years--is a mere instant compared with the long
periods during which the moon has been exposed to the sun's intense heat
by day and a more than arctic intensity of cold by night. It may well be
that, though lunar landslips occur at short intervals of time, these
intervals are only short when compared with those periods, hundreds of
millions of years long, of which we had to speak a little while ago.
Perhaps in a period of ten or twenty thousand years we might have a fair
chance of noting the occurrence of one or two catastrophes of the kind,
whereas we could hardly expect to note any, save by the merest accident,
in two or three hundred years.
To come now to the last, and, according to some, the most decisive piece
of evidence in favour of the theory that the moon's crust is still under
the influence of volcanic forces.
On May 19, 1877, Dr. Hermann J. Klein, of Cologne, observed a crater more
than two miles in width, where he felt sure that no crater had before
existed. It was near the centre of the moon's visible hemisphere, and not
far from a well-known crater called Hyginus. At the time of observation it
was not far from the boundary between the light and dark parts of the
moon: in fact, it was near the time of sunrise at this region. Thus the
floor of the supposed new crater was in shadow--it appeared perfectly
black. In the conventional language for such cases made and provided (it
should be stereotyped by selenographers, for it has now been used a great
many times since Schröter first adopted the belief that the great crater
Cassini, thirty-six miles in diameter, was a new one) Dr. Klein says, "The
region having been frequently observed by myself during the last few
years, I feel certain that no such crater existed in the region at the
time of my previous observations." He communicated his discovery to Dr.
Schmidt, who also assured him that the region had been frequently observed
by himself during the last few years, and he felt certain that no such
crater, &c., &c. It is not in the maps by Lohrman and by Beer and Mädler,
or in Schröter's drawings, and so forth. "We know more," says a recent
writer, singularly ready to believe in lunar changes; "we know that at a
later period, with the powerful Dorpat telescope, Mädler carefully
re-examined this particular region, to see if he could detect any
additional features not shown in his map. He found several smaller
craterlets _in other parts_" (the italics are mine), "but he could not
detect any other crater in the region where Dr. Klein now states there
exist a large crater, though he did find some very small hills close to
this spot." "This evidence is really conclusive," says this very confident
writer, "for it is incredible that Mädler could have seen these minute
hills and overlooked a crater so large that it is the second largest
crater of the score in this region." Then this writer comes in, of course,
in his turn, with the customary phrases. "During the six years, 1870-1876,
I most carefully examined this region, for the express purpose of
detecting any craters not shown by Mädler," and he also can certify that
no such crater existed, etc., etc. He was only waiting, when he thus
wrote, to see the crater for himself. "One suitable evening will settle
the matter. If I find a deep black crater, three miles in diameter, in the
place assigned to it by Dr. Klein, and when six years' observation
convinces me no such crater did exist, I shall know that it must be new."
Astronomers, however, require somewhat better evidence.
It might well be that a new crater-shaped depression should appear in the
moon without any volcanic action having occurred. For reasons already
adduced, indeed, I hold it to be to all intents and purposes certain that
if a new depression is really in question at all, it is in reality only an
old and formerly shallow crater, whose floor has broken up, yielding at
length to the expansive and contractive effects above described, which
would act with exceptional energy at this particular part of the moon's
surface, close as it is to the lunar equator.
But it is by no means clear that this part of the moon's surface has
undergone any change whatever. We must not be misled by the very confident
tone of selenographers. Of course they fully believe what they tell us:
but they are strongly prejudiced. Their labours, as they well know, have
now very little interest unless signs of change should be detected in the
moon. Surveyors who have done exceedingly useful work in mapping a region
would scarcely expect the public to take much interest in additional
information about every rock or pebble existing in that region, unless
they could show that something more than a mere record of rocks and
pebbles was really involved. Thus selenographers have shown, since the
days of Schröter, an intense anxiety to prove that our moon deserves, in
another than Juliet's sense, to be called "the inconstant moon." In
another sense again they seem disposed to "swear by the inconstant moon,"
as changing yearly, if not "monthly, in her circled orb." Thus a very
little evidence satisfies them, and they are very readily persuaded in
their own mind that former researches of theirs, or of their
fellow-pebble-counters, have been so close and exact, that craters must
have been detected then which have been found subsequently to exist in the
moon. I do not in the slightest degree question their _bona fides_, but a
long experience of their ways leads me to place very little reliance on
such stereotyped phrases as I have quoted above.
Now, in my paper in the "Contemporary Review" on this particular crater, I
called attention to the fact that in the magnificent photograph of the
moon taken by Dr. Louis Rutherfurd on March 6, 1865 (note well the date)
there is a small spot of lighter colour than the surrounding region,
nearly in the place indicated in the imperfect drawing of Klein's record
which alone was then available to me. For reasons, I did not then more
closely describe this feature of the finest lunar photograph ever yet
obtained.
The writer from whom I have already quoted is naturally (being a
selenographer) altogether unwilling to accept the conclusion that this
spot is the crater floor as photographed (not as seen) under a somewhat
higher illumination than that under which the floor of the crater appears
dark. There are several white spots immediately around the dark crater, he
says: "which of these is the particular white spot which the author"
(myself) "assumes I did not see?" a question which, as I had made no
assumption whatever about this particular writer, nor mentioned him, nor
even thought of him, as I wrote the article on which he comments, I am
quite unable to answer. But he has no doubt that I have "mistaken the
white spot" (which it seems he can identify, after all) "for Klein's
crater, which is many miles farther north, and which never does appear as
a white spot: he has simply mistaken its place."
I have waited, therefore, before writing this, until from my own
observation, or from a drawing carefully executed by Dr. Klein, I might
ascertain the exact place of the new crater. I could not, as it turned
out, observe the new crater as a black spot myself, since the question was
raised; for on the only available occasion I was away from home. But I now
have before me Dr. Klein's carefully drawn map. In this I find the new
crater placed not nearly, but _exactly_ where Rutherfurd's crater appears.
I say "Rutherfurd's crater," for the white spot is manifestly not merely a
light tinted region on the darker background of the Sea of Vapours (as the
region in which the crater has been found is called): it is a circular
crater more than two miles in diameter; and the width of the crescent of
shadow surrounding its eastern side shows that in March 1865, when
Rutherfurd took that photograph, the crater was not (for its size) a
shallow one, but deep.
Now, it is quite true that, to the eye, under high illumination, the floor
of the crater does not appear lighter than the surrounding region; at
least, not markedly so, for to my eye it appears slightly lighter. But
everyone knows that a photograph does not show all objects with the same
depth of shading that they present to the naked eye. A somewhat dark green
object will appear rather light in a photograph, while a somewhat light
orange-yellow object will appear quite dark. We have only to assume that
the floor of the supposed new crater has a greenish tinge (which is by no
means uncommon) to understand why, although it is lost to ordinary vision
when the Sea of Vapours is under full illumination, it yet presents in a
photograph a decidedly lighter shade than the surrounding region.
I ought to mention that the writer from whom I have quoted says that all
the photographs were examined and the different objects in this region
identified within forty-eight hours of the time when Dr. Klein's letter
reached England. He mentions also that he has himself personally examined
them. Doubtless at that time the exact position of the supposed new crater
was not known. By the way, it is strange, considering that the name Louis
Rutherfurd is distinctly written in large letters upon the magnificent
photograph in question, that a selenographer who has carefully examined
that photograph should spell the name Rutherford. He must really not
assume, when on re-examining the picture he finds the name spelled
Rutherfurd, that there has been any change, volcanic or otherwise, in the
photograph.
In conclusion I would point out that another of these laborious
crater-counters, in a paper recently written with the express purpose of
advocating a closer and longer-continued scrutiny of the moon, makes a
statement which is full of significance in connection with the subject of
lunar changes. After quoting the opinion of a celebrated astronomer, that
one might as well attempt to catalogue the pebbles on the sea-shore as the
entire series of lunar craters down to the minutest visible with the most
powerful telescope, he states that while on the one hand, out of
thirty-two thousand eight hundred and fifty-six craters given in Schmidt's
chart, not more than two thousand objects have been entered in the
Registry he has provided for the purpose (though he has been many years
collecting materials for it from all sides); on the other hand, "on
comparing a few of these published objects with Schmidt's map, it has been
found _that some are not in it_,"--a fact to which he calls attention,
"not for the purpose of depreciating the greatest selenographical work
that has yet appeared, but for the real advancement of selenography."
Truly, the fact is as significant as it is discouraging,--unless we are
presently to be told that the craters which are not common to both series
are to be regarded as new formations.
RICHARD A. PROCTOR, _in Belgravia_.
FOOTNOTES:
[63] To some this may appear to be a mere truism. In reality it is far
from being so. If two globes of equal mass were each of the same exact
temperature throughout, they might yet have very unequal total quantities
of heat. If one were of water, for instance, and the other of iron or any
other metal, the former would have far the larger supply of heat; for more
heat is required to raise a given weight of water one degree in
temperature, than to raise an equal weight of iron one degree; and water
in cooling one degree, or any number of degrees, would give out more heat
than an equal weight of iron cooling to the same extent.
RECOLLECTIONS OF THACKERAY.
In the absence of any complete biography of the late William Makepeace
Thackeray, every anecdote regarding him has a certain value, in so far as
it throws a light on his personal character and methods of work. Read in
this light and this spirit, all the tributes to his memory are valuable
and interesting. Glancing over some memoranda connected with the life of
the novelist, contained in a book which has come under our notice,
entitled "Anecdote Biographies." we gain a ready insight into his
character. And from the materials thus supplied, we now offer a few
anecdotes treasured up in these too brief memorials of his life.
Thackeray was born at Calcutta in 1811. While still very young, he was
sent to England; on the homeward voyage he had a peep at the great
Napoleon in his exile-home at St. Helena. He received his education at the
Charterhouse School and at Cambridge, leaving the latter without a degree.
His fortune at this time amounted to twenty thousand pounds; this he
afterwards lost through unfortunate speculations, but not before he had
travelled a good deal on the continent, and acquainted himself with French
and German everyday life and literature. His first inclination was to
follow the profession of an artist; and curious to relate, he made
overtures to Charles Dickens to illustrate his earliest book. Thackeray
was well equipped both in body and mind when his career as an author
began; but over ten years of hard toil at newspaper and magazine writing
were undergone before he became known as the author of "Vanity Fair," and
one of the first of living novelists. He lectured with fair if not with
extraordinary success both in England and America, when the sunshine of
public favour had been secured. His career of successful novel-writing
terminated suddenly on 24th December 1863, and like Dickens, he had an
unfinished novel on hand.
One morning Thackeray knocked at the door of Horace Mayhew's chambers in
Regent Street, crying from without: 'It's no use, Horry Mayhew; open the
door.' On entering, he said cheerfully: 'Well, young gentleman, you'll
admit an old fogy.' When leaving, with his hat in his hand, he remarked:
'By-the-by, how stupid! I was going away without doing part of the
business of my visit. You spoke the other day of poor George.
Somebody--most unaccountably--has returned me a five-pound note I lent him
a long time ago. I didn't expect it. So just hand to George; and tell him,
when his pocket will bear it, to pass it on to some poor fellow of his
acquaintance. By-bye.' He was gone! This was one of Thackeray's delicate
methods of doing a favour; the recipient was asked to _pass it on_.
One of his last acts on leaving America after a lecturing tour, was to
return twenty-five per cent. of the proceeds of one of his lectures to a
young speculator who had been a loser by the bargain. While known to hand
a gold piece to a waiter with the remark: 'My friend, will you do me the
favour to accept a sovereign?' he has also been known to say to a visitor
who had proffered a card: 'Don't leave this bit of paper; it has cost you
two cents, and will be just as good for your next call.' Evidently aware
that money when properly used is a wonderful health-restorer, he was found
by a friend who had entered his bedroom in Paris, gravely placing some
napoleons in a pill-box, on the lid of which was written: 'One to be taken
occasionally.' When asked to explain, it came out that these strange pills
were for an old person who said she was very ill, and in distress; and so
he had concluded that this was the medicine wanted. 'Dr. Thackeray,' he
remarked, 'intends to leave it with her himself. Let us walk out
together.' To a young literary man afterwards his amanuensis, he wrote
thus, on hearing that a loss had befallen him: 'I am sincerely sorry to
hear of your position, and send the little contribution which came so
opportunely from another friend whom I was enabled once to help. When you
are well-to-do again, I know you will pay it back; and I daresay somebody
else will want the money, which is meanwhile most heartily at your
service.'
When enjoying an American repast at Boston in 1852, his friends there,
determined to surprise him with the size of their oysters, had placed six
of the largest bivalves they could find, on his plate. After swallowing
number one with some little difficulty, his friend asked him how he felt.
'Profoundly grateful,' he gasped; 'and as if I had swallowed a little
baby.' Previous to a farewell dinner given by his American intimates and
admirers, he remarked that it was very kind of his friends to give him a
dinner, but that such things always set him trembling. 'Besides,' he
remarked to his secretary, 'I have to make a speech, and what am I to say?
Here, take a pen in your hand and sit down, and I'll see if I can hammer
out something. It's hammering now, I'm afraid it will be stammering
by-and-by.' His short speeches, when delivered, were as characteristic and
unmistakable as anything he ever wrote. All the distinct features of his
written style were present.
It is interesting to remark the sentiments he entertained towards his
great rival Charles Dickens. Although the latter was more popular as a
novelist, than he could ever expect to become, he expressed himself in
unmistakable terms regarding him. When the conversation turned that way,
we would remark: 'Dickens is making ten thousand a year. He is very angry
at me for saying so; but I will say it, for it is true. He doesn't like
me. He knows that my books are a protest against his--that if the one set
are true, the other must be false. But "Pickwick" is an exception; it is a
capital book. It is like a glass of good English ale.' When "Dombey and
Son" appeared in the familiar paper cover, number five contained the
episode of the death of little Paul. Thackeray appeared much moved in
reading it over, and putting number five in his pocket, hastened with it
to the editor's room in "Punch" office. Dashing it down on the table in
the presence of Mark Lemon, he exclaimed! 'There's no writing against such
power as this; one has no chance! Read that chapter describing young
Paul's death; it is unsurpassed--it is stupendous!'
In a conversation with his secretary previous to his American trip, he
intimated his intention of starting a magazine or journal on his return,
to be issued in his own name. This scheme eventually took shape, and the
result was the now well known "Cornhill Magazine." This magazine proved a
great success, the sale of the first number being one hundred and ten
thousand copies. Under the excitement of this great success, Thackeray
left London for Paris. To Mr. Fields, the American publisher, who met him
by appointment at his hotel in the Rue de la Paix, he remarked: 'London is
not big enough to contain me now, and I am obliged to add Paris to my
residence. Good gracious!' said he, throwing up his long arms, 'where will
this tremendous circulation stop? Who knows but that I shall have to add
Vienna and Rome to my whereabouts? If the worst come to the worst, New
York also may fall into my clutches, and only the Rocky Mountains may be
able to stop my progress.' His spirits continued high during this visit to
Paris, his friend adding that some restraint was necessary to keep him
from entering the jewellers' shops and ordering a pocketful of diamonds
and 'other trifles; for,' said he, 'how can I spend the princely income
which Smith[64] allows me for editing "Cornhill," unless I begin instantly
somewhere!' He complained too that he could not sleep at nights 'for
counting up his subscribers.' On reading a contribution by his young
daughter to the "Cornhill," he felt much moved, remarking to a friend;
'When I read it, I blubbered like a child; it is so good, so simple, and
so honest; and my little girl wrote it, every word of it.'
Dickens in the tender memorial which he penned for the "Cornhill
Magazine," remarks on his appearance when they dined together. 'No one,'
he says, 'can ever have seen him more genial, natural, cordial, fresh, and
honestly impulsive than I have seen him at those times. No one can be
surer than I of the greatness and goodness of the heart that had then
disclosed itself.'
Beneath his 'modestly grand' manner, his seeming cynicism and bitterness,
he bore a very tender and loving heart. In a letter written in 1854, and
quoted in James Hannay's sketch, he expresses himself thus. 'I hate
Juvenal,' he says. 'I mean I think him a truculent fellow; and I love
Horace better than you do, and rate Churchill much lower; and as for
Swift, you haven't made me alter my opinion. I admire, or rather admit,
his power as much as you do; but I don't admire that kind or power so much
as I did fifteen years ago, or twenty shall we say. Love is a higher
intellectual exercise than hatred; and when you get one or two more of
those young ones you write so pleasantly about, you'll come over to the
side of the kind wags, I think, rather than the cruel ones.' The pathetic
sadness visible in much that he wrote sprung partly from temperament and
partly from his own private calamities. Loss of fortune was not the only
cause. When a young man in Paris, he married; and after enjoying domestic
happiness for several years, his wife caught a fever from which she never
afterwards sufficiently recovered to be able to be with her husband and
children. She was henceforth intrusted to the care of a kind family, where
every comfort and attention was secured for her. The lines in the ballad
of the "Bouillabaisse" are supposed to refer to this early time of
domestic felicity:
Ah me! how quick the days are flitting!
I mind me of a time that's gone,
When here I'd sit as now I'm sitting,
In this place--but not alone.
A fair young form was nestled near me,
A dear, dear face looked fondly up,
And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me--
There's no one now to share my cup.
In dictating to his amanuensis during the composition of the lectures on
the "Four Georges," he would light a cigar, pace the room for a few
minutes, and then resume his work with increased cheerfulness, changing
his position very frequently, so that he was sometimes sitting, standing,
walking, or lying about. His enunciation was always clear and distinct,
and his words and thoughts were so well weighed that the progress of
writing was but seldom checked. He dictated with calm deliberation, and
shewed no risible feeling even when he had made a humorous point. His
whole literary career was one of unremitting industry; he wrote slowly,
and like 'George Eliot,' gave forth his thoughts in such perfect form,
that he rarely required to retouch his work. His handwriting was neat and
plain, often very minute; which led to the remark, that if all trades
failed, he would earn sixpences by writing the Lord's Prayer and the Creed
in the size of one. Unlike many men of less talent, he looked upon
caligraphy as one of the fine arts. When at the height of his fame he was
satisfied when he wrote six pages a day, generally working during the day,
seldom at night. An idea which would only be slightly developed in some of
his shorter stories, he treasured up and expanded in some of his larger
works.
While Alfred Tennyson the future Laureate received the gold medal at
Cambridge given by the Chancellor of the university for the best English
poem, the subject being "Timbuctoo," we find Thackeray satirising the
subject in a humorous paper called "The Snob." Here are a few lines from
his clever skit on the prize poem:
There stalks the tiger--there the lion roars,
Who sometimes eats the luckless blackamoors;
All that he leaves of them the monster throws
To jackals, vultures, dogs, cats, kites and crows;
His hunger thus the forest monster gluts,
And then lies down 'neath trees called cocoa-nuts.
The personal appearance of Thackeray has been frequently described. His
nose through an early accident, was misshapen; it was broad at the bridge,
and stubby at the end. He was near-sighted: and his hair at forty was
already gray, but massy and abundant--his keen and kindly eyes twinkled
sometimes through and sometimes over his spectacles. A friend remarked
that what he 'should call the predominant expression of the countenance
was courage--a readiness to face the world on its own terms.' Unlike
Dickens, he took no regular walking exercise, and being regardless of the
laws of health, suffered in consequence. In reply to one who asked him if
he had ever received the best medical advice, his reply was: 'What is the
use of advice if you don't follow it? They tell me not to drink, and I
_do_ drink. They tell me _not_ to smoke, and I do smoke. They tell me not
to eat, and I do eat. In short, I do everything that I am desired _not_ to
do--and therefore, what am I to expect?' And so one morning he was found
lying, like Dr. Chalmers, in the sleep of death with his arms beneath his
head, after one of his violent attacks of illness--to be mourned by his
mother and daughters, who formed his household, and by a wider public
beyond, which, had learned to love him through his admirable
works.--_Chambers's Journal._
FOOTNOTES:
[64] Of Smith, Elder, & Co., the well known publishers.
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